Holistic Review: The number of hypeable elements in this story beggars belief, and to a great extent it utilizes them well (eliciting much audible shock and excitement); but alas, this two-parter isn't able to maintain an even level of quality across both episodes.

As is par for the course in most Steven Moffat stories from the Steven Moffat era, there are parts of the season 10 finale that I loved, and there are parts that deeply annoyed me. There are also parts that I hated, but that's entirely due to the fact that my most recent TARDIS dream team — which I'm defining as the twelfth Doctor, Bill and Missy — is being slowly dismantled ("slowly" only because Capaldi, thank goodness, isn't quite gone yet) despite having only just gotten started. (Why do my favorite TARDIS crews always split up after a year, when the ones I'm not that keen on sometimes hang around forever?) So in that case, my sadness is a testament to how well Moffat developed these characters this year.

In general, though, I found that my attention waxed and waned during the finale, but the parts that perked me up generally had to do with one of three plot elements: Missy, Bill, and the retro Cybermen.

Missy is almost singlehandedly responsible for making the episode's first 7 minutes such a total delight, as she steps into the Doctor's shoes with panache (and a hilariously skewed vision of his behaviour and values). She doesn't quite out-Doctor the Doctor — how could she, really? — but she certainly holds her own, as she demonstrates by realizing just as quickly as the Doctor that the ship is no longer heading into the black hole. I suspect it's no coincidence that the moments in the story that involve her most heavily were also the parts that most interested me. I've enjoyed Michelle Gomez' performance ever since her first appearance, but she has really been a revelation this year. Missy's redemption arc has had me utterly hooked during the latter half of the season, and that remains true for the finale. It's also given Gomez much more to play with, as Missy has evolved beyond unhinged rambling to reveal deeper emotions, like longing and regret, which has made me aware of how very much Gomez can communicate through her expressions and her intonation. I have yet to see her give a duff delivery; every single line that comes out of her mouth seems perfectly calculated to convey the exact meaning that she intends. After a long stretch with handfuls of moderately amusing but slightly pained lines from certain other characters, I was amazed to note how much Gomez lights up the screen with every line of dialogue she's given. I adored her dancing to the alarm klaxon ("Well, it's quite a good beat, really, isn't it?") and the way she grabs her umbrella between her teeth before climbing the ladder (and can I just say how tickled I am that Missy has upgraded her laser screwdriver to a much more interesting and character-appropriate sonic umbrella!), along with her delivery of "Because I'm pretending to be him. Because that's the whole point of this ridiculous exercise.", "Dearie me, I thought you were handsome, now you've gone all cross and you're pointing a gun at me.", "Tsk.", "No, it is a little bit. Little bit the same.", "I'm secretly on your side all along, you silly sausage.", "Yes, sorry.", and the hurt in her eyes as she surveys the Master after stabbing him. But the real proof that Michelle Gomez is capable of delivering any line is the fact that she miraculously makes this one genuinely funny: "Hurry, my stallion! And if I'm in the shower, just bring me some beans on toast. That's, that's roughly human flirting, isn't it?"

If you've read my reviews of the Pertwee era, you'll know that I was never the Master's biggest fan; in fact, he's one of my biggest gripes about the UNIT years. Under a critical lens, I can appreciate many aspects of the character, but he's never been a villain that excited me... until now. Without a doubt, I've never liked the Master so much as I have this year. The Gomez incarnation has more than just breathed life back into the character, she's made Missy compelling. It's probably no coincidence that my attachment to Missy has grown as the series has begun to deepen her shades of grey while exploring the Doctor/Master friendship — always one of the character's most interesting aspects — more deeply in season 10. Every recurring incarnation of the Master has had moments hinting at the character's past relationship with the Doctor, but in the latter half of this season, it's been a major component of Missy's characterization, and I love it. World Enough and Time does a particularly good job of exploring their friendship, especially in the flashback scenes with Bill.

Can I also take a moment to gloat that my faith in Missy (and the Doctor's) was well-placed after all? Her good behaviour wasn't a trick, or a long con, but apparently a genuine desire to reform. Maybe this is yet another example of the Unsurprising Moffat Resolution, but in this case, I really like it. Wisely, Missy is allowed to remain just that tiny bit ambiguous throughout ("It's hard to say, I... I'm in two minds, and fortunately the other one's unconscious."), which means that the character never loses her unpredictability or dangerous edge. Yet she clearly has turned a corner: her first instinct when she learns about Mondas is now to rush off and inform the Doctor, she likewise rushes to his rescue during the Cyberman attack on the roof, and she even murders her previous incarnation (and gets murdered herself, in return) as an almost literal severing of her darker nature, in an effort to make herself worthy of assisting the Doctor. No wonder the Master finds this decision so odious that he would rather eliminate his own future than allow her to taint it with philanthropy. Knowing that Michelle Gomez might be formally bowing out in this episode, I had thought that Missy would sacrifice herself to save the Doctor, but this is definitely a more interesting exit. It certainly feels appropriate that the Master winds up killing himself twice over, but how sad that when she (apparently) dies, she leaves the Doctor believing that she's turned her back on him. He may never learn that he had persuaded her to switch to his side, or learn how deeply he genuinely impacted her.

Especially with this redemption arc, I can't wait to see what happens next... so I'm feeling really glum that this might be the end of both Gomez' role in the series, and the Master full stop. It's hard to imagine that this is the end of the character — escaping certain death is his thing, after all, and the camera doesn't linger on Missy's body long enough to see what happens — but then, the Master has never been killed by himself before, so there's a chance this might be for keeps. (My reaction to "Don't bother trying to regenerate. You got the full blast." was: But... what??? Nooooooooooo!) And perhaps it's understandable that they'd decide to kill off the character as soon as she turned good; maybe the audience wouldn't find a reformed arch-nemesis interesting? (but ahem Spike!) But even if the Master does return with another face, I'm really not ready to say goodbye to Michelle Gomez yet. I certainly wouldn't say no to Missy recurring for a full season, especially with this fascinating new character development. Please, pretty please, is there any chance at all that she'll be back? (During Gomez' interview in this week's DWM 514 — which made me love her even more — she implies that maybe we shouldn't believe everything she's said in previous interviews. Gomez will no doubt be pleasantly surprised to learn that this faint glimmer of hope actually made me cry. If that doesn't speak for my vastly increased love of the character, I don't know what would.)

The Doctor Falls marks another landmark: the first-ever multi-Master story. Due to the sad deaths of Delgado and Ainley, this has never been a possibility before, nor did it seem likely to happen now. So much time has passed since Simm's previous appearance in the role that I never would have imagined he would return, especially now that the character's been recast. Thankfully, the opportunity proved irresistible, and in retrospect the meeting of two Masters feels long overdue, even though of course it couldn't have been better-timed. I'm ever so pleased by how often Steven Moffat has been willing to bring back elements of the show that we thought we'd seen the last of. (I mean, Tenth Planet Cybermen, for goodness' sake!) Having two Masters sharing screentime is an exciting new spin on the traditional multi-Doctor story — we'll certainly never see a multi-Doctor story in which one incarnation murders another! — and The Doctor Falls demonstrates exactly what storytelling veins the scenario allows Moffat to mine; just as I'd suspected, it proves to be a rich seam. There's a lot of fun to be had in exploring the similarity between the two incarnations, like when they apparently join forces to torment the Doctor, or when they both tell Nardole the same lie about the Doctor's supposed last words, or even the way they both steeple their hands together when they're deep in thought.

But their differences are even more enlightening, and contrasting the two incarnations benefits Simm's Master in ways I wouldn't have predicted. The major difference between them, of course, is that Missy is becoming a gentler character; the unexpected but fantastic knock-on effect is that Simm's Master is therefore realigned toward the other extreme. In this story, Simm is largely responsible for the Master's menace, whereas Missy's loyalties are harder to pin down. For example, with Tennant, Simm's Master seemed to value their friendship on some level, but that doesn't seem to influence his relationship with Capaldi's Doctor. Nowadays, Missy is shouldering all of the emotional-friendship narrative burden, leaving the Master free to be purely adversarial, a shift which suits Simm's incarnation. His Master doesn't pay the slightest bit of attention to the Doctor's impassioned plea, whereas with Missy, it sinks in.

Part of the reason I was frustrated with his character during the Tennant years was that he came so close to being a great Master, but something about the character and the performance just didn't ring true to me, and when an imperfect Master is the only one you've got, it makes you chafe for a version that's more faithful to the original. Well, in my opinion, that's what we've got in Missy, who, despite zanily clowning around even more than Simm's incarnation, possesses both the gravitas to be properly menacing and the vulnerability befitting the Doctor's former best friend. I love her incarnation so much that it actually lifts some of the responsibility off Simm, allowing me to better appreciate the particular quirkiness of his Master. Now, Simm's Master still isn't exactly to my taste — his sarcasm still feels hammy, and his sense of humor is still a little too over-the-top — but in this story, his wackiness is greatly reined in, making the character seem more malevolent and less goofy. (And the goatee certainly doesn't hurt; I give massive props to Simm for encouraging its return!) I'm reminded of how much more palatable Nardole became once the character was allowed to expand beyond mere comic relief, just as Simm's Master benefits from having the comic relief largely stripped away. As a result of this subtle but impactful personality readjustment, this turns out to be my favorite of John Simm's performances as the Master.

