Story 275: World Enough And Time / The Doctor Falls

In which the Doctor decides to let Missy lead an expedition in the TARDIS. He will remain in the ship whilst she takes charge, accompanied by Bill and Nardole. This is all part of the Doctor's attempts to rehabilitate his old frenemy.

The ship is responding to a distress signal, and materialises in a control room. Missy must investigate and work out where they are, whilst the Doctor listens in. They have landed on the command deck of a vast cylindrical spacecraft - 400 miles long - which appears to be stationery in space, sitting on the edge of a Black Hole. Its engines are actually straining to move it slowly away and prevent it from being sucked into the phenomenon. 

A blue-skinned humanoid appears. Jorj is a janitor, and he has been on his own for two days, after his colleagues descended in a lift to the lower levels. He is armed, and appears frightened. He is concerned that one of the trio is human, which has attracted someone who is ascending in one of the lifts. Realising the danger he poses in this state, the Doctor emerges from the TARDIS. Jorj panics and shoots Bill, blasting a hole through her chest. The lift doors open and masked figures emerge, taking Bill away with them.

Nardole checks the monitors and discovers that there are thousands of life forms on the lower levels of this craft - the end furthest away from where they have landed.

There are hundreds of levels, each containing its own biosphere.

Bill wakes to find herself in a hospital, with a bulky artificial heart and lung unit attached to her chest. Exploring, she finds wards full of heavily bandaged figures. She is horrified to discover that they are silently crying out in pain. They long for death.

Looking out of a window she sees a nocturnal cityscape - a heavily industrialised area. A man named Razor introduces himself to her. He explains that she was brought to the lower levels of the spaceship some time ago. The other patients are in the process of being cured. He agrees to take her in.

In the control room, only a few seconds have passed since Bill was taken away. The Doctor realises that the ship is so large that time is moving at different speeds at either end of the craft, due to the effects of the gravitational pull of the Black Hole. Whilst minutes pass here, months or even years may pass at the other end.

The life signs Nardole detected are descendants of Jorj's original colleagues. The Doctor calls a lift, intent on searching for Bill. He is knocks Jorj out when he tries to stop the lift being called.

Bill is able to see the control room on a scanner Razor has set up, but the Doctor, Nardole and Missy look like they are frozen, with time passing so slowly in relation to where she is.

He explains that all of the people on this level are undergoing medical procedures in order to embark on a mass exodus to higher levels.

Ten years pass for Bill. Seeing that the Doctor has gone to the lift, Razor pretends to take her to the lift door on this floor to meet him. However, he delivers her instead to an operating theatre where she is told that she is to undergo a full upgrade.

The others arrive. Whilst the Doctor and Nardole go in search of Bill, Missy begins checking the computers. She discovers that this craft was a colony ship from the planet Mondas...

Razor appears and asks her if she recalls having been here before. He removes a mask to reveal that he is the disguised Master - her previous incarnation. 

The Doctor is confronted by a Mondasian Cyberman in the operating theatre, escorted by Missy and the Master. He is horrified to discover that the Cyberman is Bill...

The Doctor is taken up to the roof of the hospital where the Master explains that the Cybermen have evolved on this ship, and their 'Operation Exodus' is the planned invasion of the higher levels. They will take the entire ship, converting all the humanoids they encounter as they move towards the command deck. On Level 507 there is an agricultural zone, where the humanoid inhabitants struggle to prevent Cyberman incursions.

Missy knocks out the Master as Cybermen attack. They have always ignored non-human lifeforms, but the Doctor had altered their programming to make Time Lords just as vulnerable to conversion as human beings. The Doctor is blasted by a Cyberman, but Nardole arrives in a shuttlecraft. The three Time Lords and the Bill-Cyberman enter it and it takes off - punching its way up through a number of floors before crashing on Level 507.

Two weeks pass. Bill has been unconscious and wakes to find herself in barn where she meets a woman named Hazran. She looks after a group of children, and defends this level. She explains that Bill is kept outside their farmhouse as she frightens the children, and Bill sees her reflection in a mirror - that of a Cyberman. She had blocked her fate from her mind. The Doctor notes that she has managed to retain her human emotions.

