10 – Series Ten – Peter Capaldi

The Return of Doctor Mysterio

The Doctor arrives in New York City on a Christmas Eve, which is how this qualifies as a Christmas story, despite no other connections. And on this night he meets a young boy named Grant, gives him a rare gem stone to hold, but the boy thinks it is medicine and swallows it. It has the property of granting wishes (Grant, granting, get it), and the boy loves comics and wants to be a superhero, so that is what the stone does. 24 years later, i.e. after that last night on Darillium, the Doctor is back in NYC along with Nardole, who he somehow restored, to investigate Harmony Shoal, a research company. But it is actually a front for an alien species planning to invade Earth. We previously met them in The Husbands of River Song as the buyers of the rare diamond. And also investigating is a reporter, Lucy Fletcher. They are caught and about to be killed when a superhero named The Ghost breaks in and saves them.

Of course, this is Grant, now 24 years older, so just over 30. And he is the nanny for Lucy Fletcher, who has a baby girl. so he is leading quite the double life. The aliens are in the end defeated, and Lucy realizes she loves Grant. This is a Christmas special, after all, so you shouldn’t expect high drama. But it is a fun romp, and worth watching.

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The Pilot

The Doctor and Nardole are at a University, posing as a professor and his assistant. And the Doctor asks Bill Potts to come see him. She is not actually a student, she works in the cafeteria, but she attends all of Capaldi’s lectures., and he agrees to be her tutor. Bill and another young lady named Heather are mutually attracted, but Heather seems troubled. Then Heather finds a puddle, and it has an odd feature: When you look in it, you don’t see your reflection, you see yourself as anyone else sees you, which means a left-right reversal. Then Heather disappears briefly, and comes back as as an alien creature made of water. Heather seems to be attacking them all, but the Doctor soon realizes she is interested only in Bill.

They al try to escape, but Heather follows them, until finally the Doctor takes them into the middle of a Dalek war zone in an attempt to exterminate Heather, but she survives. Finally Bill thinks back to their last interaction, and realizes she asked Heather to “promise me you won’t leave me”, and Heather did promise. So Bill then says it is time for her to go.

This is a good opening episode, and Steven Moffat has said he intended it to be a kind of soft reboot that would make it easy for new viewers to get started. So the Doctor is reintroduced in addition to introducing the new companion.

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Smile

The Doctor takes Bill on a trip to an Earth colony in the future, but is puzzled that there are no people despite a city waiting for people. He guesses that the colony ship has not arrived yet, and that robots were sent ahead to prepare. And it turns out that the main robots are a bunch of nanobots called the Vardy, but there are also vaguely humanoid robots that communicate via emoji. The Doctor investigates and finds human bones that are fairly recent being ground up and used as fertilizer. The conclusion is that the Vardy have been killing the people, but why. The Doctor realizes that in this city there has to be the original ship the robots came in, and there must have been an advance team of people that came with the robots, and who have now all been killed. With a presumed colony ship on the way to a deadly trap, the Doctor decides that blowing up the original ship to blow up the city and the Vardy is the only safe option.

He puts his plan into action by finding the Engine core and preparing it to blow up, when suddenly a young boy appears, and then the realization dawns that this ship *is* the colony ship, and he can’t blow it up and kill everyone. The colonists decide to grab guns and fight the robots, but of course you can’t fight swarms of nanobots with guns. The Doctor then works out what must have happened. The Robots were programmed to keep people happy, but when one the original group dies, and grief takes hold, they don’t understand it and treat it like a disease. They think killing the grief-stricken person will protect the rest from the “disease”. But of course each killing causes more grief. The Doctor then wipes out the programming so the robots know nothing.

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Thin Ice

As we saw in The Doctor’s Wife, the TARDIS doesn’t always take the Doctor where he wants to go, but always where he needs to go. In this episode, the Doctor explains that you don’t steer the TARDIS so much as negotiate with it, and in this episode the TARDIS has decided the Doctor needs to be in London in 1814 for the last great Frost Fair on the frozen Thames. This is an actual event that happened, but not quite like this. The Doctor and Bill dress in Regency outfits to take a look around, and encounter street urchins. One of them steals the sonic screwdriver, but is then surrounded by lights under the ice, which opens and swallows the boy.

Upon investigation, they discover that there is a creature under the ice that is feeding on people but the creature is bound by chains, so they know someone has to be behind this. At first the Doctor suspects an alien, but it turns out to be just another greedy, selfish human named Lord Sutcliffe who is using the excrement from the creature as a very potent fuel. The Doctor then puts the decision on Bill, much like he did with Clara in Kill The Moon, and Bill decides they should free the creature, which they do successfully, and in so doing manage to kill Lord Sutcliffe.

