Doctor Who: World Enough and Time Review

(Spoilers Oh my God Spoilers)

I’ve been spoiled. I’m a big little-boy who has been living through an era of television which is capable of tailoring itself directly to the needs of more niche groups of people to bring more satisfaction to more people through the production of far, far more content. I am spoiled, I am around during this fascinating and innovative period of Doctor Who’s history where the controversial figure, professional troll Steven Moffat gets to tinker, experiment and push at the history and the boundaries of the show I have a bit of an attachment to. I have been spoiled. Steven Moffat was reportedly furious when the news was released about John Simm’s involvement in Series 10 of Who. There is an interview with him available on YouTube where the interviewer brings up Simm and Moffat's little face goes from exasperated to distraught back to professional in a flash. So we have all been spoiled. We all knew the big shock reveal in this episode going into it. For reasons of spoilage I don't think that I felt the full effect of World Enough and Time. It didn't blow me away, but it was rather good.

Big shock reveals are not what storytelling is about but they are what many viewers tend to judge the success or failure of an episode on. As a 90's kid I have had it hardwired into my brain that The Master's return in Series 3 episode Utopia is the greatest reveal of all Doctor Who history. Professor YANA is actually The Master, is actually Harold Saxon PM. Since then, Doctor Who fandom (or at least the ones who stir themselves to barrage the BBC's Facebook wall with comments - Aye that Moffat is right shit why don't he write more like Sherlock that's an actual good show) has been hard wired to equate quality storytelling with shock twists. Shock twists which normally involve the revelation that X is actually The Master in disguise (although ironically these days numerous people seem to hold the dearest wish that Michelle Gomez's character Missy will be revealed to have not been the Master all along.)

It would be very interesting to watch World Enough and Time without foreknowledge of the revelations it holds. The episode is part story, part methodical removal of toys from a toy box, each more shiny than the last. The twists are like an overture more than plot points in themselves, an overture for the tenth series finale. It's no mistake that the "Next Time" trailer which followed last week's The Eaters of Light focused mostly on the playful twist of seeing Missy play the role of The Doctor. Once again this opening scene is merely a hook, a red herring to tempt viewers in whilst throwing them off the scent of what the story will actually be about. This scene was beautifully crafted to contain all of the best things about Moffat's comedy writing - the unexpected use of words and the reversals of expectations. He uses his third last episode to stick a spanner in the Doctor naming conundrum in place ever since Patrick Troughton and William Hartnell were credited as playing the character Doctor Who. The question is raised and then scrunched up in a ball and thrown in the rubbish bin with no-one any the wiser as to why those two words Doctor and Who are so regularly combined in this universe.

The comedy quickly gives way to horror as Bill finds herself short a heart, some lung and a good chunk of her spine. The stakes are set higher than ever before. Again, the series has trained us to expect a whole lot of tragedy and death foreshadowed for the companion of the day but for that tragedy to turn out to be little more than a technicality. Amy and Rory are separated from the Doctor but live full, happy lives. Rose is registered dead on her own world but makes it out of the series with all of her family and limbs in tact. Donna loses those things that made her a great person but ends up with a loving husband and a lottery ticket nevertheless. Even the very dead Clara gets to travel the universe for any number of years before throwing in the towel. The Bill story has been light hearted so far - a wide-eyed student with the best tutor in the world. Now she's one heart lighter. We should have seen this coming really.

Despite her seemingly incapacitating predicament this is Bill's story. Moffat pulls out all of the stops and brings concept after concept to the screen. The second-to-last episode of a series is traditionally bleak and puts the characters through the ringer and this is undoubtedly the case for Bill. Trapped in a hospital in a city which is nearing the end days, Bill discovers wards of patients surgically and technologically altered, crying out in pain. Her only friend is one Mr Razor, a vaguely simian and sorta ethnic orderly who peppers their interactions with macabre humour and opportunities to jump out from behind things. Their relationship is sweet at times, the audience never quite know what to make of him and his woolly hat. The makeup is excellent perfectly concealing the famous face of John Simm from the audience an, in world, the face of Bill's ex-Prime Minister. Director Rachel Talalay succeeds in making it as difficult as possible to get a good look at Razor whose odd movements and the use of shady lighting make it difficult to really understand who or what he is. The prosthetic nose and false teeth don't help either. Razor is so bizarre, so cartoonish that he sticks out in the episode. It was for this reason alone that one could work out that he is clearly the other promised Master hidden in plain sight. If the episode's biggest reveal hadn't been made 3 months in advance then I don't think that anyone would have connected razor with John Simm. It's no wonder Moffat was so irritated.

On the other end of the spaceship, The Doctor is still talking. One of the key elements of any Moffat series is the funny use of time as a plot device. Here the gravitational pull of a Black Hole (which The Doctor is standing closer to than Bill) is making time move more slowly for him. Whilst Bill mops floors, drinks terrible tea and looks into the hollow eyes of a fate worse than death, The Doctor is giving a very physical crash course in theoretical physics. There is a very nice contrast between the two strands of story, the hot-coloured, bright spaceship control room in contrast with the dark and eerie hospital. Both of styles of Who bring out the best in the other and emphasise the joy of an energetic Doctor and the cruel discomfort of a person in peril.

This episode functions like a macabre distortion of the romantic tragedy The Girl Who Waited crossed with the pacey brutality of Oxygen, earlier this series. These are good stories to draw inspiration from. The difference is that in those episodes victory is snatched from the jaws of defeat (well, it depends on how you look at them) here this is not the case. If anything this episode ups the stakes for those around it because it shows how dangerous life with the Doctor is, our characters are just one gunshot away from a hideous fate. This Doctor, the Twelfth, is particularly dangerous. He, like Clara reflected in him, is incredibly impulsive. He takes huge, risky actions with little thought for the consequences. Through this season alone he has lost his eyesight, nearly blown up the remainder of the human race and tried very hard to get himself trapped in a portal between universes for all eternity. This is, like Tennant's Tenth Doctor's arrogance, his fatal flaw. He has seen the deaths of three allies now, Danny, Clara (who was purposefully emulating his actions) and Bill who was acting out of friendship and trust for him. Moffat hasn't been planning this from the start, he didn't even intend to write this series or the 2016 and 17 Christmas Specials but he knows his character and it has resulted in what's looking to be a very solid, if very dark era of the show's history.

World Enough and Time is a good story in its own right. It shows brutal and gut-wrenching consequences for the actions of our hero and it offers both a moving end to Bill's story and a sickening Genesis for those Cybermen, one which far outstrips the 2006 alternate world genesis story. Series 10 has been solid so far, often teetering into the realms of greatness but sometimes stumbling back into mediocrity. A lot will depend on the quality of the finale, as ever, to bring all that has been set up to a head.