Dr Who 8x11- Dark Water

[Mr Awe]

^ I wasn't thrilled with returning Clara home all the time either, or the relationship with Danny. I did like most stories though. Still an enjoyable season in my mind but YMMV. And, if they're going to use Coal Hill School, they might as well got some classic references in and a cameo by Ian! Missed opportunity, particularly since William Russell will be 90 soon!

Hopefully next season they'll ditch the returning home regardless of who is the companion. I also think Capaldi is amazing as the Doctor!

Mr Awe

 

[Australis]

Missy has two hearts so she in the current incarnation of the Master.

Sure, the Person/Being behind the MISI (Interface/Avatar) has 2 Hearts, probably a Time Lord/Lady, and no reason to believe it's not The Master. But, if Missy had bombed with the viewing public, as a Master, I think they had room to say it's just an Avatar (Starkers and all the other guys with female Avatars are Men, I doubt Sojouner is really Daffy Duck [I am a Grey Owl Wizard, though, BTW]).

So, although I hope they don't go there, I can see the "out", if needed, that MISI is not what The Master currently actually looks like.

You're assuming we're not gonna see a regeneration next week...

But I really am cooler in the Mirror Universe, and yes, I have a goatee there.

 

[Brent]

Just watched the episode, welp, it should have been The Rani IMO. That would have been a better reveal. Tired of The Master at this point, a little too overused and cliche. The Rani would have been perfect, she always did meddle with science. I mean the first paragraph in her bio on Wiki says this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rani_(Doctor_Who)

The Rani is a renegade Time Lord,[2] an evil scientific genius whose villainy comes not from the usual variety of lust for power and suchlike, but from a mindset that treats everything (including morality) as secondary to her research; she has been known to enslave entire planets such as Miasimia Goria in order to have a ready supply of experimental subjects and a place to carry out her experiments uninterrupted.

Plus

A past relationship between the Rani and the Doctor is hinted at[citation needed] but was never elaborated upon, although it is established they are the same age.

Would have made sense with the kiss and all.

That is exactly what is happening here with the Cybermen. So yeah, The Rani would have been perfect to re-introduce.

A much lost opportunity.

I'm quite angry this wasn't the case. Quite angry it is The Master.

 

[Australis]

And most of the audience would have had zero idea who the Rani is. In some ways, the Mster has a bigger impact (not a spelling error - Ms-ter).

 

[Guy Gardener]

%50 percent of the audience would have assumed that the revealed Rani was Rani from the Sarah Jane Adventures. The 12 year olds watching The Sarah Jane Adventures in 2007 now have jobs and buy stuff. They are a worthwhile demographic to plum.

 

[Starkers]

I don't like how the Master was revealed, but I do like the actress in the role. Too bad she smacks of being another "Moffat woman".

I'm sure I'll regret asking. But what exactly is a "Moffat woman"?

You know, River Song, Irene Adler, Madame Kovarian, Tasha Lem, Missy and probably several others. They are usually approaching or in middle age, not traditionally attractive, but not hideous, with similar severe facial features. They tend to act like a combination of an English school mistress and a dominatrix. They'll flirt with the Doctor or Sherlock aggressively. There is always a "mystery" about them to solve.

I don't put much stock in a discredited quack like Sigmund Freud, but there's got to be something that we can deduce about the Moff's childhood from his repeated use of the same character.

Probably as much as you could deduce from RTD's very obvious mummy and daddy issues.

Really you can make the facts fit any theory you want.

For starters lets look at some other "Moffat" women.

Susan, Sally and Jane in Coupling, nope none of them fit that mold.

Claire and Kathryn in Jekyll? Neither fit that mold.

Nancy, Reinette, Sally Sparrow, Amy Pond, Clara, Lorna Bucket, Mels...nope none of them fit the pattern either.

I'd even argue with some of your assertions. Laura Pulver was in her early thirties when she played Irene Adler, which I think is stretching it when talking about approaching middle age, and not traditionally attractive? It's fair to say that about someone like Alex Kingston (who is unbelivebly hot but not traditionally so) but Laura Pulver looks pretty traditionally attractive to me (subjective I know).

I'm not sure River's ever acted like an English schoolteacher, she's always been far too flirtatious for that, and Madame Korvarian never really flirted with the Doctor did she?

Of course I'm making the facts fit my case here, which doesn't make me any more right and, being fair, you could add Mary from Sherlock into the mix age wise and as a woman of mystery.

It also strikes me that if Jack Harkness was a woman...

 

[Captrek]

Jack Harkness: "When five billion years old you reach, look as good you will not."

 

[Ar-Pharazon]

Just watched the episode, welp, it should have been The Rani IMO. That would have been a better reveal. Tired of The Master at this point, a little too overused and cliche. The Rani would have been perfect, she always did meddle with science. I mean the first paragraph in her bio on Wiki says this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rani_(Doctor_Who)

The Rani is a renegade Time Lord,[2] an evil scientific genius whose villainy comes not from the usual variety of lust for power and suchlike, but from a mindset that treats everything (including morality) as secondary to her research; she has been known to enslave entire planets such as Miasimia Goria in order to have a ready supply of experimental subjects and a place to carry out her experiments uninterrupted.

Plus

A past relationship between the Rani and the Doctor is hinted at[citation needed] but was never elaborated upon, although it is established they are the same age.

