Dark Water (TV story)
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 - and they discover the true identity of Missy.
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 TARDIS has taken the Doctor and Clara to the 3W, where they see skeletons seated in watery graves. They’re greeted by Missy, who kisses the Doctor, and claims to be a MobIle Intelligence SyStems Interface. Missy lets the Doctor feel her hearts.
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
- The Doctor - Peter Capaldi
- Clara - Jenna Coleman
- Danny - Samuel Anderson
- Missy - Michelle Gomez
- Woman - Joan Blackham
- Gran - Sheila Reid
- Seb - Chris Addison
- Dr Chang - Andrew Leung
- Fleming - Bradley Ford
- Boy- Antonio Bourouphael
- Cyberman - Jeremiah Krage
- Cyberman - Ryan Armstrong (Uncredited)
- Mr Armitage - Nigel Betts
Crew
| Executive Producers Steven Moffat and Brian Minchin |
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| 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 other 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 and not a computer program. 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.
- 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.
- 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]
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.
- When the Doctor runs from St Paul's and warns people to flee, and Missy chides him for this, the steps to the cathedral can be seen in the distance with no sign of the Cybermen, despite the scene intercutting with footage of the Cybermen emerging from the building. Indeed, a woman can be seen in the far distance not only standing on the steps, but she appears to enter the cathedral doors where the Cybermen are supposedly exiting at that moment.
Continuity
- In Clara's flat, there are numerous sticky notes with references to Clara's travels with the Doctor, including:
- the Paternoster Gang (TV: A Good Man Goes to War et al)
- the "Impossible Girl" (TV: The Name of the Doctor)
- the Bank of Karabraxos (TV: Time Heist
- the Orient Express (TV: Mummy on the Orient Express)
- The Doctor takes a call from Clara using the TARDIS's exterior phone. (TV: The Bells of Saint John, The Time of the Doctor)
- The emergence of the Cybermen from their tombs bears similarities to their awakening on Telos (TV: The Tomb of the Cybermen) and their descending the steps of St Paul's mirrors their earlier invasion of Earth (TV: The Invasion).
- A female incarnation of the Master was previously mentioned to be among his various incarnations who were captured by the Sild. (PROSE: Harvest of Time)
- The Doctor previously knew of at least one other Time Lord who changed gender, the Corsair (TV: The Doctor's Wife), initially thought himself a female upon regeneration (TV: The End of Time), and was offered an artificially induced female regeneration at the end of his eighth incarnation. (TV: The Night of the Doctor)
- The Doctor uses the TARDIS's telepathic interface to help them find Danny. (TV: Listen)
- Clara attempts to force the Doctor to go back in time and avert Danny's death. This isn't the first time he has been asked to do so. (TV: Earthshock, Father's Day)
- The Master previously had an assistant named Chang Lee whom he also killed, although in that case Chang was resurrected. (TV: Doctor Who)
- The dark water shows the human skeletons inside the Cybermen. The Cyberman guarding the Pandorica under Stonehenge revealed a human skull inside its head when it attacked Amy Pond. (TV: The Pandorica Opens)
- The windows on the door to Dr. Chang's office and the logo of 3W itself somewhat resemble the Cybus Industries logo. (TV: Rise of the Cybermen, Age of Steel) When two doors with the logo are placed next to each other, they resemble Cyberman eyes.
- Cybermen have converted and housed the deceased before. (AUDIO: The Reaping, TV: The Pandorica Opens, PROSE: Plague of the Cybermen)
- There is a black and white photo on Clara's bookshelf of her and her father. (TV: The Rings of Akhaten)
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
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