Peter Capaldi's first series is nearly over. It's been a little turbulent with a mix of "Good, but could be better", "What were they thinking? At least it looks good", "Creative and innovative" and "Wow! That was a good one!" The transition to a new Doctor is always a bit of a bumpy ride but there was much hope for Capaldi with the expectation that the first episode would settle him in and he would be brilliant from the second... As I've said in the past, however, the Doctor is only part of the picture and liking or disliking a particular Doctor tends to actually mean liking or disliking the writers and producers more than the actor. Tom Baker, for instance, is generally regarded as the best Doctor, but I think a lot of fans would agree that while that may be true, his last few series were not so good and actually some in the middle were a bit ropey too... that's due to the changes in production team who chose to drive the show in a different direction. Unfortunately, I think the Twelfth Doctor has suffered by this kind of shift as well. Steven Moffat may still be at the helm, but his co-producers have changed more dramatically this year and the show has a different feel to it with more continuing drama and personal character arcs rather than narrative arcs and I think that is what has led to a drop in the audience Appreciation Index. New writers and directors also play their part of course so it is perhaps a good thing that the finale is a two parter written by Moffat himself... where we finally find out who Missy is and what the Heaven/Afterlife tease has been about all season...
The first part of the finale did not disappoint. An AI of 85 made it joint highest of the series along with Flatline and Mummy On The Orient Express (both written by Jamie Mathieson) but that is still below the average 86 of all Matt Smith's episodes as well as the over all revived series average (though Ecclestone and Tennant both had lower début series averaging 82 and 84.7 respectively) and, next week's part notwithstanding, makes it the lowest scoring series finale since the show returned. On reflection the day after watching Dark Water I felt that the ride had been a good one but it didn't seem like much happened, so I was struck by the episode's ability to retain it's appeal with tense drama because the double reveal wasn't enough to do it alone - though they will be what make this a classic to be remembered.
Let me start at the beginning though. Clara is phoning Danny and is desperate to tell him everything, has post-it notes all over her bookshelf to prompt her, and needs him to just listen. She also insists that she has to do it over the phone because she can't tell him to his face, as evidenced by the fact that she still hasn't done it. She starts with "I love you" and explains that she will never say that again (though she does elaborate and explain she won't say it to anyone else and that she is giving the words to Danny, they are his now) but before she can proceed, the line goes quiet and Clara is suddenly concerned that he's no longer trying to answer (even though she didn't want him to say anything). An unknown female voice then breaks the devastating news that he has been hit by a car and is dead. Arguably, Clara should have heard the accident, the screech of tyres, the thump and clatter of Danny being hit and dropping the phone, but I guess the emphasis as stated in the script is that it was a nothingness. Clara's gran says it was "a terrible thing" but Clara tells her that actually it was "boring and ordinary like stepping off a bus", she feels let down after all she has seen and been through with the Doctor...
Of course, when you have a friend with a time machine and your boyfriend has just died, the natural instinct is to call your friend and try and change the past and prevent the death... but Clara knows that the Doctor isn't likely to oblige, indeed he takes his time even answering the phone. The next scene takes on a curious back and forth strategy as it jumps between the outcome and the lead up to the moment Clara presents the Doctor with an ultimatum. We first see the Doctor waking up outside the TARDIS at the edge of a volcano with Clara. As he wakes up and Clara starts to tell him what is going in we cut back to see her entering the TARDIS. The double threaded narrative ensures the viewer knows what is going on as it unfolds and understands the twist only as they arrive at it. It also means that they can side with both Clara and the Doctor at the same time even though they are on opposing sides of the argument. They are both manipulating each other and ultimately, of course, the Doctor comes out on top. Clara has gathered all seven TARDIS keys from their secret hiding places (the first time they've ever been mentioned, so don't be disappointed that you weren't aware of them!) and each time the Doctor says he won't help her get Danny back she throws one into the larva (which we also learn is the only way to destroy them). She was able to get him into this position by use of a "Sleep Patch" (again, I'm pretty sure these have never been mentioned before either), despite the Doctor saying he didn't have any (or at least that she couldn't have one)... so she tricked him into setting coordinates for a volcano before putting him to sleep then, on arrival, dragged him out of the TARDIS and waited for him to wake up... only when she throws the last of the keys away and regrets it immediately, shocked that she actually went through with it, the Doctor reveals that in fact the "Sleep Patch" doesn't put a person to sleep but induce a dream state and that when she slapped it onto his neck Clara actually had it back to front and affected herself! The whole scenario had been played out in the console room and the keys were all perfectly safe. With both parties feeling betrayed and hurt, the Doctor tells Clara to go to hell, which she takes as a fair point and goes to leave the TARDIS in shame. Only the Doctor had meant it literally, or as literally as he could without believing that Heaven and Hell actually exist. He convinces Clara to interact with the psychic interface again and think of Danny... the TARDIS certainly thinks he is somewhere, and off they go...
The rest of the episode plays out in two separate strands inter-cut. We discover that Danny is in the Nethersphere at the "After Death Department", effectively being inducted by Seb who we had seen going through the same process with the policeman in The Caretaker, while Clara and the Doctor learn about the mausoleum in which they have materialised... and along the way, the BBC received complaints about the subject matter and the interpretation of death that was put forward!
