If you’re reading this, then you’re on the Internet. And if you’re on the internet, there’s no way you’ve managed to avoid the revelations of ‘Dark Water’.

So, let’s see exactly how dark this water was below the surface…

 

“Just this once, everyone lives!” 

The rebooted Doctor Who has a noble tradition of turning over-familiar elements into vital plot points (the double heartbeat of the theme music, the question inherent in the title itself). Now it seems Moffat is ransacking his own dialogue, returning to a line from ‘The Doctor Dances’, and a trope of his best episodes – even the victims haven’t actually died.

Before, this has been way of a happy ending for all – but now that we know the dead still have a connection with what’s going on with their bodies, the afterlife has been rewritten as the darkest concept the show has explored so far.

 

“By the Goddess, we have…” 

If the idea of souls being tethered to the pain of their corpses wasn’t upsetting enough, there’s the large-enough-to-miss-it suggestion of who exactly Missy is to us.

No, not the big reveal near the end of the episode, which we’ll be coming to later on, but ever since ‘The Caretaker’ and Seb’s dry comment “She’s a bit busy today” when the policeman says “Oh my God”, there’s been a heavy hint that the dead have a pretty firm idea about who is in control of Heaven. After all, The Master has tried God-heading Earth in his own image before, back in ‘The End Of Time’.

 

“Time Lady, please. I’m old-fashioned.”

For this reviewer’s money (not that he has a great deal), the revelation that Missy is actually The Master makes complete sense, and is a beautiful continuation of the character.

Generally the reaction was largely positive, the nay-sayers panicking that it was a PC move (want to walk me through that?), or that it leads the way to a female Doctor. It’s probably more likely that the existence of The Mistress actually delays such a thing for a good few years – it would be quite a leap, albeit an admirable one, if both the show’s hero and arch-nemesis send up as women.

Annoyingly, even the fact that The Master is now a woman doesn’t have to be set in stone: it is possible that an escape clause has already been written into the plot – who says that Missy is a direct regeneration from John Simm’s Master? She could be from earlier, even before the Derek Jacobi incarnation. It’s worth acknowledging, then, that in an episode with death, Cybermen, hell and sentient corpses that the most terrifying thing for some fans was still the idea of a female Doctor.

 

“Leave the girl; it’s the man I want.”

Another, less hysterical, and more understandable criticism is that a female villainous Time Lord being revealed to be The Master was something of a missed opportunity, when there was a perfectly good Rani going spare.

Let’s ignore, for now, the response that nobody really remembers The Rani, and that Kate O’Mara’s magnificent performance belongs firmly in the camp-neon era of the 1980s. The truth is somewhat subtler: certain sections of fandom are voicing the concern that because the Master is now the Mistress, you rule out any chance of The Rani ever returning.

That, we hope, is rubbish, because it would suggest the show only has room for one female baddie. And it’s not like there’s a quota on that sort of thing. Not like there is for female writers (cough, cough).

 

Continued on Page 2…