Dark Water/Death in Heaven
Story 252, Episodes 811 & 812, Series 8 Episodes 11 & 12
Doctor: The Twelfth Doctor
Companion: Kate Stewart, Clara Oswald
The Doctor and Clara go to Hell and find some nasty robots, an old friend, and the afterlife in the finale to Series 8.
The Review
This story is monumental, and starts with a bang. Danny Pink is dead, dying ordinarily in a car accident. Clara meets the Doctor again and tries to force him to break the laws of time to save Danny, but the Doctor gets out of it in a clever dream sequence. Clara takes the TARDIS to where she’ll Danny again, and it’s a creepy mausoleum with sitting dead bodies in water tanks. We meet a very kissy MISI and a Doctor who explains they’re at 3W. The dead live on and still feel what they’re bodies feel, so they are cared for in the afterlife by 3W.
Danny’s not dead, well, he’s dead, but found himself in the Nethersphere. It’s just ‘more life’ than he was expecting. Telling Clara to stay away and seeing the kid he killed as a soldier, he heads to delete himself. The Doctor sees ‘MISI’ again and the bodies are seen to truly be Cybermen, MISI is really Missy. As the Doctor runs out of St. Paul’s Cathedral with Cybermen on his tail, Missy is really…the Master. He’s back! Well, she.
Part two picks up there, starting with Clara saying she’s the Doctor to avoid death and the opening hilariously having her and Capaldi’s roles reversed. UNIT comes to confront the Cybermen and Missy. The Cybermen explode into clouds that start to infect graveyards. The new President of Earth Doctor is taken aboard UNIT’s plane where he learns: the dead are being turned into Cybermen. Missy darkly kills Tumblr-character Osgood, reveals she kept Clara with the Doctor, and buggers off.
After a cool scene where the Doctor falls from cruising altitude into his TARDIS, Clara awakes in a graveyard as Cybermen rise from their graves, and sees she was saved by CyberDanny. The Doctor comes by and has to have Danny’s emotions inhibited to see Missy’s next plot. Missy flies in and reveals the truth: the army was for the Doctor. The Doctor rejects her, seeing that Danny loves Clara even without emotions. Danny takes command of the Cybermen and they destroy the clouds, ending the scheme.
Missy tells the Doctor where Gallifrey is and then is vaporized by a lone Cyberman…the Brigadier, saving the day one last time. Clara and the Doctor meet two weeks later and Clara says Danny’s back and everything’s fine, the Doctor saying he found Gallifrey. Both are complete lies. They part ways and the Doctor sits bleakly until Santa Claus bursts in and insists it cannot end like that! And that’s a wrap on Series 8.
The first part was a thrilling set-up, and though part two did not quite hit those heights, it was fantastic too. This story had a brilliant female Master, exhilarating action, and a personal look at death and love. The Doctor isn’t a good man, he’s just a good man with a box who helps where he can. The sad conclusion of lies was the inevitable end to the series. In a story packed with deep exploration of themes and amazing acting, this finale really delivered.
Steven Moffat turns out a spectacular conclusion to Peter Capaldi’s debut as the Doctor. From Cybermen rising from old graves to Missy’s promise to kill Osgood in exactly a minute to ‘Don’t Cremate Me’, Dark Water/Death in Heaven rose to the occasion.
9.5/10 Peter Capaldi is good. REALLY good.
Reviewing Doctor Who from Start to Finish 