Story 253: Dark Water / Death In Heaven

In which Danny Pink meets with tragedy. He is talking with Clara on his mobile when crossing a road and is hit and killed by a car. Clara is disconsolate, and forms a desperate plan to save him. She decides to hold the TARDIS to ransom, destroying each of its keys one by one in a volcano until the Doctor agrees to use it to save Danny. He point-blank refuses, and soon Clara has destroyed the final key.

It transpires that this is all in her mind. The Doctor realised what she was up to and has been playing with her mind. He agrees to help her, however, by having her link with the telepathic circuits to see where it takes them.

Danny has found himself in a place called the Nethersphere, where he is greeted by the young man named Seb. He asks Danny if he has ever killed someone, and the ex-soldier recalls a terrible day of battle he once experienced. A child whom he killed that day would like to see him.

The Doctor and Clara arrive in the 3W Foundation, which is a vast funerary complex. They are greeted by the woman known as Missy, who has been observing them of late, and who has been welcoming dead people to some sort of afterlife. She claims to be a hologram - Mobile Intelligence Systems Interface. The Doctor is disturbed when she makes him feel her heart.

Many skeletons are seen sitting in tanks of water. They meet a man named Dr Chang who asks them who they are looking for. He has a device which will allow Clara to speak to Danny. He also tells them that the skeletons they saw are suspended in Dark Water, which shields non-organic matter.

Danny meets the child he killed, but the boy is scared and refuses to see him. When told that Clara wishes to speak to him he decides that she must be prevented from coming after him.

When they speak together he refuses to confirm that he is Danny, so that she will suspect some trickery. 

Faced with Clara and the child who ran away, Seb informs Danny that he can take his emotions away, if he consents.

The Doctor discovers that the 3W stands for Three Words - these being "Don't Cremate Me", as the dead are aware of what happens to their bodies.

The Doctor refuses to accept this, and goes into the main funeral chamber to investigate the skeletons.

Missy reveals that she was only pretending to be a hologram. She kills Chang and begins to empty the Dark Water tanks. All of the skeletons prove to be Cybermen, their armour invisible in the water. The Doctor recognises the Nethersphere as being a Gallifreyan artefact - a Matrix Data Slice. Missy has been downloading the minds of the recent dead into it - and now these will be uploaded to Cyberman bodies.

Clara is attacked by a Cyberman in Chang's office. Danny decides to allow his emotions to be erased.

The Doctor discovers that the 3W Foundation is built within St Paul's Cathedral in London. Cybermen start to emerge from the building, and Missy reveals that she is the female incarnation of the Master...

The Doctor had suspected that she was a Time Lord after feeling the beat of twin hearts.

Clara evades the Cyberman in the office after pretending to be the Doctor. Outside, he is surprised to find that none of the public seem at all worried about the army of Cybermen who have appeared. It transpires that they are UNIT operatives in plain clothes. Kate Stewart and Osgood appear. Kate has a wrecked Cyberman head, left over from their earlier invasion attempt supported by Tobias Vaughn, to show that UNIT can defeat them. The Cybermen depart, flying into the sky with rockets built into their feet. Everyone sees the dome of St Paul's open up and a Cyberman flies up and explodes, creating a huge black cloud. This is composed of Cyber-pollen. Osgood realises that there was one Cyberman for every major population centre in the UK. UNIT capture Missy, but also knock out the Doctor.

Clara is rescued from a group of Cybermen by another one. This is Danny, who had woken up in a mortuary to find himself in a Cyberman body.

The Doctor finds himself being taken to UNIT's new mobile HQ - an adapted Boeing 747. He learns that he has been appointed President of Earth to help with this crisis. The Cybermen have exploded over every city, and the Cyber-pollen has fallen on graveyards and cemeteries, turning the dead into Cybermen. Missy is a captive in the aircraft's hold. She manages to escape and kills Osgood.

Flying Cybermen attack and the aircraft is destroyed. Missy teleports to safety and the Doctor has to skydive to reach the falling TARDIS. It materialises in a local cemetery, where the Cyberman Danny has brought Clara. He has not been totally altered, still having his emotions.

Missy reveals that she has made this Cyberman army for the Doctor, as a gift. He can use it to defeat all of his enemies and make the Universe the way he wants it to be. She passes command of them over to him.

Danny wants Clara to activate his emotional inhibitor, but the Doctor warns her not to. If he becomes a full Cyberman he will kill her. Clara decides to ignore his warnings and she turns on his inhibitor. However, he does not harm her. His emotions are strong enough to over-ride the conditioning.

Seeing this, the Doctor hands over command of his army to Danny. Missy can only look on helplessly as he orders the entire Cyberman army to launch itself into the sky and self-destruct, sacrificing himself in the process. 

Clara manages to get hold of Missy's weapon and is intent on killing her with it. To save her life, she claims to know the location of Gallifrey, and gives him the co-ordinates. The Doctor manages to talk Clara out of using the weapon, but Missy is suddenly blasted by a surviving Cyberman. It has saved Kate Stewart from the crashing aircraft - her father. It salutes the Doctor then blasts off into space.

Some weeks later Clara is contacted by Danny as the Nethersphere is shutting down. He can get one person back across to the realm of the living. He sacrifices himself once more to make this the boy he had killed.

When the Doctor and she meet in a café, she lies that she has been reunited with Danny - and he lies that he has found his home planet. Each wants the other to move on.

