The
ever-traditional two-part Doctor Who
finale gets underway with a pre-titles sequence where the Doctor stumbles out
of the TARDIS, lost in an icy desert, seemingly about to regenerate. Whilst it’s
undoubtedly a striking image, it leaves me worried we’re going to get our least
favourite type of Steven Moffat: the “deliberately pitching the entire thing to
a tiny section of the audience” Moffat. That
doesn’t really tend to work out well. But what of the episode itself?
Post-titles,
my worst fears immediately seem to be confirmed with an excruciating sequence where Moffat trolls Gallifrey Base over
whether or not the Doctor’s real name is actually ‘Doctor Who’. After the main
event of this scene (which is otherwise quite good), namely Bill getting shot
with a really quite unsettling special effect, the episode slips back in time
to provide the set-up, and I can’t quite help but feel that the episode is
being told in non-chronological order simply because it can. Jokes about the
TARDIS windows being the wrong size were cute, and River Song’s enigmatic past
was quite interesting for “Silence in the Library” (and literally never again
after that). But these sort of knowing winks to the people who make gifs for
Tumblr and puzzlebox plotting feel like they’ve steadily been taking over the
show at the expense of characterisation and comprehensible stories. Oh, and
there’s also dabbing and talk of ‘man-crushes’, which, as with many of Moffat’s
previous attempts, evokes this image instantly:
And also
this one, which I will find any excuse to post, to be honest:
Fortunately,
the episode then gets absolutely bloody fantastic. It’s hard not to feel the
influence of Marc Platt’s highly regarded audio drama Spare Parts (widely considered one of the best Doctor Who stories
in any medium), but Moffat still manages to get the horror of the Cybermen
exactly right in a way nobody else has ever been able to. This is genuinely
distressing, psychological stuff; scary in a way “Blink” could never hope to
be. I am really impressed that the show went this far; I think it shows real
courage. There’s a sciencey plot that seems like it might actually stand up to
close scrutiny. The fact that I never twigged Bill’s new friend was John Simm
in disguise, is, I think, a testament to the show’s make-up department and Simm’s
acting ability (rather than saying anything about me, hopefully).
The sheer
horror of the genesis of the Cybermen and what happens to Bill here is
something I find hard to put into words. It’s genuinely harrowing stuff. And
although this is effectively a prequel to a television story first broadcast in
1966 and which no longer even exists in its entirety, it is still pitched well
to the casual audience; compare it to 2015’s “The Magician’s Apprentice” / “The
Witch’s Familiar”, which required intimate knowledge of two serials from the
1970s to make sense. It feels a bit like Moffat has been taking one or two
ideas from Russell T Davies’ playbook… or is that a bit mean? Nicholas Briggs’
recreation of the original Cybermen voice is great, and the costumes – a faithful
recreation of the original ones from five decades ago – are simply staggering.
Especially the slow evolution, as more and more upgrades are added… and it
still manages to pitch itself well to the casual audience, and Moffat somehow
finds the temptation to resist trolling the audience with references to Missy’s
secret daughter or anything like that. (I find it rather telling that RTD
openly mocked this sort of thing in “The Sound of Drums”.)
I find it
hard to sum up just how good the last half-hour of this episode is, after a
slightly stagnant beginning. But this is genuinely chilling stuff, beautifully
written, designed, performed and directed; a feeling that the show is firing on
all cylinders.
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