As always with the Capaldi era Doctor Who, Rachel Talalay directs the two part series finale. Unlike the previous series, showrunner Steven Moffat has concluded that being too hard against leaking spoilers can be counterproductive with viewers.
So we knew from the official BBC press release and from the trailers that the Mondas Cybermen will return after almost 50 years as well as John Simm reprising his role as the Master.
Apparently the pre-title sequence which saw the Doctor emerging from the Tardis exuding regeneration energy was only filmed a few days before broadcast. The rest of the episode was shot some months ago. However the impact of it was probably lost due to the rather pointless fake regeneration we saw just a few episodes ago.
As Moffat seems to have trouble keeping his companions dead, the shock of seeing Bill blasted with a big hole in the middle of her chest also probably induced a groan with the viewers who figured this would just be one of those timey-wimey things and the companion would come back to life somehow.
However this is not to say this was a bad episode. It was an atmospherically macabre and eerie episode. It is just that the Moffat tropes have become tired to the general viewer and it shows in the decline in viewing figures for this series.
The Tardis crew land inside a spaceship which has sent out a distress call. Missy is leading the disposables as he calls Bill and Nardole or should it be Exposition and Comic Relief. The spaceship is 400 miles long and 100 miles wide and trying to escape from being sucked into a black hole.
Bill is shot by a trigger happy Blue person and is taken to the lower floors where a chest unit is fitted into her to keep her alive and she meets a Mr Razor, played by an actor with heavy make up. He actually reminded me off the actor Michael Sheen, who is famous for playing Tony Blair, the former Prime Minister of United Kingdom.
What Bill discovers is that the hospital has patients who are heavily bandaged and in pain. Their agony being dealt with by turning the volume of their screams down.
On the upper floors and with time moving deferentially because of the gravitational effects of the Black Hole is the Doctor trying to locate Bill. When he finally gets to the lower floor what he finds is the genesis of the Cybermen and two Masters.
Not knowing how the concluding part will go, this was a creepy, tense and thrilling episode. Moffat has certainly delivered a classic aided by Talalay's direction.