Alone in the TARDIS a short time later, the Doctor is shocked to find Santa Claus at the door...

Dark Water / Death In Heaven were written by Steven Moffat, and first broadcast on 1st and 8th November, 2014. The episodes brought Series 8 to an end.

Missy's true identity is revealed - a female incarnation of the Master - and the mystery of the dead people being welcomed to the afterlife, which had been a feature especially of the earlier stories, is explained. It is revealed that it was Missy who first brought the Doctor and Clara together way back in The Bells of St John, as she was "the woman in the shop" who gave her the TARDIS phone number.

After a few throwaway remarks from the Doctor, this is the first confirmation we get that Time Lords can change gender when they regenerate.

Michelle Gomez plays Missy as a sort of demented Mary Poppins. She even appears to float down to Earth using her umbrella at one point. She is as crazed as the John Simm incarnation, but is even more sadistic. She toys with her victims - Dr Chang and Osgood - before she kills them, yet she isn't out to kill the Doctor. Quite the opposite, she actually wants to give him an army as he is always fighting evil across the universe. Another of her victims is the character Seb, who has been a bit of light relief. Even his death is humorous. He is played once again by Chris Addison.

As well as Addison and Gomez, we have returnees Jemma Redgrave as Kate Stewart, and Ingrid Oliver as Osgood. Anne Reid also returns as Clara's grandmother, last seen in The Time of the Doctor.

Dr Chang is portrayed by Andrew Leung, and comic actor Sanjeev Bhaskar plays Colonel Ahmed, who features briefly on the UNIT aircraft.

Nick Frost features briefly at the conclusion of Death In Heaven as Santa Claus, in a throw forward to Peter Capaldi's first Christmas Special.

The Cybermen are of the 2013 redesign, but now have rockets in their feet - making them even more like Iron Man.

Scenes of them stumbling around graveyards, the picture tinted to simulate the dark cloud of Cyber-pollen in the sky, are suitably atmospheric. We have seen them in this setting before, however, in the wintry graveyard sequence of The Next Doctor. Once the Cybermen appear, the story rather loses interest in what to do with them. They just stand around whilst the main cast get on with things, then Cyber-Danny has them blow themselves up.

The death of Osgood at the hands of Missy is quite shocking, she having been such a likeable character in The Day of the Doctor - but then you recall how there was a Zygon duplicate of her in that story...

There is a lot wrong with this story.

The "Dark Water" exists purely to provide a striking visual. It is entirely irrelevant to the plot. There is no reason whatsoever for Cybermen to be sitting in the tanks of water. 

Equally, there is no logic to the 3W Foundation being built inside St Paul's Cathedral, other than to allow the production team to homage a certain classic image from The Invasion. (Everyone talks about the Cybermen walking down the steps of St Paul's in that 1968 story - but they don't. They are seen walking down steps at Peter's Hill).

The whole concept of the Three Words is disturbing - especially if you were a child who had recently lost a friend or relative. 

Complaints were received and the BBC were called upon to defend the story. 

Now that his kids have grown up, Moffat no longer thinks it necessary to write for a family audience. 

The idea of the Brigadier becoming a Cyberman is both stupid in concept and an insult to the memory of Nicholas Courtney. Moffat had already given the character a touching farewell, but here he stamps all over that - something he has a habit of doing, trashing his own episodes.

Overall, an extremely dark story, not very suitable for youngsters. This was the start of the period when the series lost its younger audience - something it has never really recovered from. A perfect departure point for Clara, but the ending is wasted as Moffat will allow the character to outstay her welcome (repeatedly).

Things you might like to know:

• If the Brigadier can be turned into a Cyberman because he's dead, does that mean that Amy and Rory are also now Cybermen, and therefore now self-destructed by Danny?
• On location Michelle Gomez had to make sure that on-lookers didn't hear her reveal her true identity. It was hinted that she was actually the Rani. Moffat had another acronym prepared - Random Access Neural Integrator - RANI - just in case.
• At one point Missy mentions how she loved TV on Earth - a reference to her previous incarnations enjoying The Clangers and The Tele-Tubbies.
• Amongst the post-it notes on Clara's fridge is a "hyperscape body swap ticket". This is a reference to the appearance by Coleman and Matt Smith at the 2013 Doctor Who at the Proms concert.
• Moffat has used the Cybermen in the penultimate episode of each of his series so far - The Pandorica Opens, Closing Time, Nightmare in Silver. They will be in the penultimate episodes of Series 10 and 12 also - so 7 times out of the last 9 series to date.
• The two episodes were shown in cinemas as a 3-D movie-length compilation in the run up to the launch of Series 9.
• One of the TARDIS keys is hidden in a copy of The Time Traveller's Wife, the novel by Audrey Niffeneger. Moffat is clearly obsessed with this book. He has just adapted it for TV, and it was the inspiration for River Song and for The Girl in the Fireplace.
• Death In Heaven opens with Clara's eyes in the titles, and Jenna Coleman's name before that of Capaldi, after she has claimed to be the Doctor to fool the Cybermen.
• The mortuary where Danny wakes to find himself turned into a Cyberman is called the Chaplet Funeral Home. Chaplet was Hartnell companion Dodo's surname. This may be a "dead as a dodo" joke.
• Do we really think that Osgood doesn't know the difference between Thunderbirds and Captain Scarlet? I think not.