Hey Missy, your so fine, your so fine you blow my mind, hey Missy! Well, I started last week off with a song reference, this week has one built-in so my whole brain just went, “what the hell!” This is the double-bill series 8 finale, and the reveal of that devilishly wonderful Scottish woman I’ve featured at the end of each review she’s appeared in when I could. I think it was safe to say, I didn’t like this series, I don’t like the arc, and I don’t care for the direction we’re heading in either. Nonetheless, we push on.

Moffat is back to his old tricks of pushing out everything with the aim of finding something that connects well enough. No, come on, he isn’t Chibnall, let’s be fair. Steven Moffat is a busy writer and does have a lot of ideas when he writes not only an episode but a series as well, and while it does often seem like Always Sunny-style conspiracy nonsense, it is often connected well enough and there is the illusion of something reasonable. That said, “Dark Water” & “Death in Heaven” closed out one of the worst arcs of modern Doctor Who and was never going to excite me on the return.

Danny is dead, and for some stupid reason I’ll never understand, the Brigadier, Sir Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart is now a Cyberman. I know it started in a comic and it all came about because of some magic rain. That isn’t the point, it is the fact it was done in the first place. There is a lot wrong with this story, the very least of which is that business of making a Lethbridge-Stewart a Cyberman, and almost all of what is still to come. Best buds, that’s our adventure pals with the most toxic and unbelievable relationship in the world, and take note that Brannigan had a human wife that gave birth to a litter of kittens.

I don’t care who you are or how awful your relationships are, I dislike Clara actively betraying the Doctor after telling him that he (an orphan) should let kids die so they don’t have to grieve their parent’s death. If you think of all the horrible things she does, not only last time but here and beyond are justified, I want to ask what in the hell is mentally wrong with you? I can’t for the life of me understand the relationship and the seemingly neverending desire to pretend this level of one-sidedness is either healthy or right. The episode ends with a hopeful note of Clara walking away after a goodbye, but all that hope is punctured by the fact I know she’s back at Christmas.

Ok, focus on the episode: There is a mausoleum in St Paul’s, filled with the dead as they sit in fish tanks of water, and there is a weird Scottish woman who likes getting a bit too close a bit too quickly. Almost as if she’s known the Doctor for all his lives. Turn out the water isn’t actually water but something called “Dark Water”, and Dr. Chang, the creepy pervert that he is for wanting to use it in swimming pools, runs the facility for his master. Dark Water only shows organic material, meaning clothes or otherwise like synthetic metals would be invisible. Yeah, all the dead people are Cybermen.

I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again, I don’t care for the stompy monsters of boredom. I never have and probably never will. Would it be too much to ask for a simple and effective monster that is not the same thing we’ve seen seventeen other times in a few years? I know I am saying this ahead of the next series featuring Daleks, the Zygons, The Time Lords, and the Master, but some of the best Doctor Who is when something is new or different. “The Empty Child,” Human Nature, and even “Blink!” I’m bored of stompy cyborgs of so and boring death.

Maybe I also don’t like a lot of the story for a lot of anti-science nonsense, including referring to an embryo as a baby and alive. Don’t get me started on “Kill the Moon” again or I’ll probably kill someone with undiluted rage. Equally, the mystery, wrapped in an enigma, wrapped in a sausage roll dropped on the floor of a Greggs that is Clara’s entire backstory needs to be shot out of the eye of a cannon and into the heart of the Sun at point-blank range. The fact that at any point, Moffat could pull out “she was a figment of my imagination, I am (actually) the Doctor” and it doesn’t mess up anything in the show is the reason why Steven needed to pull his head out of his hole.

There is plenty enough in the episode for it to be enjoyable at times. I mean, Michelle Gomez is, and I’ll argue this for a long time, one of the best bits of Peter’s Doctor. She actually makes a large portion of his story palatable at times. The trouble is, it is bogged down in this initial story trying to paint the Doctor as the villain, someone to question, “am I a good man?” I’ve said it before, I am banging my fist on the table to emphasize here, and I’ll say it again, of course you are a good man, you spent hundreds of years on Trenzalore!

Speaking of The Thick of It, I’d have liked Peter abusing Chris Addison some more, just abusing him in every way possible until he cried. I mean, he is fine as is, but come on, a little bit of Malcolm Tucker abuse never hurt anyone. Instead, he’s just there to make the fun show about adventure all the more depressing. While Danny processes “the afterlife” which I always thought of as a place full of bureaucracy anyway, Danny is shown the kid he shot while in Bush and Blair’s pointless war in the Middle East.

Ok, happy thoughts: I like Kate and Osgood. I’m glad they are around, even if it is only for a short while. Staying on happy things, “could you just hurry up please, or I’ll hit you with my shoe” is something I think I’ll be continuing to use for the next couple of series and Chibnall’s upcoming nonsense until Russell is back. The cat is already out of the bag, but Missy’s reveal at the end of the first episode, despite being heavily sign-posted, is solid. No Derek Jacobi slowly realizing his past, but still absolutely fantastic.

I won’t prattle on about every detail, mostly because my notes are longer than a Leonard Cohen song and I’ve got better things to do, but ultimately it was a fine episode. Not the end of an arc episode, not the episode you build to and reveal the big scary thing like The Master is back, she pretended she knew where Gallifrey was, and Clara loses the only person she cared about. I say this because, in spite of all the attempts to make something worth caring about, I just don’t. I don’t care that X character is dead. I care that Y happened, and it is possibly because neither does Peter.

That is my problem with not only this series but all of Peter’s era, his Doctor is rather indifferent and hands-off, an attempt to bring back a bit of Hartnell’s grandad feel. Call me old-fashioned, especially after watching Tom Baker’s “The Robots of Death” serial this week, but I want a Doctor that is warm and someone I want to be around. This dependence on being influenced by the classic-era just doesn’t sit well with me. It is wallowing in the sadness that you can’t experience what once was. I’m all for capturing the feeling, being influenced, and showing hints of it, but a large portion of what Peter’s era is depends too much on the past and being that cold old man.

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Doctor Who "Dark Water" & "Death In Heaven"

6

Score

6.0/10

Pros

• Hey Missy, you're so fine.
• Mr President.
• Kate and Osgood.

Cons

• The world's most toxic relationships.
• Of course you are a good man!
• More Cybermen.