Death in Heaven

Dear Gary—

I don’t even know where to start with this absurd mess called Death in Heaven.

I guess I’ll begin with Kate Stewart and UNIT coming along to legitimize 3W. Turns out, 3W is a thing; it’s not just a front for the Doctor. There really are a bunch of millionaire idiots who are spending billions for Missy to take their dead bodies and seat them on thrones in tanks of water to be put on display in Saint Paul’s Cathedral. Except it is super hush-hush secret; only the elite and UNIT know about it; and Saint Paul’s isn’t really Saint Paul’s but a TARDIS in disguise.

Now let me see. Cybermen. We have Cybermen to contend with. Except these aren’t Cybermen. Other than in appearance, these metal men don’t resemble any Cybermen I know. These are nothing more than conjured cyber bodies that Missy has whipped up out of thin air to do her bidding. They can fly through the air with the greatest of ease and are quite the handy little army for Missy to command. She can grow them out of the ground, seeding graveyards with rainclouds of dead minds. I think that’s right, but it doesn’t really matter. It all looks and sounds impressive. Gives the people a good scare.

Except the masses aren’t scared by these shiny toy soldiers invading their cathedrals and squares. The milling citizenry stands around taking selfies with them. They don’t seem to have learned a lesson from Army of Ghosts. Not that these Cyber Bodies do much to inspire fear. Oh, they emerge from the ground, popping out of every grave and tomb and crypt and mausoleum and mortuary, which is rather creepy. But then they just stand about doing not much of anything. Even the ones that are out in society never open fire. These Cyber Bodies prefer to debate rather than inflict harm. It’s a war of words, not of weapons for them. And a severed Cyber Head sends shivers down their spines. I can only assume that Missy is calling the shots (there is no hint of a Cyber-Leader) and has her tin army on stand down for the moment.

Otherwise Clara would be dead. The scene of Clara trying to convince the Cyber Bodies that she is the Doctor is amusing, nothing more. There is no tension because we never once believe that these CB’s will shoot her down. Jenna Coleman is rapid fire good as usual, though. And in the end, the purpose of this sequence is to have Cyber PDP hang his Cyber head in sorrow and confirm that Clara Oswald is undeniably a liar.

Indeed, the entire reason for the season boils down to Cyber PDP and Clara. Everything has been carefully crafted to lead to the showdown in the graveyard. Continuity, logic, common sense, creativity—it has all been trampled under the Cyber Foot of the season arc. Adventure and artistic freedom has been under Steven Moffat’s Cyber Thumb for the duration.

All the rest of it—the Cyber Bodies, Missy, UNIT, the Nethersphere, 3W, Seb—it’s all just a show; a distraction; a house of cards created to provide an entertaining backdrop for the  Cyber PDP and Clara drama unfolding. And if I cared anything about the Cyber PDP and Clara melodrama I would be entertained. As it is I am slightly amused but mostly angered, annoyed, and bored in turns. Not helping is the unrelenting cloud of doom and gloom stagnating over the entire story. This is one episode that I won’t be sitting down to watch again and again. The few good bits are overshadowed.

Thus: “Bow ties are cool” is funny; Osgood’s death is maddening. “The President of Earth” is a nice set-up for the “vote for an idiot” gag; the Doctor as President of the Earth is irritating. (The practicality and logistics of it don’t stack up against the world’s political climate and isn’t consistent within the Doctor Who universe—is he erased from history or ubiquitous internet meme? The show just can’t make up its mind about the man of anonymity vs. the Super Hero of pop culture persona. It all depends on the whim of the moment and is exasperating beyond belief.) The Valiant/Cloudbase/Thunderbirds/Captain Scarlet exchange is diverting; the Doctor’s disdain of all things military is grating and has been done to death.  

Likewise, Michelle Gomez is hilarious; Missy is irredeemably despicable.

At the core of this rotten apple lurk Cyber PDP and Clara. This superficial and manufactured romance comes to a predictably thrilling conclusion as Cyber PDP utilizes the convenient hive mind of these Cyber Bodies to track down Clara, and he inexplicably takes her to a graveyard full of sluggish Cyber Bodies. Here he begs her to turn on his emotional inhibitor that for some unknown but expedient reason isn’t functional. Clara doesn’t know how the blasted thing works and so even though Cyber PDP could tell her exactly what to do, she instead calls the Doctor for direction leading to our final confrontation.

It’s all moving and touching, I’m sure, as Clara struggles with ‘killing’ her Cyber boyfriend. And of course we have Cyber PDP mocking the Doctor as “the blood-soaked old general” and this whole anti-soldier/soldier season-long build up culminating in Missy handing the Doctor his very own army. All neatly tied up, this seasonal package. Almost as though the Doctor’s life (not to mention Clara’s and PDP’s) has been scripted.

In the end it turns out that Missy Moffat engineered the entire scenario simply to get her “friend” the Doctor to admit that the two are “not so different.” She hands over control of the Cyber army to the Doctor expecting that he has no choice but to conquer the universe in some classic New Who faulty logic. Missy must have learned her math skills from PDP. It does not follow that saving the Earth leads to conquering the universe or that conquering the universe will save the Earth. Not one single dot connects to another to lead to this conclusion. But because she says it the audience is expected to hold its collective breath in despair waiting for the Doctor to pull his magic rabbit out of his magic sonic or some such thing.