As Nardole helps Hazran prepare defences against the full invasion, the Master leads Missy and the Doctor into the woods near the farm. The latter is concealing that the injury he received from the Cyberman on the roof was actually terminal, and he is holding back his regeneration. The Master shows them both a lift entrance, and suggests they use it to find the Doctor's TARDIS and escape. His own ship is disabled on the hospital floor, its dematerialisation circuit burnt out. Missy carries a spare - due to a vague memory of these events.

The Doctor thinks they will never reach the TARDIS alive, and he wants to stay and help defend Hazran and the children. He asks his fellow Time Lords to join him. The Master and Missy refuse, and set off for the lift.

A number of booby-traps destroy some of the Cybermen, many of whom have evolved into more advanced versions. The Doctor orders Nardole to guide Hazran and the children to an upper level, as he plans to destroy this one with all the Cybermen concentrated in one location - even though he is likely to perish himself in doing so.

At the lift, the Master and Missy betray each other. She has taken on board much of what the Doctor had done to rehabilitate her, whilst he hates what the Doctor has done to his future self. They kill each other. The dying Master descends to the hospital level to find his TARDIS, where he will regenerate into her, whilst she is left for dead in the woods - the Master having ensured that she can no longer regenerate.

Nardole leads Hazran and the children to Level 502, whilst the Doctor and Bill battle the Cyberman army. He is shot several times, but manages to blow up the Level. Bill finds his body and takes it to the TARDIS. 

The water entity Heather appears, never having lost contact with Bill. The pair will travel the universe together, with Bill transformed into an ethereal being like her.

The Doctor wakes up in the TARDIS, and emerges to find himself in a bleak snowy wasteland. He refuses to regenerate. A figure approaches through the icy fog, and he is shocked to see that it is his own first incarnation...

World Enough And Time / The Doctor Falls were written by Steven Moffat, and first broadcast on 24th June and 1st July, 2017.

They brought the tenth season of the revived series to a close, and marked the final appearances (to date at least) of Michelle Gomez as Missy, and John Simm as the Master. The story also introduced David Bradley as the First Doctor, after the actor had previously portrayed William Hartnell in the 50th Anniversary drama An Adventure in Space and Time.

The episodes were also supposed to mark the departure of Peter Capaldi as the Twelfth Doctor, regenerating at the conclusion due to multiple blasts by Cyberman attackers. 

Steven Moffat had assumed that his successor as show-runner was going to write the 2017 Christmas Special, presumably introducing the Thirteenth Doctor. However, Chris Chibnall informed him that he was going to pass on writing a Christmas episode and would not be providing his first story until the Spring of 2018. Not wanting to see the series lose the prestigious Christmas night prime-time slot, in which had fared well in the ratings, Moffat hurriedly altered the ending of The Doctor Falls so that it would segue into a new final story for Capaldi, to be screened on 25th December.

Capaldi had earlier stated that the original Cybermen were one of his favourite monsters from the classic era of the series, and he'd love to see them make a return. These were the costumes designed by Sandra Reid for The Tenth Planet in 1966, characterised by blank cloth faces. He had suggested to Moffat that they could do the costume much better nowadays with current materials. 

By way of a thank-you to his departing star, and because he himself was leaving, Moffat elected to write a story which included the Mondasian Cybermen. This would also act as a Cyberman origins story - an idea first mooted by their co-creator Gerry Davis back in the mid 1980's. This time it was Capaldi who suggested it - possibly inspired by the Big Finish audio Spare Parts. 

Moffat re-read Davis' Doctor Who and the Cybermen which demonstrated how the Cybermen simply wanted to survive. The two newer versions of Cyberman could be included as the creatures would be seen to evolve.

Cybermen had featured in a number of series finales since Moffat took over - or the penultimate episode of the season: The Big Bang, Closing Time, Nightmare in Silver, Dark Water / Death in Heaven, and Hell Bent.

