An imbecile, a Glitter Gun, and not the Seal of Rassilon
Bill swaps chips for microchips in the first instalment of a very clever two-parter.
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Missy has made such a roaring success of rescuing The Doctor’s crew from Mars, being his live-in mechanic, and tearing up suggestively that now she’s being granted her own adventure, complete with reluctant disposables Thing One and The Other One.
Doc has selected a practice scenario worthy of her iniquitous intellect: answering the distress call of a 400-mile-long colony ship that’s narrowly avoided a black hole’s oblivion, and has spent the last 2 days slash 1000-plus years reversing back away from it.
Unfortunately Bill never backed up her heart and a jittery janitor takes her briefly offline. However, with some patients she’s soon back on her feet and joins Mr Razor edging around a bargain-basement hospital. Can Doc rescue her from the conversion theatre and thwart Operation Exodus?
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Summary: following legendary Seventh Doctor scribe Rona Munro (Eaters of the Light rating 4.5/5) was a tough act to follow, but this diamond of an episode pulled it off. Bravo!
Rating: 4.9/5 poor Mondasians ‘upgraded’ to stumbling around wearing tights on their heads.
So I’m back after a while. The reason why I didn’t send in more minis for season 10 is because I don’t really like many of the episodes in it and all I would have said is my song from my last mini.
Ya know that little classic that when (take it away Drew) “Alfie don’t like it, rock the doctor, rock the doctor!” Now I just hope drew remembers it otherwise this is going to sound terrible.
Anyway world enough and time is great and seeing as it’s a cyberman episode I have to love it.
So I give it a 5/5
From your former prime minister, awesome Alfie!
Hi folks
Sweet, sweet WEAT.
So clickbaity pre-titles aside (I’ll save my thoughts on that one for later), we jump into Missy’s test for being the Doctor. I love the Missy/Doctor banter: snappy, snarky and scottish. Brutal intercutting of Bill’s conversation with Doc and her being shot.
So a big thing for me is being familiar with the Big Finish story Spare Parts (set between Time-Flight and Arc of Infinity so the classic gang can listen to it now). Conversion horror is often skipped over in the show (though one notable exception in the 80s and then series 2 has a bit). But just as Spare Parts does it for BF, this one is a grim dark affair and is glorious.
So Razor…I actually missed the spoiler that Simms was back so it was a surprise for me on first watch. But you could tell that something was off with him. Bill’s conversion is very brutal, the Master has really done it this time. Interesting banter between the two Masters (It took me a while to work out the former prime minster line as it’s not quite as you first think it is, but next time explains it a little more). Oh and the music in this one is so good, especially in the runup to the Doctor finding CyberBill.
How did the crew miss that they were heading towards a black hole? Did it creep up on them? (insert Red Dwarf’s Marooned reference)
I gave Heaven Sent a full 5. I don’t think I can give it the full but it gets 4.9/5 “Pain. Pain. Pain. Pain”
Cheers
Kieren
Heidi ho Who Back When Team!
I really wish they hadn’t done spoilers in the trailers for this, as the cliffhanger reveal ending is simply perfect.
I liked the cold open, foreshadowing the Doctor’s regeneration; it was reminiscent of Ten’s odyssey to prolong his life before the prophecy caught up with him.
I thought Missy was great pretending to play Doctor Who at the beginning. I especially liked her introducing Bill and Nardole as “Exposition” and “Comic Relief”, and calling them her “disposables”.
The flashback exposition scene in the university kitchens, where The Doctor is explaining his plan to them is great, especially how it was juxtaposed with the current time and things are falling apart.
This story is based on the same principle as one of my favorite Red Dwarf episodes (White Hole), and The Doctor even mentions Space Corps! (Relative time dilation in an extremely compressed space.)
I loved the atmosphere and lighting; it has a very grim thriller feel to it, very suitable for Hallowen.
All the cast were perfect, especially Bill. But poor Nardole didn’t really get much in this one.
This was the beginning of the end for Bill, but I think they did her exit story much better than Nyssa, even though they were very similar, except Nyssa didn’t get converted.
I give this 5 out of 5 screaming Mondasian proto cybermen with their volume turned down.