Review: Doctor Who Series 8, Episode 12 – Death in Heaven

All the drama and tension that’s been building up has finally come to an end.

The cliff-hanger at the end of episode eleven revealed who Missy (Michelle Gomez) really was: the Master in female form! This was shocking. I thought Missy would turn out to be the Rani, another enemy of the Doctor (Peter Capaldi), but I was wrong.

The next surprise is Missy converting the dead into Cybermen in order to take over the world. We also see poor Danny (Samuel Anderson) become a Cyberman – his transformation is one of the saddest scenes in the series.

UNIT are back and they’ve put the Doctor in charge of stopping Missy and the Cybermen. The actress who plays Missy, Michelle Gomez, is fantastic. She captures the unstableness of the character that Jon Simm, the actor who played the role previously, portrayed.

The Doctor is torn between whether to destroy Missy or let her go, but Missy has a bargaining tool: she knows the location of Gallifrey, her and the Doctor’s home planet. But is it just a trick?

The Doctor lies to Clara, claiming he visited the coordinates Missy gave him and found Gallifrey. The Doctor also believes Danny survived and was brought back from the dead, as this is what Clara tells him. They both lie because they think they’re telling the other what they want to hear. Then Clara says goodbye.

It was an action-packed finale, although I felt Clara (Jenna Coleman) was only really there to bring closure to Danny’s storyline.

There had been rumours that Jenna Coleman would be leaving the show, but the on-screen announcement at the end of the credits – that The Doctor and Clara would return at Christmas – suggests the actress isn’t going anywhere for now. I really hope Coleman isn’t leaving as I think her character has much more to do.

Long-term fans of the show will appreciate the episode’s many nods to characters from previous series, including the Brigadier, (Nicholas Courtney) who used to head up UNIT. This was tear-jerking for me as I loved this character and that particular series was a classic.

The episode felt a little rushed in places, as though the writer, Steven Moffat, knew he was running out of time to tie up loose ends. Having watched previous episodes that Moffat has written, he never wraps things up neatly, and he’ll often revisit plot points in the future.

The special effects are good in places. I always think it’s clever that Doctor Who seems to be filmed in London with recognisable landmarks, but the team’s production base is actually in South Wales. I often recognise the streets of Cardiff posing as London!

Overall, I enjoyed this series and I like the new Doctor, Peter Capaldi. He has breathed freshness into the character.

I hope series nine continues to excite and scare me!