Would have made sense with the kiss and all.

That is exactly what is happening here with the Cybermen. So yeah, The Rani would have been perfect to re-introduce.

A much lost opportunity.

I'm quite angry this wasn't the case. Quite angry it is The Master.

If the Doctor lies, so could the Rani.

 

[Mr Awe]

I rewatched the episode again and I've noticed something more clearly (I think).

1) I think it's got to be set a few years in the future, at least. There's a whole corporation, PR package, govt inspections, etc. It was based on research that was conducted over time. Since the "company" started, the customer base seems to be widespread and based on making the corpse comfortable so that the after life is more enjoyable. That's the commercialized part of the afterlife, storing the corpses comfortably. This is big business but Clara is unfamiliar with it. Combined with the non-response to the Cybermen, this has to be the future.

2) It's clear that in the nethersphere, they manipulate the new arrivals to evoke strong emotions. This is done to get them to delete them, which implies a sense that it must be voluntary for it work.

Maybe this is all obvious but the rewatch made it more clear to me. I really enjoyed this story and thought it was even better the second time through!

Mr Awe

 

[EyalM]

We saw Missy take people from different time periods. She obviously have time travel capabilities. We also see futuristic technology in the mausoleum.
I think the corporation\company operate in the future, but Missy chose to invade the "present".

 

[Ithekro]

She definately has Timelord technology.

 

[Hartzilla2007]

Combined with the non-response to the Cybermen, this has to be the future.

And why would people be responding to (at the time) what looks like a small number of people in weird robot costumes coming out of a building a decent distance a way from them? Especially when they haven't done anything threatening yet.

 

[Mark_Nguyen]

Yeah! Also they look nothing like the metal guys who emerged from Canary Wharf only to be shot down en masse by those other aliens, who were they again...?

And I'm SO loving the TARDIS as portrayed in this episode. As shown by Clara's treasure hunt at the top of the show, Twelve has gone and put so much STUFF in his console room! There's even a desk and work table on the lower level now, and coatstands and chairs and all sorts of lovely junk. The previous Docotr may have designed / chosen the room, but this one has really made it his own.

Mark

 

[Marc]

I agree the Daleks have been horribly overused, but the Cyberman and Master haven't been used nearly as much so I don't really see the issue there.

Heck, we probably saw the Cybermen a lot more frequently on the classic series. Or at least it kinda feels that way.

From memory Cybermen appearances in the classic series

1st Doctor - Tenth Planet
2nd Doctor - The Invasion
Wheel in Space
The Moonbase
Tomb Of The Cybermen
3rd Doctor - Cybermen stories
4th Doctor - Revenge Of The Cybermen
5th Doctro - Earth Shock
6th Doctor - forgotten the name
7th Doctor - Silver Nemesis

So 9 appearances over 25 years with 4 in the 3 or 4 year run of the 2nd Doctor which some might say was over usage but still a long way short of the Dalek Appearances.

 

[Doctorwhovian]

A Cyberman made a brief appearence in "Carnival of Monsters" and quite prominently in The Five Doctors (Their last team-up with the Master.)

 

[Ithekro]

The Daleks were the first monster. The popular monster. The First Doctor ran into them a lot. They semi-retired them after the first year of the Second Doctor's run, but then they returned for the 3rd Doctor. Considering the Fourth Doctor had a seven season run, he only ran into them twice.

The Daleks being a right of passage for a Doctor. Everyone of them had to face them (save the 8th Doctor who didn't have screen time to face much of anyone save the Master).

The 3rd Doctor finally ran into the Cybermen in the Five Doctors.

 

[Marc]

A Cyberman made a brief appearence in "Carnival of Monsters" and quite prominently in The Five Doctors (Their last team-up with the Master.)

one was a cameo appearance that wasn't essential to the story, the other wasn't a story in the 3rd Doctor's run.

 

[Sindatur]

A Cyberman made a brief appearence in "Carnival of Monsters" and quite prominently in The Five Doctors (Their last team-up with the Master.)

one was a cameo appearance that wasn't essential to the story, the other wasn't a story in the 3rd Doctor's run.

Then how does that make it "Cybermen Stories" in the 3rd Doctor's run?

 

[diankra]

A Cyberman made a brief appearence in "Carnival of Monsters" and quite prominently in The Five Doctors (Their last team-up with the Master.)

The Carnival of Monsters cameo was intended as a reminder of them to set up their return later in season 10 (Carnival was always intended as the second story of season 10, but was shot months earlier at the end of season nine).
They were to have returned mid-season in the first half of the six-and-six-part Dalek/Master anniversary story (Frontier in Space/Planet of the Daleks) in season 10 (following on having Hartnell and Troughton back in Three Doctors).
But Terry Nation didn't like the idea of having Cybermen and Daleks in the same story (he'd vetoed it back in 68/69), so Frontier in Space was rewritten so that the Master's henchmen were Ogrons rather than Cybermen.
This was all known but only rumoured until a production sketch of Cybermen in the Ogron role in Frontier (burning their way into the Earth freighter in part one) was printed in The Vault last year.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Gotta wonder who can hack who faster?

They're both exuding information nets with ports that anyone with the right access can access, and do untold damage once they're in there if they have broad enough permissions.