Simm gets to portray two characters this week: the evil Master, as well as Bill's quirky, squirrely, chummy friend and protector Razor. And we really have to talk about Razor for a moment. Because I knew full well that John Simm was going to be in this story, yet he had me totally fooled. About two-thirds of the way through the episode, I even started wondering when Simm was going to turn up, despite the fact that I'd been watching him all along! How embarrassing is that?! With hindsight, I can recognize his smile behind the mask, but on first viewing I was totally taken in, and the penny didn't even start to drop until the end of his first scene with Missy. All of a sudden, I started to wonder why those two characters, of all people, were being paired up, and then the thought struck me: what if...? My initial reaction was 'surely not', but the longer the idea sat with me, the more convinced I became, and then Razor's dialogue started to back my intuition up. So by the time Razor pulled off his mask ("I love disguises! Do you still like disguises?"), I was getting genuine chills of delight and surprise. After years on a steady diet of stories involving the Master in disguise, which I've been watching for so long that I can't remember ever having been surprised by the reveal, finally he caught me unawares. For me, that moment absolutely made the cliffhanger.

However, aside from the impressive way Simm pulled the wool over my eyes, I can't say that I was all that enamored of Razor, and I think it's something to do with Simm's delivery. Razor is delightfully kooky, but his jokes often don't quite land: for example, "It was a clever lie, but you see straight through me." and "I call one good, one bad." have a lot of potential, but they come across as just amusing rather than actually funny. Apparently I find Simm's malevolence more convincing than his comedy chops. Having said that, I enjoyed his snickering at "Very fast bottom.", and this one made me laugh:

Razor: "Excellent! Positive attitude will help with the horror to come."
Bill: "What horror?"
Razor: "Mainly the tea."

As Razor, I enjoyed his delivery of "People, people, people, people, people! They are people!", "I know! I make picture for you.", and "A week raising his eyebrow? Why would I change?" As the Master, I enjoyed "You wanna see my city, Doctor?" and he really twists the knife on the line "Ten years you spent up there chatting, you missed her by two hours." (And I adore that, along with the goatee, his Master is now also wearing eyeliner.)

My second favorite plot element: Bill, no surprise! Wicked Steven Moffat, trading on the knowledge that the audience is uncertain whether Mackie will be staying or leaving, decides to frighten us with the prospect that Bill is a goner. The story's first eight minutes had me riding high on an elated thrill of plot intrigue and sublime dialogue, but the moment Jorj blasts a smoking hole through Bill's chest, my excitement died with her. For the remainder of the story, I couldn't shake the dread I felt that Bill was going to be killed off, and I guarantee that my worry for her kept me from enjoying part 1 as much as I otherwise would have. Then again, the remainder of part 1 is pretty unrelentingly grim and gloomy. It's fitting for a terrifying Cyberman story, I admit, but I think subconsciously — because I didn't put a finger on it until much later — the story was reminding me of Mindwarp, with a beloved companion under constant threat, abandoned by the Doctor to a body-horrific fate worse than death. But there is a silver lining, because it's Bill's plight that gets us so emotionally involved with the Cybermen plotline. Cyber-conversion is a horrible enough concept when it's being inflicted upon a stranger, but that much worse to imagine it happening to someone you love.

Moffat tries to pull another fast one on us toward the beginning of The Doctor Falls, by letting us think that over a two-week span, the Doctor has somehow hit the reset button and restored Bill to her original human body. Oh, what cruelty! The revelation that she's still a Cyberman made my heart sink. By that point I'd pretty much given up all hope, and had despondently resigned myself to Bill's ultimate sacrifice, when finally hope arrived... completely out of the blue, mind you, with no foreshadowing at all, so the sudden reappearance of Heather (Stephanie Hyam) is a total deus ex machina. The unexpected shots of Heather's distinctive iris were really quite jarring; they threw me for a loop of massive confusion until I realized that they were meant to be a last-minute flashback to remind us about Heather, who was imminently due to make a return appearance. Why Heather's only just now showing up, I have no idea; after all, Bill's cried before, including at least twice in this very story! But since her reappearance allows Bill a happy non-Cyber ending, with the option to become human again whenever she wants, I find I don't even care how unlikely it is. I'm grateful for it, especially because this ending leaves the door open for Mackie's possible return, should Chibnall decide to keep her on (though I'm under no such illusions). As for Hyam, I like her much better in this episode; she's reminding me a bit of Keira Knightley, and her character's not around long enough to seem inconsistent. I enjoyed Hyam's delivery of "Of course we can't!", "I can make you human again. It's all just atoms, you can rearrange them any way you like. I can put you back home, you can make chips and live your life, or... you can come with me.", and she and Mackie share a very sweet onscreen kiss. But why not Penny??? I was so much more invested in that relationship. And speaking of plot threads with no closure, I guess we're never going to find out how Bill works up the courage to come out to Moira. So I'm sure we won't be learning Bill's full first name! Her parting from the Doctor is also deeply sad; she doesn't get to see him regenerate (or, well, remain alive), nor does he know that she's been resurrected. So as far as they're aware, the other is dead, which will make for a deeply satisfying reunion, should the day ever come that the thirteenth Doctor crosses paths with Bill.

Thanks to all the flashbacks, Mackie gets to try out another handful of brand-new hairstyles in this story alone. Mostly they involve variations on a center part; I'm especially fond of the more dramatic parted style as she and the Doctor stroll toward the university. It's a great look on her, very hip. Her up-do in the canteen is cool too... buuuut I also have to ask, why doesn't her hair style or length change during the 10 years that she's trapped on floor 1056? Maybe their hairdressers are as zealous as their surgeons. Even though I feel she's sidelined in her final story, Mackie gives a wonderful delivery of "Me! Me, me, I, I'm, I'm human. I'm, I'm the only one, just, just me.", the way you can tell that her resolve is crumbling on "She scares me.", "Cheers!", "But you'll try and keep me alive.", "Thanks, mate.", "I think they do!", her smile when Razor jokes "The months will fly by!", "No. Well, bits of it. You turned up.", "Oh, good-o!", "You know I am.", and Bill crying over the Doctor's body (which made me cry!). Two moments, though, stand out as particularly strong. First, I feel so keenly for Bill after she defiantly claims to the Master's face that she's not upset, because we can tell that he's rattled her; what she really seems to need is a big hug from the Doctor, but he just glances at her and walks away. (Bill holds it together way, way better than I would.) But most of all, I was impressed by Bill's outburst when she finally unleashes all that pent-up anger over the Doctor's failure to rescue her in a timely manner, fuelled by her suppressed physical and emotional trauma from Cyber-conversion. It's a powerhouse performance by Mackie, in a scene that's regrettably brief but perhaps all the more poignant because of it.

And that's the third area where this two-parter succeeds: going back to the Cybermen's roots, in more ways than one. Before season 10, if you had asked me whether I would be interested in seeing the Tenth Planet version of the Cybermen again, I'm pretty sure my response would have been a firm no. I've always considered them to be the rather embarrassing low-budget version, with weird cloth faces and weirder voices and clunky costumes. I really wish that I had been able to review The Tenth Planet before watching this story, because my opinion of it now is absolutely going to be colored by the fact that World Enough and Time seizes these limitations with both hands and somehow makes them scary. It's really quite a feat. Likening the Cyber chest units to a heart-replacement implant, and their cloth faces to hospital masks, and finally giving the peculiar jug-handles an actual function as skull-mounted emotional suppressors, gradually takes just about every questionable element of the original design and gives it a chilling purpose. (And the headlamps are being used as weaponry again, yay!) A critical element, of course, is that each of these design features incorporates an aspect of body horror, which is by far the most frightening thing about the Cybermen, yet is rarely alluded to, much less featured in an episode. World Enough and Time could have done more along those lines too, in my opinion, but the scene that establishes that the post-conversion victims are in constant excruciating agony goes a long way toward selling the concept without suggesting any vivid mental images that children might find difficult to shake.

The common denominator among all of these successful plot inclusions, I'm beginning to realize, is Capaldi's Doctor. It's cool just to see the Mondasian Cybermen back, but the real excitement is to watch their rematch with the Doctor. And while I love the scenes of Missy and the Master squaring off against one another, and I'm always excited to see Bill take charge of whatever situation she's in, both Bill and Missy sparkle the brightest when they're given scenes with the twelfth Doctor. Opposite Mackie, Capaldi brings out the avuncular side of the Doctor, indicating with great subtlety how much he cares for her. Likewise, with Missy, both actors radiate a wary yearning to restore their broken friendship. It's funny, because the twelfth Doctor is hardly the most touchy-feely of his incarnations, yet Capaldi has imbued the role with a real depth of caring that's masked by his brusque, prickly manner. Perhaps it's come out more this season as the character has mellowed, or perhaps Capaldi is simply being asked to call upon that aspect of the character more often as the Bill and Missy storylines have developed, but either way it's been a real strength. I sometimes don't appreciate just how crucial the Doctor is to bringing out the best in every element of a story, but this is a prime example.

Given such high praise, it goes without saying that Capaldi hits this week's performance out of the park. Not just in grand showy ways, either, but in subtle moments like those I mentioned above. I'm really pleased that his final full season as the Doctor sees him bowing out on such a high note. His conversation over chips with Bill on the roof is a highlight, as we see him readily open up to her for once, which not only demonstrates how much he trusts her but also positions them almost as equals. I also appreciated the sensitive way he lightly inquires of Bill "Do you remember what they did to you?", and Capaldi's delivery of "No, no, I don't like guns." And his hair in the teaser is spectacularly feathered!

