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Death In Heaven starts with Clara outsmarting a Cyberman, by trying some psychology that only a human could be perplexed by, and somehow this confuses the metal muppet, and then we’re all confused when she says she’s not Clara, but she’s The Doctor! Oh, come on!
But just as Missy thinks she’s got the world covered with silver baddies, UNIT* turn up to kick ass. Yet, despite Cyberman technology outsmarting human weaponry, they all take off like they’re wearing jetpacks, then more of them shoot out of St Paul’s Cathedral, and with 91 of them about, there’s one per city… until they explode and effectively pollenate each one with zillions more Cybermen… and where’s the best place to start? As the Doctor manages to speak, just before an impromptu tranquiliser dart knocks him out, “Guard the graveyards”.
(*In new-Who, UNIT are now known as “Unified Intelligence Taskforce”, not the original “United Nations ied Intelligence Taskforce”)
You see, the whole point of the dart was to get him on government plane Boat One, by the way. That’s where all the thinkers and doers go. Where are they going? Cloudbase? The Valiant? Then some confusion over whether Cloudbase was a part of Thunderbirds or Captain Scarlett? Yes, a geek-gasm is happening here as Steven Moffat squeeees all over the script.
Anyhoo, you can’t beat this enemy for efficiency, since all the dead are now coming back to life as jug-heads, and thanks to something even the Doctor doesn’t know about, when the world is in peril, the complete control of the Earth is handed to just one person, the President of Earth… and it’s The Doctor!
The annoying Sanjeev Bhaskar also turns up as Colonel Ahmed, who addresses The Doctor with a salute, to which he replies, “Don’t do that. You look like you’re self-concussing… which would explain all military history now I think about it”, before declaring him a ‘Man Scout’.
Meanwhile, Clara has been saved by a rogue Cyberman clutching a piece of paper from the coroner’s telling how Danny Pink is dead. Is it there to save her? Well, since it knocks her out and dumps in a cemetery… perhaps she’s not really saved after all, as there’s thousands of them there and they’re about to rise from the dead.
Oh, but hang on, this one is actually Danny in a cyberman suit – and he ain’t getting out of it (YAY!), and he wants Clara to switch off his emotion inhibitor so he doesn’t feel anything else… even though that’ll make him a Cyberman proper and he’ll kill Clara. Oh, what to do!
Some other pieces of nonsense from Death in Heaven:
- The Nethersphere wasn’t really an official afterlife, but Missy’s way of recruiting the dead by somehow kidnapping all the souls and storing them for a time like this. The Doctor concludes mankind is beat: “How can you win a war against an enemy who can weaponise the dead”
- Galifrey is in another dimension, while the Doctor thinks it’s lost, Missy tells him it isn’t… she knows and she isn’t telling… but as we later learn from her, Gallifrey has returned to its original location.
- And as Missy’s plan succeeds to blow up Boat One, thankfully that means Sanjeev Bhaskar is killed off, but sadly that also means the lovely Jemma Stewart (returning as Kate Lethbridge-Stewart) is brown bread, as well.
And there were a few good lines in this episode, but not as many as previous ones. Three of choice were:
- Osgood (Ingrid Oliver, reprising her role from The Day Of The Doctor, although I remember her best, seducing Mark the wrong way in Peep Show episode, Jeremy’s Mummy) knows Missy is the Master, as she quips, “We do have files on all our ex-Prime Ministers. She wasn’t even the worst.”
- When the TARDIS phone rings, Missy declares: “Oh, Doctor, I do believe you’re on-call!”, before we get a flashback to earlier Doctor Who episodes, one featuring Matt Smith, as they hint at a computer helpline phone number and a newspaper advert – putting The Doctor and Clara together – all being the work of Missy. Hmm… that’s stretching credibility enormously!
- And then there was Missy singing “Missy” to Toni Basil’s Mickey, then getting control of the plane by killing everyone guarding her with the most simple escapologist trick in the book – slipping out of handcuffs. Is that all they did to restrain her?
Go to page 2 for more thoughts on this episode.
