Doctor Who season 12 episode 9 preview: “Ascension of the Cybermen”

The penultimate episode of Doctor Who season 12 brings the Doctor and Team TARDIS to the far future, and a battle against the Cybermen to protect the last of humanity.

Somehow, we’ve already reached the Doctor Who season finale. Well, not quite, since it’s a two-parter and this is technically the penultimate episode of season 12, so there’s still another one to go. But this is officially the beginning of the end, and it honestly feels as though this season has flown by.

We should probably prepare ourselves now for the fact that there’s no way the season’s last two episodes will manage to tie up all of the loose ends that are out there right now. After all, the outstanding topics include: The return of the Master, the destruction of Gallifrey, the existence of the Ruth!Doctor, Jack Harkness’ warning about the Cybermen, and whatever the heck the Timeless Child is are all outstanding season 12 questions, and there’s just not enough time to get to them all.

Now, we’ll certainly see some of these topics as primary story beats. This episode is called “Ascension of the Cybermen,” after all, and the finale itself is apparently named “The Timeless Children”, so that’s a big hint about what we might expect to see there. It certainly seems to indicate we might finally get some answers about the Timeless Child question that was brought up way back in the second episode of Jodie Whittaker’s first season.

But everything else? Your guess is as good as ours.

The official synopsis has a bit more detail, but nothing we couldn’t have really guessed on our own, and contains more questions than answers.

"The aftermath of the Great CyberWar. The Doctor arrives in the far future, intent on protecting the last of the human race from the deadly Cybermen. But in the face of such a relentless enemy, has she put her best friends at risk? What terrors lie hiding in the depths of space, and what is Ko Sharmus?"

And it’s possible that the episode trailer has even less? Showrunner Chris Chibnall is rapidly becoming notorious for the fact that he shares so little information prior to each installment, but whew this is next level.

So…. I guess we’ll all be tuning in on Sunday, yeah?

Doctor Who continues Sunday at 8pm ET on BBC America.