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Saturday 1 July 2017

Doctor Who 10.12 "The Doctor Falls" Review

                                           Image result for doctor who the doctor falls photos
The Doctor (Peter Capaldi) is carried by Bill (Pearl Mackie) and we see him at the rooftop with the Master (John Simm) and Missy (Michelle Gomez) in restraints and he flashes back to what happened with the lift and Bill, being hit on the head by Missy, falling onto a computer keyboard and Nardole (Matt Lucas) running away, then the Doctor falling down.  He asks them where Bill is. Whilst they dance on the rooftop and the Master says how he'll be turning into her soon, a woman. Missy" hold me. "
Master: "kiss me"
Missy: "make me."
They would tell him where Bill is but...she's behind him, as a Cyberman.  She waited for him and the Master comments how she waited 10 years but he was 2 hours too late to save her.  The Master shows him his city and how everyone is being converted to the Cybermen.  The Doctor speaks of his return.  How he left him at Gallifrey and they fixed his condition.  He then left there, it was a mutual leaving.  He tells the Master how his TARDIS crashed here and he took over the city with the people finally rebelling his cruelty and he had to go into hiding in a disguise as Razor.  The Doctor surprises them by saying Missy shouldn't have hit him since he had time to mess with the programme, even if it was only one key he could press and initiate one change, altering the the Cybermen's humanity.  When they find that out it will take them a while to figure it out and reconfigure themselves. Remembering how the  planet, Mondas, Earth all fell.

They also question the Doctor on his last requests and ask if he's ever been burned, or drowned. Missy saying she recalls he fell once.  Was she alluding to now when the Doctor will fall.  Te Cyberman exit the lift and they fire at them with their Sonic, with one of them getting through and getting hold of the Doctor as Nardole flies in on a spacecraft to rescue them.  Bill gets angry and kills the Cyberman.  The Doctor can only exclaim "Bill."  Was this since she saved him or that she had the ability to do this now: to kill.  She holds onto the ladder and carries him out as he loses consciousnesses, I wanted to say faint, but that'd be uncharacteristic.  Missy was also going to help him with the Sonic, but Bill got there first.

They arrive on the solar powered floors where farming is taking place with a holographic number and sky.  Nardole tells the girl, Alit (Brianna Shann) they need help.  Bill wakes up in the barn and Hazran tells her the Doctor wanted her here to be safe.  She wants to see the Doctor and Hazran (Samantha Spiro) appears to be afraid of her.  The Doctor's getting his injuries tended to and they've been here two weeks.  Alit isn't afraid of her as Bill tells her she would never hurt her.  She brings Bill a mirror and she looks to see herself as a Cyberman and is in denial.  The Doctor turns up and Alit  tells him she gave hr a mirror, to which he says it's okay and offers her a jelly baby, having one himself.  (A penchant of the Fourth Doctor (Tom Baker)).

The Doctor tells Bill she's now a Cyberman but she can't believe that's her.  She waited for him for ten years and he didn't come.  He says he can fix this, however he can.  Bill gets angry and blows up the barn.  She's allowed to get angry for what she's become.  Nardole meanwhile gets set on finding effective weapons against the Cybermen as they will be arriving soon and their guns won't do.  With Hazran finding she's attracted to him.  He tells her he's not human, but she'll try anything once.

Missy and the Master have a conversation about becoming a woman as they take the Doctor to find the lift hidden in the woods so they can evacuate the children.  The Doctor tying to conceal his regeneration.  They find one and then some more and Missy pushes the call button alerting them to their location.  They'll be here now which makes evacuating the children imperative.

He asks them for their help telling them it's what he does in an impassioned speech about saving humanity, but they both refuse as he and Missy find that they can use the Master's TARDIS which is on the bottom level to get away from here.  Obviously the Doctor can't us his TARDIS cos it's on the bridge and it will take them too long to reach it, by the time they do they'll be invaded by the Cyberman already.  No they must stay and fight.  The Master refuses cos he tells the Doctor he wasn't listening to him, yeah with his 'round face' but Missy appears to have second thoughts and they touch hands.  However she tells him she's not staying either.  See mistake putting her in the vault and trying to get her to change.  He tells her he's noticed she has changed, but she says she hasn't.  Of course we know she'll be coming back to help cos she has changed.  With the Master applying some eye liner, well it was meant to be guy liner for now!  Also Missy used lip gloss on the roof so shades of make-up sneaking into Doctor Who!  Ha.
Doctor: "where I stand is where I fall, stand with me.  It's all I ever wanted;" he pleads but she was dogged determined to follow the Master.

So the Master will regenerate into Missy and that's why she was in the vault to begin with so that the Doctor could help her change and become a better person/Time Lord with her regeneration.  At least that's how I see it.  As they reach the lift;  the Master wonders if he's wrong about his feeling this way.  She tells him it is wrong and then she retracts her hidden knife after stabbing him.  He didn't feel that, in some ways she was still herself.  He says she gave him enough time to reach his TARDIS and have a cup of tea before he regenerates into her.  Begging the question of why they were killing each other anyway.  Missy telling him this is what it was coming to and was meant to be, them helping the Doctor.  But he says no it wasn't and gets her in the back with the full blast of his Sonic so she can't regenerate. Knew that was coming.  Missy dies and the Master will become her, suppose they couldn't have two of Missy around.  Without the Doctor even knowing that she was coming back to help him.  Is this where Missy was meant to have led them all the time when he let her out of the vault and onto the ship last ep, since she told the Master she can't remember everything, but they're his memories.

