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World Enough And Time began with The Doctor doing that fake regeneration crap again, making my heart sink from the off, not least because the two-part finale is brought to you by the combination of Steven Moffat and Rachel Talalay, the latter who was responsible for… er… Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare – the worst Freddy Krueger film ever.
Also, together, they brought you the Series 9 finale of Heaven Sent and Hell Bent, where Capaldi had to spend 2 million years smashing through a bloody wall – it felt that long, too!
And the pile of risible dog-poop continued when they went to Gallifrey for 5 minutes, or something…
Moffat, please just sod off, and keep sodding off. Forever. You had some great guest episodes – including the brilliant Blink – and then completely fucked it up when you took over. Let’s hope Chris Chibnall doesn’t do the same.
So, post-opening credits and the team are on a spaceship that’s 400 miles long and 100 miles wide and it’s heading towards a black hole, where the end of the ship that’s closest to that will find time moving at a different speed than the end which is farthest away. Blimey, imagine this episode lasting a zillion years! Doesn’t bear thinking about!
There was a whole load of pointless time-filling (necessary when you’ve got a zillion years) with Missy pretending to be ‘Doctor Who’ with Bill and Nardole in tow. And why was she calling herself “Doctor Who”? To save time, apparently, since when The Doctor says he’s “The Doctor”, others reply, “Doctor who?” – and also pretending that that’s his real name.
Then enter a member of the Blue Man Group (if he was related to one from a few episodes ago, it wasn’t brought up), panicking because a group of others are coming up via the lift, and that they will only stop unless the sole human, Bill, is dead. Yes, hopefully someone, tonight, will KILL BILL!!! (yes, my old joke cropped up early)
Oh, but, before long, she had a huge gunshot in her…. but (bar a short bit where it flipped back in time to pre-this trip when The Doctor and Bill discussed about the test they’re giving Missy to pretend to be him – thankfully, a short-lived scoot back in time, as I thought it might like Extremis did to much annoyance.
I’ll save some time as when Bill was taken away to be “repaired”, it was actually for for her “full conversion” into a Cyberman. And not just any old Cyberman – a Mondasian Cyberman! They’re from the planet Mondas, Earth’s twin planet. Yes, I’m not particularly fussed, either. I did notice, however, that she shed a tear just as Tracy Ann Oberman did when she was turned into one in 2006’s series 2 finale, Doomsday.
At least Bill’s new look solves the problem she had until then, when her heart had been replaced with a metal one, physically stopping her from leaving, as her new organ would’ve stopped working outside of the hospital.
So, World Enough And Time was an exercise in waiting for something to happen. And only the last 10 minutes were entertaining – Bill was revealed as the latest Cyberman, while the tramp accompanying her for months on end turned out to be The Master in John Simm form, for the first time since David Tennant and Russell T Davies’ 2010 finale, The End OF Time.
And Missy was in cahoots with him all this time, it seemed, in a bid to lead Bill to her fate. Took her fucking time! She should’ve done that WEEKS ago!
Throw in a nod to the title of a story that fans have wanted for a long time – The Genesis of the Cybermen – and that was it.
The big problem with this episode is that at the point when it ended, THAT needed to come no later than halfway through the episode, so we actually had some meat to chew on. World Enough And Time just played for time. Time us viewers didn’t have.
Next time: The Doctor has to stop The Cybermen. Will Missy join him? Will The Doctor regenerate next week like he’s hinted at yet again (at the very end of this bit)? Will you care? He can’t do, surely, since he’s got the Xmas episode to come as well as announcing who the next Doctor will be.
World Enough And Time is available on the BBC iPlayer for a month.
You can also buy Series 10 Part 1 on Blu-ray and DVD, ahead of its release on May 29th. Both versions contain six episodes, plus six exclusive Series 10 art-cards.
In addition, you can pre-order Series 10 Part 2 on Blu-ray and DVD, ahead of its release on July 17th. Both versions contain the last six episodes, plus six exclusive Series 10 art-cards.
Individual episodes can be bought in HD and SD here.
Score: 2/10
Director: Rachel Talalay
Producer: Peter Bennett
Executive Producers: Steven Moffat and Brian Minchin
Writer: Steven Moffat
Music: Murray Gold
Cast:
The Doctor: Peter Capaldi
Bill: Pearl Mackie
Nardole: Matt Lucas
Missy: Michelle Gomez
The Master: John Simm
Jorj: Oliver Lansley
Surgeon: Paul Brightwell
Nurse: Alison Lintott
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.