My
spoilery review of this season’s Who finale was so packed that I didn’t get a chance to touch on Missy, and I really
want to take a look at this character.
Big spoilers ahead on Missy, her identity, and important events from the
finale, so read on at your own risk.
From
her first cameo in this year’s premiere as the Mary Poppins-esque overseer of “Heaven,”
fans have been speculating about just who Missy is. Among other guesses (the Rani? an evil regeneration
of Romana?), her name led some fans to hit the nail on the head. It’s not so surprising, given Moffat’s
penchant for wordplay, that Missy is the Who
version of Irene Adler’s password. Missy
= Mistress = the Master, the first onscreen depiction of a Time Lord
regeneration that crosses gender. We
knew it was possible – when Eleven first checked the length of his hair, he
momentarily thought he was “a girl,” and his stories about the Corsair in “The
Doctor’s Wife” confirm cross-gender regeneration – but we’d never seen it.
Overall,
I’m fairly pleased with the result. I
think I would’ve preferred her written by a showrunner with a less “men are
from Mars, women are from Venus” approach to gender, but it’s not too bad. The ludicrous flirting/macking/claims that
the Doctor is her boyfriend are the most irritating – it’s like she can barely
control herself. (On a side note, I’ve
always wondered which is hardwired for a Time Lord, their orientation or the
gender(s) they’re attracted to. Take the
Doctor: mostly ace-ish but at least
partially romantically attracted to women.
Would it be the same for a female Doctor because she’s inherently into
women, or would it flip because she’s inherently straight? Of course, with the Master’s long-established
obsession with the Doctor, we don’t exactly have a clear-cut answer here. I’m sure the Tennant-Simm Doctor/Master slash
fans are particularly jealous of these two.)
But
though I’m not sure about some of her dialogue or her behavior, I adore her plan. It’s pure, twisted Master all the way. As I said, the Master’s always had this
intense tug-of-war obsession with the Doctor, and I love the idea of her giving
him an army of undead Cybermen to resolve all the conflicts in the
universe. She’s baiting him with the means
to save the unjustly slaughtered, but she’s coupling it with war, something he
can’t bear. She’s doing it all to “get
her old friend back,” and she plans to do it by dragging him down to her level
and proving he’s just as power-hungry and corruptible as she is.
Then,
throw in the idea that, while the bodies in the Cybermen are whatever was on
hand on Earth at the time, the consciousnesses she’s been collecting in the
Nethersphere have been cherry-picked from across the Doctor’s timeline. We see her this season scooping up minds of
the dead from Twelve’s adventures, but it’s not just the current incarnation –
the frickin’ Brigadier is turned into
a Cyberman. So, her gift of a
mindlessly-obeying, killer Cyber-army is populated entirely by loved ones the
Doctor has lost, people he failed to save, people who died because of his
mistakes, or people who gave their lives for him. How sick is that?! I mean, my goodness, talk about a head
trip. Although some have lately been
pushing the idea that Twelve is cold and callous, that he doesn’t care about
collateral damage, Missy knows better than that. Her plot goes straight for the emotional
jugular, hitting the Doctor everywhere it hurts the most. I hope we see this incarnation again, because
I can’t remember the last time the Master pulled something so perverse, and
that was some excellent TV.
No comments:
Post a Comment