I might also cite the inventive storyline as a major point in the story's favor. One of the strongest parts of the plot is the brilliant sci-fi concept underlying it, of a cigar-shaped generational ship caught in the event horizon of a black hole, which causes time to move more rapidly at one end of the ship than at the other. As soon as the Doctor said "Black hole, 400-mile spaceship... it's a matter of time," I realized he was talking about time dilation, and smugly spent the next several minutes waiting for the other characters to catch up. There's a deep tragedy in the idea that a woman on floor 1056 could live out her entire life, and her children and grandchildren's entire lives, in the amount of time that it takes her sister on floor 0 to prepare and drink her morning coffee. (It was perhaps not the best idea to situate this story immediately after The Eaters of Light, which wrung dramatic tension out of that exact same basic conflict, but still.) Black-hole time dilation isn't a plot device I've ever seen in a sci-fi episode, and on the whole, it works really well, because Moffat has clearly given some thought to how time dilation would affect a closed system like the Mondasian ship. I was particularly impressed with the speed of the lift — at first I thought we were in for another "magically slowing bomb timer" of the ilk that affected The Pyramid at the End of the World, with the lift appearing to slow down as it neared the bridge, but of course that's exactly what would happen if you were at the top of a time-dilated elevator shaft: the lift would begin to sync up with your time-rate as it approached. The concept of time dilation is also utilized well to create dramatic tension, as Bill's separation from the Doctor becomes temporal as well as spatial, not to mention nearly insurmountable. The first part milks a great deal of intrigue out of Bill's predicament, since the audience knows what her replacement heart represents, and what the "patients" really are. (But how much would our minds have been blown if we hadn't known the Cybermen were coming back???)

But there's a 'but' coming, and it applies to everything. Despite the cleverly-incorporated sci-fi concept at the heart of the story, despite the dream team of the twelfth Doctor + Bill + Missy, and despite the fact that the return of the primitive Tenth Planet Cybermen unexpectedly reinvigorates the Doctor's #2 adversaries by getting back to the root of what makes them scary, I can't help but feel that the script fumbles the ball in numerous ways, constantly undercutting the story's strongest elements.

For me, the story was really exciting at the start and end of World Enough and Time (and wow, what a hard cliffhanger that was to suffer through!), and I was rapt (but distraught) at the end of The Doctor Falls. In between those three high points... it's kind of a snoozefest. World Enough and Time at least holds the viewer's attention with its sci-fi gimmick and our concern for Bill; what reservations I had were mainly personal (ie, my sinking feeling of dread regarding Bill's fate), though it must be said that there's much more world-building than plot advancement, and I also took issue with its portrayal of the Cybermen, which we'll be getting to momentarily. These reservations were unfortunately not mitigated by The Doctor Falls, which in every way is really the bigger offender of the two.

Right from the start, The Doctor Falls rips off one of the low points of the RTD era, annoyingly resolving the cliffhanger through flashback as in Last of the Time Lords. Once the action — or, should I say, inaction — relocates to floor 507, the plot suddenly bears overwhelmingly strong similarities to Moffat's previous regeneration story, The Time of the Doctor, as the majority of the episode concerns the Doctor dedicating the remainder of his life to protecting one tiny village from wave after wave of an onslaught of monsters. At least Moffat seems to have learned from his mistakes: the setup of The Doctor Falls is much better justified, and there's a proper resolution, but not only does the waiting feel interminable, it stops the story's momentum stone-cold dead. I want an episode that's about the Cybermen, not about a village of people waiting on pins and needles for them to attack.

Critically, part two also sidelines all three of the plot's most interesting elements. Missy is dreadfully underutilized, only popping up for the occasional chat with Simm's Master but never again commanding a scene until the story's climax. Bill barely does anything of note during the entire episode, except for putting a face (in an entirely metaphorical way) on Cyber-conversion. We don't even get to see what part she plays in the farm's defense! Perhaps worst of all, the Mondasian Cybermen, who have only just been reintroduced, are back-burnered in The Doctor Falls: they're given a single fight sequence at the story's start, and are thereafter relegated to second-fiddle status. They're not even treated like individuals, as they were in The Tenth Planet, but wind up as an anonymous horde of soldiers playing backup for the newer models. Why include the original Cybermen, and make them a major selling point of your story, if you're not really going to feature them?

Even the time-dilation aspect of the plot seems like more of an afterthought in The Doctor Falls. It only really comes into play in that it somehow buys the Doctor and his friends time to plan for the Cybermen's eventual assault, but that doesn't make much sense, does it? If anything, the new-and-improved Cybermen should be hot on their heels, having advanced by decades in the minutes that they've been gone. Yet that's not what we see: not only does floor 507 get a two-week reprieve, but when the Cybermen finally arrive, they're not uniformly upgraded. Instead, the offensive is led by a mixture of old-fashioned and fully modernized Cybermen. Admittedly, the plot justifies this technological advance — if time is moving rapidly onward down below, then it makes sense that the Mondasian scientists (or the Cybermen they became) would eventually improve upon their original blueprint — but it's regrettable that the original Cybermen's screentime is reduced as a result. But if the script is determined to show the Cybermen becoming more technologically advanced over time, then it ought to be consistent. At the very least, we should see some original Cybermen with partial upgrades. And why have the Cybermen only upgraded once in however many thousands of years?

Another aspect of the time dilation that doesn't seem to have been thought fully through is how it affects the Cybermen's pursuit of new converts. Evidently, at some recent-ish point, the scientists on floor 1056 realized that they were running out of living bodies to upgrade, and decided to kidnap some of the population of the higher floor(s). This would make total sense if the Cybermen had exhausted all the human beings on floor 1056 and were forced to seek out further candidates for conversion on the higher floors, but that's not the case: Razor shows Bill that they still have willing converts in the city, including children, and we see at least two unconverted humans in the hospital, so what's motivating the raids? It's hard to understand why the Cybermen are suddenly desperate to hunt down every lifeform on every floor that corresponds to human life signs. More to the point with regard to the time dilation, why are they waiting centuries (by their chronometer) in between each raid? The Cybermen's advancement seems to be moving with excruciating slowness. Something just doesn't make sense.

On a broader level, this introduces a whole other problem: the Cybermen's backstory is not only inconsistent with prior canon, but is muddied even within the episode itself, making the story more confusing than it ought to be.

First, the Cybermen's backstory is lacking some internal consistency. The traditional backstory, as portrayed quite well in Marc Platt's audio Spare Parts, is that the Cybermen were once humans who were forced to replace their organs piecemeal (whether to survive in a polluted environment or merely to extend their own lifespans, though I prefer the former explanation), until they became more machine than human and, with the loss of their emotions, became obsessively driven to force similar upgrades on all other humans. Overall, that tracks really well with the story we're given in World Enough and Time, except for one thing: it's never entirely clear why these experiments are being carried out. The story gives lip service to the idea that the Mondasians on this ship are being forced to upgrade to survive their polluted environment, but we never see it. Shouldn't there be patients in the hospital with cybernetic arms? Cybernetic lungs? Cybernetic eyes? Different upgrades for different people, depending on their needs. But all the patients we see appear to have been uniformly upgraded. Now, maybe that makes sense; if the issue is pollution, we could assume that the respiratory system is the standard upgrade. But that doesn't explain why Bill, the sole counterexample, has been given a replacement heart. (Clearly customized upgrades are available, so why don't we see more of them?) And it doesn't explain how people are being chosen for the upgrade. Razor says that they're upgrading people who are strong enough to make the exodus. Maybe that explains why there are still lots of humans wandering unharmed around the city streets while the Cybermen are apparently going all-out to abduct victims from the higher floors, but I still feel dubious. After all, we see a line of people being marched into the hospital, and they're not all young and fit; there's at least one stooped elderly woman among the crowd. Which raises a related question: are these people all volunteering for the upgrade? Or is the Surgeon an evil scientist who's conducting experiments in secret? (He implies that it's the latter when he suggests to Bill that nobody enters the conversion theatre willingly.) We also see some children in the volunteer line, which seems unlikely to me too, given that full-sized Cybermen would need full-sized bodies for conversion. The Doctor, however, later states just the opposite: "They target the children because conversion is easier with a younger donor. The brains are fresher, and because the bodies are smaller, there's less to [throw away]." Which makes it sound like now we're back to Cybermen that only incorporate human brains and nothing else, as in Army of Ghosts and Doomsday? But in this very episode, we can see Bill's face behind the Cyber-mask, so that surely can't be accurate.

Second, the Cybermen's backstory is also making a hash of external consistency, by which I mean existing continuity. I was a bit taken aback to learn that the Cybermen originated on a Mondasian spaceship rather than the planet of Mondas itself, which, as we know from The Tenth Planet, is the Cybermen's ancestral home. But maybe, I thought, the Cybermen would wind up piloting the ship to Mondas, where they'd convert the native population in their image. But that's not what ends up happening. Instead, the story makes itself impossible to reconcile with The Tenth Planet by advancing the Cybermen thousands of years in mere days: by The Doctor Falls, armored new-series Cybermen are clanging their way around the city streets, and are sure to replace the cloth-faced versions before much longer. (In fact, given the Cybermen's mandate to upgrade, I'm surprised they coexist at all.) Not only is this disappointing because it steals focus from the original Cybermen, who are apparently no longer considered worthy to headline a story on their own, but also because it makes my Mondas theory impossible. If ever these ship-based Cybermen did make it to Mondas, they'd surely use the more advanced models as the template. The only conclusion, therefore, is that the Cybermen arose independently on this ship and on Mondas, in an unlikely form of convergent evolution. Which is basically what the Doctor implies when he says, "They always get started. They happen everywhere there's people. Mondas, Telos, Earth, Planet 14, Marinus..." But what are the odds that the Cybermen on Mondas and the Cybermen on this ship would be identical, when the technology was designed by two completely different people? This might explain their differing looks, but surely not their common features (ie, why would all independently-arising versions of the Cybermen settle on jug handles as emotion suppressors?) And if they all arose independently, then how would the Cybermen in Earthshock have footage from every other time they encountered the Doctor? (Unless we've only ever seen the same "strain" of Cybermen until the revival? but the Doctor implies that the Mondasian Cybermen and the Telosian Cybermen are unrelated lineages.) If the Cybermen were brand-new adversaries, none of this would matter, but ever since their first appearance in 1966, we've had a general idea of how they were created, and this account just doesn't seem to mesh. Maybe this will end up being a good thing — if this is the origin story of an evolutionary offshoot of Cybermen, we can still have another "traditional" Cyberman origin story set on Mondas — but that's assuming that (a) these Cybermen are not the same as the Tenth Planet Cybermen (a sure thing if this ship never gets free of the black hole, but a toss-up if it ever does) and (b) the incoming new production team have any desire to clear up this self-inflicted conundrum (a big big 'if'). Otherwise, it's unclear how the two stories fit together.

