Doctor Who Series 8, Episode 11: What’s it all about?

by William Hohmeister

I’m trying to figure out what series 8 was about. Before “Dark Water” I had this list: Clara, trust, lies, understanding who you are, and the definition of goodness. Early into part one of the series 8 Doctor Who finale we see Clara betray the Doctor for Danny, and hear so many lies and partial truths that their difference almost doesn’t matter. It’s bizarre.

Danny Pink (Samuel Anderson) dies while talking to Clara (Jenna Coleman) on the phone. We watch Clara drift through time in a way that doesn’t require the TARDIS: she goes from Danny’s death, to his memorial, to standing in her kitchen with her grandma. Grandma says what we expect when a loved one dies; Clara refutes the normal platitudes and says that Danny’s death was mundane, simple, and stupid, not tragic. She says she doesn’t deserve better, but she is owed.

Then she looks at her phone, which rings over and over as it tries to contact the TARDIS.

We’ve seen what Clara plans to do before, though not so deliberate. When the Doctor collects her, Clara asks for a volcano. While the Doctor argues with her, Clara collects all of the seven TARDIS keys, and a “sleep patch.” When the Doctor agrees to take her to a volcano, she slaps the patch on him.

I try not to write “good reviews” because the internet is full of those by smarter people. I want to write something you like, and that matters to me. My favorite moments of Doctor Who aren’t the over-the-top cool moments (though I do like them), but the personal in the middle of the grandiose. I love the Doctor when he promises Rose Tyler, “I’m coming to get you,” and for the look on his face after he loses her.

Clara’s personal moment, as the volcano… acts like a volcano around her, is my favorite personal moment in the past four series. It’s strong, it’s striking, and despite not being real I think it still holds power. After she destroys the last key, the Doctor reveals the patches actually induce hallucinations, and they don’t effect him. After Clara tried to knock him out, the Doctor put the patch on her and let the fantasy play out.

At first I thought this was terrible. I still dislike flashbacks, dreams, flash-forwards, and other forms of narrative “lying”, but I tried to see this moment as a concrete example of the new Doctor. It’s easy for him to turn his back on people like Journey Blue. But, although Clara betrayed him, although he knows she’d do it again, he says:

You betrayed me. You betrayed my trust, you betrayed our friendship, you betrayed everything that I’ve ever stood for. You let me down!… Do you think that I care for you so little that betraying me would make a difference?

Series 8 is about truth in the middle of lies, I think, and whether the distinction even matters. Is the Doctor good? I don’t know, but does it matter? He’s mean, rude, insulting, and kind of a jackass, but he saves the world every other day. And he forgives.

This idea becomes even more important when the Doctor and Clara meet Missy (Michelle Gomez). While Danny talks with Seb (Chris Addison) inside the Nethersphere, the Doctor and Clara explore 3w, a strange funeral home that houses skeletons in water tanks. Misi introduces Dr. Chang, who explains that the dead suffer horribly, and 3w is based on the three words: “Don’t cremate me!”

Clara and Danny connect via IPad, while the Doctor and Dr. Chang explore more of 3w. Clara promises to commit suicide if Danny proves he’s real, so of course Danny convinces her of the opposite. I had little use for Danny throughout series 8, but this moment felt real and sad. Again, I think it ties into the idea of lies used for truth: Danny wants Clara to live and move on, so he has to lie and pretend he’s a fake by telling Clara “I love you.” He lies by telling her the truth.

The Doctor and Dr. Chang find Missy. Earlier, she pretended to be a robot helper named MISI, and made out with the Doctor. There’s some strange stuff going on here, so I’ll explain how I thought through this. When she put the Doctor’s hand over her heart, I thought ‘Of course, she’s a Time Lord.’ This lead me to the Master, but I reasoned my way out of this. ‘She can’t be a Time Lord, and definitely can’t be the Master. They’re all trapped in the Time War, and I’m pretty sure the Master exploded from lightning magic anyway.’

She’s not the Master; she’s the Mistress! And as crazy as ever.

Maybe not that crazy.

Missy kills Dr. Chang and unleashes the Cybermen on London. The Nethersphere, the Promised Land, the afterlife are actually a piece of Time Lord technology that can capture or absorb dying minds and place them in a virtual reality. The minds inside remain connected to their newly-upgraded bodies. Each mind is also given the chance to purge their emotions, and then probably deposited back into their body to act as a Cyberman.

