Sunday, 2 November 2014

Doctor Who: Dark Water - spoiler warning

So we know who Missy is now….and she’s exactly who everyone thought she was.


Earlier this week, I threw a theory out there that Missy was just a piece of misdirection designed to distract us from the real threat of the series. This would mean that the reveal would be pretty interesting, but largely insignificant in light of the real threat that we’d all failed to notice.

Well, mush the like the River Song reveal, Missy’s identity falls into that which was recognised by the first episode. I’m not saying that she’s not a good villain, but going for such an obvious one just seems lazy. Also what happened to the Time Lord’s ability to recognise one of their own instantly. The Tenth Doctor knew the Master (even with a new face) straight away, but the Twelfth doesn’t recognise him/her without any explanation.

So there we go; I’m not thrilled about that reveal.

As to the episode, it’s pretty good as a standalone (albeit half of a standalone). To see Clara as a psychiatric wreck, following Danny’s death is pretty good starting point. The Doctor’s trick with a dream state is pretty awesome, as Moffat finds time to call back to manipulative Dreamlord persona that hides under the surface of the Doctor.

The reveal of the Cybermen is very well executed and had last week’s trailer not spoiled their presence it would have been very surprising.

Another small thing that I really liked was the Malcolm Tucker reference thrown in by The Doctor’s psychic paper conveying all the swearwords that he’s not allowed to use on a family show. For nostalgia’s sake it’s also nice to see the Cybermen stalking around St Paul’s in a call back to classic era.

The other reveal we got, was the source of Danny’s PTSD. Turns out that while serving in Afghanistan, he accidentally killed a child. Pretty dark stuff, but it’s handled pretty well.

Overall, this episode does a very good job of setting up the finale, I just wish that the villain reveal could have been more surprising.



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