Nardole upgrades their guns, however there are fuel lines underneath the ground that's how they can blow up the Cybermen when they arrive.  The Doctor mentioning they'll think they have upgraded weapons and so the Cybermen will have to upgrade theirs too.  He unearths a service tunnel which can be used to evacuate but someone must remain behind to blow everything up.  Nardole wants to but the Doctor sends him with the children since he's stronger.  He knows it has to be the Doctor who must remain behind and Bill wants to stay too; reminding the Doctor what she said about rather being dead than being a Cyberman.  This is their farewell then and Nardole says he won't find the words.

                                              Image result for doctor who the doctor falls photos

As Bill and the Doctor fight the Cybermen and he gets killed twice over for his two hearts.  This is how it's going to be, no stars, he wished there were stars but there's only a tumultuous explosion.  As he sees all his companions, Rose, Martha, Donna, Amy and Clara as well as Captain Jack Harkness and Sarah Jane. This is where the Doctor falls/fell.  Ahh the Doctor remembered Clara after all.  Bill finds him and cries as Heather (Stephanie Hyam) the 'water' girl  from the 10.1 The Pilot ep, appears and Bill leaves her body with the cybershell falling to the ground.  She asks if she's dead and she kisses her and asks if that feels like she's dead.  They can't leave the Doctor here and tells Bill she gave her tears.  Flashing back to the first episode where Bill comments those tears aren't hers.  The Doctor also referring several times to the Cyberman having tears now.  "Where there are tears there's always hope" as he told her and Bill repeats this.  The Doctor having uttered his last words of  "without hope, without witness, without reward."  
The words of River Song from 10.6 Extremis:  "‘Only in darkness are we revealed. Goodness is not goodness that seeks advantage. Good is good in the final hour, in the deepest pit, without hope, without witness, without reward. Virtue is only virtue in extremis. This is what he believes. And this is the reason above all I love him. My husband, my madman in a box. My doctor.’ "  

They take him to the TARDIS and she tells Bill she can return her to human form rearranging ehr atoms and she can make chips or come with her (in a scene reminiscent of Clara and Ashildr when she left.)  Heather shows her the universe and she can show her around it.  But Bill says she's been around a lot, so she can show her around.  The TARDIS being piloted by Heather, as she was a pilot after all.  Correct me if I'm wrong but didn't the TARDIS have a mind of its own in the Doctor's Wife so why not be able to fly by itself and reach them in the ship, though I know that would've been too easy.  Even though Idris's (Suranne Jones) body died and she disappeared into a burst of light, that would've been something unique about the TARDIS now.  Oh one ore thing, before Idris 'died' she told Rory (Arthur Darville) who tells the Eleventh Doctor (Matt Smith) of  "the only water in the forest being the river."  Once again Doctor Who having a watery connection with Heather too.

Was this more of a mish mash, sorry to use that expression, of the Doctor going to war.  As he speaks of how he falls where he stands and he will help save whomever he can, however he can.  That even if he saves a few it will be worth it.  That's all he does since he is THE Doctor.  Ahh tears anyone, sure some were shed aplenty, admittedly I had a teary moment, it was too difficult not to.  Especially since we're used to losing Doctors so fast now, they come and they go and each one surpasses all expectations than the one before.  Hated seeing David Tennant go, then Matt Smith and didn't think Peter would be much good, but I take back my words and eat a large chunk of the TARDIS, cos he was magnificent and actually brought the Doctor into his own showing again that age doesn't matter when playing this eternal, immortal Doctor.  He gave it his all and after Clara/Jenna Coleman leaving thought it couldn't get any sadder than that but the Doctor refusing to regenerate cos he's had so many faces and doesn't want another one, wishfully thinking he could stop it from happening even repeating Doctor Ten when he said "I don't want to go;" was all incredibly breath taking and sombre! We didn't want him to go either!  Doctor: "Never again... I can't keep being somebody else..."  We'd have liked for him to become Missy though, she did redeem herself in many respects and yes the Doctor a woman, they said it enough times.

The Doctor saying the only one to stop the Cybermen and that's "me."  Which he did do by calling out the places where he had victory over them all and exploding them: "Mondas, Telos, Voga, Planet 14, Canary Wharf, Messier 13... and the moon."  Before meeting his final demise (final being used loosely) he awoke after Bill left and once again after she dropped a tear on his forehead.  The tears again and the tears of a companion who stood by him enthusiastically and who herself 'lost' her life. Could Missy have uttered it so graphically and in so many descriptive ways: "she's dead, dismembered, fed through a grinder and doomed to spend an eternal afterlife as a biomechanical psychozombie."  However the Doctor told Bill she was strong resisting the consciousness of the Cybermen and spending all that time with the Monks, made her 'compartmentalize - my word - her emotions.  She still has human emotions.

Alit was reminiscent of a young Bill and as plucky as Bill now, with the Doctor giving her an apple, calling it humanity's first weapon.  (Garden of Eden there) and she threw it at the Cyberman making them explode.  With Nardole's non-too witty remark of "the ultimate apple upgrade."  Well the Doctor did swipe Nardole's technology to the Sonic to enable him to fight the Cybermen, it was his destiny as always.  Another reference/dig by Stephen Moffat to Drumpf and how "like sewage, smartphones and Donald Trump, some things are just inevitable."

Then came the Cloister bells with the Doctor determined not to regenerate and his meeting the original Doctor (David Bradley) leading to to the Christmas Special...

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