In addition to underutilizing the story's biggest selling points, the script is also riddled with disruptive plot holes that kept pulling me out of the story. Some are immediately obvious, whereas others only become apparent later.

Where should we start? There are just so many. Golly. Okay, first let's tackle the two that threaten to undermine the entire story, and then I'll try to group the slightly less problematic ones into categories.

• Why didn't the original 20 crewmembers ever return? They clearly succeeded in reversing the engines, and they had children — btw how awkward must that have been? — so it's not as if they all died before their mission was complete. And the lifts haven't stopped working, so they weren't stuck down there. They should've been back up on the bridge seconds after they'd left. So why did they decide to stay and live out their lives on the far end of the ship? You could argue that this is a classic case of a high-concept premise that just hasn't been thought all the way through. Moffat just thought "what if a civilization had arisen on the lower level!" and didn't think about why — or, for that matter, how (ie, where did they get all the supplies to build this city?) — it got started.

• Why does Jorj care if the Cybermen come to the bridge? He knows (or at least has made an accurate educated guess) that they're only after humans, because they've already invaded the bridge once to abduct his colleagues. He also knows that when they arrive, they will likewise abduct Bill, and immediately leave again. So why is he so panicked about their imminent arrival if they pose no threat to him? (Even Missy raises this point — "Why do you care, smurf? They're not even interested in you." — but it's never answered.) And why does he shoot Bill at the last possible second, when it clearly does no good (and might not have dissuaded the Cybermen even if he'd killed her the moment that the lift started to ascend)? This is a huge problem, because it renders a key part of the plot pointless.

Next, let's talk about the problems with the ship and the black hole:

• Mondas is a free-floating rogue planet: no home sun, therefore no home solar system, therefore no close neighbors. So if they're going to build a colony ship, you'd think they'd build it, you know, on Mondas. But the ship is returning to Mondas so that the intended colonists can board for their journey, and the Doctor says that the crew were getting the ship from "the factory", implying that the factory wasn't on or near Mondas. So, what, they ordered the ship online from some remote location, and sent out a skeleton crew (including one and only one alien; maybe Jorj is an escort from the race that built the ship?) to fetch it back? For some reason I just find this scenario difficult to believe.

• The Cybermen are the descendants of the original team of 20 that went to floor 1056 to throw the engines into reverse. And we know that, prior to the Cybermen's creation, an expedition left from floor 1056 to explore floor 507, which is why there's another colony on that floor. But there should only be two distinct populations of humans, right? So why does the scan display life-sign readings on nearly every deck of the ship? (My only theory is that the descendants of the original 20 didn't all stay on floor 1056, but gradually settled higher and higher floors. Except that we know the Cybermen have been harvesting every human they could find, up to the very top of the ship, so how did all these other human lifesigns escape detection and conversion?)

• Assuming that the far end of the ship is actually experiencing time at the same rate as the rest of the universe, and it's the near end that's abnormally slow — because I think that's how it would work, if the back end is still outside the event horizon — then I have to wonder, did nobody from Mondas ever bother sending out a rescue team to find the missing colony ship anytime in the past millennium?

• Why would you plot a flight path from the shipyard to Mondas that veers dangerously close to a black hole? And is the person responsible related to whomever plotted the flight path for the Hyperion III's Earth-Mogar run?

Shall we look at the time dilation aspect of the plot next?

• Thanks to the "world time" clocks on floor 1056, we know that for every day that passes on floor 0, the residents of floor 1056 live out roughly 184,517 days (or about 505 years, in Earth terms). That's 128 days per minute, or a little over 2 days per second (again, in Earth metrics, which we have no reason to believe that this ship is using). When the Doctor, Missy and Nardole walk over to the elevator, it takes 8 seconds before Bill happens to catch sight of them on the television, and during 4 of those they're standing right in front of the lift doors. How did she fail to notice them heading in that direction for at least one and up to two weeks? Had she given up hope and stopped checking the television each morning?

• Does it make sense for the Cybermen to raid the upper floors for humans, when the population of floor 1056 can breed thousands of new subjects for conversion in the same amount of time that it takes them to bring back 1 to 20 people?

• The timeline of floor 1056 is terribly confusing. We know that there were identical Cybermen on the bridge two days before the Doctor's arrival, when they abducted Jorj's crewmates. That equates to a millennium on floor 1056! So we surely must be seeing generations passing in the blink of an eye, yet when Bill arrives on the lowest floor, the vague implication is that she's meeting the same surgeon who invented the Cyber-upgrading technology. (Or, at least, the episode never makes explicit that he's merely perpetuating a thousand-year-old surgical technique.) What makes this even more peculiar, then, is that for the last thousand years, the technology apparently hasn't advanced one iota. Until, of course, it suddenly does; see above, re: fully modernized Cybermen! (Then again, not really that sudden, eh? We don't know the exact time differential between floor 1056 and floor 507, but we can safely assume that spotty upgrade took the Cybermen between 1,000 and 3,000 years to achieve!)

Then we have the Cybermen.

• We've talked a bit about how the Cybermen's backstory doesn't match the facts we thought we knew; but it doesn't quite match in spirit, either, which I suspect is partly why it comes across as muddied. Fandom has always generally assumed — and I think it's safe to say this was Kit Pedler's assumption, too — that the Cybermen first began replacing their organic systems with cybernetic components out of necessity. Upgrading was originally voluntary, even desirable, thus mirroring our increasing reliance on technology, plastic surgery, and cutting-edge techniques to extend human life and the quality thereof. At first, this two-parter does a great job of portraying conversion as an unfortunate necessity, but it swiftly crosses the line into forced. Don't get me wrong, this works — because the conversion process is, horrifically, portrayed as excruciatingly painful, and therefore not desirable at all — but the episode just moves so quickly from voluntary to forced that it loses a bit of its allegorical potency.

• Is there any good reason why the Surgeon doesn't subject Bill to the full conversion right away? We've already established that nobody else seems to be receiving partial conversions, and the Cybermen are abducting humans specifically to convert them, so why bother with half-measures?

• I wish that we knew more about why exactly the Cyber-converts are in such excruciating pain. They look un-mutilated, in that they don't have any obviously missing (or upgraded) limbs, though I can't bring myself to call this a negative, because it implies that Cyber-conversion does still incorporate a great deal of the human physiognomy, despite what the Doctor later suggests. But it doesn't really even hint at what might be causing them pain, except that their face masks are reminiscent of hospital bandages, implying some drastic facial reconstruction at the very least (and possibly their anaesthetic has worn off?). But again, I get why; this story is probably scary enough for children without blatantly advertising the fact that, say, the Cybermen's arms have been sawed off at the elbows.

• If the Cybermen detect human life signs using an algorithm, one assumes it must be a fairly complicated algorithm with lots of variables. So how does changing the number of acceptable hearts from one to two suddenly expand their search to Time Lords? It should mean that the algorithm now accepts humans with two hearts (of which there can't be very many!), not any lifeform with two hearts. Unless the algorithm allows the Cybermen to convert any species that meets all of a limited subset of requirements (ie: carbon-based, oxygen-breathing, pH = 7.40 ± 0.05, one heart, bipedal) and the number of hearts was the only criterion that didn't equally apply to Time Lords? The alternative explanation is that the Cybermen are willing to convert any species matching any of the biological characteristics of humans, but that would be ridiculous. ("That biological organism has skin! Skin is acceptable. UPGRADE.") So I wonder, is this a hint that these Cybermen never escape from the black hole? Otherwise you'd think their newly-revised algorithm would have spread, and Cybermen everywhere would have been trying to upgrade any Time Lord they encountered.

• One of the most egregious: How can this "primitive" Cyberman electrify the Doctor by touch? I'm not sure we've ever seen a Cyberman electrocute someone before, and certainly not an early model. Annoyingly, the story doesn't even try to pretend that this ability is important to the plot: it only shows up on this one occasion, never to recur.

And, on a related note, Bill's predicament:

• Her conversion is a bit confusing, given that it seems to divide into three distinct stages. We see stage 1 at the end of World Enough and Time: Bill is conscious of her identity, but is feeling some strong emotions (apparently sadness or pain), and seems to be aware that she's a Cyberman. In stage 2, at the start of The Doctor Falls, Bill seems completely unaware of her own identity, and aside from her instinct to protect the Doctor, behaves exactly like a typical Cyberman. Then in stage 3, following the Doctor putting her to sleep, Bill appears to have shut out her Cyber-conditioning in all but one regard: she views herself as human, and she experiences a full range of emotions... except, apparently, for excruciating pain. At least, one assumes that she should be feeling the residual agony of the conversion, if she's blocked out the emotional dampeners, but that doesn't seem to be the case. (Understandably, of course; the story would be even more traumatic if Bill spent the entirety of it howling in unbearable agony.) I am, at least, grateful that Moffat provides a reason why Bill alone is able to resist Cyber-conditioning, and that it links back to an earlier episode: "All that time living under the Monks," the Doctor tells her, "you learned to hang onto yourself."

