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Ten Thoughts About Doctor Who: The Doctor Falls: Always Read The Comments

Okay, so, no, no new Doctor Who. Okay, I mean there is, but not Kris Marshall. Or anything like that. Let's just have that at the top. Onwards with The Doctor Falls and spoilers to come.

1. Cyberscarecrows

Ten Thoughts About Doctor Who: The Doctor Falls: Always Read The Comments

The Patients/Proto Cyberman did that thing where they looked like dummies, effigies, Guy Fawkes figures to be burnt, or strapped up, their role as scarecrows is both utilitarian and haunting. And reminds one of the Family Of Blood quite considerably. Human but not. Upgraded but not.

 

It also harkens back to other horror tropes, just as the previous epsiode played with body horror and asylums for the insane, so this goes for small town rural community under seige from creatures from below. Somewhere between Stephen King and Hammer House of Horrors…

2. Master Bation

Ten Thoughts About Doctor Who: The Doctor Falls: Always Read The Comments

I believe it's called self-love. Just think of the children!

3. Still Bill

Ten Thoughts About Doctor Who: The Doctor Falls: Always Read The Comments

Bill Potts is not the only person to have held on to who they were. A certain head of Torchwood and a certain Brigadier Lethbridge Stewart didn't do a bad job either. But the body dysmorphia on display here was more pronounced. A woman trapped in a Cyberbody, with her own denial not harming herself but saving herself. Her body betrays it all, it's not just the mirror or the shadows but her very gait… reminiscent of the first time we met Clara/Oswin who didn't know she was a Dalek.

And rather than killing herself, Bill Potts was weaponised. Everyone who hangs around with the Doctor is in the end – or at least wants to be. Nardole is denied his.

4. Always Read The Comments

Ten Thoughts About Doctor Who: The Doctor Falls: Always Read The Comments

Oh go on then. This time I will. Or all you lot will rise up against me, I just know it. A nice parable for modern revolution though. The people who are ignored, the one who feel abandoned, turn against you, become Cybermen and vote UKIP.

And to the Doctor, of course Donald Trump is inevitable, he's a fixed point in time.

5. Moffatverse

Ten Thoughts About Doctor Who: The Doctor Falls: Always Read The Comments

A long time ago, in the finale of Coupling, Steven Moffat wanted to use the departed cast member of Richard Coyle, playing Jeff. Unable to persuade the actor to return for one last episode, he went for a hallucination and genderswapped Jeff to be Jeffina. And cast Samantha Spiro to be the female Jeff. Now she returns, as Nardole's destiny. A good luck charm for Moffat's way out?

6. Memories Are Made Of This

Ten Thoughts About Doctor Who: The Doctor Falls: Always Read The Comments

Missy remembers that the Doctor died and regenerated after a fall – she was there after all in Logopolis. And that famous ending echoed here, with so many past companions screaming the Doctor's name during a regeneration which he is still after all, able to pause. And so many echoes of past Doctors in Capaldi's lips, foreshadowed by jelly babies. He doesn't want to go. He will always remember when he was him, crashing Time Crash into full official continuity as well.

That's a sentiment echoed by Missy, playing with memories or rather her lack of them. Setting a time loop in place to save herselves as well as remembering who she was. And both of herselves disgusted with the other, not allowing the other to live. Can this truly be the end? No, no, never. Could Missy also have a pond girl friend out there in the cosmos also willing to whisk her away?

This time the scorpion didn't sting the frog half way across the river. She stung herself. Twice.

7. Talking Therapy

Ten Thoughts About Doctor Who: The Doctor Falls: Always Read The Comments

"Where I stand is where I fall" – this Doctor gives good speech. And something that's all that's needed to cast a spell, so everyone (eventually) falls into line and the impossible is made possible. Or at least just very, very improbable.

8. A Tear In The Fabric Of Space-Time

Ten Thoughts About Doctor Who: The Doctor Falls: Always Read The Comments

The Power Of Love does it again. And can summon your savour across time and space. Or at least from the first episode of the current series, after not mentioning hide nor hair of this for the last eleven episodes. Basically an Ex Machina to help you exit the machine. Though did anyone predict the return of Heather? And what a nice kiss…

9. Cosmic Hobos

Ten Thoughts About Doctor Who: The Doctor Falls: Always Read The Comments

That's the thing about the Doctor. He leaves people to whizz off around the galaxy, in all of Time and Space doing what he does and never checks up. Clara and Me. The Doctor's Daughter. And now Bill Potts and The Pilot as cosmic beings… and a Bill quite happy to walk out on the Doctor's corpse if there's a possibility of a quick fumble behind a quasar.

10. The Young Whippersnapper

Ten Thoughts About Doctor Who: The Doctor Falls: Always Read The Comments

That's the solution to any mid-life crisis, refusing to get old, refusing to move on, refusing a much-needed regeneration. A chat with your younger self, full of vim and energy to realise what a fool you are being and get on with your lot in life. Ho ho ho.

Loved the performance. Of them both…

Doctor Who aired on BBC 1 earlier tonight and will air on BBC America at 9pm ET.

 


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Rich JohnstonAbout Rich Johnston

Founder of Bleeding Cool. The longest-serving digital news reporter in the world, since 1992. Author of The Flying Friar, Holed Up, The Avengefuls, Doctor Who: Room With A Deja Vu, The Many Murders Of Miss Cranbourne, Chase Variant. Lives in South-West London, works from Blacks on Dean Street, shops at Piranha Comics. Father of two. Political cartoonist.
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