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| The Master shows the Doctor the truth about her origins. |
2 episodes: Ascension of the Cybermen, The Timeless Children. Running Time: Approx. 115 minutes. Written by: Chris Chibnall. Directed by: Jamie Magnus Stone. Produced by: Nikki Wilson.
THE PLOT:
In the distant future, the Cyber-Wars have resulted in the near-eradication of both humanity and the Cybermen. A handful of human survivors, led by Ravio (Julie Graham) are trying to reach a place of safety known as "The Boundary" in a dilapidated shuttle. But the shuttle has broken down - and despite Ravio's best efforts to repair it quickly, the Cybermen have found them.
The Doctor and her friends arrive just as the Cybermen attack, led by Ashad (Patrick O'Kane), the Lone Cyberman who retrieved the Cyberium from 19th Century Earth. The Doctor stands her ground long enough to distract Ashad, allowing the others to escape - except for Ryan and a young survivor named Ethan (Matt Carver), who become separated from the others. The Doctor manages to rescue them from Ashad, then steals a Cyber-shuttle to follow Ravio's escaping ship.
That ship breaks down completely near the debris marking the last great battle of the Cyber-War. Ravio, Graham, and Yaz manage to land inside a dead Cyber-ship. But Ashad is not far behind - And the ship is not as dead as it appears.
Meanwhile, the Doctor reaches "The Boundary," a phenomenon separating this universe from a pocket dimension. The divide is guarded by Ko Sharmus (Ian McElhinney), an aging veteran who has stayed behind to guide other survivors to safety. He shows the Doctor the boundary, and she is astonished at what lies beyond.
The remains of Gallifrey! With the Master himself waiting to reveal the secret of "The Timeless Child" - the lie upon which Time Lord society was created...
CHARACTERS:
The Doctor: As The Haunting of Villa Diodati made clear, the Doctor is still haunted by Bill's Cyber-conversion. The moment she realizes that her preparations have failed and that she won't be able to just fend off the Cybermen, she pushes her companions to flee, berating herself for being "reckless" by bringing them anywhere near Cybermen. When the Master captures her in Part Two, she begs him to help her friends, appealing to their shared history. As the Master refuses, then taunts her with her hidden past, she reaches the point of physically attacking him (well, his image at least), visceral in her ferocity.
Yaz: Yas has finally started coming into her own over the second half of this season, and this proves to be another strong story for her. When the group realizes that the Doctor is trapped on the other side of the boundary, they all agree that they should rescue her. But the barrier is strange and scary, leaving them all hesitating... All except Yaz, who all but storms forward, heedless of all except the need to help the Doctor. When the Doctor insists on facing the Master at the end, Yaz is the one who protests the most strongly, insisting that "We're not letting you go!"
Graham: Spends the first half of the story in an entertaining double-act with Yaz. He and Yaz push Ravio's group to keep trying to stay alive, even when the weary survivors seem ready to give up just to end their perpetual running. As they prepare to utilize a desperate disguise to escape the Cyber-ship, both realize there is a good chance their efforts will end in death or conversion. Graham takes a moment to tell Yaz how impressed he is with her. He also enjoys an amusing flirtation with Ravio, who dubs him "strange," then clarifies that she actually likes that about him.
Ryan: Appears to have taken the Doctor's warnings about weapons a bit too much to heart, as Ko Sharmus has to convince him to take up arms against the Cybermen. "You can be a pacifist tomorrow; today, you have to survive." Ryan manages to take out one group of Cybermen - Though in his celebration, he almost gets himself captured by another group coming up behind him.
The Cybermen: "We're carrying a Cyberman that makes other Cybermen scream!" Ashad, the Lone Cyberman, returns, this time as the head of an army. The Doctor's capitulation to him at the end of the last story has left him in control of the Cyberium, and has made him more powerful than ever. He effortlessly defeats the Doctor's preparations against his attack, and she and her friends are lucky to escape with their lives. A confrontation between him and the Doctor makes clear that he despises himself for being too human - And the decidedly un-Cyberman-like anger he carries makes him more dangerous than most of the Cyber-leaders the Doctor has faced. Inevitably, he makes a deal with the Master... Though just as inevitably, that arrangement doesn't quite work out as planned.
The Master: Sacha Dhawan's Master reminds me of Anthony Ainley's early appearances in the role, before he descended into camp. Much like Ainley in Logopolis, this is a version of the character who has been battered and broken, his surface urbanity now only a thin veneer that can't hide the vicious insanity underneath. Also like the Ainley Master in Castrovalva, he won't be content with merely defeating the Doctor - He needs the Doctor to understand the intricacies, to experience the same revelation that broke him. Dhawan's screen chemistry with Jodie Whittaker is tangible, with an added sexual charge marking their confrontations. This is a Master who is only barely in control of himself, and there's a sense of unpredictability and danger to him. I'm not going to call him the "Best! Master! Ever!" - that would be either Delgado or Gomez, depending on my mood - but so far I'd rate him a fairly close third.