• Also, there is NO PENNY. Have I mentioned this?? Raarrrr, is what I say. Raarrrr.

Presumably this is Nardole's swansong as well, and I know I should be sad to see him go, but I'm really not. I know I've had occasional issues with Lucas' acting choices this season, but I really don't pin my dissatisfaction with the character on him. As far as I'm concerned, the problem is in the characterization and scripting. Nardole just seems to have been a badly conceived character. He was introduced with practically no backstory, which is fine — you could say the same about Mel (though Terror of the Vervoids does a great job of sketching in the key details) and I had no problem with her — except that he was barely given any personality either, and what little we got wasn't very likeable. Thankfully he was soon upgraded from "cowardly whiny jokester" to "strict headmaster", which helped quite a bit, though it does reinforce my impression that Moffat thought "cowardly whiny jokester" would be sufficient. But Nardole's characterization still wavered from episode to episode; even here, in his last story, Moffat has him sticking a pin in a moment that was shaping up to be genuinely poignant, completely deflating it with unfunny, on-the-nose, overexaggerated meta-humor:

Doctor: "She's the only person that I've ever met who's even remotely like me."
Bill: "So more than anything, you want her to be good?"
Nardole: "Are you having an emotion? [...] Yeah! Look at that face, he's having an emotion! Yeah! Yes, look at that bit, yeah, he's doing emotions."
Bill: "Oh, leave him alone!"
Nardole: "Can I take a selfie with you?"

Likewise, when Nardole sees a monster, he has to flag it in the most unoriginal way possible: "There's always a scary thing with you, isn't there?" (To which the Doctor sarcastically replies, "You're only getting that now?") And I think it's telling that in his final story, we're still learning critical details about his character: Nardole complains "But I'm the computer guy! That's always me!" (Oh really?) and, with 20 minutes left to go in his final story, "You know what I was like! There's more than three people in a room, I start a black market! Send me with them, I'll be selling their own spaceship back to them once a week." Have we even once seen Nardole hack a computer or attempt to scam someone...? I can't recall a single instance. Nardole also demonstrates a level of knowledge about war preparations that I wouldn't have expected from someone with his (sometimes-)conflict-averse personality. I'm glad that Nardole's character is still developing, but shouldn't we have learned about these character-defining details ages ago?

Making matters worse, Nardole was almost never given a meaty role in an episode. Instead, he remained a fifth wheel in practically every story. On one hand, that's fine by me, because I'd rather have seen Bill get the meaty parts anyway. But it made Nardole feel very peripheral, to the point that he doesn't even feel like a real companion as much as the Doctor's butler, always stuck at home or sidelined from the main action, so the stories put forth very little effort to make me like him. I find I don't have the same joy when Nardole comes up with an inventive solution because I just don't have anywhere near the same stake in his character. I had always assumed that Nardole would be around only for this season, though I did have a momentary worry of "what if they decide to keep the character on?!", so it didn't feel like there was much sense in getting attached anyway.

But this brings up another issue with the script: poor Nardole's fate! To go along with his non-entrance, he gets a non-exit. I may not be a huge fan of the character, but he deserved better than this. Initially, it looks like the Doctor is saving him from the certain death that's about to befall him and Bill; but in the end, both the Doctor and Bill are free to continue roaming the universe, while Nardole... is trapped for the rest of his (possibly very short, possibly very long) life on this spaceship, under constant threat of another Cyber-attack. And the story just ends there? Sure, the Doctor takes care of the Cybermen on floor 507, but they will regroup, and probably within a matter of months. So this is possibly the first story ever in which, despite all his grand proclamations about making a stand even when it seems futile, the Doctor just departs in his TARDIS, leaving the locals in the lurch. Mind you, it's hardly his fault, since the TARDIS relocates him while he's unconscious and on the point of regeneration, but I sincerely doubt that either the Christmas special or an episode of the Chibnall era will be about the Doctor returning to the ship to save its inhabitants once and for all.

And while we're on the topic of regeneration, here's one that's a real doozy: what exactly causes the Doctor to regenerate? We have no idea. We just know he's supposed to regenerate this week, because we see the process starting in the teaser's flash-forward (which is an odd and rather spoilery decision, given that we otherwise wouldn't have expected him to regenerate until the Christmas special), so regenerate he does. But can anyone tell me what triggers the process? Possibilities: (1) Maybe the internet rumors were right: the Doctor's actually been holding back his regeneration all season long (which would explain his ability to tap into that energy in The Lie of the Land), and is only just now losing his ability to keep it at bay. If that's true, we still don't know what triggered it, but at least we'd know it wasn't anything particular to this week. Because otherwise, the only options would seem to be (2) whatever Missy and the Master did to him before tying him up (but they don't seem to think they've done anything to cause his regeneration yet) or (3) when the Cyberman on the roof grabs him from behind and electrifies him or whatever. But no matter what, it's a delayed reaction, unless we're supposed to believe that the Doctor's regeneration is caused by (4) touching a tree.

The only other likely possibility, which would tie in nicely to the Christmas special, is that the twelfth Doctor's body is simply "wearing a bit thin"... perhaps the Capaldi incarnation had hundreds of years' worth of adventures after Clara's departure, before he settled down with the vault and met Bill? But we'll have to wait and see if that turns out to be the case. That might perhaps explain another question that came to mind: how is the Doctor repeatedly able to stave off his regeneration? We've seen the tenth and eleventh Doctors do this too, but presumably to a much lesser extent (though we don't really know how long the tenth Doctor zipped around the universe looking up old friends). Perhaps a regeneration due to old age is easier to hold back than a regeneration due to injury.

Only two episodes left to squeeze 'em in, Mr Moffat! (At least these are, respectively, (1) obviously teasing, and (2) from the Master, and therefore not so objectionable.)

SHUT-UP COUNTER: 2 1.   (11:20)   Doctor: "We're the most civilized civilization in the universe. We're billions of years beyond your petty human obsession with gender and its associated stereotypes." Bill: "But you still call yourselves Time Lords." Doctor: "Yeah, shut up."   2.   (06:49)   Doctor: "And ever since then, you've been hiding out, probably in disguise because everybody knows your stupid round face." Master: "Round?!" Missy: "Just a little bit." Master: "Shut up!"

But to end on a happier note, I adore how many blasts from the past we're given in this two-parter, even aside from Mondasian Cybermen and John Simm. We've got references to the third Doctor's era (the twelfth Doctor uses Venusian aikido again), Logopolis (while musing on the Doctor's regenerations, Missy observes, "I know you've fallen."), and the Doctor cites additional previous Cyber-encounters in The Moonbase, Tomb of the Cybermen on Telos (twice), Planet 14 (as likewise hinted at in The Invasion), Revenge of the Cybermen on Voga, an oblique reference to Genesis of the Daleks (when Missy and the Master nickname this story Genesis of the Cybermen), Doomsday, and a controversial reference to Marinus from The Keys of Marinus, which the DWM 1987 sixth-Doctor comic "The World Shapers" suggested was an early name for Mondas, with the Voord a primitive form of Cybermen. Plus the Doctor passes out jelly babies, Missy produces an old-style dematerialization circuit, and the cloister bell tolls. Meanwhile, Missy echoes the tenth Doctor from Time Crash ("I loved being you."), both the Doctor and Bill paraphrase the dying third Doctor ("Where there's tears, there's hope."), and the Doctor quotes his fourth ("Sontarans perverting the course of human history!"), tenth ("I don't wanna go!"), eleventh ("...and the Doctor was me!"), and — in a neat bit of foreshadowing — first incarnation: "I am the Doctor. The original, you might say." And then we have the Doctor's near-regeneration, which features one of my favorite blasts-from-the-past yet. I am so thrilled that we get a "Doctor!" clip-scene reminiscent of Tom Baker's! Even though it's a bit weird to be including all the new series companions when only two of them are Capaldi's, it's still such a lovely touch. (But ummmmmmmmm, where's Rory?!? Poor constantly-overlooked Rory! This omission is only made worse by the fact that Steven Moffat did think to include non-regulars Vastra, Jenny and River!)

I have, of course, omitted the most momentous blast from the past who appears in the episode's closing moments: the first Doctor himself, played on this occasion (as in the wonderful An Adventure in Space and Time) by David Bradley. Bradley's doing such a good first-Doctor impression; it's not exactly Hartnell, but it sure is close enough, and thanks to Richard Hurndall before him, that's quite all right. I might have balked more quickly if it had been the second Doctor who was recast, but since the first Doctor has already been recast once before in the series, and we've already enjoyed Bradley in the role, it seems harmless at worst and a charming way to honor Hartnell's legacy at best. Really, Bradley is the perfect choice, and I'm beside myself with excitement to see the first Doctor again in the Christmas special.

On the bridge, we meet Jorj (Oliver Lansley), the ship's rattled janitor, who turns out — in a nice visual sight gag — to be presumably another member of the same unnamed blue-skinned alien race that we've been meeting since The End of the World. Lansley does a great job making Jorj convincingly jumpy, and apparently haunted by guilt that he was unable to save — or perhaps didn't actually try to save — his former crewmembers.

