Doctor Who - Recap: Upload the Mind, Upgrade the Body
Recap and review of Doctor Who - Season 8 Episode 11 - Dark Water:
"Dark Water" is among the more daring episodes of Doctor Who I've seen in some time. I say this recognizing that the show often suggests the impermanence of death, calling into question the validity of a story's stakes. How can we really feel a loss if we don't anticipate that the loss is permanent? "Dark Water" is one half of a whole, and hard to judge without its other half, but it does some things that make it instantly commendable in its own right.
Credit: BBC
This season of Doctor Who hasn't always portrayed The Doctor in the warmest light, with regard to his manner with Clara. Sure, he trusts her, and looks out for her as best he can, but there was never the warmth of Matt Smith's 11th Doctor. Formerly, it seemed implicit that The Doctor always cared for his companions, beyond just what they mean to his adventures. They're not merely companions, but friends. Yet that wasn't the immediate case with Capaldi's Doctor, who seemed vaguely contemptuous of Clara in early episodes. So it's weirdly satisfying here to see the culmination of The Doctor's post-regeneration journey back to something resembling the man we knew before. It's a terrific portrayal by Capaldi, and it helps to anchor a pretty fantastic adventure, as the mystery of Missy (Michelle Gomez) is finally revealed in one hell of a cliffhanger: Missy is short for "Mistress", the feminine form of...The Master.
Credit: BBC
Yes, The Master is back, although it's uncertain just how he/she managed to come back, given where we left the character in the 10th Doctor serial, "The End of Time". But this is the rare reveal that I don't think needs to make a ton of sense. It's The Master! And she's leading an entire army of Cybermen! This is pretty much The Doctor's worst nightmare, and the combination of Missy toying with The Doctor before the reveal, and The Doctor's wide-eyed, open-mouthed horror at learning who this woman is makes this one of the best moments of Season 8. Gomez, in particular, is a real delight here, luxuriating in virtually every line. Whether she's pretending to be a robotic, lifelike program for an underwater mausoleum, or she's kissing The Doctor on the mouth and nose as a form of greeting, Gomez goes all-in with the character, making for a wonderfully devious portrayal. She's never not in control. Not for one moment does she cede control to The Doctor, and it's a powerlessness that scares him. Particularly since her plan, to upload the minds of the dead from a Time Lord hard drive (just roll with it) into the bodies of the Cybermen, is understandably terrifying. Apparently, every consciousness that we've seen killed and brought into Missy's afterlife this season has been essentially trapped in a way station between death and rebirth as a Cyberman. "Upload the mind, upgrade the body. Cybermen from cyberspace. Now, why has no one ever thought of that before?"
Credit: BBC
The Doctor's terror is matched only by Clara's, since her mission to save Danny from death is complicated by the purgatory he finds himself in. This version of the afterlife perpetuated by Missy is a place called the Nethersphere, and it's kind of a horrific concept. Their minds are in the afterlife, but their souls are still connected to their bodies in the real world, meaning the dead still feel what their bodies feel. Or rather, that's what the Nethersphere wants the dead, like Danny, to believe. Seb (Chris Addison), the bureaucrat in charge of the Nethersphere on Missy's behalf, wants Danny is forced to confront the horrors of his past as a soldier, in particular the accidental death of a child. He wants Danny to get into contact with Clara on the other side and realize he can never be with her again. He wants Danny to realize that death in no way frees him from his pain. YWhen Seb offers Danny an iPad with the option of deleting all of his feelings to prevent himself from suffering, the purpose of all this becomes apparent: to force the dead to willingly convert themselves to Cybermen.
Credit: BBC
Danny wavers on the choice, and...honestly, I kind of wish we'd gotten this backstory about Danny before. It's not that he was ever a bad character, but I'm not sure I ever really bought the relationship with Clara to the level that the show wanted me too. This is the guy Clara is throwing TARDIS keys into lava over? I absolutely can buy that these two people care about each other, even love one another. But this isn't Amy and Rory. It all just feels kind of rushed, I suppose. And that's why I feel if this had been a relationship going for more than six or seven episodes, all of this would have more weight. That said, I did think that once the episode committed to portraying Danny's selflessness -- forcing her to hang up on him so she wouldn't risk getting herself killed just to see him again -- the connection between the two characters felt more palpable. There was a genuine anguish in Danny being unable to truly be with Clara, and anger in Clara being unable to reconcile her skepticism over whether the man she spoke to was really Danny, and her naive hope that he really was.
Credit: BBC
The Clara/Danny drama will likely form the basis of next week's finale more so than The Doctor's war with The Master, but if it holds up as well as it did towards the end of "Dark Water," I trust this will be a finale worth watching. This has been a strong season for Doctor Who, and it deserves a similarly strong conclusion.