Live from Master Closet Studios, you’re listening to the only podcast on the internet that’s held up by an invisible exoskeleton, it’s you, the listeners that hold up our dead rotting corpses: It’s the Noobs and the Whovian!
My name is Austin and I’m the Whovian, and these are my sons Corbin and Tripp and we’re the noobs!
This is the podcast that introduces a whole new generation to Doctor Who by watching an episode each week and discussing it from the perspective of a dad who’s seen it before, and two sons who haven’t.
Welcome to Episode 126 covering the Series 8 episode 11: Dark Water and Death in Heaven
This is the one where the Doctor and Clara chase after a psycho aka the girl in the shop aka the mistress aka the master… then robo zombies take over the world as the Doctor’s birthday present. Just for him to give it away.
Production notes
- Story # 252
- Originally aired November 1 and November 8 to 7.4 million viewers and 7.6 million viewers
- Written by: Steven Moffat
- Directed by: Rachel Talalay
Misc Trivia
- After the camera zoom on Clara’s face when she said “I’m the Doctor,” they put her eyes in the opening credits and placed Jenna Coleman’s name before Capaldi’s.
- There was a fan theory that this was Clara last story. This was actually true for a while, before Jenna Coleman renewed her contract for Series 9.
Cast
- Missy – Michelle Gomez
- She was born November 23, 1966
- Clara’s birthday was given as November 23, 1986
- Doctor Who premiered on November 23, 1963

Checklist
- Name of the episode spoken in dialogue?
- We call it dark water, only organic matter can be seen through it.
- Creature of the week
- Cybermen
- Jiggery Pokery
- TARDIS
- It takes lava to destroy a TARDIS key. And there are what, only 7?
- Psychic paper
- Why is there so much swearing.
- TARDIS
- The Question/Doctor Who?
- My heart is maintained by the Doctor. Doctor Who? DR. CHANG!!!!!
Other stuff we noticed
- What’s so special about a volcano? It’s just like a leaky mountain.
- Time can be rewritten, but with great care and precision. If I save him then you’ll never come here to ask me to save him. A paradox.
- I’m sorry, didn’t Eleven do just that with the grenade thingy?
- Go to hell. No seriously, we’re going to hell.
- That last thing that happened to you, that really happened.
- And it was literally the last thing that happened to him!
- iPads? We have Steve Jobs!
- Doctor Skarosa? Skaro?
- It’s like I’m missing something obvious *elevator closes with mirrored 3W logos look just like Cybermen eyes
Who’s Who?
- Who is Osgood?
- We saw her in the 50th anniversary episode
- She’s a companion that never was!
- Who is Danny Pink?
- His death was boring. It was ordinary.
- Who is Clara?
- She calls Danny and as soon as he answers she says “shut up!”
- I love you – I’ll never say those words to anyone else for the rest of my life. Those words from me are yours now.
- Don’t do that with the eyes, how DO you do that anyway? It’s like they inflate!
- Speak for me again and I’ll detach something from you.
- She’s the Doctor!
- Who is the Doctor?
- His stickbug profile photo is gone
- So what can I do for you, Clara? I’VE GOT SOME IDEAS!
- Do you think I care for you so little that betraying me would make a difference?
- He’s President of Earth and CEO of the human race
- I’m not a good man, or a bad man. I’m an idiot with a box and a screwdriver, passing through, helping when I can.
- Love is not an emotion, it’s a promise.
- Never trust a hug. It’s just a way to hide your face.
Can we talk about bootstrap paradoxes
- The doctor said if we save him then you’ll never come to see me and then he’ll die so on so on
- This has given me an idea on how to beat it
Classic Who Connection
- The Cybermen marching outside of St. Paul’s Cathedral is a direct allusion to the Second Doctor’s 1968 serial The Invasion. This serial not only has Cybermen but also the introduction of UNIT and also has Brigadier Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart and that is the style of cybermen that the head came from that the cybermen left behind on Earth. So presumably that is the cybermen invasion that Kate Stewart is referencing.
- The Cybermen coming out of tombs could be a reference back to the Cybermen waking up on Telos in the 1967 serial Tomb of the cybermen
- In order to hide the reveal of Missy as the Master an alternate version was also filmed where Missy was a return of the Rani
- In the Doctor Who TV movie, the Master also killed his assistant Chang Lee
- In classic who there was a lot of talk of the Matrix. This was like a massive cloud storage setup that held video of most anything to do with Time Lords and you could watch it on screen or enter it and watch and sometime interact with it. The Nethersphere was a part of that Matrix.
