Doctor Who season eight

[Esquilax]

My comments on the finale should come as no surprise...

And I find myself disagreeing with some of them, surprisingly! It's weird, I was all set up to hate this one after the last one, and I kinda didn't. Comments after the hide tag.

SPOILERS

---

The pollinating cyber-men was a good idea, and probably the only good idea. No wait, the old-design cyberhead was also a nice touch.

I laughed when Kate dumped that thing on the ground. Just the right amount of call back to the last time UNIT tangled with the Cybermen.

Didn't appreciate the subplot where the boy Danny killed is inexplicitly brought back to life (how?), when not enough time or consideration was ever given to exploit this are of the plot. As I said in my last comment, the relationship simply had no real pay-off.

Well, I liked that it gave a little more context to Danny's soldier stuff, but they did totally bork it with the glowing light in Clara's hallway and the kid coming back when it's already been established that the mind is the only thing kept in the Nethersphere. It was way cheesy.

Didn't appreciate the plot where the Doctor is made "president of the world" - in what universe is that plausible? Who would put an alien in charge of their entire planet?? This plot lead nowhere anyway.

It's semi-plausible in the ridiculous Whoniverse, where weird alien shit falls from the sky all the time and there's only one person who reliably keeps his shit together. I was more concerned that suddenly the whole world is aware of all the alien stuff that's been going on again; the Cybermen were mentioned by name on a news broadcast as having been seen before, but the cracks in time from season five were, from a storytelling standpoint, created to wipe the slate clean on all the previous alien incursions to contemporary Earth to start again. That's why Amy didn't remember the Daleks in Victory of the Daleks and all that; those events had fallen out of time and Earth was now an alien virgin again. When did that change back?

Didn't appreciate Danny overriding his programming. 1. It's been done before, and done in a finale so why repeat the exact same plot again?

Yeah, because Doctor Who has never recycled plot points before.

2. How-come he can over-ride his programming when he's completely dead and his personality isn't even from his old brain but from a computer simulation that is capable of shaping it however it wants?

He didn't delete his emotions in the Nethersphere, so he was still Danny, just uploaded into a Cyberman body. Now, one could argue very easily that the human consciousnesses are unnecessary for these Cybermen if they have to be changed so drastically to get them to work right, or that Danny's emotions could easily have been deleted by force as the Cybermen are wont to do, but at least there's some form of in-universe justification for your question, here. It just opens two more plot holes in its wake.

3. How come he, and the Brigadier can override their programming but other cybermen can't? Do all those people have lesser "feelings" towards their loved ones?

I guess the Brig didn't delete his emotions either? I dunno, that whole part of the story feels like that thing Moffat does where he has two cool disparate ideas ("What if the Master was in charge of Heaven?!" and "What if the Cybermen rose from people's graves?!") that he then awkwardly combines. I guess it could be a callback to Doomsday, kinda? These civil service types with a strong sense of duty, overriding their cyber-programming?

4. Didn't really like the open cyberman helmet showing Danny's face, the scene would have worked better with it closed. And we also didn't need to know whether Danny's "personality" is returned to that exact body or not.

Yeah, that whole thing was obviated by the consciousness uploading thing. It's like, what? Can the Cybermen not just build robot bodies? Why're they so hung up on converting people when it's the less efficient route to take?

Didn't like the plot that the Master is "giving an army" to the Doctor.

I liked what it was trying to say. I'd prefer a ham-fisted attempt at character building than a bombastic nothing of a finale any day.

And why does the Doctor teleport the Master? Where does he supposedly teleport her to?

Oh, he didn't. It's my understanding that Cyber-Brig straight up killed her.

Didn't like the part where Clara claims to be the doctor to the cybermen - again it was utterly anti-climatic.

I disliked it because it seems so unearned. Clara is not that much more capable than any of the other companions, so why does she get to occupy this spot in the series of being the Doctor's champion so many times? I like that they tried something with her this season, but it feels so forced.

Really, really, really didn't like the plot that Danny destroys all the cybermen. At the very least he could have lead them away to be an army for good to be later used in the series. That could have lead to further far more interesting stories than this one.

Ugh, now I really want that too.

---