Floor 1056 is flat-out an unsettling place to be. The nurse (Alison Lintott) appears to be horribly cruel, without a single redeeming feature. It's even difficult to claim with any confidence that she takes care of her patients, given that the only care we see her giving them is to muffle their agonized complaints. But even the nurse is small fry compared to the incredibly creepy Surgeon (Paul Brightwell), who revels in his macabre duty. It's hard to tell during his brief appearance whether he's of the "science before emotions" ilk or the "unempathetic psychopath" ilk — if indeed there's really any difference — but either way, his sadistic glee in his work is deeply uncomfortable. He also gets one of the best lines illustrating the horror of the Cybermen: "This won't stop you feeling pain, but, er, it will stop you caring about it."

Comparatively speaking, we meet a bevy of characters on floor 507. Alas, none of them really stands out, possibly because there are more of them competing for screentime, possibly because they're generally nice people, and possibly because the plot is nearly as dull as dishwater at this point. Alit (Briana Shann) at least gets to be the audience identification figure, as it's through her that we first see the shuttle's crash-landing, and come to terms with Bill's new Cyber-nature. Hazran (Samantha Spiro) gets a late boost out of her crush on Nardole, which is sweet if a bit full-on, though perhaps I only feel that way because we don't see a single formative moment of their relationship (such as it is) until Hazran is practically throwing herself at him. More power to her, but it doesn't exactly make for a convincing coupling. Even a couple of lustful glances in earlier scenes would have made all the difference!

As the new voice of the original Cybermen, Nicholas Briggs excels with a literally pitch-perfect recreation of their speaking style. My favorite of his lines is Cyber!Bill's incensed "I am Bill Potts!"

Murray Gold turns in a striking score this week, starting right out of the gate, as gorgeous operatic music soars along with the camera as it pans from the black hole into the ship's control room. I also loved the futuristic heist music as Razor leads Bill off on their nighttime excursion while the Doctor, Missy and Nardole are taking the lift down to floor 1056; the 1920s horror music as Cyber!Bill comes to life; and the unsettling juxtaposition of charming music over the shot of creepy Cyber-scarecrows. The sound effects on floor 1056 are particularly good, with faint unsettling drill noises in the background as Bill explores the recovery ward.

The space effects, predictably, are great: both the fantastic black hole, and the nebula outside the TARDIS door as Bill joins Heather. The blasted wasteland of floor 507 looks convincingly bleak and churned-up, too; the battlefield seems to stretch for miles. Thanks to this goodwill, I suppose I won't complain (much) about that cheesy effect of the Doctor downloading information from Nardole's laptop to his sonic screwdriver.

I'm quite impressed with this week's sets, at least for floor 0 and floor 1056, which couldn't be more different. Floor 0 is a futuristic spaceship flight deck, with interesting details that make it filmable from every angle (even from below, thanks to the great CGI dome in the ceiling). Meanwhile, floor 1056 is a deliciously morbid old-style hospital, just different enough from actual hospitals (in that it's darker and dingier than one would expect, with no typical hospital paraphernalia beyond a futuristic IV bag) so as not to frighten children too much. The giant lit-up "CONVERSION THEATRE" sign gives me subtly nostalgic can't-quite-put-my-finger-on-it spooks. It's the sort of foreboding sign you'd see in a 1930s horror movie, maybe, or The Twilight Zone. Razor's office, in contrast, is a comfortable smorgasbord of clutter, which delightfully includes an old 1960s-ish TV set (perhaps a nod to the story's 60s monsters?)

But I do need to have words with whomever designed the model of this ship, because in hindsight, it's pretty confusing. For starters, when we first pan across the ship, we can see through some of the windows. We eventually get a glimpse of floor 1056, but it's not the first one we see. In other words, it's not the bottom floor. (As an aside, the landscape inside the next two windows we glimpse appear to be the Scottish countryside from The Eaters of Light, and the wheat fields of Gliese 581 D from Smile, which led me to wonder if this ship had somehow collected locations from all of the twelfth Doctor's adventures, like a big CET machine. As it turns out, the "Scottish countryside" was actually floor 507, and there was no CET, but it did have me wondering!) Each of these windows appears to be aligned with a single floor, meaning that there should be 1056 rows of windows on the ship. We never do get a full view of it, but I count 35 windows in the bottom segment (we'll call it segment 1), 33 windows in segment 2, and at least 28 windows in segment 3, with apparently 8 segments in total, plus the top deck. Even if we assume a maximum of 35 windows per segment, that's only 280 floors. I might also mention that in wide-view, the ship has elongated ovoid windows, but when we get a close-up glimpse through them, they're smaller and round. I mean, it's a great design overall, but was there any attempt at consistency...?

Rachel Talalay's direction is ever so stylish. Check out the cinematic zoom into the control room; the sweet shot of the Doctor holding Bill's hand as she dies; the eerie sight of the Doctor appearing at the foot of Bill's bed, only to fade away into darkness; the way the Surgeon's face is lit from below as he prepares to operate on Bill; the rather heart-wrenching image of Cyber!Bill shedding a tear; Cyber!Bill emerging from the fog cradling the Doctor; the clever image of the shaft of sunlight hitting Bill's chest (unit) as Hazran flees the barn; gorgeous shot of the camera passing over the sun-dappled creek toward the house with its blooming daffodils; and the shot of the Cybermen launching into the sky and hovering in mid-air. The only slightly questionable shot is the close-up when Bill declares "I'm fine!"; what with the intrusion into the frame of obviously-not-Bill's-gloved-hand, and the way the camera pans down past Bill's face to the Cyberman head, the realization of it is a little off-kilter, but it's a splendid concept. To counterbalance that mild criticism, let's talk about one of my favorite shots: the way the camera slowly zooms out from Bill after she's been shot, just before she falls backwards out of frame to the floor, so that for a disconcerting moment you're not sure whether it's the camera or Bill moving.

I nearly lost my resolve to stay spoiler-free before World Enough and Time, after not one but two friends messaged me going "oooh, that trailer was so awesome, I can't wait to see next week's episode!" Readers, I nearly gave in. But I managed to resist, just barely, and a good thing too: that trailer was spoilery! I wouldn't have been the slightest bit smug about figuring out the time-dilation thing, because I'd have known it going in. So I'm glad I resisted the urge! I must also tell you that I went shopping the morning before The Doctor Falls, and was very excited to finally find a can of blackcurrant Pepsi 1893 (it's been available since March, but I haven't been able to track it down), which had just enough time to chill before I sat down to watch the episode. Given that it's probably the first-ever blackcurrant product that's been broadly commercially available in the US in my lifetime, it felt like an appropriate way to commemorate the end of season 10. (And it was delicious.)

I've labored enough over this review that before I'd even finished my first full draft, the thirteenth Doctor was announced. I was a bit late to the party, because that weekend I was playing tour guide with my aunts (Gray's mother, and Gaye, who watched Thin Ice with me) in northern Michigan. I was checking my phone while waiting for them outside a public park bathroom in Petoskey when I came across the announcement; sadly I saw the whopping great news headline before I even came across the official reveal video (which I watched later that night, once we got settled into our hotel rooms in St Ignace) but that was a minor disappointment compared to the exciting shock, and wave of excitement, I felt upon learning the news!

And can I just say, I'm ecstatic. Even aside from the exciting potential that Whittaker's casting has for shaking up the way that stories are told — maybe we'll still get the Doctor and her pretty young English girl-next-door companion, but maybe not — I love that now little girls can aspire to be the Doctor and not just his best friend in the universe. This moment has been a long time coming, and I can't wait to see where we go from here. (Plus, although I haven't watched past the first episode of Broadchurch yet, I loved Whittaker in Black Mirror.) And how much fun would it be to watch the Doctor's companion, who wasn't around to witness his regeneration, come to terms with the fact that he's changed not just faces but genders? See, Chibnall should definitely re-hire Mackie. (as if that were ever in any doubt anyway!) And maybe this will tempt Michelle Gomez to make a reappearance, to give us an all-female Doctor-Master teamup!

Minor points:

• I saw several people commenting on the "shocking" teaser of World Enough and Time, but we already knew this was Capaldi's last season, and the season trailer hinted that we'd see an early regeneration, as have several of Moffat's interviews, so even though we know Capaldi isn't leaving until Christmas anyway, this wasn't so much shocking as... expected?

• I love the title of part one. From the first moment I saw it, it reminded me of a Sliders episode title (although they would've called it "Time Enough and World"!)

• Continuing with the quotable Missy dialogue:

  Missy: "Hello. I'm Doctor Who. And these are my plucky assistants: Thing 1 and... the other one."

• I am rather sad that the revival seems to frown on the word "companions", but I love whenever this question comes up:

  Missy: "Okay, right, what, so, what does he call you, companions? Pets? Snacks?"

• An interesting difference in perspective between Missy and the Doctor:

  Missy: "Time Lords are friends with each other, dear. Everything else is cradle snatching."

• Then Capaldi gets in on the cracking-dialogue action, as the Doctor waits for everyone else to catch up to him:

  Doctor: "Finally. It's like watching plants grow."

• Now the Doctor is chewing crisps and jelly babies and sometimes chips with an open mouth! Oh, the humanity! (Incidentally though, out of pure curiosity, what kind of crisps is he eating? The bag looks most similar in design and color to McCoy's Flame Grilled Steak crisps, but in a couple of shots, I can almost make out a logo on the front that seems to say "Lamont's Crisp" or "Eamon's Crisp" or maybe a stylized "Amon's Crisp". Alas, none of these are actual brands! Am I missing something obvious or was this bag a result of the props team's ingenuity?)

