Talk and Relevant Discussions in Snark: Doctor Who “Death in Heaven” SPOILER Recap

Would you know his name…if you saw him in heaven?

Okay, so…The Mistress’ entire plot was a large scale gathering of human souls since the beginning of the concept of an afterlife (which would likely be just after the moment the first human realized it would someday die) in order to create a Cyberman army that she could then hand to the Doctor to control, which would combine with his obvious disorientation and PTSD to force him to prove he’s a hypocrite (not that he’s never been a hypocrite before).

As Master plots go, it’s actually more focused and logical than some s/he’s had in the past, even though the character is being portrayed as barking mad, and apparently does everything she does because the Doctor and her aren’t child playmates any more. You know, I’m over most every issue I ever had with a childhood playmate, so you’d think people who were centuries old would be too. I guess maybe if Dick Cheney or Vladimir Putin had a been a childhood playmate it might be different (for one thing, the rules of time would have bent a great deal).

And yet if the Mistress is the one who first got Clara and the Doctor together, she could have just skipped that step entirely and let the Great Intelligence do the job. But she’s as barking mad as the Joker now, apparently, so her lack of coherence mirrors that of her writer.

Other thoughts:

-I like MIssy’s facial expressions. They do remind me of Anthony Ainley a bit (The Master I grew up with).

-“Just point and think” is how you operate the sonic screwdriver? That’s IT?

-Clara’s impersonation of the Doctor – pretty good. Though it works better for the Matt Smith version.

-Does Danny’s time-traveling grandkid no longer exist?

-Asthmatic scientist girl really does remind me of the female Doctor played by April O’Neil in the Wood Rocket porn version. Sorry to see her die, but glad to see that somebody significant is allowed to. The Kate death seemed cheap, and the undoing of it cheaper, though I will cop to a teary eye when we found out how it was undone.

-Chaplet funeral home? There’s an old-school reference. Guess her family weren’t happy at Dodo’s premature departure, and it inspired a lifelong career.

-The moment Danny took his Cyberface off, my first thought was, “That’s a cheap semi-resculpt for all the toy companies.”

-Given where that kid probably was, war-zone-wise, when killed by Danny, aren’t the odds pretty good he’ll either just die again, or be labeled an unholy abomination by some crazy Imam and put to death anyway?

-Why did a bunch of countries the Doctor has never helped agree to let an alien become president of Earth? It’s a good gag, but I don’t buy it. We’d have a goddamn second Civil War in the U.S. if any leader voted our sovereignty over to an illegal alien controlling a One World Government, Cybermen or no Cybermen.

-So, the entire season was setting up the idea that the Doctor had a condescending attitude towards soldiers just so he could be proven wrong when one saves the day based on his military sense of honor? And the Doctor has never, ever seen this happen before?

-These really are pretty shitty Cybermen, by the way, if love can overcome them so easily. The Dalek from earlier in the series growls at you for defying the point of your creation.

-The Robin Hood episode took all these pains to establish gold as a weakness to be a big honking clue…and we don’t use that fact at all?

-How much of this episode is Santa Claus going to handwave away with some kind of magic Christmas wish, do you think?