I set myself up for this episode by expecting it to be a disaster so I wasn't really disappointed or anything. It wasn't as ridiculous as I thought it might get, but it also wasn't any good. I know most of the reviews out there are positive and praising, but I really found it lacking in most ways.
Can't say any more without SPOILERS
YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED
World-Building: Shoddy
Characterization: 2D
Plot: Linear (thankfully) but not well done at all
This episode is full of people thinking something's happened only for it to turn out it was a dream or hallucination or something like that so I want to start by summarizing. Basically, in this episode Danny dies and Clara and the Doctor go to try and save him/bring him back. They then find out that Missy (the Master) has been saving the consciousnesses of the dead for use in cybermen bodies. Somehow. So the people who have just died think that they're in this promised land/nethersphere/afterworld place and get tricked into opting into the emotional deletion so that they don't feel the pain of cremation when actually they're about to be made into cybermen.
Before I start complaining - because I will - I will say that there was something I truly enjoyed about this episode. Danny Pink. The acting was so excellent that I finally went and looked up the actor's name. Samuel Anderson is a good actor. He makes us believe that he's a haunted ex-soldier. He makes us feel the actor's shock when he figured out he's dead. He makes it undeniably clear that he loves Clara and that he wants to protect her when he forced her to turn off the connection and terminate their last conversation then he'll do it. And we see his emotions as he does so. They're real. Something that has been severely lacking this season and with Moffat in general.
If only we had had more of Danny Pink this season to bring that real emotion to it. Instead we got stuck with a few phone calls here and there where he tells Clara to be careful or enjoy herself or whatever and they relied on Clara telling us - constantly - that she loves him without any real emotion shown. What I'm trying to say is that Moffat did a TERRIBLE job of setting us up to love Danny and to feel Clara's loss.
This episode was different from other Moffat episodes and finales in that it stopped trying to be timey-wimey and tried to follow RTD's approach more. Linear. Emotion-based. The problem is that Moffat doesn't know how to actually do that. It only works if you can write real characters. His usual style relies on shocks and surprises and "epic twists" in the plot that generally distract us from the bad characterization, but none of the shocks in this episode were in any way shocking. They were completely predictable.
I knew from the first go that Missy was probably going to be the Master and so did every other Doctor Who fan. We HOPED it wouldn't be that obvious/predictable, but Moffat chose to go the lame route. It was obvious that this was going to have something to do with dead people. Moffat has uploaded people's consciousness onto hard drives before and he's done it better might I add. Silence in the Library was actually well done. Not so this time. We've also seen the Master harvest people's brains/consciousnesses and try to build himself an army in that utopia trio of episodes. The Cybermen are overused. I mean, I really don't get why people still defend Moffat. One of the biggest criticisms of RTD I've seen from Moffat fans is that he overused the villains such as Daleks and Cybermen in his finales. Well. Now Moffat's done it. Are you going to complain? Of course not.
Moving on, there are many things about this episode that irk me so I'm going to make a list of questions to Moffat.
QUESTIONS:
1) If you made Danny up just to kill him off and have Clara grieve over him, why couldn't you invest some time in making us like him? Why did you make the majority of fans hate his guts? Why couldn't you show us why we should care about his and Clara's relationship?
2) Who the heck is that old woman comforting Clara and why do her 'family' or 'loved ones' always randomly appear where they never before existed? You do know this makes her less convincing as a character, right?
3) The TARDIS only opens with one of seven very real, physical keys that can be easily stolen by companions obviously poking around the TARDIS and 'stealing' them right under the doctor's nose. OK, SURE. This involves either the doctor being stupid or the audience forgetting that the TARDIS has its own consciousness (see the Doctor's Wife) and is much more than a machine. Did you forget all this Moffat?
4) Why does every female character you ever write - including the master who has been living inside a male body for all his past regenerations! - just want to kiss the Doctor? Grow up, Moffat.
5) Why is the Doctor so afraid when Missy reveals herself as the Master? This is something we all already knew and it's not like the Doctor to be this afraid of a well-known enemy.
6) Why does the Master now sound like a version of Moriarty from your other show Sherlock? "Do try to keep up" etc is dialogue we've all heard before from Jim Moriarty - are you just recycling lines of dialogue now?
There are many more things I found a little annoying and unconvincing and just plainly badly written, but I'll stop here. I guess we should all be thankful that Missy didn't turn out to be River Song, but it's not like it made a difference - all of the women Moffat writes are exactly the same.
Overall, this episode is much of what I expected from Moffat. It lacks proper characterization.
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