• Missy gets her own version of the classic "You're a beautiful woman, probably" line! It may lack the punchline of the original, but it's still funny:

  Missy: "You're probably handsome, aren't you?"

• This one really made me LOL, and I kind of adore that Missy is trying to make us all believe that 'Doctor Who' is the Doctor's real name! I mean, it would be kind of funny if all this time he's been claiming it's 'unpronounceable' when really he's just a bit embarrassed about it. (But honestly I don't believe her for a second, at least not that it's his real name. After all, plenty of people/supercomputers other than River Song seem to either know it or randomly guess it. But as a self-appointed nickname? Yeah, her explanation is totally plausible. Either way, major points to Moffat for finally grabbing the bull by both horns! It's about time the series finally sorted out this silly elephant that's been in the room since the 60s. Or, you know, at least teased it a little.)

  Missy: "Well, I am that mysterious adventurer in all of time and space known only as Doctor Who, and these are my disposables, Exposition and Comic Relief."

• Now I have to wag my finger at Nardole a little bit. In this line, we have simultaneous examples of (a) flagging the joke (though, to be fair, it needs some kind of flagging or it wouldn't be a particularly funny moment, but there are so many more sophisticated options than just blurting out the obvious) and (b) dropping in heretofore-unknown backstory, which is clearly meant to be a joke but isn't funny at all because it's not grounded in Nardole's character. Because we never even knew there was a possibility of him being blue, it's not so much hilarious as it is surprising. These jokes need more context, people!

  Nardole: "Oh, you're blue! Nice! I should go back to blue."

• I mean, you can see why I was so delighted by the start of this episode, the dialogue is just incredibly funny!

  Missy: "Is this the emotion you humans call spanking?"

• Aaaaaaahhhhh, Bill loses a whole chip as she scrapes them from the cutting board into the bowl! I mean, that would be fine, except she just leaves it there when she goes off to fry them! I, OTOH, am the kind of person whose friends make fun of him because I feel the need to scrape, say, every last grain of quinoa out of the pot. No way I'm leaving a whole chip behind!

• Is Nardole eating a jaffa cake? Yum yum. I relate to him for maybe the first time ever.

• Love this discussion; and, fair point, Bill! (I kinda wanted the Doctor to bring up Time Ladies until I realized that it would probably undermine, rather than support, his argument!)

  Doctor: "We're the most civilized civilization in the universe. We're billions of years beyond your petty human obsession with gender and its associated stereotypes."
  Bill: "But you still call yourselves Time Lords."

• Okay now, when the Doctor tries to call back the lift, we can clearly see that his sonic screwdriver has gone back to green again. And then — as if this isn't confusing enough — on floor 507, when he points his sonic screwdriver at the door of the approaching lift, and when he attacks the Cybermen, it's blue. In the shot of the Doctor downloading information from Nardole's laptop, it even seems to change from green to blue between camera angle cuts. What is up with this magic color-changing?! It's enough to actually make me believe that popular fan theory that I'd never given much credibility, that we're still viewing the Monks' simulation. (Apparently Moffat created a Normal Again reality-questioning scenario without intending to, oops!)

• Apparently the Cybermen kidnapped Jorj's crewmates on the very same day that the ship got stuck in the black hole, so somehow within 475 years at a maximum, they managed to build their grand new city and pollute it so badly that the residents all required cybernetic upgrades to survive. I suppose that's just possible, but it does seem like awfully fast development.

• Now that the Doctor realizes what's going on, why does he bother explaining anything to the rest of them? He must realize that time is of the essence, so why isn't he chasing after Bill as fast as he can?

• I'm trying to figure out the meaning of the "IN" and "OUT" signs. We see people confined to hospital beds in the "IN" ward, but sitting in chairs (therefore, improved?) in the "OUT" ward. Is the "OUT" room where people go after their trip to the conversion theatre?

• Um, Bill, can you explain to me what point there is in hiding behind a curtain if you're then just going to go and poke your head back out while the probably-bad guys are still in the room? Talk about risky!

• Up to this point, we've seen the Cybermen have to use a keyboard to communicate. (Weirdly, the keyboard seems to associate a word with each key, unless there's some complicated signalling system involving varying degrees of pressure or something? Anyway 9 of the 24 keys would appear to be the words AWAY (row 3, key 2), BE, NOT, PAIN (3,1), REPAIR(ED), SHE, STAND (1,3), WE and WILL. Conversations in Cyber-land are probably pretty limited.) But the second "patient" that Bill approaches isn't typing anything, so how is it saying "Kill me"? Likewise the pre-conversion patient chanting "Die me" as s/he marches down the hallway. (Oh well, it's an undeniably spooky visual!)

• Why are we meant to be afraid of this Cyberman coming up from behind Bill? It looks weak and wracked with pain and unable to hurt her at all.

• Dude! Bill! Why are you dilly-dallying in the hallway?! If you don't want to get caught, shouldn't you, y'know, hot-foot it after Razor?!

• Okay, this one made me laugh too. I think Simm's slightly-deadpan delivery actually helped this line!

  Razor: "Drink it while it is very hot. The pain will disguise the taste."

• Okay, so I love Razor's TV, but why doesn't it have a fixed perspective like a CCTV camera? We shouldn't be seeing Talalay's directorial flourishes on it. This is a pet peeve of mine, so I'm not letting them off the hook for it!

• Is it only the partial conversions who can't leave the hospital? Otherwise you'd expect all the Cybermen to drop dead as soon as they left on their raids. (The Surgeon does imply this is the case, when he tells Bill "This unit of yours won't last forever, you know. You need the full upgrade.") Do you suppose they deliberately arrange it that way, like planned obsolescence? Except, this is "planned you-can't-escape-us-before-full-conversion"? Though as far as we know, the only person this affects is Bill!

• Here's another example of dialogue for Razor that's pretty funny on paper, but somehow not all that funny coming out of John Simm's mouth:

  Razor: "You are dear to me. You are my... dearest person. You are like..."
  Bill: "I know."
  Razor: "...a mother to me."
  Bill: "Definitely not a mother."
  Razor: "Or an... aunt."

• Likewise this one, which could have been hilarious, but winds up feeling predictable:

  Razor: "When you hug me, it hurts my heart."
  Bill: "Aww. Sweet!"
  Razor: "No, your chest unit, it digs right in."

• Bill is just now finding out that Razor cleans the operating theatre on Wednesdays? After 10 years? (I mean, apparently it's a lie, but still... you'd think she would've been able to retort "No you don't, that's chicken curry and gin rummy night!")

• Love Gomez' delivery:

  Missy: "I'm really trying not to kill anyone today. It would be tremendously helpful if your major arteries were out of reach."

• Why does the map of Mondas show it to be an exact twin of Earth? Its continents are meant to be upside-down compared to ours.

• The Doctor's reaction to being confronted by a Cyberman is really quite bizarre. I have a hard time imagining him dashing up to a Dalek and urgently asking it "Have you seen Bill? Can you help me find her?" It's not your friend, Doctor!

• When a small army of Cybermen marches on the farmhouse, I'm not quite clear on whether these are current scarecrows who have gotten loose, or a new invading horde? (Alit says they're "new ones", so I assume the latter?)

• Funny? Inappropriate? Unsettling? Icky? I think, yes, all of these.

  Missy: "Hold me."
  Master: "Kiss me."
  Missy: "Make me."

• Great line, and yet again, it's Gomez who really sells it:

  Doctor: "Where is Bill?"
  Master: "Well, if we told you that, I'm afraid you'd be really, really upset."
  Missy: "Soooo..."
  Missy / Master: "She's right behind you."

• Perplexing: Missy claims that the surgeon "ripped out [Bill's] heart, threw it into a bin, and burned it all away." But she knows perfectly well that Bill's heart was already gone, vaporized by Jorj. Surely she's not trying to tip the Doctor off that she's on his side, because the Master was there for Bill's death and her subsequent surgeries, so he knows all about her heart too. But I can't imagine what other motive she might have for saying it, unless it's just clunky scripting.

• I'm sure some people are getting hot under the collar that the Doctor is yet again insulting Donald Trump, but I find it interesting that of the three inevitable things he mentions, one — smartphones — is downright positive. Well, depending who you ask. As for the association of Donald Trump with sewage, well, we'll just let that lie there, shall we?

• This week's Line I Just Don't Understand is a real doozy. I'd ask "does this make a kind of sense that I'm not in on?" but this time I'm pretty sure it's not my fault. It feels like Moffat was aiming for grandiose but couldn't get anywhere close.

  Master: "Doctor, what have you done?"
  Doctor: "People plus technology minus humanity. The internet, cyberspace, Cybermen. Always read the comments, because one day, there'll be an army."

• What makes the Masters think that the Cybermen are coming specifically for them? They're moving toward the building, yes, but that could mean any number of things.

• Yay for Nardole single-handedly liberating a shuttle with which to rescue the Doctor (and Missy, the Master and Bill), but it wouldn't have done him a lick of good if they'd decided to continue torturing the Doctor in the conversion room, rather than hauling him up to the roof for no apparent reason. So that's one strike in the Plot Convenience column, and Nardole earns a second one by virtue of his showing up at exactly the right time.

• Missy's self-preservation instinct returns in full force:

  Missy: "What was that, Doctor? You'll only slow us down? Yeah. I think you're right."

