TV: Doctor Who - Season 8 Finale 'Death In Heaven'

‘Death In Heaven’ was quite frustrating but at the end of it all enjoyable, which is the absolute best you can hope for from a Doctor Who finale.  One of the joys of New Who is the masochistic delight of the last episode of a season not living up to the expectations raised by a brilliant penultimate episode (along with lots of hints dropped throughout the series…) 

This year’s penultimate episode was especially creepy – some nice cyber-steampunk ideas used to segue into scenes of modern Cybermen partying like it’s 1969 all over again.  And then the brilliant reveal of Missy as being The Master gone – yep, I know! – Glaswegian.  Oh, and she’s a woman now too as well.  It gelled together really well in its own right and felt like a story sure of itself enough go at its own pace. 

But, as in finales of all the other series of Doctor Who the ending of the season went at a breakneck speed, didn’t all make a lot of sense and the pacing was firmly back into kitchen sink territory.  Not all necessarily for the bad, either.  The bulk of the episode felt like a more or less

"Those UNIT guys get all the best lines..."

equal balance of set pices that worked and ones that didn’t.  Throwing in UNIT as padding into a story that really didn’t need any padding immediately felt like a mistake as it completely changed the pacing.  I know that the season’s loose (make that ‘very loose’) theme has been, essentially, ‘The Doctor doesn’t like soldiers but is a bit like them in some ways, but won’t admit it, or at least doesn’t want to, at least, not just yet.’ But when you’ve got a female Master and Cybermen from the Graveyard, UNIT and its characters are going to be the most boring part of your story by default, and in introducing them you’ve just lost about a third of your screen time to them instead of the interesting bits – own goal.

Sure enough, the UNIT parts of the episode felt like the weakest throughout. Having Kate Lethbridge-Stewart murdered by Missy was very gutsy and showed that the stakes were being considerably raised by the producers in terms of storytelling.  So having her turn out not to be dead but in fact rescued by her Dad in Cyberman form was a disappointment as well as being a rather mawkish one.  The scenes where Cybermen started to emerge from the graves was an extremely effective scene.  When the Cybermen flew around like The Amazing Rocket Men From Mondas they looked a bit daft though.  It was effectively chilling seeing Danny as a burnt out emotional wreck; seeing him give a rousing speech to his fellow Cybermen seemed completely overdone, unless it was intended as a satire on those kind of speeches in war films…  I don’t think it was though. 

Missy was brilliant – basically, a psychotic Mary Poppins – and a sex-change hasn’t changed the brilliantly crap quality of The Master’s Dastardly Schemes.  But then she was shot and it was all over apart from a brilliant scene of The Doctor and Clara lying through their back teeth at each other.

Whenever there’s a finale in Doctor Who, there’s a good chance it won’t be satisfying because it never really has been – the closest a finale has come to having a really satisfying ending is probably 2006’s ‘Doomsday’, but there a lot of the plot-holes could be papered over by showing Daleks and Cybermen together!  At the same time!  And the fact that the increasingly smug Rose was going! 

The year before, there was all the ‘Bad Wolf’ stuff that had building up to a conclusion - bookies were taking bets on what it all meant, but I think “That Billie Piper having sucked in all of time and space after opening bits of the TARDIS she shouldn’t have” wouldn’t have been a favourite.  In fact, they papered over Bad Wolf not having a proportionately satisfying ending by having The Doctor regenerate.  The wrapping up of the ‘Bad Wolf’ mystery is a bit convoluted and on its own manages to feel a bit like a cop out without being one, setting the tone for a lot of future series endings. 

The year after had the Magic CGI Monkey Doctor Thingy turn into a sort of Cosmic Jesus through the power of prayer, making The Doctor’s solution seem even more insane and megalomaniacal than The Master’s Dastardly Scheme for a change.  By the time of Matt Smith’s finales I gave up trying to understand everything going on and just enjoy them like a shaggy dog story or a pantomime (why does he need to marry River Song?  He doesn’t, but go with it cos look at them there having fun with it!)  And you don’t enjoy a pantomime for the strong plotlines do you.

So ‘Death In Heaven’ was not too bad an ending at all for a series that has as a weak spot with strong series closers.  I didn’t walk away thinking that maybe I would understand it on a second watch.

One of the joys of the character of The Doctor is that he can just turn up in any story he likes and do whatever he wants in it.  He’s never going to be pinned down into one kind of story for long – or at least if you do try to keep him in your base under siege style stories too long he’ll simply get out of them by turning into Jon Pertwee, who might even turn into Tom Baker if you make him hang out with soldiers for too long.  So giving a character as mercurial as The Doctor the lead in a show (especially Capaldi’s Doctor, who is capable of walking off mid adventure when he’s done with it) and expecting a neat ending to a series that wraps everything up in neat little boxes…

Well, if it did happen, the show overall might not be as good.  The finales get the most hype and in practice they rarely live up to that hype.  This series overall has been exceptional however and Capaldi has been a different kind of madman with a box.  How will he get on against Father Christmas remains to be seen of course.