This is a good episode that is not only entertaining but involves Bill in finding out more about who the Doctor is and how he rolls. And she learns it is not all sweetness and light, but the Doctor does try to do the best thing he can do in any situation.

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Knock Knock

You know what they say about a deal that is “too good to be true”. Bill, along with 5 students, is looking for a place to stay, and the Estate Agent shows them very tiny places because that is all they can afford. Then a landlord, played by David Suchet, offers them a mansion on very reasonable terms. But when Bill asks the Doctor to help her with the move, he quickly sees that something is wrong. They see a tree moving in the wind. But the Doctor realizes that there is no wind. And when the students sign the lease, they may not have read all of the provisions, but the Landlord makes very clear that the Tower is off limits.

Strange things start to happen, and one by one the students seem to disappear. Then doors suddenly close, shutters on Windows close, and none of them can be reopened. And we learn that there is someone in the Tower when Bill and another girl manage to get there, but it is a woman made of wood. She is being kept alive by alien creatures that are form of wood lice, and these creatures need to be fed. So every 20 years the Landlord finds a group that needs a house, and they all get fed to the wood lice. We think the wooden woman is the Landlord’s daughter at first, but she turns out to be his mother, and when she realizes how twisted her life has become, she brings it all to an end. Back to house hunting, Bill.

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Oxygen

This is the great anti-capitalist episode. The Doctor first gives a lecture about how space can kill you. Then he takes Bill and Nardole on a trip to space where this information may come in handy. He gets a distress call from a space station involved in mining, but out of a crew of 40 there only appears to be 4 still alive. And the running theme is that you have to buy the oxygen you need to breathe. The corporation that owns the mining station apparently believes you should never overlook a potential profit center. And they get the oxygen from their suits, even inside the station. And when the TARDIS arrives and lets oxygen into the station, the automated systems vent it into space to maintain the market price of oxygen on the station.

This is a variation on the “base under siege” plot, where the inhabitants are under siege from their employers. And eventually the Doctor works out that the employers are deliberately killing the employees because they are no longer sufficiently profitable. So he sets up a situation where killing them is now more expensive then letting them live.

When they all get back to Earth, Nardole is very angry with the Doctor because he is supposed to be guarding whatever is in the vault in the basement. That has come up enough that it is now clear that this is the “mystery box” for the season. Also, the Doctor is now blind.

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Extremis

This is the first part of three-part story known as The Monks Trilogy. So it presents a situation without resolving it. And it makes for a convoluted plot since many things need to be set up here. First, the Pope comes to the Doctor for help. Apparently there is a note in the Vatican archives from Pope Benedict IX, who was pope in the 11th century, recommending the Doctor if anything really serious comes up, and they act on it. There is a document called Veritas written in some unknown language, and everyone who has ever managed to translate it then commits suicide. It turns out that an alien race, who are the Monks of the trilogy, wants to conquer the Earth, and starts by creating a simulation to evaluate their plans. And the Veritas document reveals this. The people who commit suicide are just removing themselves from the simulation.

Meanwhile there are flashbacks showing that, for reasons never entirely clear, the Doctor is supposed to execute Missy. But in the end he doesn’t. But he did take an oath to guard her body, which is the solution to the mystery box of “what is inside the vault in the basement?” It is a very alive Missy. And when when the situation with the Monks and the simulation comes into some focus, the Doctor knows he will need her help. Finally, the Doctor has been blind since the events of Oxygen, but is hiding it from everyone except Nardole.

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The Pyramid at the End of the World

We come again to the fictional country of Turmezistan, seen previously in The Zygon Invasion/Inversion. And apparently a 5,000 year old Pyramid has suddenly appeared here, right where the armed forces of Russia, China, and the United States are staring at each other. The Secretary-General of the United Nations has called on the Doctor as President of Earth to look into this situation, and when he arrives, the Pyramid opens a door, and it is the Monks. Of course, this is part 2 of a 3-part story, so it isn’t all wrapped up yet. The Monks claim the the Earth will; be desolate wasteland in one year, and show this to the humans. They say they can save us, but they need to asked to do it out of love. The Doctor tells everyone not to surrender to these aliens, but of course no one listens to the Doctor, do they?

The question is what creates the wasteland. The three military leaders there from the three countries are united, so it can’t be World War III. Then the Doctor decides it must be something completely different, and settles on something biological, and traces it to a lab where something has gone wrong and is turning plants, and then one careless lab worker, into slime. The Doctor blows up the lab, which changes course of the future, but to get out he needs his sight, so Bill surrenders to the Monks to get his sight back. This will all be wrapped up, I suppose, in the final part of this trilogy.