What struck me about the first surprise reveal was that it had taken me so long to work it out, whereas the second had come to me several days earlier. The mausoleum is structured as a large multi-storey gallery viewable from the ground. The individual tombs, as Clara observes, are like large fish tanks with the dead curiously seated in the middle in skeletal form. Beyond the unusual configuration, the Doctor wonders how the bones stay in place without any muscle or flesh... something about the water perhaps. The discover that the mausoleum is run by a company called 3w who's logo is a large circle with a much smaller one tagged on below-left, kind of like a backwards Q, and it is used for windows in the institute's doors, making them look like portholes. Of course, when these doors are seen from the back, the double circle looks more obviously like a Q... but that's not the clue. The Doctor is escorted through a double door and as they close they reveal symmetrical windows with the smaller circles on the outer side... like eyes with a tear welling at the corners, the suddenly unmistakable visage of the Cybermen! Meanwhile, the Doctor has learnt that the skeletons are housed in a non-organic casing and the water has been treated, manipulated to (somehow) allow light to pass through non-organic material... as the tanks begin to empty we see that the skeletons are in fact Cybermen, with their metal casings being rendering invisible by the so-called "dark water".
Given the presence of Cybermen in trailer, all of this should have been obvious,of course. I had already noted that the tall gallery-like mausoleum was reminiscent of the tomb found in The Tomb Of The Cybermen and a number of similar sets featured in later Cyberman adventures. Funny how the opening scenes completely wiped the trailer from my mind! It is later revealed that rather than being in some distant land or remode space craft, the mausoleum is in fact within London's iconic St Paul's Cathedral and once released, the Cybermen are seen storming down its steps much like scenes from 1968's The Invasion - their fourth outing and first visit to Earth.
The second surprise reveal was, of course, the identity of Missy. Her introduction in this story was the first time the Doctor and Clara encounter her, having only appeared in brief cut-away scenes throughout the series. Curiously, she appears out of character compared with what we had previously seen. Rather than a flamboyant and friendly person, she appears to be an android with a peculiar sing-song voice (possibly another hint towards the Cybermen and their earliest sound). This is perhaps a tease to reflect the Ms. Delphox duplicate in Time Heist but no, this is the very same Missy being clever playful and deceitfully teasing. There's a curious play with the "official 3w greetings package", not some much a 'welcome pack' of information as I'd expected, but merely an excuse to shoehorn another gratuitous passionless kiss into the show. Missy realises she may have over stepped the mark and offers to turn down the intimacy level... it's just a gag that fails to deliver anything other than a gag-reflex from the audience (or was that just me?!). The Doctor asks to see her boss, and in the process goes through an elaborate play of confusion to get the Doctor to feel her heart before she calls maniacally for Dr Chang. The business with the heart was her way of showing the bemused and befuddled Doctor that she is a Time Lord (or rather Time Lady because she's a traditionalist) but he misses the cue and the viewer is none the wiser until the end of the episode when she finally reveals herself to be the Master, thus re-enforcing the subtly planted seed from The Doctor's Wife that Gallifreyan gender is as changeable as their appearance and dismissing the arguments once and for all that the Doctor will only ever be a man. Now that's a whole other discussion for another time but it is now clearly stated and demonstrated perfectly within canon that he could be female whenever the producers decide the time is right...
As I said at the start, very little action takes place in Dark Water, with much of it being wordy ideas and visuals with not a great deal of cause and effect narrative, but it does allow for a lot of clever scripting including Danny questioning the presence of wifi and iPads in 'Heaven' and being told by Seb that they have Steve Jobs (co-founder of Apple who died in 2011). The Doctor uses his psychic paper when Dr Chang eventual asks who he is and he sees it as a Government Inspector and asks "Why is there all this swearing?", to which the Doctor replies "I've got a lot of internalised anger"... a fairly innocuous but curious exchange, but it's a playful reference to Peter Capaldi's excessive swearing as Malcolm Tucker in Government based drama "The Thick Of It" (which also starred Chris Addison, who plays Seb). In describing the Nethersphere to Danny, Seb says that it isn't so much life after death and a bit more life than expected rather like embryos expecting life to end after nine months which he describes as "nothing at the end of the cord" - a play on the original title for Doctor Who's first serial/episode "Nothing At The End Of The Lane". On top of all this, we also get to see Danny's traumatic experience as a solder in Afghanistan when he accidentally killed a child, and being in the Nethersphere he gets to see him again.
A lot of ideas and revelations then. Clara gets to speak to Danny but is worried its a trick because her mind was read/scanned to determine who she wanted to speak to... in trying to get some tricky proof from him, all he will say is "I love you" even when she gives him the ultimatum "Say that again and I'll hang up"... It's not clear whether he pushed her so that she would hang up and let go of him, or whether that was his proof because they were 'his words' according to Clara's opening speech... but perhaps it was simply a deliberate and heartfelt repeat of his automatic offhand reply when she first said it to him at the start of the episode.
As well as the revelation that she is the Master, Missy concludes the episode with the warning that "Every grave on Earth is about to give birth"... And at the time of writing, that will happen tomorrow night as the series concludes...
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