Series 10, Episode 11 | Part 1 of 2 | First broadcast: 24 June 2017 | Writer: Steven Moffat | Director: Rachel Talalay
Cast
- Peter Capaldi as the Twelfth Doctor
- Pearl Mackie as Bill Potts
- Matt Lucas as Nardole
- Michelle Gomez as Missy
- John Simm as the Master
- Oliver Lansley as Jorj
Summary
Testing whether Missy has truly reformed, the Doctor brings her along with Bill and Nardole to answer a distress call from a colossal colony ship desperately reversing thrust away from a black hole; the sole crewman on the bridge, Jorj, panics and shoots Bill when she admits to being human, and she is carried away by masked figures who promise she can be saved. Investigating, the Doctor, Missy, and Nardole discover the horrifying scale of the black hole’s time dilation: while mere hours pass on the bridge, years have passed on the ship’s lower decks, where Bill has lived an entire life under the care of a mysterious hospital administrator named Razor, who has been slowly converting the “patients” into the first Mondasian Cybermen. When the Doctor finally reaches the lower level, he discovers Razor is in fact an earlier incarnation of the Master himself, reunited with his future self Missy, and that Bill has already been fully converted into a Cyberman without even realising it.
Interesting Facts
- This is the first story in Doctor Who’s television history to feature two incarnations of the Master on screen together, reuniting John Simm’s Master with Michelle Gomez’s Missy.
- The episode marks the return of the original Mondasian Cybermen design, unseen since their 1966 debut in the First Doctor serial “The Tenth Planet,” and depicts the earliest stage of the species’ creation.
- The episode’s title is drawn from the opening line of Andrew Marvell’s 17th-century poem “To His Coy Mistress”: “Had we but world enough and time…”
- John Simm’s casting was kept secret until shortly before broadcast, with the character disguised on-screen as “Razor” until the reveal at the episode’s end.
- Bill Potts’s transformation into a Cyberman while unaware of what has happened to her was widely singled out by critics as one of the most disturbing character fates in the show’s history.
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