SPOILERS
“World Enough and Time” kept my attention through the whole thing and all of a sudden it’s the end. One more episode left, then Christmas, then
someone new. But let’s just say for as much as we knew about this episode,
there was a twist none of us could have predicted. Right? (Actually, reviewing
my notes I predicted that twist in the second act, but it still caught me a
little off guard).
So for most of the episode it seems rather normal. We have a
quirky Missy put to the test and she ambles about an almost-doomed spaceship
pretending to be The Doctor. She calls Bill and Nardole “Exposition” and “Comic
Relief”, which was a nice little light-hearted meta-moment before the sole
inhabitant of the upper part of the ship finds them, demands to know who the
human is, and accidentally shoots Bill as the Doctor is pleading with him to
not. All this is told against a small backdrop of Bill and the Doctor acting
all student-professor at the university and he is telling Bill about the
Master/Missy and Bill is saying “promise you won’t get me killed” as she falls
to the ground in the present with a spectacular hole in her chest. But…she’s
not dead yet. She was taken to a lower deck and fixed up. She wasn’t damaged
enough to turn into what the audience knows to be a Cyberman, so she has to
live in the hospital and work there, rooming with an odd guy named Mr. Razor.
 |
| "Hello, I'm Doctor Who!" says Missy in the only happy part of the episode. |
It turns out the black hole the ship has been circling is
causing a bit of wibbly-wobbly, and the lower levels where Bill is has time
moving so much faster than where the Doctor, Missy, and Nardole are. It is
implied many months or even years pass by the time the three at the top get
over to the elevator and get down to her. (Maybe the time jump in the last
episode was a foreshadowing of this?) By the time they get down there, Mr.
Razor had already tricked Bill into thinking she was going to meet the Doctor
at the elevator, but instead was lead into the Operating Theater and, well,
turned into a Cyberman. While the Doctor is approached by a confused and
saddened Cyber-Bill, Missy is approached by Razor. As soon as he started
talking, I figured out who he was. I did appreciate the continuity of acknowledging
Simm’s Master was Prime Minister and Bill would have remembered him, hence his
disguise as Razor. Did anyone else get chills when the music has those
dissonant four beats?
So the Doctor now has to deal with the two versions of his
best frenemy, a companion who thinks he abandoned her, and the Genesis of the
Cybermen (which even I know is a reference to the “Genesis of the Daleks”, one
of the more popular Classic Who
stories). I’m oddly excited for next week. I want to see whose side the Master
and Missy will end up on, how they will end up beating the Cybermen, and of
course how it will end and where the story will leave off to set up the
Christmas episode.
My only complaint about the episode, and the only reason it’s
getting a 9.5/10, is “killing off” Bill. First of all, this seems like a repeat
of last season, having the Doctor face off his enemies without his companion,
newly killed. If they bring her back, I will be a little upset just because again
it would seem like a retread of last season. Also, I’m not sure if that would
even work. Her death seemed rushed and cheap, though I guess more beloved the
character, the harsher the death? Thanks Moffat. At least we had an inkling she
wasn’t signed on for more than one season. If only Who companions could get a happy ending.
9.5/10
No comments:
Post a Comment