Sunday, November 09, 2014

Doctor Who: Death in Heaven

Picking up from the various precarious cliffhangers we were left with last week, “Death in Heaven” goes pretty silly for the first 10 or 15 minutes. In the peculiar pre-credits sequence, Clara dives into an extended deceptive riff about being the Doctor in disguise so as to avoid deletion by a Cyberman. Even stranger is the decision to put Jenna’s eyes into the credits where the Doctor’s should be, which I guess extends the joke. This goes on for several scenes, and if nothing else, it’s sort of amazing to find out exactly how much she knows about the Doctor – maybe more than any other companion.

Last week I cracked wise about whether or not the Londoners would care that they’re being invaded, and it turns out I wasn’t too far off the mark: Selfies. Oh, if poor Karen Gillan was watching, she must have cringed. Speaking of cringing, how about that Cyberpollen? Doctor Who often does weird stuff to get from Point A to Point Q or whatever, and after last week’s set-up, I was curious as to how Moffat would have Cybermen rising from the grave. Never fear! Magic Cyberrain, made up of exploded Cybermen, pouring down on the cemeteries of the world somehow transforms dead bodies into living Cybermen. Surely it didn’t take long for the show to lose loads of viewers based on this process alone (some of the vitriol going around the net seems to confirm this). Don’t expect me to explain it all; I’m not even sure Moffat could explain this beyond what’s on the screen.

UNIT, in the form of Kate Lethbridge-Stewart (Jemma Redgrave), her asthmatic scientist sidekick Osgood (Ingrid Oliver), and a bunch of soldiers arrive outside of St. Paul’s. They quickly secure Missy and the Doctor, taking the pair to a hangar, wherein resides Earth Force One. By this point in the episode, it’s pretty clear the stakes are high, and that this is big, big, big stuff. But it gets even bigger when it’s revealed that the world powers have named the Doctor the President of Earth, should an alien invasion occur – placing him squarely in charge of everyone, and specifically the military. The Doctor becomes the thing he’s railed so hard against throughout the entire season.

Read the rest of this season finale recap by clicking here and visiting Vulture.