- The Master also teamed up with the cybermen in The Five Doctors
- The Master, or Missy, used the phrase “Oh my giddy aunt.” This was used more than once by the Second Doctor
- The coordinates of Gallifrey and the fact that it is in the constellation Kasterborous was first mentioned in the Fourth Doctor serial Pyramids of Mars
- The title sequence for Death in Heaven was altered to have Clara’s eyes on the Doctor’s face. The only other time the title sequence has had someone other than the Doctor in it was the TV movie Doctor Who which had the Master’s eyes featured.
- The Fifth Doctor called himself an idiot in the serial Kinda and was thereafter referred to as “idiot” by the character Panna in that serial.
- The Master loves TV or “the telly”. He also mentioned this in the serial The Sea Devils
- The Fourth Doctor said he was UNIT’s “unpaid scientific advisor” in The Android Invasion which is perhaps why the Doctor is so keen on how much he is being paid by UNIT now
- Clara’s knowledge of the Doctor’s history
- She mentions children and Grandchildren – Susan Foreman (grandchildren are in the comics)
- But they are missing or dead – Tomb of the Cybermen he mentions that he thinks his family is dead
- Graduated in Glasgow with a doctorate – The Moonbase
- His a Prydonian privileges were revoked
- Prydonians are the most powerful of the original chapters on Gallifrey
- Rassilon the Grand Master before there were Time Lords
- The Prydonian chapter has produced a number of renegades and conniving Time Lords
- Most of the Lord Presidents have come from the Prydonian including the Doctor
Overall impressions
- Overall rating out of 10 –
- Jared – 8.5 squishy metal suits
- Austin – 8 sad Cybermen eyes on an elevator
- Corbin – 8.5 skeletons
- Tripp – 10 doctor claras
- Creep Level – out of 500
- Jared – 450
- Austin – 300
- Corbin – 50
- Tripp – 70
Theories
- Thoughts on Missy and Heaven?
- Corbin & Tripp – The Half-faced man didn’t actually die but was put into a new body of some kind. That’s not Heaven, though it could be the Promised Land.
- Tripp – Missy is NOT a robot, perhaps a creator.
- Corbin – Missy is the bad guy. Missy is the lady in the shop. It’s not Heaven, it’s hell. Robots.
- Nethersphere
- It’s not really an afterlife, it’s just more life than you were expecting.
- Who is Missy?
- Mobile Intelligent Systems Interface – helping you to help me to help you
- Missy. Short for Mistress. I couldn’t very well keep calling myself the Master now could I?
- Remember when I said that on the night of the premiere of the series that someone guessed this?
- She’s the woman in the shop that gave Clara the Doctor’s number. She’s also the one who took out the advert to get them together in the restaurant in Deep Breath.
- This is another step in the direction of Thirteen becoming possible. We Eleven think he was a girl because of his long hair when he first regenerated. Then, he told us about the Corsair who was a woman on at least one incarnation. Then, in Night of the Doctor, it was implied that Eight could become a woman on his next incarnation if he chose.
- Missy is the first on-screen instance of a Time Lord becoming a Time Lady.
- What was with all the robots?
The Game Plan
- Next week we have a Classic Who Rewind episode covering the Seventh Doctor adventure Remembrance of the Daleks. This is Season 25, episodes 1-4.
- Then, it’s the 2014 Christmas Special Last Christmas

Closing
Noobs and the Whovian is a production of Master Closet Studios, where it’s always smaller on the inside. Your Senior Producer is Austin Reason. Our Audio Engineer is Tripp Reason. Corbin Reason is our Production Editor. Special thanks to tardis.wikia.com for the trivia, and to Jared for the Classic Who Connection. Shout outs to Victor, Jared, and James for their Patreon support.
You can find us at facebook.com/noobsandthewhovian or twitter.com/noobswhovian and email us at [email protected]. Consider supporting us at https://www.patreon.com/noobsandthewhovian. Please subscribe and leave a rating wherever you found us, and share us with a friend not because we’re a great show but because we watch one.