Where the other Time Lords are, Gallifrey’s fate, and how the Mistress is even still alive are all important, as-yet unanswered questions, and I have no real speculation. I didn’t see the Master coming. At all. But we can be sure the last episode will go off the rails. With the Mistress/Master involved it always does.

Conspiracy theory: Is there a 4-beat rhythm in the Doctor Who theme that matches the beat the Master hears in her head all the time? I’ve been listening to it… too much, but I can’t confirm it. Anyone else notice it?

RECAPLET: The Walking Dead S5E04, “Slabtown”

Okay, kids, honesty moment here:  I shoulda been proactive and gotten this written on Sunday or Monday, because I’ve been in Nashville all week at a teacher conference.  It’s currently close to 10 PM on Friday night and I’ve been chasing barbecue all evening and I’m sort of ready to collapse, so if this is sliiiiiightly more abbreviated than usual, I’m terribly sorry.  I swear.  I’ll do better next week.

Plus this episode kinda sucked.

PREVIOUSLY ON “THE WALKING DEAD”:  Beth went missing a long time ago, so long ago that her sister forgot she existed and ponced off to Washington, D.C. with her common-law husband, an idiot, another idiot, a third idiot, and Rosita.  Bob got partially eaten and totally dead.  Rick kept his promises, and Gareth and company got the crap killed out of them.  And more dialogue than the entire collected works of Shakespeare, translated into German.

TL;DR VERSION OF THIS POST:  Worst episode of Scrubs ever.

We start with eyeballs, as Beth awakens in what looks exactly like a pre-apocalypse, perfectly normal hospital.  She’s got a cut on her face that wasn’t there before and her wrist is all wrapped up.  She does some panicky stuff and then Dr. Cox and the Janitor walk in, only the Janitor is a woman dressed like a cop.  They explain to her that some of their people, who apparently just wander around looking for trouble, found her unconscious and surrounded by walkers, which… yeah, this already obviously not true to everyone.  She asks about Daryl and they tell her she was alone.

“If we hadn’t pulled you out of there, you’d be one of them,” the Janitor says.  “So you owe us.”

…

…y’know, I’m gonna cut this one short here.  I thought last season was the best in the show’s history and so far this season has not come close to being as good as last season was.  I was gonna recap this traditional-style only with a lot of Scrubs jokes (the kid she escapes with was gonna be Turk, and I was gonna start calling Beth “Elliott” after a while) except that man, it’s just not worth it.

Here’s what this episode does right:

• I kinda like Dr. Whatshisname, the dude I was calling Dr. Cox and probably ought to have called Dorian except then there wouldn’t be a Dr. Cox.
• Anything involving Junior Kimbrough cameos is all good.
• The entire escape sequence, from Beth getting the rapist cop eaten to the excellently creepy descent into the elevator shaft to the somewhat unrealistic if fantastically shot “Beth turns into Armageddon badass” sequence, was great.  The elevator shaft in particular was the creepiest moment in a season that has been, for its faults, really high on creepy moments.
• Keshia Castle-Hughes is in it.  She dies quickly, though, which seems unfair.  She’s too good of an actress to waste like that.
• That said, watching them take her arm off with what appears to be a length of wire is another one of those excellently creepy moments.

Problem is there ain’t much more.

• Dorian/Dr. Cox just found a Caravaggio painting?  Just, like, laying around?  Sure he did.
• The entire hospital setup makes no sense at all.  No part of it, from the cop-lady’s attitude to her random Beth-slap early in the episode to everyone’s willingness to put up with Obvious Rapist Cop, is just as dumb as can be.  I can imagine this happening in some sort of larger society but this place seriously appears to be just one floor of a hospital.
• I really don’t see how these guys are managing to make long supply/stealing blondes runs when their hospital is in the middle of Atlanta.  Atlanta is screwed, and none of them really appear to be too terribly smart.

Things get interesting at the very end, when Beth is about to kill somebody and then Carol gets wheeled in, unconscious.  We still don’t know who Daryl had with him– good money is on either Morgan or Noah/Turk from this episode, but I don’t see him abandoning both Beth and Carol to head back to the church with either of those guys.  So that’ll be interesting to find out about.

NEXT WEEK ON “THE WALKING DEAD”:  My mood does not improve any, as the show decides to follow Glenn, Maggie, Rosita and the Dumbasses Three to see what stupid things they decide to do.  Pleasepleaseplease let Eugene die.   Badly.