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The Lie of the Land

This is another of those titles that is a double entendre. Everyone in the world is being constantly lied to.

As a result of Bill’s surrender, the Monks are now in charge of the Earth, and have managed to somehow convince everyone that they have been here all along, as far back as the first fish to crawl on land. But Bill knows they have only been here 6 months. She has conjured up in her mind an imaginary version of her mother, based on the photos that the Doctor got for her previously. This seems to block out the psychic signal somehow and keep her grounded in reality. Then Nardole shows up, and he is somehow immune to the signal, either because he is alien or because he is a cyborg. He knows where the Doctor is being held. He is on a prison ship, where he records videos for the Monks, reinforcing the psychic signal. So Nardole and Bill go to the ship, where they find the Doctor, who says he has joined the Monks. But this is a ruse to test if Bill has been brainwashed.

Then they go to visit Missy, who says she has encountered the Monks, and that the psychic signal is transmitted from all of the statues we see, which are in a every town. And Missy was able to defeat them because she found out that the person who gave the Monks permission is the psychic link. Just kill that person, and no more Monks. While Bill is willing, the Doctor won’t hear of it. Finally it works out that Bill’s love for her mother overcomes the signal from the Monks, and people are freed. When this happens, the Monks leave. And in the closing, Missy and the Doctor talks, and Missy expresses regret for some of the things she has done.

Overall, this ending is weaker than the two previous stories Extremis and The Pyramid at the End of the World. It is not much of a payoff for a 3-story arc.

Note: Magpie Electrical makes yet another appearance in this episode. It first appeared in The Idiot’s Lantern, and has appeared frequently since then.

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Empress of Mars

A NASA mission to investigate what lies under the Martian icecaps reveals rocks arranged to spell out “God Save The Queen”. Very odd, that. The Doctor is able to pin down the time to 1881, and the TARDIS team takes off. When they get there Bill falls into a hole, and the Doctor tells Nardole to go back to the TARDIS and get rope, but as soon as he does the TARDIS takes off of its own accord, and refuses to return. None of this is explained. But the Doctor and Bill encounter British soldiers, and learn that they found a crashed spaceship with a survivor, who they call Friday, and who is an Ice Warrior. We haven’t seen any of them since Cold War. He tells the soldiers they can go back to Mars together, and the soldiers can mine gems and gold there, but what he really intends is that they uncover the hibernating Empress of Mars, which they duly do.

Being British soldiers of the Victorian age, they assume they are superior to anyone they come across, and the Doctor’s warnings that they are up against a superior race with superior technology are ignored.. A number of them are duly killed as a result. The Doctor sets out to get the two sides to join together peacefully, and they do. Mars is no longer habitable, but the Doctor contacts Alpha Centauri, the nearest representative of the Galactic Federation, which sends ships to pick up the Ice Warriors. That makes this story in essence a prequel to the Third Doctor story The Curse of Peladon. Meanwhile, Nardole, unable to make the TARDIS return on his own, gets Missy to help, and together they bring the TARDIS to Mars to pick up the Doctor and Bill. And Missy is very concerned about the Doctor’s well-being as the story ends.

Also, the portrait of Queen Victoria that we see bears a striking resemblance to Pauline Collins, who portrayed the Queen in the Tenth Doctor story Tooth and Claw. Had they waited a few years they might have been able to use a picture of Jenna Coleman, who played the Queen in a series after leaving Doctor Who.

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The Eaters of Light

Every once in a while Doctor Who takes up something mysterious from the past and gives it an explanation. Fictional, of course. In this case it is the disappearance of the Ninth Legion of the Roman Army, which disappeared in Scotland, but no one knows why or how. No trace has been found in Britain of this legion, but there are various theories. In this story, however, it is aliens, specifically coming through a portal between dimensions. Most of the Ninth was wiped out by this creature, but a remnant survived and is hiding underground, where Bill finds them. Meanwhile, the Doctor and Nardole have found the Picts, and one of them, a young lady named Kar, is called the Guardian of the Gate. She is the latest in a line of Guardians who must drive back the aliens periodically, but she let one through this time in the hope it would kill her enemies, the Romans. Good enough, but it will also kill all of her people, and according to the Doctor, go on to wipe out all life on the planet, if not destroy the sun and all of the stars.

The Doctor has a plan, but first he has to get the Picts and the Roman remnant to join forces against the common enemy. He does this, and Kar and the Romans go through the gate, which then collapses around them, ending the threat. Back in the TARDIS, Missy is seen. The Doctor has let her out of the vault and is trying to “civilize” her, so to speak. So we now see that the overall theme of this season has to do with a change in Missy. How will it play out? We’ll have to see.