THOUGHTS:
This review has taken me longer than most of my Series 12 reviews. There's a simple reason for that: After I finished Part Two, I wasn't sure what I thought. Much of this two-parter is excellent. However, there are bits that just don't work, notably the climax. It is an indisputably significant story, whether you like its revelations or not; but too much of what it reveals is delivered via long reams of exposition, leaving me to wonder if some of this information couldn't have been parceled out earlier in the season.
Ultimately, I think the easiest way to deal with this serial is to do what I almost never do with Doctor Who multi-parters: Look at the two parts individually, before judging the whole.
ASCENSION OF THE CYBERMEN
The title is a bit labored, but the episode isn't. On its own, the first half of this story ranks among the best of this season. Momentum is built almost immediately, as the Cybermen make short work of the Doctor's defenses and three of the seven survivors fall in rapid succession. There's a sense of danger, and the situation feels legitimately high-stakes in a way that The Battle of Ranskoor av Kolos failed to achieve.
Meanwhile, a side story involving a young man named Brendan (Evan McCabe) is given no direct link to the main story, yet it feels of a piece and is intriguing on its own. Initially lyrical, this side story builds a gradual sense of dread after Brendan miraculously survives a gunshot wound and a fall from a cliff. Though protesting that he was "lucky," his family suddenly eyes him... not quite with suspicion, but certainly in a way that's less than loving. When we return to Brendan near the episode's end, his story receives a shocking final note... But it never is tied into the main plot in that first episode. This is not a bad thing - It shows Chris Chibnall's confidence in his material, that he is certain the audience will wait for the next installment to tie it all together.
Ascension builds to strong endings to all three threads: The Brendan side plot, Graham and Ravio's group trapped on a ship with the Lone Cyberman, and the Doctor coming face-to-face with the Master. Pretty much every note works, guest performances and regulars alike are on strong form, and anticipation is left high for the final episode. Judged on its own merits, I would probably rate Ascension of the Cybermen as a "9," and a "10" wouldn't be out of the question.
THE TIMELESS CHILDREN
I'm not going to say, "And then it all falls apart," because it really doesn't. But The Timeless Children simply isn't as strong as Ascension of the Cybermen, and I think the Master's presence is a big part of the reason. Though the first third of the episode builds tension as Ravio, Yaz, and Graham escape the Cyber-ship, the Cybermen plot is tied off a little too quickly and easily. In short, it's now an inconvenience when Chibnall wants to focus on the Doctor/Master scenes, so the entire story strand is unceremoniously cleared away to make room for that.
I'm left wondering if this wouldn't have worked better as two separate stories, with the first leading into the second. Leave Part One much as it is, but have the Doctor defeat the Cybermen at the Boundary - likely using the very same Doomsday Device (TM) that does the job at this story's climax, with her and her friends jumping through the Boundary to avoid the explosion. The Cybermen plot is thus finished... Just in time for the Master to appear with basically the same cliffhanger that leads into Part Two. He uses a Vortex Manipulator or some other gadget to take her away from her companions... leading into the Timeless Child story, without the leftovers of the Cybermen plot to distract.
As it stands, we have an excellent Cyberman story that lacks a satisfying conclusion, and a Master story that, revelations aside, is left feeling ever so slightly undercooked.
This isn't to say that I didn't enjoy the scenes with the Master. As I mentioned above, Dhawan and Whittaker have excellent screen chemistry. Dhawan's Master coaxes a raw quality out of Whittaker, leaving her more exposed and vulnerable than we've seen elsewhere, while he seems to become twitchy (well, twitchier) and off-balance at the mere sight of her. We see at two points in this episode that he is more than willing to die if it means "winning," and it could be argued that his entire goal here is simply to make the Doctor angry enough to put him out of his misery.
The Timeless Child flashbacks are beautifully shot and well-edited, particularly as we are shown how Brendan's tale fits into the whole. But just because it's a generally well-done info-dump, that doesn't change the fact that it is pure exposition, and quite a lot of it. Given that Can You Hear Me? involved hidden fears and memories, I can't help but wonder if some of this couldn't have been brought out in that story, which might have reduced the expositional load on this one.
THE CLIMAX
The single weakest scene in the story is, unfortunately, the climactic Doctor/Master/Cybermen confrontation.
