"Better a fallen rocket than never a burst of light."
~ Tom Stoppard, The Invention of Love

Sunday, November 2, 2014

Doctor Who: Series 8, Episode 11 – “Dark Water” (2014)

 
It’s been a couple years since Who has had a proper two- (or three-) part finale.  I’ve missed that penultimate-episode insanity, those incredibly amped-up stakes.  “The Pandorica Opens” has one of the show’s best cliffhangers, and “Utopia” and “The Sound of Drums” both go out on ridiculously suspenseful notes (too bad those two are followed up by ham-fisted resolutions – series 3 definitely ends with a whimper.)  I was looking forward to that again, but unfortunately, “Dark Water” doesn’t have a big “pow!” ending.  Yes, it gives us some big reveals, some big monsters, and some big world domination-ish plans, but I was hoping for a real “??!?!!” moment.
 
As for the rest of the episode, it has a definite part 1 feel, and while it sets some interesting things in motion, I can’t ultimately judge it until I see how the dust settles next week.  (Also, I’m going to have to do a more spoilery write-up sometime after the finale – it’s hard to talk about revelatory episodes without giving anything away.)  Chiefly, this episode gives us forward momentum on the season arc, which, come to think of it, I don’t think I’ve actually mentioned in any of my previous reviews:  the mysterious “Promised Land” we’ve seen cropping up for various deceased one-shot characters and Missy, the demented Mary Poppins type who appears to oversee it.  We get a better look inside this apparent after-life, and the Doctor and Clara meet Missy and see her unorthodox activities and obsession with the Doctor first-hand.
 
A day later, I’m still not sure what I think about all of it.  The foreshadowing for the big alien threat is good, although it would’ve been even better if the show hadn’t featured them in the end-of-episode trailer last week.  I like the Promised Land/Nethersphere stuff – the concept is totally Moffat nightmare fuel, and I like how it ties in with the aforementioned alien threat.  It’s a connection that really makes sense and seems logical.  I’m a little disappointed in the reveal of Missy’s identity, only because it’s been widely speculated since her first appearance so it wasn’t much of a surprise.  Still, she seems fairly well-characterized, and I’m looking forward to where the finale takes her.
 
And as for the Doctor and Clara… The Doctor is pretty good here.  He’s brusque with Clara but sympathetically so – does that make sense?  Probably not.  Though I won’t go into details, Clara goes significantly off the rails here, and the Doctor is fairly understanding, bringing her back from the brink and supporting her without coddling her.  Oh, and he doesn’t grasp the appeal of swimming pools with “X-ray water” that only lets you see organic material (in other words, people, but not their swimsuits) – I love me some asexual Doctorness.  On the other hand, he’s more than a little slow on the uptake when it comes to the central mysteries, and there’s only so much I can chalk up to being thrown off-kilter by Missy.  And Clara is just all over the place.  Although she’s dealing with some seriously heavy stuff in this episode, I still can’t reconcile some of her statements and actions.  Even at the start, before the drama starts going down, she feels off and is behaving in ways that really don’t make sense.  Maybe last week’s at-least-partially-misleading preview is coloring my opinion, but she doesn’t seem natural.  I can’t make heads or tails of her here, and I don’t know where the show is going with it.
 
Lastly, I won’t get into specifics, but Moffat seems to have entirely forgotten that he established that the Doctor can open the TARDIS by snapping his fingers, and it seriously undermines a part of the episode that’s meant to be suspenseful.

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