The story would be seeing the conclusion to the Missy story arc - and the departure of Gomez. To make this series finale even bigger, Moffat decided to deliver a "Two Masters" tale, bringing back John Simm as the previous incarnation. He had last been seen in The End of Time Part II,  leaving the show with David Tennant and Russell T Davies. At the time he had claimed that he would not be returning - as Gomez was to claim on the occasion of her departure.

As a nod to the Delgado and Ainley incarnations, Simm sported a goatee beard this time. The use of disguises was another of their traits.

The Master states that before he left Gallifrey, the Time Lords cured him of the persistent drumming in his head - hence why it hasn't affected Missy of the Sacha Dhawan incarnation. They no longer have the X-ray skeleton effect which we saw in The End of Time.

Presumably the Master had stolen his new TARDIS from Gallifrey, as he had not been seen to possess one since The Mark of the Rani (though not seen on screen, he must have used it to get to 18th Century Northumbria). Missy's failure to recall any of the events here, involving as they do her earlier self (apart from her unconsciously carrying of a spare dematerialisation circuit) can only be explained by the trauma of their mutual destruction of each other, though it isn't terribly clear.

It was originally intended that Simm's return would be a closely guarded secret, but then the BBC released the news as they thought he would be spotted on location. As it was, no-one did notice, so the return was spoiled by the production team themselves.

Other than the rogue Time Lords already mentioned, there are two additional guest artists of note. Playing Hazran is Samantha Spiro, who had recently played Carry On... star Barbara Windsor in biographical drama Babs, having previously played her in an earlier biopic titled Cor, Blimey! about the relationship between Windsor and Sid James. And Stephanie Hyam returns from The Pilot to play Heather.

Jorj is played by Oliver Lansley, and the surgeon and nurse who upgrade Bill are Paul Brightwell and Alison Lintott respectively.

Overall, an excellent pair of episodes that would have made for a fitting swansong for Peter Capaldi's Doctor. Lots to please long term fans with references to the classic series and even spin-off material. The Mondasian Cybermen may be slightly over-designed, in comparison with the originals, but Moffat gives them a great origins tale. Recently voted the top Capaldi story in the DWM 60th Anniversary polling.

Things you might like to know:

• "World enough and time" is a line from the 1681 poem To His Coy Mistress, by Andrew Marvell. In it, the poet promotes living life to the fullest as death may be just round the corner. It was published posthumously.
• One of the reasons John Simm agreed to return to the programme was because he was disappointed not to have been involved in the 50th Anniversary.
• It was assistant director Michael Williams who coined the phrase "Mondasian Cybermen". 
• Moffat addresses Cyberman continuity by claiming that whilst they evolved on Mondas, they came into being on many other worlds as well, quite independently. Wherever there are humanoids struggling in adverse conditions, there is the potential for them to resort to cybernetic implants to survive.
• Planet 14, mentioned in The Invasion as somewhere the Cybermen once encountered the Doctor, has long been puzzled over by fans. Is it the Moon? Is it Telos? Is it the scene of some unscreened adventure? According to this story, it's simply another planet where Cybermen evolved.
• Marinus is also mentioned, tying in with a DWM comic strip - "The World Shapers" - in which Voord evolved into Cybermen.
• The Doctor also mentions places where he has defeated the Cybermen in the past, which include Telos (Tomb of the Cybermen and Attack of the Cybermen), the Moon (The Moonbase) and Voga (Revenge of the Cybermen).
• According to this story, it is the handlebar attachments on the Cybermen which act as the emotional inhibitors. In The Tenth Planet they simply held the head lamp in place.
• Amongst the silly names Missy uses for Bill and Nardole, she calls them "Exposition" and "Comic Relief", which just happen to be two story functions of the companion character.
• The scenes in the snowy wasteland with David Bradley were shot during the making of the Christmas Special, and only edited into these episodes just before broadcast.
• Earlier regenerations are referenced. The Doctor talks of Sontarans perverting the course of history as he wakes up in the TARDIS (as with the Fourth in Robot); says "No!" - the final word of the Second Doctor; and "I don't want to..." - as in Ten's "I don't want to go".