World Enough and Time / The Doctor Falls

Chapter The 224th, where a servant is disguised as one of two Masters. 

Plot:

In his ongoing attempt to rehabilitate Missy, the Doctor sets up a test where she, accompanied by Bill and Nardole, answers a distress call in deep space, while the Doctor monitors from the TARDIS. They have materialised on the bridge of a 400-mile long colony ship, so vast that it contains areas within of different landscapes, including solar farms with holographic skies. It was on its maiden voyage to pick up colonists, crewed by a 50-strong skeleton staff, when it came close to a black hole. Two days prior to the TARDIS team's arrival, a team went down - in super fast inertia (magic) lifts - to the other end of the ship to turn the reverse thrusters to full power in an attempt to escape the black hole. Suddenly, there were thousands of life forms showing on the ship's sensors, even though the ship had not been boarded; mysterious cloth-faced figures arrived in the lifts to take the remaining humans from the bridge, leaving only non-human Jorj the janitor. He is so petrified of any human appearing and attracting these figures that he threatens Bill - the only human in this new party - with a gun. The Doctor leaves the TARDIS to defuse the situation, but is too late as Bill is shot, and her severely wounded body taken off in a lift by the cloth-faces. The Doctor explains that time dilation caused by the black hole means time is running much slower on the bridge than at the other end of the ship, and the life forms are descendants of the original crew who went down there.

In the time it takes the Doctor to explain this, and overpower Jorj to get to the lift, ten years have gone by for Bill. She had a new electronic heart fitted, but cannot leave the hospital as it will stop working. She is befriended by a porter / handyman Razor while she waits for the the Doctor. In the hospital are many more patients in the cloth-face masks in lots of pain. Everyone is weak and dying (whether this is due to inbreeding or engine fumes or something else is not spelled out), and the eventual plan is to operate on everyone and then leave for the higher levels, Operation Exodus. The medical procedure, though, is to convert everyone to a cyberman form, and Razor is really the Master in disguise. When the Doctor arrives, he's just too late, and Bill has been fully converted. The Master and Missy (wavering as to which side she's on) capture the Doctor to gloat at him, but he's made a change to the Cyber neural network to make the Cybermen come after Time Lords too, forcing his dual enemies to join forces with him to escape the attacking horde. With Bill in Cyber form, resisting her conditioning, they all escape in a shuttle craft piloted by Nardole, which crashes into a solar farm on level 507 of the ship.

A group of humans, including children, live on this level. The Doctor wants to help them, but the Master just wants to escape - the Master's TARDIS is on the bottom level, and even though broken, can be fixed by a spare component Missy has. The Doctor implores Missy to join him and fight, even though the odds seem stacked against them, but she starts to leave with the Master. Having second thoughts, she fatally stabs her previous self precisely enough that he'll have time to get away (and presumably then regenerate into her). The Master won't let her stand alongside the Doctor, though, and zaps her with his laser screwdriver. Meanwhile, the Doctor and Cyber-Bill fight the attacking Cybermen, leaving Nardole to escape with the others to a higher level, becoming their protector for future Cyber skirmishes. At the end of the battle, all the cybermen are destroyed but both the Doctor and Bill appear to be dying. The watery pilot version of Heather, Bill's crush, appears from the rain, having never stopped tailing Bill. She converts Bill into a similar pilot form, they drop the Doctor off in the TARDIS and go off to explore the universe together. The Doctor looks like he's going to regenerate, but holds it back, landing at the South Pole where he meets his earliest (as known at that time anyway) incarnation, who is also staving off his regeneration. To be continued at Christmas...