Now we get the Doctor’s big revelation: “I am not a good man. I am not a bad man. I am not a hero. And I’m definitely not a president. And no, I’m not an officer. Do you know what I am? I am an idiot, with a box and a screwdriver. Just passing through; just helping out; learning. I don’t need an army. I never have; because I’ve got them; always them. Because love—it’s not an emotion. Love is a promise.”

And so the Doctor turns control over to one of “them;" to Cyber PDP, who no longer has any emotions in him, but because the Doctor has pronounced love a non-emotion he still has the promise of love enabling him to embrace Clara before flying off into the wild blue yonder to commit suicide (if a dead mind in a Cyber Body can technically commit suicide) and burn off the hovering clouds of dead minds along with his fellow Cyber Buddies. Neat and tidy. No more threat to Earth; no more Cyber Army.

No more Cybermen, either. Because these just are not Cybermen. Since their introduction in New Who the show has been flirting with this idea of individual Cybermen bucking the hive mind mentality and revealing emotions they shouldn’t have. Only when it is convenient to the plot; and only when it is a particular character we have gotten to know and who has been converted. The climax of Death in Heaven takes this to new heights. Cyber PDP is one thing. But Cyber Brigadier Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart? Somehow the mind of the Brigadier has found a Cyber Body (and since he has been dead for a good many years I can’t imagine his dust and bones and rotting flesh was converted, but then again being New Who I guess we can accept that conjuring trick) and now Cyber Brig has made his way to the exact spot where the final showdown is happening at just the right time, and somehow Cyber Brig has resisted not only the Missy controlled hive mind but now the PDP hive mind instructions and hasn’t blown himself up with the rest of the Cyber Bodies, at least not until he has saved the Doctor and received his long overdue salute at which point he flies off to oblivion. How come no Cyber Jamie McCrimmon or Cyber Queen Elizabeth I or Cyber Shakespeare or Cyber Van Gogh or any number of dead humans who have a connection and affection for the Doctor? No, only Cyber Brig because he fits in so nicely with the UNIT story.

Just think, though. The Doctor could have all manner of Cyber companions clinking and clattering in the TARDIS with him. Before sending them all off to their Cyber deaths, PDP could have called out those who owe allegiance to the Doctor and we’d have a full TARDIS.

Seriously, though, Gary. Think about that corner Doctor Who has painted itself into. No heaven and no hell; not in Doctor Who-verse. No soul. No afterlife. Yet every (or most every) human mind that has ever existed has been residing in the Nethersphere or in Cyber Bodies or in raindrops or in clouds—all just waiting to be brought back to life, Cyber life though it be. So now all of these minds are burned up in the Cyber suicide pact? But wait, no. PDP mind speaks to Clara two weeks after the big bang in the sky. So where exactly is the PDP mind now? Surely not heaven or hell; not in the Nethersphere; not in a Cyber Body or a cloud or a raindrop. Is there perhaps a version of limbo in the New Who-verse? And all those other minds—are they there with PDP? The little kid he killed is at least.

Oh, how poignant when PDP sends the little kid through the magic portal. Only enough energy for one trip. How is it that this kid, who has been dead for quite some time, has a whole and healthy flesh and blood body? His old body? Where did that come from? And now what? How does he know if his parents are even still alive? And if they are, how are they or others going to react to this resurrection? Everyone he knew will have aged several years yet he is the same age as when he died. And is he now expected to be returned to whatever war-torn country he came from just to more than likely live a short and sad life? Yes, that was a story well told.

But this is when the real tale should begin. Clara now knows that PDP’s mind is alive and well somewhere; he is merely trapped. Now is when she should plug herself into the TARDIS and find him. If Missy, using Time Lord technology, can snatch PDP’s mind and insert it into a Cyber Body, why can’t the Doctor snatch it up and insert it into, oh, I don’t know, a teddy bear? Or how about a toy soldier? Maybe that exact one that played so prominently in Listen. (Speaking of which—how was it that they met up with a supposed ancestor of the PDP/Clara Oswald bloodline in Listen when PDP is now dead with no possibility of the two of them ever procreating?)

But Clara gives up. She resigns herself to a life without PDP in which she maybe thinks about him occasionally, maybe turns on the TV and tries to distinguish his voice coming out of the white noise. She doesn’t even tell the Doctor that PDP is out there somewhere trapped and waiting for them to rescue him. Instead she lies to him (“the one man I would never, ever lie to” indeed) and tells him that PDP is alive and well. Meanwhile the Doctor lies to her and says that he has found Gallifrey and the two go on their not so merry and separate ways.

Enter Santa Claus.

Now, Gary, I’m just about fed up at this point. Thankfully I have recently bought the DVD for the next season, and while there are some rocky moments to start, I find that there is hope yet. So let’s say goodbye to PDP and the season that was and look forward . . .