Cybermen are bad enough. Two Masters are worse. Throw in a dying Doctor, and you’ve basically got the most depressing company picnic ever.
Short Synopsis
Bill has become a Cyberman, the Master has returned, and Missy is caught between redemption and relapse. The Doctor makes his final stand on a spaceship full of villagers, where everyone is doomed. Spoiler: most of them die.
Extended Storyline
We pick up right where World Enough and Time left off: the Doctor facing Cyber-Bill. She’s still in there, clinging to her humanity, but everyone else just sees a clunky Mondasian nightmare in a cloth mask. It’s heartbreaking. (If you didn’t cry at “I am Bill,” your tear ducts need service.)
The Doctor, meanwhile, is juggling more problems than an octopus at a juggling competition. First, Cybermen are swarming up the ship. Second, Bill is in post-human tragedy mode. Third, Missy is trying to prove she’s good… while her former self, the Master, is gleefully evil. It’s like an identity crisis with extra eyeliner.
Our heroes (if you can call them that) retreat to a little farming community of humans at the top of the ship. They’re essentially living on borrowed time, and the Doctor knows it. He rallies them to fight the Cybermen, despite the fact that the villagers’ most advanced weapon is… a scarecrow with a pointy stick.
Bill, trapped in her new steel shell, is struggling to accept her condition. She still sees herself as human, thanks to some handy narrative perception trick, but to everyone else she’s just a Cyberman. Cue maximum tragic irony when she tries to comfort a child and accidentally terrifies him.
Meanwhile, the Masters have their own subplot: John Simm’s Master is still his smirking, sadistic self, while Missy teeters on the edge of redemption. The Doctor pleads with her to stand with him, to be something better. For once, he almost gets through. Almost.
The Doctor makes his big stand: wiring up explosives to blow the Cybermen into oblivion, even if it kills him. It’s his “if I can’t win, I’ll at least hold the line” moment, and Capaldi sells it with one of his finest speeches — a raw declaration that being kind, even in the face of certain defeat, is worth it. (Insert applause and sobbing noises here.)
The Masters? They’re busy being the worst. Missy stabs her past self, mortally wounding him. The Master, in turn, shoots Missy in the back with his laser screwdriver. Translation: she’s dead (maybe), he’s dying (again), and the Doctor has officially lost his last best hope of turning her good. Talk about family drama.
Back to Bill: the Doctor is fatally wounded fighting off Cybermen, and he collapses in the orchard. Bill, full Cyber at this point, sheds tears — literal liquid tears leaking out of a Cyber-eye. Enter Heather, the star-eyed pilot from episode one. She sweeps in, scoops up Bill, and restores her humanity by whisking her away into a cosmic “water girlfriend” adventure. (It’s either beautiful or baffling, depending on your taste.)
The Doctor awakens in the TARDIS, badly injured and mid-regeneration. He tries to resist, raging against change. “I don’t want to go” has now become “I will NOT go.” He stumbles out into a snowy landscape, his hands glowing with regeneration energy. And who does he run into? The First Doctor himself, played by David Bradley. Cue fan squeals.