Context:

It's ages since I last blogged, apologies. I took a week or more after watching the last Doctor Who story - as well as going to the BFI event related to Season 22 to watch another - to write up my notes and publish the associated post, then another week after that before I had time to watch the next one chosen at random. On a Sunday in March, I sat down to watch World Enough and Time from the new series 10 Blu-ray, with all three children, boys of 15 and 12, girl of 9; I was surprised particularly that the eldest wanted to watch, but he did. They all stayed for the duration, but there wasn't time that day to watch the second half so it was almost another week before completing the story (I watched a whole classic series Doctor Who story in the gap, but that's for next time). Comments from the children included a chorus of views on how the Doctor had "Very long hair" in the pre-credits scene, the younger two laughing a lot at Matt Lucas's lines as Nardole, the eldest saying "Is that Sam Tyler?" at the Master reveal, referencing one of John Simm's most prominent roles, and the middle child wondering "Where did they get the pigs?" to make the bacon for the breakfast Razor makes in the first episode, before the presence of farms made this clear in the second.

First Time Round:

I first saw this story on its debut BBC1 broadcast in the UK on two consecutive Saturdays towards the end of June 2017. I can't remember much detail, but I know that I caught them both accompanied by definitely the Better Half and probably all the family, slightly time-shifted on the evenings of broadcast. I remember being a bit worried ahead of broadcast about the title for the first episode, as it included the word 'Time'; including that word in a title has previously been seen as a curse which will mean the story will turn out not to be much cop (see the Deeper Thoughts section of the Time Monster blog post from May 2017, a month ahead of World Enough and Time's broadcast, for more details). From other blog posts around this time (it's as close as I get to keeping a diary), I see that there was a heatwave going on in the UK around when the episodes were shown, and that - with rather unseasonal festiveness - I continued the Doctor Who fun after The Doctor Falls by watching David Tennant and Catherine Tate Christmas special The Runaway Bride with the Better Half. The 'Time' curse seemed to have lifted, as I liked the story unreservedly on this first watch; but, I have to admit the one key reaction I remember having was thinking that Peter Capaldi in the opening sequence needed a haircut (just as my children did this time round).

Reaction:

There are broadly two types of Cyberman story in the history of Doctor Who, the more action-oriented that foreground the silver giants' remorseless invulnerability, and the more horror-inflected stories that concentrate more on their emotionlessness and conversion of others. The former outnumber the latter significantly, and often a Cyber story only touches briefly on the latter themes, while most of its plot is concerned with the former (e.g. the last story covered for the blog, Attack of the Cybermen, which has some body horror moments highlighting cyber conversion, but for the most part is an actioner). The reason for this, I think (and as I outlined in a bit more detail in the Deeper Thoughts section of a Cyber story post many years ago) is that doing justice to the full horror of the Cyberman concept within a Doctor Who TV story is hard. To be truly impactful to the concept as conceived by Cybermen creators Kit Pedler and Gerry Davis, it has to be gradual. These are a group of people who bit by bit replaced every part of themselves with machinery over the years, and in doing so lost their souls. Usually, a Doctor Who story structure can't fit in the sweep of elapsed time required to show this process. It's probably easier to do such stories in other tie-in media (I've not experienced any, but have heard that the Big Finish audio Spare Parts, which also sets out to show a "Genesis of the Cybermen", is very good). Writer Steven Moffat's clever use of the time dilation caused by proximity to a black hole to allow this, makes this story - to my mind at least - the very best Doctor Who Cyberman story of the horror type.

Interestingly, the script gets the best of both worlds / times, as the second episode becomes an all-action shoot out with the Mondas monsters, who niftily - thanks to that time dilation again - change from the creepy cloth-faced versions to the more combat-friendly steel-encased models that better suit the evolving narrative. The two episodes together cover pretty much anything you'd want from a Cyberman story. The change of genre between part 1 and 2 of a series finale is reminiscent of the previous Capaldi season, where the creepy haunted castle vibes of penultimate episode Heaven Sent gave way to the space western of Hell Bent (similarly, The Doctor Falls sees our Time Lord sharp-shooter holed up in an isolated outpost, including a barn, protecting its inhabitants from attacking 'bandits' that massively outnumber the heroes); again, the episodes are directed with flair by Rachel Talalay. The presence of the Cybermen in both halves makes World Enough and Time / The Doctor Falls story much more of a whole piece than that previous attempt, as does another strong subplot that runs through both parts. This is the conclusion of a running thread for the season - the rehabilitation of Missy. At the point of her final test, she needs to face up to her evil past and make a choice. It's another great script decision that her evil past is personified in the John Simm version of the Master, who's having a ball and really delivers, though Michelle Gomez matches him. It seemed screamingly obvious to me that Razor was him in disguise, though, despite good make-up and costume, but that just brought back happy memories of watching Anthony Ainley as the (often poorly) disguised Master in the 1980s. I wonder if anyone was truly fooled? This is the first time that Doctor Who on TV has featured two different incarnations of the Master working together in a story, so Moffat is innovating right up to the end...

