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Dark Water (TV story)

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Dark Water was the eleventh episode of the eighth series of Doctor Who produced by BBC Wales. It saw the return of the Cybermen, and the Twelfth Doctor's first encounter with them.

It was the first televised story to apparently feature a Time Lord who had changed gender, as Missy claimed to be the Master. This practice had, unambiguously, appeared in other mediums and had been referenced in The Doctor's Wife.

Synopsis

When Danny is involved in a terrible accident, Clara and the Doctor travel to a mausoleum where the dead are not all that they seem...

Plot

Clara is ready to confess to Danny the adventures she’s been having with the Doctor, despite telling him she wasn’t. She’s about to tell him over the phone, when Danny steps out into the road and is killed by an oncoming car. Unable to deal with her grief, Clara calls the Doctor for help with the intention that he’ll change events.

The Doctor picks up Clara asking her where she wants to go, almost immediately sensing something is wrong. She asks the Doctor to take her to a volcano, all while collecting up the TARDIS keys that are hidden in the console room. After the Doctor sets the destination, Clara uses a sleep patch on him.

The Doctor seemingly wakes on a volcanic planet, and Clara tells him whats happened and that she is holding the seven TARDIS keys hostage. Clara then reveals that she knows lava can destroy them and if the Doctor doesn't let her try to save Danny she'll throw them all into the crater in order to prevent the Doctor from ever re-entering the TARDIS, proving that she's serious by throwing one straight away. The Doctor point-blank refuses to save Danny since his death is part of her personal timeline, trying to take control of the situation by telling her to throw another key in the lava. Clara then throws all but one in, and when the Doctor still won't help she throws the last in before suddenly being overcome by the enormity of what she's done. The Doctor then reveals that she didn't actually knock him to sleep (the two are still in the console room), and this has been a telepathic test to see how far she’d be willing to go to be with Danny again. Seeing the extremity of her desire to see him, the Doctor agrees to do everything he can and connects her to the TARDIS’ telepathic circuits, as her timestream’s connected to Danny’s. The TARDIS takes them to wherever she thinks Danny now is.

Danny wakes-up in the Nethersphere, and is greeted by Seb, who informs him of his death.

 
The Doctor feels Missy's two hearts.

The TARDIS has taken the Doctor and Clara to the 3W, where they see skeletons seated in watery graves. They’re greeted by Missy. Stating that he clearly didn't receive the formal advance materials, she kisses the Doctor, and claims to be a MobIle Intelligence SyStems Interface. Missy lets the Doctor feel her heart, evoking a reaction of quiet surprise from the Doctor.

In the Nethersphere, Seb asks Danny if he’s ever killed someone, due to a request from someone Danny could have killed in the army. Remembering his “bad day”, the child Danny accidentally killed is revealed to him.

Chang reveals the dark water to the Doctor and Clara. When submerged, only organic matter can be seen - the skeletons are inside something else, hidden by the water.

Danny meets with the child, who runs away when Danny tries reaching out to him. He and Seb hear a man screaming, which Seb explains to mean he left his body to science.

Chang then explains to the Doctor and Clara that the 3W was established after a discovery from television static, that their founder, Dr Skarosa, translated to be distant voices. Believing them to be the voices of the dead, Skarosa isolated some of them. Chang plays a recording of the voice that inspired 3W’s founding: “Don’t cremate me”. Chang tells them the dead are still conscious, and aware of everything that happens to their body.

Seb is explaining the same to Danny, who constantly feels cold because he’s still connected to his body, which is being kept in a cold place.

The Doctor states that the dead don't come back, and Chang establishes a communication signal to the Nethersphere, and Clara is able to speak to Danny, with Seb’s assistance. The Doctor tells to Clara to ask Danny questions only to which would he know the answer.

Missy activates the tanks, and the skeletons stand. When Chang and the Doctor arrive, Missy reveals she was only pretending to be an android, and kills Chang. As the tanks begin to empty, the Cybermen are slowly revealed.

Clara asks Danny to name the restaurant of their first date - he can’t remember.

Missy shows the Doctor the Nethersphere, which is a part of the Matrix housing minds of the deceased in edited forms, while their bodies are used for Cyber-conversion. The Doctor knows the Nethersphere (actually a small sphere within 3W) which is containing the neural patterns is actually Gallifreyan technology, and Missy reveals that she is indeed a Time Lord, or rather a Time Lady as she prefers to be called. The Doctor asks her which Time Lady she is - she’s the one he “left for dead”, without expecting her to “find [her] way back”. The Doctor runs out of the 3W, which is St. Paul’s Cathedral.