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World Enough and Time

This is another two-parter, though the opening scene of the Doctor starting to regenerate also ties it to the finale. As we have seen, the Doctor believes he is having a positive effect on Missy, and proposes to test her by taking the TARDIS out and searching for distress calls. Bill is not happy, but finally says “Promise me you won’t get me killed”, and the Doctor says he can’t promise that. This is what we call foreshadowing in literary criticism. They find a colony ship that is 400 miles long and a mile wide, and it is slowly backing away from a super-massive black hole. But then another one of those blue aliens shows up, and he is terrified, and sees that something is coming up in the elevators. In his fear, he kills Bill. Then the elevators open, and people in lab coats come out and take Bill, saying they can save her.

Because of the massive gravitational field, time is different between the top and the bottom of the ship, so while the Doctor, Missy, and Nardole spend an hour or so at the top of the ship, Bill is given an artificial heart and spends years on the bottom, waiting for the Doctor to come and save her. Her one friend is a fellow who finally tricks her into entering the operating theater, where she will be completely converted into a Mondasian Cyberman. Mondas is the planet seen in the First Doctor story The Tenth Planet, and we find out that the colony ship is from Mondas. And the fellow who betrayed Bill turns out to be the John Simms version of the Master, introduced in David Tennant’s second season, and last seen in The End Of Time. So we now have the first story with multiple Masters. And the final scene is the Cyberman “Bill” saying to the Doctor “I waited for you”

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The Doctor Falls

Back on the spaceship, the Doctor is tied up and the Master and Missy are trying to decide what to do. But the Doctor has already acted, and changed the programming of the Cybermen so that they recognize people with two hearts as human. Thus they are coming to grab the three Gallifreyans and convert them. Nardole picks them up, along with Bill, and they fly to a farming level of the ship. The people are fighting against the Cybermen, but the Doctor tells them Bill is not like other Cybermen. But the rest of the Cybermen are on the march. They particularly want the children who are easiest to convert.

The Doctor and Nardole organize a fighting resistance, and succeed in stopping the first wave. But the Doctor realizes that now they are viewed as a military threat, and the Cybermen will change their tactics accordingly. Missy and the Master take off on their own to get to the Master’s TARDIS, but the Doctor stays to help the people. Then he sends Nardole to take the people to a different farming level where thay might be safe for a while. Meanwhile, Missy and the Master kill each other, the Doctor takes a blast from the Cybermen, and he falls. Bill shows up, and then the girl from The Pilot shows up and frees Bill from being a Cyberman, they put the Doctor in his TARDIS, and go off. The Doctor is starting to regenerate, and then the TARDIS lands in a snowy location, and the First Doctor appears. Both of them are resisting regeneration, and we have the setup for the final special with Peter Capaldi.

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Twice Upon a Time

And now we pick up from the end of the previous story with the 12th Doctor and the 1st Doctor both fighting regeneration, when a man shows up in the uniform of a World War I captain. He was facing a German soldier in a bomb crater, and they both had guns pulled, when suddenly everything stopped, he got transported to the South Pole. They all go into the 12th Doctor’s TARDIS, and it is then hijacked by something called Testimony. When they come out of the TARDIS they are on a ship, ad then Bill Potts shows up. There is also a mysterious woman made of glass, and to find out who she is the Doctor consults the biggest database in the world, which is the Dalek hive mind. To do this he goes to the planet Villengard, one-time home to the big arms manufacturer first introduced in The Empty Child, but now hte planet is a ruin. There the Doctor consults Rusty, the Dalek he entered in Into The Dalek.

From the Dalek hivemind, the Doctor discovers that Testimony is a wholly benign project that grabs people at the moment of death, harvests their memories, then returns them to the moment of death. Bill Potts is now living on through Testimony, as well as a few other old friends. So they take the WWI Captain back to the battlefield, and we discover hi name is Lethbridge-Stewart. He is the grandfather (I think) of the Brigadier. Then the 1st Doctor goes off to complete his regeneration into the 2nd Doctor. And then not only Bill, but also Clara and Nardole show up, and the Doctor now has his memories of Clara back. And last of all the 12th Doctor regenerates into Jodie Whittaker’s 13th Doctor.

So all in all this is mostly fan service, but enjoyable fan service to be sure. But a note worth keeping in mind is that this was not part of Moffat’s plan to begin with. The Doctor Falls was supposed to be Capaldi and Moffat’s last story, but Chris Chibnall, the next showrunner, did not want to start his run with a Christmas special. And Moffat thought that if they didn’t do one, they might lose the slot, so he whipped up a quicky.

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Series Ten Review

Peter Capaldi Era Review

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