Well, nearly the end. The biggest beef I have with this story is that it's not the swansong for Peter Capaldi that it looks to be at the outset. The flash forward in the cold open of the first episode teases the Doctor starting to regenerate, and the story involves him tying up the themes of the season, doing a big speech about his personal credo ("Why not, just at the end, just be kind?"), saying emotional goodbyes, and standing up against insurmountable odds, sacrificing himself to help others in an epic war zone. Nardole gets to be heroic, and has a love interest in the character of Hazran (nicely played by Samantha Spiro); Bill gets to go off into eternity with the character of Heather from her very first story. There's even a flashback clip montage of all the other companions and friends saying "Doctor" at the end like in Logopolis. And after that... Capaldi stays alive for another whole episode. I talked in the recent blog post for Time Flight about the delicate balancing act between material that forms the climax of a story or season (or as is the case of this moment, the climax of a Doctor's whole era) versus the material that follows. This is an example of how not to do it, as everything is said and done and wrapped up by the end of The Doctor Falls, so the following story and Capaldi's actual final episode Twice Upon a Time has nothing to do but tread water. This was forced upon Moffat reportedly, as a relatively late decision saw Chris Chibnall preferring not to introduce his new take on the show in a Christmas special, so Moffat had to dig in and create one more story. It's a shame.

The production design is superb throughout. The updated take on the very earliest Cybermen design is a tour de force, combining with script, performance and direction to take what was an imaginative but never wholly satisfactory look from 1966 and make it scary, heartbreaking (Bill as a Cyberman, shedding a single tear) and iconic. The creepy dark corridors of the hospital, populated with grotesques (the surgeon and nurse characterisations are just as 'large' as Simm's Razor), are magnificent and sinister. The second part is not as much of a visual challenge, but the finale battle scenes are suitably epic. Music and effects work also match the overall high standard. There's a couple of questionable moments of the script, but they only show up on a second or third watch. There's a lot of talk about how the patients in semi-Cyber state can't leave the hospital, but lots of them are clearly seen to do just that. Then, there's the lifts - they're a bit of a plot hole. In the first episode, they must somehow operate without being impacted by the time dilation, as otherwise the journeys up and down all the levels of the ship, would take years and either Bill or her Cyber attendants would have carked it before getting to the bottom level and the hospital. (Mind you, Bill does seem to be obeying some kind of Road Runner version of physics where she can have a massive hole blasted out of her, but not fall down until - like Wile E Coyote having rushed off a precipice - she looks down and notices.) In the second part, though, when the lifts are a potential means of escape, suddenly they're slow relative to the bottom decks again. The story also doesn't get fully resolved, with the Cybermen still having the potential to regroup and attack Nardole and his charges sometime in the future, and poor old Jorj the janitor is presumably still on the bridge wondering exactly what's going on. I like this, though; it gives it an edge to show that any victories - as the Doctor admits to Missy in his big speech - are only temporary ones. 

Connectivity: 

A brace of 45 minutes per episode two-parter stories featuring the Cybermen, one after the other. Both this story and Attack of the Cybermen focus on the Cybermen converting people (rarer than you'd think), have links back to the Cybs first appearance in the 1960s, feature time travel shenanigans, and have an actor returning to a role on the show they've played before, in both instances a male with dubious morality (Lytton, The Master).

