Series 8, Episode 11 | Part 1 of 2 | First broadcast: 1 November 2014 | Writer: Steven Moffat | Director: Rachel Talalay
Cast
- Peter Capaldi as the Twelfth Doctor
- Jenna Coleman as Clara Oswald
- Samuel Anderson as Danny Pink
- Michelle Gomez as Missy
- Andrew Leung as Dr Chang
- Sheila Reid as Gran
- Chris Addison as Seb
Summary
Clara calls Danny to finally confess the truth about her travels with the Doctor and admit she loves him, but he is struck and killed by a car mid-conversation, sending him into an afterlife known as the Nethersphere. Devastated, Clara attempts to blackmail the Doctor into helping her rescue Danny from death itself, only for the Doctor to reveal he saw through her scheme immediately and still chooses to help anyway. Using the TARDIS’s telepathic interface, they trace Danny to a mausoleum called the 3W Institute, where submerged skeletons are preserved in a strange substance called Dark Water, and where they encounter the enigmatic Missy, who runs the facility. As Danny navigates his own trial in the Nethersphere under the guidance of the sinister Seb, Missy reveals to the horrified Doctor that 3W’s skeletons are, in fact, Cybermen — and, in the episode’s now-legendary climactic reveal, that she herself is a female incarnation of the Doctor’s oldest enemy, the Master.
Interesting Facts
- This episode delivers one of the most tightly guarded reveals in modern Doctor Who: Missy’s true identity as a regenerated female incarnation of the Master, last seen played by John Simm in 2009-10’s “The End of Time.”
- To prevent any leaks, Peter Capaldi and Michelle Gomez mouthed their lines silently during filming of the climactic reveal, with the dialogue added afterward via automated dialogue replacement, and the scene was stripped from all preview screener copies sent to critics.
- The image of Cybermen emerging from St Paul’s Cathedral is a deliberate homage to the 1968 serial “The Invasion,” which featured a nearly identical shot.
- Sheila Reid returns as Clara’s Gran, having first appeared in “The Time of the Doctor”; she had also appeared in the classic-era serial “Vengeance on Varos” back in 1985.
- The episode’s use of death, cremation, and the afterlife as central plot elements drew complaints from some viewers, prompting the BBC to issue a public defense of the storyline’s handling of the themes.
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