So, Death In Heaven feels like a mish-mash of half-arsed bad ideas, along with ones nicked from other films and TV series. None of it particularly made sense, but it threw in a dig at the government in general by having The Doctor pass the sonic screwdriver to Clara so she can sort out Danny’s inhibitor and effectively ‘kill’ him, since that’s the only way to have him activate and, thus, reveal the plan for the remaining clouds.
Michelle Gomez has been great, but Missy is like an evil Mary Poppins, flying in on her umbrella, then trying a Marilyn Monroe impression, singing “Happy Birthday, Mr President” to the Doctor, since he’s forgotten what day it apparently is, and she’s bestowed this Cyberman army on him… which he then passes onto Danny, because he’s NOT a real Cyberman after all! And he then commands all the dead Cybermen to burn the clouds and put a stop to mankind being totalled.
Oh, and Kate Stewart is fine after all, since she was saved by one stray Cyberman… who could it be? The Doctor didn’t even need to say. It was Brigadier Sir Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart, CMG, CBE, DSO, aka The Brigadier.
But then, two weeks later, Danny manages to speak to Clara from wherever he is, telling her that Missy’s bracelet lets her travel from one world to another, but there’s just enough charge left for one last trip. So that means he can come back home, surely? Oh no, please say it isn’t so… And it isn’t! Since he saves the boy he killed.
Michelle Gomez, as the devilish Missy, and Ingrid Oliver, getting her sexy geek-chic on as Osgood,
are the two best things about Death in Heaven.
Jesus H Fanny, if I ever thought that Russell T Davies had lost the plot (literally) when writing Doctor Who episodes, then I think Steven Moffat has overtaken him with this utter powerball of dreadfulness.
And what the hell was going on with making the Doctor fall out of the plane and have the TARDIS fly up and come and save him? Oh, pur-lease!
The ending is both ridiculous and excruitating, since Clara and the Doctor are separating, but both of them are lying to each other – her claiming that she and Danny can live happily ever after, and him saying Missy was right about Gallifrey’s co-ordinates taking him home, when it’s not there after all. This is echoed when she goes to hug him. He doesn’t want to, so she asks, “Why don’t you like hugging, Doctor?” and he replies, “Never trust a hug… it’s just a way to hide your face”, which is a surpisingly good line – probably the best of the episode, and one of the few good things about this episode, because as sure as hell, there isn’t much to enjoy in this one.
In fact, under Moffat’s tenure, this is his WORST. EPISODE. EVER. Rest assured I was on the internet within minutes, registering my disgust.
And then just as you think it’s all over, the Doctor is woken up from a snooze in his TARDIS by a knock at the door. Who could get all that way out there to him? Santa Claus. Yes, although we call him Father Christmas in the UK, the BBC are more interested in the American market and so he’s called Santa Claus. And jolly old Saint Nick is played by another Nick – Nick Frost. Turning up in bloody everything else, and now this, and he’s hinting that Clara and our leading man will be back together. (and you can see the Doctor Who Christmas Special 2014 trailer here)
At this point, I was going to do a trawl through series 8 and say which episodes are good and which were crap, but quite frankly, Deep Breath – Capaldi’s first full episode – was good fun, and Flatline was a great late-series entry, while Listen promised to be a new ‘Blink’ and ended up a let-down by comparison. All the other episodes… anywhere from forgettable to dire, ending with the worst of the lot.
Moffat. You’re killing Doctor Who. Please resign, with immediate effect.
Score: 1/10
Director: Rachel Talalay
Producer: Peter Bennett
Screenplay: Steven Moffat
Music: Murray Gold
Cast:
The Doctor: Peter Capaldi
Clara Oswald: Jenna Coleman
Danny Pink: Samuel Anderson
Missy: Michelle Gomez
Seb: Chris Addison
Osgood: Ingrid Oliver
Kate Lethbridge-Stewart: Jemma Redgrave
Colonel Ahmed: Sanjeev Bhaskar
Boy: Antonio Bourouphael
Teenage boy: Shane Keogh-Grenade
Teenage girl: Katie Bignell
Graham: James Pearse
Cyberman: Jeremiah Krage
Voice of the Cybermen: Nicholas Briggs
Santa Claus: Nick Frost
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.
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