Deeper Thoughts:

A treatise on morals as seen through the prism of Sci-fi convention appearances; TRIGGER WARNING: contains John Barrowman. One thing that World Enough and Time / The Doctor Falls does not get right for me, is the level at which the decision was made to leave behind flesh in favour of metal and plastic, and leave behind emotions for logic. I've always found it most chilling to imagine that the original Mondasians willingly and individually turned themselves into Cybermen, rather than being forced as is usually depicted in the series, as indeed it is in this Capaldi two-parter where some kind of elite group is operating on the innocent populace against their will. I would love one day for this to be explored on TV, but the details established of Cyber lore leave enough wriggle room that it can be seen that Mondas as a whole made the decisions that took them down the path to losing their humanity (or Mondasianity, I suppose), and that some individuals might not have had much choice in the matter. Perhaps it is just as scary, not losing one's own way but being swept up in a collective wave of people who believe they know what's best for one. This certainly has a contemporary resonance, which Moffat spells out in the script having the Doctor say "People plus technology minus humanity: the internet, cyberspace, Cybermen" and "Always read the comments, because one day they'll be an army." The thing about any twitter pile-on is that the majority think what they're doing is right. Can any of us say that we haven't been caught up in a collective reaction against what appears to be some egregious act when we're presented with it, maybe without sufficient context, on social media? Is it best to swim against such a stream? This is a point where I feel I have to reiterate the trigger warning - I'm going to talk about this in relation to John Barrowman.

The Captain Jack actor is very unpopular with a section of fandom that regularly air their views on social media, because of some silly behaviour he exhibited when making Doctor Who and Torchwood nearly 15 years ago. I will state upfront that I'm not a particular fan of the actor or of the character - they're both perfectly fine, and have had some great moments here and there, but I would never stand in line for a selfie or an autograph. A lot of people would, though, and I think they should be allowed to do so. That's just my opinion, though no doubt some people will judge me for such a stance. The history of this is as follows. John Barrowman, no doubt trying to be more outrageous than anyone else with regard to theatrical backstage pranks, used to get his willy out occasionally and flash people during the making of Doctor Who and Torchwood. It was well known at the time (around 2005 to 2008), and talked about regularly in interviews and convention appearances. There was no attempt to hide that this was going on, and there was no indication that there was any sexual intent to these actions. It was seen by some at least as a bit of fun (in a jokey cast and crew video made towards the end of Russell T Davies's first period as Doctor Who showrunner, it is explicitly referenced, for example). Were they wrong to accept this behaviour at that time? Many now think so. A criticism often levelled is that if someone in an office job did the same thing, they'd be fired. This is an unfair equivalence, to my mind, though, as an office job doesn't routinely involve people changing into and out of costumes. A better comparison would be of a sporting team. I feel sure that even in the current day and age, if someone was playing similar pranks in a locker room, and it was making other people feel uncomfortable, they would not be fired but would be taken aside and given a quiet word re: not doing it anymore.

This is what happened with Barrowman. A complaint was made in 2008 related to Barrowman's behaviour on Torchwood, and executive producer Julie Gardner reprimanded him. It was around this time also that what Barrowman refers to as his "exuberant behaviour" was discussed on a national radio programme for BBC Radio 1, again in a jokey manner. Playing up to this, Barrowman undid his trousers, not realising that there was a webcam streaming the visuals. Nothing was caught by the cameras, and the BBC only received one complaint, but Barrowman nonetheless issued a full apology. There is anecdotal testimony that he might have gone back to his old ways on the set of the Arrow series that he filmed later, but given a reputation that was now established and that he gleefully was playing up to, and given that this was based on things said by people at convention appearances playing to the crowd, those reports might well be exaggerated. Anyway, there's no evidence that any such behaviour has happened in the last decade, and Barrowman has been in a lot of dressing rooms in that time. There's no statute of limitations on moral considerations, though. In the last year, the behaviour from 2008 and thereabouts has become known to a new generation of fans who missed it first time round. Much more controversy arose than ever had in 2008 (even when there was a risk that some could have seen it happen on a webcam stream) just at the idea that it had happened back then. O tempora, o mores!