I will say that the first part of the scene works, with the Doctor confronting the Master. Her plan is to use the story's Doomsday Device to blow up the Master, herself, and the Cybermen all in one go. She knows that doing so will save the universe from potential devastation; the Master actively wants her to do it, because it will make her into the kind of "ends justify the means" killer that she's tried so hard not to be; and the Cybermen stand by like the robots he had earlier mocked them as, commanded by the Master not to shoot. All of this is tense, well-acted, and beautifully shot.
But of course, the show isn't about to kill the Doctor or make her into a killer, so an escape clause is required. Which means a guest characer shows up to take the device away from the Doctor and set it off, first giving her time to escape. This part is predictable, but that's not the main problem. It is genuinely badly executed.
The guest character appears at the edge of the room and takes full seconds to walk to the Doctor to take the device from her. During this time, there is nothing stopping the Master from either using his patented Shrink Ray or ordering the Cybermen to just shoot, either of which would restore the previous stalemate. Instead, the Master and all the Cybermen wait patiently until the Heroic Guest Character can get into position to perform the Heroic Self-Sacrifice. Is the Master willing to die in order to make the Doctor lose? Sure, of course he is. Is he willing to die in order to let Random Guest Character 27 go out in a blaze of glory? Er... Not so much, no.
It's not enough to ruin the episode, let alone the story, particularly as it all ends on an enjoyably bonkers cliffhanger. But it definitely knocks the score down a bit - And it probably could have been avoided, had the Cybermen and Master strands been separated into different stories, rather than squished together into a two-parter that fails to do justice to either of them. If Part One was a triumph, then this is... not. Were I to score The Timeless Children individually, I would probably award it a "6" - and it would mainly manage that for the performances of Whittaker and Dhawan.
THE BIG REVEAL
I have no doubt that a portion of fandom is boiling with rage at Chris Chibnall's retcon of the Doctor's origins. I'm not going to be among that number. First, Chibnall didn't really do anything that Philip Hinchcliffe and Robert Holmes hadn't tried to do with The Brain of Morbius. Hinchcliffe was moved to another show before he could make text the implication of pre-Hartnell Doctors - but the context in Morbius is clear, even if some wiggle room is left to allow for the "other faces" to be Morbius' incarnations.
What Chibnall has done is actually a rather neat reconciling of that attempted retcon with the references in The Three Doctors and Mawryn Undead to Hartnell being the First Doctor. The Morbius Doctors did exist (and more besides)... But the Doctor had no memory of them, and genuinely believed the Hartnell incarnation was the first.
I'm also fairly certain there are more revelations to come, very likely some that will muddy the waters a bit. It should certainly be noted that the Master is far from a reliable narrator, and that his stated purpose in showing the Doctor this past is to "break" her. He's probably telling the truth... But he's fairly certain to not be telling the whole truth.
Here are just a few potential questions: Why did the Master indicate in Spyfall that what was done specifically impacted both him and the Doctor; it wouldn't make sense to single out himself if he was no more linked to this than every other Time Lord. Why were all the Doctors in the previous regeneration cycle male, something so statistically improbable as to be almost indistinguishable from impossible? Perhaps the Time Lords locked the Doctor's regenerations to male ones (the only reference to female as a possibility was in The Night of the Doctor, in a regeneration offered not by the Time Lords but by the Sisterhood of Karn); as soon as that was "unlocked" in The Time of the Doctor, the Doctor becomes a woman in the second life of this new cycle - which is to say, about what you would statistically expect.
I'm not saying that those are necessarily directions I expect the show to go; the latter notes would honestly be a bit too backward-looking. The point is, there are avenues that are open to explorations, ones that don't overwrite previous lore so much as expand upon it.
OVERALL
But while I think there are legitimate dramatic possibilities in these new revelations, I still come back to this: These revelations were almost exclusively delivered via expositional infodump, and they didn't really need to be. When the Doctor discovered the possibility of a hidden past in Fugitive of the Judoon, it was achieved with a brilliant visual reveal of her digging up the buried TARDIS. Had even one standalone been jettisoned, a two-part version of Can You Hear Me? could have provided an ideal opportunity for a few more tantalizing hints and clues. Then the Master wouldn't just be delivering exposition - He would be lending context to puzzle pieces the Doctor had already discovered.
This remains a good story overall, boosted considerably by excellent performances, and I have to give Chibnall credit for risk-taking - Series 11's biggest sin, as I've previously indicated, was an almost religious adherence to playing things safe. But I can't escape the conviction that this should have been better. Give this story outline to Moffat or Davies, and they'd have left me slack-jawed, staring at the screen, digesting everything for weeks. Chibnall's story is basically a good one... But most of the time I've spent mentally picking at it has involved puzzling out ways the same basic story could have been much better.
Overall Rating: 7/10.
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