Doctor Who closes out season 10 with a finale that unabashedly embraces the spirit of what makes the series great. (Even if the narrative gets a little lost along the way.)
“The Doctor Falls” doesn’t just mark the end of season 10 of Doctor Who. It’s also a goodbye to an era. As surely everyone knows by now, showrunner Steven Moffat is turning in his TARDIS key at the end of the year. And Broadchurch creator Chris Chibnall will take over as showrunner for season 11.
Twelfth Doctor Peter Capaldi is also out, along with current Master – sorry, Mistress – Michelle Gomez. And rumor has it that companion Pearl Mackie won’t be back next year either. So not only is this an ending to season 10, it’s a ending to something much larger. And in many ways, things come full circle for all the departing parties in this episode. Moffat returns to the well of several of his previous stories, while Capaldi gets to make his most forceful case yet for why Doctor Who still matters in the world we live in today.
Is that enough to make a good finale? It depends what you want from the episode. If you want a plot that makes sense, “The Doctor Falls” will disappoint you. But if you watch the show for its emotional resonance, there’s a lot to enjoy here. Mostly because this feels a bit like Capaldi’s dream episode, and it’s hard to deny the joy in that.
"The Master: Is the future going to be all girl?The Doctor: We can only hope."
Everything ends, and it’s always sad
Though this episode is the second half of a two-parter, its primary story isn’t that exciting. (It’s kind of mediocre, really.) Twelve, Nardole, now-Cyberman Bill, and the two Masters are still on the colony ship. They end up on Floor 507, a solar farm full of people, including many children. A badly injured Doctor attempts to save everyone from the oncoming Cyberman army. And that’s kind of it for the main story. And for the most part, that’s okay. Because this is one of those episodes where the primary plot is actually the least interesting part of it. Several secondary characters are introduced, including an exceptionally open-minded woman named Hazran who takes quite a shine to Nardole, but they’re really only there to get threatened, and to give the Doctor something to defend. (I refuse to believe anyone wanted to see Nardole get a love interest. Full stop.)
And when the inevitable twists come – none of them are that shocking. Several are variations on previous themes – Moffat possesses an unfortunate tendency to circle back to the same ideas in his stories. That happens rather often here, with several scenes borrowing heavily from his previous episodes. Bill eventually gets a happy ending of sorts, cheating death thanks to the intervention of Heather, her crush from the season’s first episode. The two head off to explore the universe together because reasons, which is exactly what Clara and Ashildr did last season at the end of “Hell Bent”. The sequence in which Bill can’t recognize her cyber-self is straight out of “Asylum of the Daleks”. And the Doctor’s decision to stand with a ragtag group of humans in a remote location mirrors Matt Smith’s swan song “The Time of the Doctor”. (There were Cybermen in that one too.)
This isn’t a new story. Its twists aren’t particularly well handled. But, nevertheless, the emotional beats hit like gangbusters when they land. This episode is successful – and quite gut-wrenching in several places – because of the fact that the emotional stakes between these characters mean something. That doesn’t excuse the narrative laziness, to be clear. But it makes it matter a little bit less in the end.
"The Doctor: Winning? Is that what you think it’s about? I’m not trying to win. I’m not doing this because I want to beat someone. Or because I hate someone. Or because I want to blame someone. It’s not because it’s fun. God knows it’s not because it’s easy. It’s not even because it works, because it hardly ever does. I do what I do because it’s right. Because it’s decent. And above all, it’s kind."
The hoper of far-flung hopes and the dreamer of improbable dreams
Doctor Who is a science fiction series. Technically, it’s about a weirdo alien and his friends (and sometimes enemies) who run around space and time having adventures. But that’s also not what it’s about. Not really. Doctor Who is about being a hero. But in a way that doesn’t require super powers or sonic devices or some other external aid. All it requires a special heart. Being a hero in this word is about constantly searching for the best version of ourselves, and seeing the best in others. It’s about loving our friends, sometimes beyond hope, and forgiving our enemies, sometimes beyond reason. And above all, it’s about being decent and kind, in defiance of a world that insists those things don’t matter. Those are the lessons of the Doctor. And maybe it’s the world around us these days, but they seem more important than ever before right now.
It’s fitting that it falls to Capaldi, a longtime Whovian himself, to remind us that while many Doctor stories revolve around fancy gimmicks, the heart of the show is about doing as much good as you can, for as many as you can, for as long as you can. The highlight of the episode is probably Twelve’s speech about why he does what he does, in spite of all the pain and failure he faces. It’s an epic monologue that ends with a promise to stand for goodness and kindness and decency, simply because they are things worth fighting for. It is the essence of Doctor Who distilled into a couple of minutes. And it is so good it almost makes up for the fact that the Doctor’s actual “help” boils down to a few scenes of explosions before his own death. (Remember: Actual episode narrative? Not great.)
"Missy: Because he’s right. Because it’s time to stand with him. It’s where we’ve always been going."
Without hope, without witness, without reward
“The Doctor Falls” was marketed as a multiple-Masters episode. And that’s true. There are two versions of the Master present. And Michelle Gomez and and John Simm sparkle together. So much so that you have to wonder how the two don’t already have some sort of The Master Adventures spin-off in the works yet. (I would physically fight someone to watch that – just in case you’re listening, BBC.) But this isn’t a two Masters story so much as it is a Missy story.
And that is probably how it should be. From vault prisoner to would-be heroine, Missy’s story drove much of season 10. Was her desire to change genuine? Could any incarnation of the Master every truly become good? Unsurprisingly, the answer turns out to be something close to “well, yes and no”. Missy has clearly not changed completely. The presence of Simm’s Master offers her an opportunity to indulge the worst aspects of her nature and she takes it several times. But putting Missy next to her previous incarnation also shows how far the character has come.
To be fair, Missy’s story probably didn’t get the space within this season’s narrative it deserved. Gomez was regulated to flashbacks and one-off scenes in most episodes prior to “World Enough and Time”. And Doctor Who delighted in playing both sides of her potential “redemption”. Maybe it would have been better for everyone if we’d ditched one of the (generally awful) Monks episodes in favor of a Missy installment. But when the Mistress kills the Master because she finally decided to choose the Doctor, it feels like something we’ve been waiting a lot longer than twelve episodes to see.
“Good is good in the final hour, in the deepest pit, without hope, without witness, without reward,” Doctor Who told us back in “Extremis”. Therefore, it’s fitting that Missy’s final crucible (and ultimate triumph) comes in a place where no one can see it. But it’s heartrending, to realize that Missy did choose good – without witness or reward, but just because it was decent. “What would you die for?” Twelve asks the Master(s). And it turns out that, for Missy, the answer is simple: Herself. She dies attempting to be a better version of herself. The version that the Doctor believed in, that chooses to stand with her friend, instead of run. That Twelve will never know that he was right, that Missy tried when it counted, that his faith was not misplaced – is certainly the tragedy of the season, but what an incredible way for Gomez to go out.
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Dragging out Twelve’s regeneration may or may not be a successful plot twist. But since it’s giving us one more episode of Capaldi’s Doctor, it’s hard to care too much. We have all year to ruminate on what the appearance of David Bradley’s First Doctor means to Twelve’s story. But it’s hard to imagine a more perfect ending for Capaldi, the lifelong Who fan, so for his sake, I really hope they make it work. (See you at Christmas!)