Ironically, what seemed to bring the subject back to light was a recording shared online of a past convention appearance not including Barrowman, where someone else (who I'm not going to name, but he also played a semi-regular on Doctor Who in those early years after the relaunch) talked about Barrowman's behaviour; this person, though, was someone who'd been accused of a systematic pattern of much more serious offences alleged to happen at around the same time and beyond, and about whom an active criminal investigation was ongoing. This is probably the most important of the levels at which consideration of this behaviour is made, the legal level. I don't think anyone can or should say (without risk of libel) that Barrowman's actions were sexual harassment, as that term has a legal definition. There has never been a criminal investigation into Barrowman's actions, let alone charges brought. The public record does not register anything even being raised with the police. Another level, not really connected to legal or even moral considerations, is commercial or corporate concerns. A planned Big Finish audio starring John Barrowman was shelved in 2021 when the controversy first emerged (not even re-emerged really, as I reiterate it was not - whether one thinks it right or wrong - controversial first time round). That's a commercial decision - Big Finish are a company with a small, loyal and social media-savvy customer base; being associated with something potentially harmful to their brand would cost them disproportionately, so they probably felt they had to take that decision. ITV on the other hand have continued to employ Barrowman because they presumably feel that they can take whatever minor hit it might make to their audience.

I'm not a lawman, and I don't run a company. That leaves only considerations at the moral level for me. And morality is a personal thing, isn't it? I don't think anyone taking a stance against John Barrowman is doing it through a Christian moral lens, which would anyway instruct one to forgive another's trespasses and leave everything else to be decided between them and their maker. Not being a religious type, I only have my personal moral awareness. This leads me to one conclusion - John Barrowman doesn't owe me anything, certainly not an apology. He's never flashed me (I suspect he's never flashed anyone who's complaining about him online either). Though I understand and empathise with someone who may have had an unpleasant personal experience with similar behaviour to Barrowman's, and I appreciate how that might change their judgement, I don't think it should impact my own decision. I also empathise with those frustrated with the law's failings for victims in this area; but I get very nervous at trying to close that gap by desiring a widespread moral standard to be established that aligns with one's own views. This can start off small (like the "If you follow X, then please stop following me" messages that people tweet in the heat of emotion sometimes on social media platforms), but where does it lead? A morality-inspired like-minded group doing work they believe the authorities are neglecting is a definition of the worst kind of vigilantism, and many of the same people taking against Barrowman would no doubt recoil in horror at other groups still out there guided by a moral duty to take the law into their own hands.

When I see a chorus of cloned disapproval online, it seems pious. It reminds me of a caricature of a Victorian gentleman, getting red in the face at the moral taint of some fallen woman. But because we believe we're addressing this ire at aggressors, we think it's okay (and note, I'm including myself, nobody's immune to getting swept up in this). Are we willingly leaving behind our discernment and leaping to judgement too quickly? Barrowman was recently announced as appearing in a ComicCon in Wales (he's since pulled out, anyway, stating reasons not connected to any controversy, who knows whether true or not). My twitter feed lit up on the day of the announcement with a lot of fans expressing their anger at this decision, which is fine - they are free to do so. Some said that they would not go to an event if that person was present, and again they are free to do so. They'd be within their rights to lobby the organisers to reverse the invitation too, and enough of a stink could cause a commercial reaction. This makes me uneasy, though. If it's accepted that not everyone will come to the same moral judgements, and that the one thing John Barrowman as a professional entertainer might be said to owe someone is entertainment, then what about the people who want to see him? Shouldn't they be free to do so? What would one be protecting them from - did anyone realistically think there was a possibility of Barrowman showing anyone his penis in the International Centre in Telford? The Missy / Master subplot of World Enough and Time / The Doctor Falls is about the possibility of redemption. Could we not imagine the same possibility for someone in real life as well as in fiction?

In Summary:

It's the one Cyberman story that creates world and time enough to let the concept be properly explored. Plus, there's also the Capaldi's Doctor's last (ish) brave stand, and a subplot about two incarnations of the Master - what more could one want?