157 World Enough and Time & The Doctor Falls

Live from Master Closet Studios, you’re listening to the only podcast on the internet that doesn’t want to know what’s in the bad tea. 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 157 covering series 10 episode 11 and 12, World Enough and Time & The Doctor Falls

Super-short Recap 

This is the one where the Doctor and Bill land on a 400-mile long spaceship, Bill dies and gets turned into a weird lookin cyberman, and Nardole gets stuck with the dumb humans. Also Bill didn’t die, she got taken away by water girl TO SEE THE UNIVERSE! 

Production notes

• Story #275 
• Originally aired June 24 & July 1, 2017 to 5.01 & 5.32 million viewers
• Written by: Steven Moffat
• Directed by: Rachel Talalay
  • She did Dark Water/Death in Heaven (another Missy/Cybermen story!)
  • She also did Heaven Sent/Hell Bent, the BEST Twelfth Doctor story, FIGHT ME!
  • She’s doing another two-parter here, and follows it up with Twice Upon a Time next week.

Misc Trivia

• There have been multiple-Doctor stories, but this is the first multiple-Master story
• If you remember that there was a Cyberman in the Cloisters during Hell Bent, then all three of Capaldi’s finales AND every 12th episode during Moffat’s era featured Cybermen.

Checklist 

• Name of the episode spoken in dialogue?
  • Nope and nope
• Creature of the week
  • Cybermen!
    • They’re inevitable, like sewage, cellphones, and Donald Trump
      • I don’t remember them ever mentioning a current US President before now… They’ve mentioned Trump twice this season!
• Jiggery Pokery
  • TARDIS 
  • Sonic
    • Sonic umbrella!
    • Prime Minister Master has a sonic
    • Doctor used his as a communicator!
    • It sucked the programming out of the computer!
  • Psychic paper
  • Random 
• Jibberty Jabberty
• Needless sacrificial death
• Attack Eyebrows
• The Question/Doctor Who?
  • His real name is Doctor Who. He chose it to be mysterious, but dropped the “Who” when he realized it was a bit too on the nose.
• The Doctor Breaks the Fourth Wall
• Jammie Dodger sighting
  • Running count – 4
• Adventures in closed captioning!
  • It all goes a bit… bending machine
• The march towards 13
  • When he and the Master met, he’s pretty sure the Master was a man. He’s pretty sure he was too, but it was a long time ago.
  • So Time Lords, a bit flexible on the whole…
  • They’re billions of years beyond our petty human obsession with gender and its associated stereo-types!

Other stuff we noticed 

• Didn’t they teach you any of this in space school?

Who’s Who? 

• Who is Mr. Razor?
  • Corbin’s fav
  • It’s a clever lie, you see right through
  • I love his burgling mask!
• Who is Bill?
  • She’s so mortal. They pop like balloons. I mean, one heart?!
  • CyberBill? CyBillman?
  • All that time living under the Monks taught her to hang on to herself
  • If Nardole is gonna kick her butt, he’ll have to go back down to the hospital and find it
• Who is Nardole?
  • I should go back to blue!
  • Remember the Alamo. Er, maybe not… 
  • He doesn’t know where he’s from. He was sort of… found
  • Is he Dorium Maldovar?!
  • Wait, so he got left on the ship then? With the Cybermen still around?
• Who is Missy?
  • Hello, I’m Doctor Who. These are my assistants: thing 1 and the other one.
  • Corbin loves the hat!
  • You’re probably handsome aren’t you. Congratulations on your relative symmetry.
  • These are my disposables: Exposition and Comic Relief. Darling, those were genders.
  • She’s different than his other friends. He doesn’t know why.
    • Actually he does. More than anyone he’s met, she’s the only one who’s remotely like him. 
  • They had a pact with the Doctor to see every star in the universe, but she was too busy burning them.
  • She’s cleverer. She’s more evil. Same thing. It really isn’t. It kind of is the same thing.
  • She’s dancing with himself! 
    • They are SO into each other!
  • The two of us being together pushed the timeline out of sync. You can’t retain the memories, so I don’t have them.
  • Wibbly wobbly – she has a vague memory of a scary lady slamming him against a wall and making him promise to always carry a spare dematerialisation circuit
  • She stabbed himself in the back!
    • She said she was fuzzy about the whole regeneration thing. Apparently that was because of the timestream memory problem thingy
    • Then he shot herself in the back. Their perfect ending.
  • This is also the third time in a row he’s been killed by a woman
    • Chantho
    • Lucy Saxon
• Who is the Doctor? 
  • Are you having an emotion? 
  • I will kill you. Don’t do that, it’ll only make me mad!
  • Venusian aikido – he has hidden talents and hidden arms
  • There’s always a scary thing with you, isn’t there?
  • I love it when he’s Mr. Volcano.
  • I do what I do because it’s right, it’s decent! And above all, it’s kind. Just that… it’s just kind.
    • Who I am is where I stand. It’s where I stand. It’s where I fall.
  • All he’s ever wanted is for the Master to stand with him
  • He loves being surrounded, it means everyone’s looking at him!
  • Without hope, without witness, without reward.
  • I’m not a doctor, I’m The Doctor. The original you might say… 
  • Why did we see Clara in the flashback?! He can’t remember her.
  • He doesn’t want to change, ever again. I don’t wanna be someone else.

