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Doctor Who trashing the TARDIS, Clara alone, useless UNIT – Death in Heaven

Upgraded Jihadist Iron Men Cybermen

Gavin says:

Danny’s dead (unexpected), Clara’s gone (as predicted) and the Doctor is alone, painfully alone. Thus endeth Doctor Who season 8.

Death in Heaven was certainly climatic, navigating blockbuster and personal drama.

But did it succeed?

First, to the story line and the villain: the Master.

The riddle of "who is Clara Oswald" and the Doctor was tackled in a way that will leave Who fans gnawing away as this particular bone.

The Master is no ordinary maniac bent on orchestrating vast armies and subjugating mass populations – he wants that, too: he also plays mind games.

It was he, we are told, who brought Clara and the Doctor together, paring the high-maintenance Oswald with the no-rules Doctor, to basically do in Who’s head.

Who fact checkers will recall how Clara debuted in Who and may question whether the Master had a hand in that - when Matt Smith was the Doctor.

But flashing back to earlier episodes and returning to seemingly innocuous moments did provide both a thrill and sense of “ah-ha” for Who nerds.

Doctor Who

The episode cemented the Moffat's Master as a killer villain. Unpredictable, he can play vulnerable like a lost and frightened boy but ultimately he is the nihilist Joker of the The Dark Knight.

Is that really the end? I hope not. The Master was one of the few enduring universal enemies who could give the Doctor a serious run for his money. Less is more, agreed, but it’s an emptier Universe and an emptier Who knowing the Master isn’t ready to pop back: It’s like having Indiana Jones without the Nazis or Peter Pan minus Hook.

Let’s get down to the drama.

Honesty has been a big issue in this series – chiefly, Clara’s lack of it in her dealings with Danny Pink and the Doctor. But I think she's been unfairly picked on: Danny can't forgive her lying full-stop, vouching for her prowess as liar in St. Pauls' to the other Cybermen and proceeds to be crushed in the graveyard and is close to blowing Clara away when Clara tells Danny - when she thinks he's still just another Cyberman - that the Doctor is the one person she trusts absolutely and she would never lie to.

We leave Clara as damaged goods: she's lost her lover, her relationship with Doctor is broken beyond repair, and she's marooned and lonely on Earth. Was this a fair outcome for the once Impossible Girl who was fast on her feet in cheating death and in sparring with the Doctor?

But what to make of the Doctor’s meltdown in the TARDIS? This was a unexpected moment, his console trashing made more powerful for its silence over swelling music. Why now, looking at harmless blank space, having survived death on may occasions?

We learn the Doctor isn't as cut off as he pretends, having realised Gallifrey is not where the Master said it was and - possibly - having lost it for ever. If there's one thing worse then no hope, it's hope snatched away. Maybe the Doctor wanted to believe the Master and maybe the Doctor would have let the Master live after all. If so, then the Master would succeeded in calling the Doctor's bluff. Even in death, the Master was a gifted plotter who managed to twist the knife in the Doctor's well-hidden feelings and desires.

I’ve said before that I've had enough of the Doctor-as-bad-man, A-level-student thesis and so have the Who writers, at least it seems. It was good to see the Doctor in his grave-year speech hurl off the characteristics and interpretations heaped upon him by collaborators, assistants and foes alike. Having been handed the keys to the Cyberman army, the Doctor says he's not a good man or a bad man, an officer or a president. He's just an idiot with a box and a screwdriver, helping out and learning.

Do we believe him? The Doctor is a humble hero and this speech is the real spirit of the Doctor: a traveler in space and time with no higher purpose viewed by others through their partisan filers. But he does carry a deep scar and a desire to belong that we've not really seen before.

Clueless UNIT

As to the canvas of this story, Death in Heaven mostly worked but I had to roll my eyes.

OK, sigh, the writers have seen Iron Man and upgraded the Cybermen appropriately but they have seen 28 Days Later and The Walking Dead, too. That was clear from the permeating Cyberman “plague” to Clara in a twilightish graveyard full of re-animating Cybermen. Also, in a nod to current affairs, the Cybermen have become jihadists blowing themselves up for a higher cause.

There were also some by-the-book thriller story vehicles: the Master handcuffed and under TV surveillance, playing mind games with UNIT onboard their aircraft. We knew the set-up and what was coming: it was only a matter of time before she slipped her cuffs to wreak havoc. Th episode also snuffed out some promising characters we thought were keepers: heart-a-flutter, nerdy Osgood was offed by the Master on the brink of a promising career as a TARDIS co-pilot.

Some parts just didn’t work: UNIT’s involvement was as almost utterly pointless as was the now standard-issued-TV-team-security squad that descended on the Cybermen in St Paul's and did precisely nothing.

UNIT served only to revive Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart and give the Doctor an emotional link to one of the few figures from his past he bonded with. A straight-up-and-down type, cleaver and no emotional clutter – the type this Doctor gets on best with and apparently wants in his TARDIS.

UNIT did provide a pretext for rolling out their version of Airforce One, which in itself served simply as a dramatic stage for the Master’s unfolding chaos and the Doctor’s Bond-like skydive to the TARDIS. Yes, it was silly but also fun and in a nod to the audience even the Master’s evil sidekick Seb got over excited - getting vapourised for his trouble.

But, as ever there were holes and the Who writers fell straight into them.

My chief problem was with Danny Pink. Was he really meant to be cast as such an intractable opponent to the Doctor? His spat fury at the Doctor as "blood-soaked general" for his supposed hypocrisy but this soldier failed to comprehend the bigger strategic picture: the Doctor had to know what the clouds would do. Surely as a good soldier he'd have seen that? In the spirit of the episode, Danny Pink should have preached less and sacrificed more willingly.

Other, more familiar, holes tripped up the writers.

There was the cringing, hand-is-quicker-than-the eye explanations and some hastily invented Doctor-Who lore to explain some important episode developments: the Doctor as president of the world? Since when? And, in the event, it proved a totally pointless device. Cyberman DNA that converts anything organic that it comes into contact with? Again, in the entire canon of Who, since when? That rainwater containing Cyberman DNA reanimating the dead: Danny's body was on a raised table above the water in the morgue, so therefore safe from a water re-animation. And how did the Master escape the time war on Gallifrey and also become a woman?

Did Death in Heaven succeed? Mostly “yes”, some grumbling “nos” and a bit of breathing deeply and just letting it go.

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