Clara asks Danny more information about her and tells him that if he is Danny, she is determined to find him in the netherworld and threatens to hang up if he says "I love you" one more time instead of answering her questions. Danny tells Clara she must continue her life and not follow him; he repeats the same words for the last time and she disconnects the communication signal. Seb gives Danny the option to delete himself, which would relieve him from the surge of emotional trauma from his call with Clara.

In the 3W, Clara turns around to see a fully-revealed Cyberman in the water tank. The Cybermen activate, and begin marching down the steps of St. Paul’s Cathedral. The Doctor yells at civilians to run away, but he’s dismissed as an angry Scotsman. The Doctor demands that Missy tell him who she truly is, and Missy reveals that her name is short for “Mistress” as she couldn't keep calling herself by her previous title... the Master. The Doctor initially reacts with disbelief that quickly turns to horror when he realises she is telling the truth and his old nemesis has returned.

In the Nethersphere, Danny is on the verge of disconnecting himself, and sees the child he killed reflected on the screen of the iPad he holds.

Cast

Crew

General production staff

Script department

Camera and lighting department

Art department

Costume department

Make-up and prosthetics

Movement

Casting

General post-production staff

Special and visual effects

Sound



Not every person who worked on this adventure was credited. The absence of a credit for a position doesn't necessarily mean the job wasn't required. The information above is based solely on observations of the actual end credits of the episodes as broadcast, and does not relay information from IMDB or other sources.


References

  • TARDIS keys can be destroyed by lava.
  • The Doctor keeps five TARDIS keys secreted away in various places around the console room (plus one on his person and another in Clara's possession). Despite his having the ability to open the TARDIS doors with the snap of his fingers, Clara - in her highly emotional state after Danny's death - indicated a belief that only seven keys exist, and that destroying these keys would render the TARDIS forever inaccessible to the Doctor.

Individuals

  • From among books in which the Doctor has hidden TARDIS keys, Clara picks up a copy of The Time Traveler's Wife, which influenced the character of River Song and the plot of The Girl in the Fireplace.[1]
  • Clara's birthday (23rd November) is used by Danny to convince her that he is genuine. This date is the original broadcast date of the first ever episode of Doctor Who, An Unearthly Child on 23rd November 1963. This is the same birth date given for the Clara Oswin Oswald splinter featured in TV: The Snowmen.
  • Upon being asked by the Doctor whether there are stairs in the 3W base, Missy replies that she isn't a Dalek.
  • When asked about having iPads in the afterlife by Danny, Seb responds by saying that they have Steve Jobs.

Story notes

  • The Cybermen walking from St Paul's Cathedral and through the London streets emulates a similar scene in the same location in the TV story The Invasion.
  • This episode marks the first on screen instance of a Time Lord changing gender through regeneration, although the possibility had been alluded to in The End of Time, The Doctor's Wife and The Night of the Doctor. Notably, the only times the Doctor has indicated that he may change genders has been when he was about to regenerate or recovering from regeneration, both of which are states in which his rationality is visibly diminished.
  • The Radio Times programme listing was accompanied by a small colour head-and-shoulders photograph of Missy and the Doctor, with the accompanying caption “ Doctor Who / 8:15 p.m. Missy and the Time Lord come face to face at last – what will the outcome be?”
  • The Hyperscape Body Swap Ticket used to get Clara and the Eleventh Doctor into the Doctor Who at the Proms is shown on Clara's bookshelf among her sticky notes. The Proms skit is not canonical (due to its real-world elements), so ticket's place within canon remains unclear. Discounting the sticky note references to the Paternoster Gang, who Clara had also encountered in Series 7, the ticket is the only element of the Eleventh Doctor era visible on Clara's notes, though the camera does not focus in on all the stickies.
  • When the Doctor hands Dr. Chang the psychic paper, it says that he is from the government and Chang questions the amount of swearing on the paper. The Doctor responds with "I've got a lot of internalized anger." This is a reference to Peter Capaldi's well known role as Malcolm Tucker.[2]
  • This episode marks the first use of the term "Time Lady" in the revived series.

Ratings

to be added

Filming locations

Production errors

  • When Danny is walking across the park, his phone rings, which means that Clara is calling him. When Clara is shown holding her phone, it displays "Danny calling" which would normally indicate that Danny has called her. Furthermore, her phone clearly still shows the "Danny calling" message even when she is talking to him.
  • In several scenes, the skeletal bodies submerged in the dark water appear to be making direct contact with some objects such as the chairs, which they shouldn't be able to do given that they are inside the Cybermen shells.

Continuity

Home video releases

DVD releases

Doctor Who Series 8 Boxset

Blu-ray releases

Doctor Who Series 8 Blu-ray Boxset

External links

to be added

Footnotes

  1. ↑ http://gothamist.com/2011/04/21/steven_moffatt_executive_producer_o.php
  2. ↑ http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/doctor-who/11198931/Doctor-Who-Review-Dark-Water.html
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