Corbin has feelings about the ending 

• Nardole got left
• Mondasian cybermen

Classic Who Connections

• The early Cybermen that we see are very close copies of the original Mondasian Cybermen that we see in the serial The Tenth Planet with the First Doctor. This is also the regeneration serial from the First to Second Doctor.
• The Doctor did some Venusian aikido. That was a specialty of the Third Doctor except it was originally called Venusian karate.
• The Master has used disguises in the past. The first one we see is in Terror of the Autons.
• The Doctor talks about the Cybermen evolving naturally on many planets. While these locations are all at least talked about, they are not all seen on TV. Mondas was only heard about in an audio story. Telos was from a book. Marinus was in a comic. Planet 14 was seen in The Invasion and Earth was the NuWho episode of Rise of the Cybermen
• As the Doctor is killing cybermen he recounts his various victories over the cybermen. Telos was The Tomb of the Cybermen. Voga was in Revenge of the Cybermen. Planet 14 was again in The Invasion. And Canary Wharf and the moon were in NuWho.
• Missy talked about when the Fourth Doctor fell to his death in Logopolis
• When the Doctor wakes up he says “Sontarans! Perverting the course of human history!” This is what the Fourth Doctor said after waking up from regenerating in Robot.

Overall impressions

• Overall rating out of 10
  • Jared – 8.5 – Double Murders
  • Austin – 8 Cybertears
  • Corbin – 7 weird cyberman masks
  • Tripp – 9 doomed Nardoles 
• Creep Level – out of 500
  • Jared – 100
  • Austin – 25
  • Corbin – 25 
  • Tripp – 50

Theories

• How does Bill leave?
  • Tripp: she dies, she sacrifices herself to save the universe
  • Corbin: Missy kills her
  • Jared: Missy uses her as a pawn to escape and that will drive Bill to quit the TARDIS
• Is Missy turning good?
  • Tripp: she’ll change a bit, but not really
    • She’ll look like she’s good, but then turn back
  • Corbin: not at all
• What’s up with the Sims Master returning?
  • Tripp says he’s the Master and Missy never was
  • The next story is a simulation, so the Sims Master is part of the simulation

The Game Plan 

• Next week, we’re covering THE LAST CHRISTMAS SPECIAL EVER: Twice Upon a Time!
• After that, we’re a bit iffy… 
  • As of recording, Series 13’s release date hasn’t been announced.
  • If we stick with the current schedule, we’ll be ready to cover Series 13 live on December 12. So if it doesn’t come out before then, we’re golden!
  • However, if we strip away all the Timey Wimeys and the Master Plan, we’d be ready by November 7th. So if it comes out before then, we’ll have to figure something out.
  • So, everybody listening right now needs to write a letter to the BBC asking them to NOT release series 13 until November 7th at the EARLIEST, and preferably on December 12th