*WARNING: THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS!
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| "Oh you know who I am." |
The first big revelation in Dark Water is that Danny Pink is dead, killed whilst crossing the road and talking to Clara on his mobile phone. The way characters can constantly return from limbo, death, alternative universes may make this comment obsolete by next week. I am not going to be surprised in the least if he is back sucking face with Clara next week.
Since virtually the beginning of Series 8 my Twitter friends and I narrowed down Missy's identity to either the Master or the Rani. I can't believe that a professional writer like Steven Moffat would believe for a nanosecond that we Whovians and fans would not figure this out way before the end of the series.
To me this signifies one of two things,
1: Moffat genuinely believed no one would guess.
2: He just didn't care.
I also believe there are other motives for making the new Master a woman, it paves the way for the Doctor to regenerate into a woman. There will be howls of protest at this, I too object to it but not for any sexist or misogynist reason but simply because it would change the whole Doctor/Companion relationship. My Goodness, are we going to have the Doctor and her female companion traverse the universe like Zena Warrior Princess and her assistant? Would it mean that a new female doctor would have a host of male companions, the possibilities, good or bad are endless. My point is, should this become fact at some stage Moffat can shrug his shoulders and say "hey you knew this could happen, remember Missy."
We already knew the Cybermen would be appearing thanks to pics that had been released and I've previously spoken about the whole Missy identity issue. There is something very sad about a great series that loses it's punch because the writers have become so transparent in their scriptwriting. We were short changed as most of the story was once again taken up by Clara and her love life while the Cybermen were virtually relegated to cameos.
I can only hope that Steven Moffat has some twists and shocks hidden up his sleeve for part two, Death In Heaven but with some many disappointments in this series I won't be surprised if there aren't any.
In her grief, Clara attempts to blackmail the Doctor by collecting every key in the TARDIS and then throwing each one into a lava pool until he agrees to take her back and change events, preventing Danny's death.It turns out that this scene was just a "dream" (always viewed as a writing cop out when you've written yourself into a corner.) in order for the Doctor to discover what Clara's motivations were.
If writer Steven Moffat was hoping this desperate, angst riddled Clara would have the audience howling buckets of tears then he missed the mark by a long shot with this writer. That scene made me absolutely loathe Clara Oswald. Why does she believe her loss is any greater than anyone else on the planet? To see how a similar situation is portrayed take a quick look at Rose Tyler's scenes when she watches her dad's death in the 9th Doctor story Father's Day. I'm prepared to accept that grief can and does make people do strange things but it seems everything Clara does is always way over the top.
Doctor Orpheus.
In a direct reference to Greek Mythology, the Doctor offers to take Clara into the underworld to find Danny, just like Orpheus ventured into the underworld to beg Hades to release his love Eurydice. The underworld turns out to be the Netherworld, a place where the consciousness of the dead go to. In actual fact it is actually the Matrix, a Time Lord device that houses minds like a hard drive.
In a nutshell, the minds of the deceased are being kept in the Matrix whilst their bodies are saved to be used as new cybermen all with the help of the mysterious Missy.
And Missy Is...(shock, gasp, horror.)
In this episode the identity of Missy is finally revealed and it turns out she is actually the Master. I personally don't have a problem with a Time Lord changing their gender, after all, oysters do it lots of times over their lifetimes (not that I'm suggesting that Time Lords are ancient intelligent oysters.) but my issue is with why. We are used to writers glossing over issues they really don't want to invest time in but we should be told how the Master survived a rebooted time war/alternative history and why he choose to regenerate as a Time Lady.Since virtually the beginning of Series 8 my Twitter friends and I narrowed down Missy's identity to either the Master or the Rani. I can't believe that a professional writer like Steven Moffat would believe for a nanosecond that we Whovians and fans would not figure this out way before the end of the series.
To me this signifies one of two things,
1: Moffat genuinely believed no one would guess.
2: He just didn't care.
I also believe there are other motives for making the new Master a woman, it paves the way for the Doctor to regenerate into a woman. There will be howls of protest at this, I too object to it but not for any sexist or misogynist reason but simply because it would change the whole Doctor/Companion relationship. My Goodness, are we going to have the Doctor and her female companion traverse the universe like Zena Warrior Princess and her assistant? Would it mean that a new female doctor would have a host of male companions, the possibilities, good or bad are endless. My point is, should this become fact at some stage Moffat can shrug his shoulders and say "hey you knew this could happen, remember Missy."
Summing Up.
Dark Water didn't have the shock value that we have come to expect from a series finale (or part of it)We already knew the Cybermen would be appearing thanks to pics that had been released and I've previously spoken about the whole Missy identity issue. There is something very sad about a great series that loses it's punch because the writers have become so transparent in their scriptwriting. We were short changed as most of the story was once again taken up by Clara and her love life while the Cybermen were virtually relegated to cameos.
I can only hope that Steven Moffat has some twists and shocks hidden up his sleeve for part two, Death In Heaven but with some many disappointments in this series I won't be surprised if there aren't any.
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