Missy is still annoying, that whole hologram thing with the cartoony sound effects? What is this, Warner Brothers? Clara is too much of a Mary-Sue, I mean she's in with the elite of the worlds taskforce dealing with aliens and it takes her mentioning that the aircraft could be bombs before UNIT goes 'Durr, oh yeah'. Seriously, UNIT is becoming a joke now, stop it Moffat.
I'd hate to be the poor sod in charge of tidying up after the Doctor, I mean that Chieftain tank in 1100s Essex? Yeah, that's an anachronistic mess waiting to happen, and to think all hell broke loose when Rose tried to save her father back in season one.
I did like the fact that Missy put Clara back in her place, the whole thing with the couple and the dog, that was a good line. But honestly, the whole foe-yay (google it) thing is really only being put there for the fan-fiction writers. Although since the majority of the shippers are women, they'd probably have preferred it if the Master stayed a man.
Anyway, to the meat of the story, Davros, played brilliantly as always by Julian Bleach, and a hint of how he became evil. A nice moral choice moment, kind of already done in Genesis of the Daleks, but still good. Then completely ruined when the Doctor goes back with a dalek gun. Likewise Clara and Missy being killed and the TARDIS destroyed. No-one is buying it. The TARDIS is one thing that can't be destroyed, it can be smashed up for redecorating, which is probably what has happened, but it can't be destroyed. Likewise Clara won't be killed because she's not due to leave yet, and Missy won't be killed because she's too central a character to the series. It's like the Cybermen and the Daleks, each time they get killed off completely they always come back.
Speaking of the Daleks, and Skaro (nice rebuild by the way, but not so great a shock that it's there since the last Doctor visited it not so long ago in Asylum of the Daleks...but Davros has done a great job with the place) and Gallifrey. Now that it seems the 'Time lock' on the Time war has been broken, or at the very least worked around...surely this means that all the horrors that Tennants Doctor mentioned will come out with them?
To quote, from 'The End of Time':
Quote:
DOCTOR: That's how I choose to remember them, the Time Lords of old. But then they went to war. An endless war, and it changed them right to the core. You've seen my enemies, Wilf. The Time Lords are more dangerous than any of them.
DOCTOR: You weren't there in the final days of the War. You never saw what was born. But if the Timelock's broken, then everything's coming through. Not just the Daleks, but the Skaro Degradations, the Horde of Travesties, the Nightmare Child, the Could-have-been King with his army of Meanwhiles and Never-weres. The War turned into hell. And that's what you've opened, right above the Earth. Hell is descending.
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Where did all that go? Gallifrey, and that includes Rassilon, the Master (who somehow got out from the timelock and the 'picture lock' to regenerate as Missy) the genocidal Time Lords was saved and will come back at some point...but it's not the Gallifrey of old, it's Gallifrey of war. And Skaro, Skaro has returned, what of the Skaro 'Degradations'? All those deliciously sounding horrors, all the terror that the Time War placed on the universe...and it has seemingly been forgotten.
A pity, really, I liked the direction that that was taking, a once noble race, driven to madness by an eternal war, a war which caused chaos throughout the universe in time and space until it was safely locked away, both opponents locked in a moment in time, never to bother the universe again.
Still...we'll see what Moffat throws at us this season, I've not got my hopes up, to be honest. I'd be happier if Davies would come back. He wrote much better stories, much better scripts, but sadly I doubt that'll happen. At the least though, we need to get rid of Moffat. Oh, and turn the Master back into a cold calculating genius of a villain...not this random psychopath who kills people at random just to prove that she's a baddie. It's like they've taken the craziness of Simms Master and turned it up to eleven. It's not scary, it's annoying. The actress playing Missy could do with a much better script.
And finally, when Clara does go, for the love of God, please don't get another twenty-first century girl. I know the audience need someone to identify with, but you can get away with broadening the catch a bit. Look at Leela, for example, a cave girl but a perfectly good companion. Since the new series started we've had a couple of non-Earth companions, but the only one that has lasted more than one episode has been Captain Jack Harkness.