• LOL, excellent multi-Master dialogue:

  Master: (climbing into the shuttle) "The Doctor's dead. He told me he'd always hated you. Let's go."
  Nardole: "No."
  Missy: (climbing into the shuttle after him) "The Doctor's dead. He told me he'd always hated you."

• According to the Master (if not the ship's map on the bridge), floor 507 is the only other inhabited floor on the ship. So isn't it awfully lucky that (despite his intentions, for some reason) Nardole's stolen shuttle had exactly the right amount of fuel to get to floor 507 and no further?

• Why is Hazran bringing a pile of blankets to a Cyberman? I'm pretty sure that Cyber!Bill doesn't feel the cold. Or if she does, she needed these blankets last night, not this morning.

• Also, why did Cyber!Bill need to rest for two weeks straight? As a Cyberman, shouldn't she be beyond the need for sleep? (Though there's an implication that the Doctor was doing something to her during that period; either the Doctor tweaked her memory block, or she's just been in a haze.)

• Alit brings Bill a wrapped-up mirror, which she's clearly expecting ("Is that it?" she asks), but she's apparently not expecting what she sees in her reflection. So why did she ask for the mirror? (I'd love to hear how that conversation went.) Maybe she wanted to be sure her hair wasn't terrifyingly unruly...?!?

• Poor limping Doctor. I started breaking in a new pair of Doc Martens a few days before this episode aired, so I was very sympathetic!

• Why does the Doctor describe the Cyberman this way? It's really not accurate; it makes it sound as if the Cyberman become incredibly trendy among the teen demographic. We don't have to sound hip with everything, you know.

  Doctor: "Perfectly sound idea, unfortunately all they want to do is to turn everyone else into Cybermen too. They go viral."

• I wasn't at all happy with the first half of this line until I realized it wasn't an insult about Bill's hair, but the second half is very funnily delivered by John Simm:

  Master: "While you've been here chatting up Robo-Mop, me and... me have been busy."

• When the Doctor first starts to regenerate, the process makes a noise much like the Key to Time!

• "We're not gonna get out of this one, are we?" despairs Bill, as she and the Doctor admire a placid river on a bright summer's day.

• Hooray, further confirmation as to why the Doctor (and, in this case, Missy) never remembers the events of meeting his former selves. Well, except for Time Crash.

  Missy: "Two of us together puts the timelines out of sync. You can't retain your memories, so I don't have them."

• Cluuunkyyy. (Was this, as some people at the time theorized, one of several hints that the producers were planning to introduce a female thirteenth Doctor? But surely this was scripted and maybe even filmed before they had any idea?)

  Master: "Is the future gonna be all girl?"
  Doctor: "We can only hope."

• Surely the Cybermen have a better way to advance through the decks than by blasting hundreds of holes through the flooring?!? That can't be safe for the ship's structural integrity! (For that matter, are the original Mondasian Cybermen even capable of head-butting their way through steel?)

• Where did this laptop come from that Nardole's using? Did he bring it from floor 1056? But neither floor appears to have achieved this level of technological advancement, aside from the computer consoles that were probably hardwired into floor 1056 from the start. Maybe it was just lying around the ship, but we don't see anybody else using one.

• Ohh plot, you're really trying hard to frustrate me, aren't you? Based on Nardole's later explanation, and the evidence of the episode itself, there's no need for anyone to fire guns or hurl apples at the Cybermen; Nardole can trigger all the explosions remotely. Maybe he's only using the apple as a target because the Cyberman army isn't in his line of sight, but why wouldn't his laptop be able to track the Cybermen if it can track an apple? (And is it really the case, as the Doctor's later escapade against the Cybermen implies, that every square inch of the flooring is combustible?)

• I love the dematerialization-circuit gag, reminiscent of the Doctor's sonic-screwdriver calculations in The Day of the Doctor. Charming!

• However, what I do not love is the first erection gag since The Crimson Horror. Maybe it wasn't scripted that way (the dialogue leaves things vague) but that's certainly how John Simm plays it. Under ordinary circumstances, no problem at all, but in Doctor Who? A show that's (at least ostensibly) for children? It leaves me feeling a bit icky.

• Oh, I forgot, this week we have Line I Just Don't Understand #2. This makes no sense... all Alit ends up doing is throwing a (not-actually-)explosive apple at them, which hardly re-imbues the Cybermen with fear.

  Doctor: "Well, it's very simple, you see. The Cybermen have removed all fear from their hearts and from their minds. But you, Alit, you are gonna put it all back."
  He sweeps away all the toys, knocking over the toy-Alit as he does so.

• And we never do find out the end of this question:

  Bill: "Listen, er... I don't suppose..."

• Okay, so it's not up to the level of his anti-war speech in The Zygon Inversion, but it's pretty good! We could definitely use more people with this mindset in the world.

  Doctor: "I'm not doing this because I wanna beat someone, or because I hate someone, or because, because I wanna blame someone! It's not because it's fun. God knows it's not because it's easy. It's not even because it works, because it hardly ever does! I do what I do because it's right! Because it's decent. And above all, it's kind."

• I thought Missy was planning to save the day by fetching the Master's TARDIS and piloting it back to the farm to save everyone. (I also thought maybe Missy had palmed something to the Doctor when she seized his hand, but that guess was flat-out wrong too.) But since she doesn't — since her only purpose in going back with the Master is to kill him — why doesn't she just stay with the Doctor right here and now? She knows this Master dies eventually, but she doesn't know for sure that she has to be the one to strike the deadly blow; maybe it's the Cybermen who are now hunting him, or maybe he doesn't die for decades yet. So why risk the chance that he'd get revenge (as he does)? Unless the Doctor's words really hadn't sunk in yet, and she doesn't decide to stay by his side until after she's already skipped town with her earlier incarnation?

• Yet another line that the characters present won't understand, and a lame joke at best for those of us at home.

  Nardole: "Awesome weaponry. The ultimate Apple upgrade."

• This doesn't make sense. Why isn't the answer "the Doctor"?

  Doctor: "Listen! One of us has to stay down here and blow up a load of silly tin men, and one of us has to go up there and look after a lot of very scared people, day after day, for the rest of their lives, and keep them safe. Now, the question is this, Nardole: which one of us is stronger?"

• Man, they really should've tweaked the running order of some of these stories. Now we've got the egregious similarity of two stories in a row in which the idea is raised of naming livestock after the Doctor.

• I'm glad that Nardole at least gets a great final line (to the Doctor and Bill anyway):

  Nardole: "You're wrong, you know. Quite wrong. I never will be able to find the words."

• Why does the Master think Missy wants him to "come here"? Does he think she's trying to seduce him in the middle of the forest?! Surely he finds this as suspicious as I did; I immediately suspected she was going to kill him.

• Related, but too delightful not to give it its own bullet point: from all appearances, it would seem that Missy kills the Master by stabbing him in the left hip, or very possibly his bum.

• This line had me momentarily terrified. I actually groaned at my laptop: "Oh, don't go there!" And then it made me LOL hard, mostly out of sheer relief, but that didn't quite banish the panic: I couldn't help but wonder, was that where Bill was originally planning to go with that sentence, or did she chicken out? But I'm holding onto my faith that Moffat was just winding us up. (Also, can you picture that first line coming out of the mouth of a Tenth Planet Cyberman?)

  Bill: "Hey, erm, well, you, you know how I'm, I'm usually all about women, and, and kinda people my own age?"
  Doctor: "Yeah?"
  Bill: "Glad you knew that."

• Yay Missy!

  Missy: "Oh... because he's right. Because it's time to stand with him. It's where we've always been going, and it's happening now, today. It's time to stand with the Doctor."

• Some plan, Doctor. He evacuates all of the children to safety, but when he destroys floor 507, he apparently blows up nearly all the adults.

• How does an explosion that kills the Cybermen barely singe the Doctor? and how is Bill the only Cyberman who survives? (He's also lucky he doesn't cause a hull rupture, or blow out the spaceship's exterior windows.)

• I'm surprised that the Doctor thinks he even has a choice in whether or not he regenerates; isn't it a biological imperative?

• Where has the TARDIS materialized? I can only assume either Antarctica (which would seem to line up with the first Doctor's comment "I will not change!" which I had originally assumed was meant to be mocking the twelfth Doctor, but is more likely him talking to himself) or Tigus?

• Between Bradley, Capaldi and Whittaker, I'm really excited to see where the Christmas special goes! (And hey, I'll get to watch it with Gray!)

• I've also delayed this review long enough that the Christmas special teaser has been released. I was pretty intrigued in the episode from the start — I mean, the meeting of the first and twelfth Doctors alone is enough of a hook — but then Mark Gatiss popped up, and I thought, ooh! ...and then... "Is he here? Is the Doctor here?" and my friends, I lost it. Apparently the Christmas special will be fulfilling a very deep wish of mine. (But we'll say no more about that until the Christmas special arrives, in case any of you were better-behaved than me and managed to resist — and avoid — spoilers. For that reason, I'll also refrain from rewriting any ultimately-inaccurate statements I may or may not have made in this review.) And then I read a comment that clued me in to the identity of the blond woman helping the Doctor (how did I not realize right away?!), and I'm just getting more and more pumped for Christmas.

It is perhaps a minor miracle that Capaldi, Mackie, Gomez, and Moffat have managed to make me like a story that most strongly reminds me of a mash-up between Mindwarp, Last of the Time Lords, and The Time of the Doctor, but despite the odds, they have snatched it from the jaws of defeat. Still, it's awfully hard to overlook the fact that Bill, Missy, and the Mondasian Cybermen are all underutilized, and the clever plot ideas don't seem to have been thought all the way through.