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The Mondasian Cybermen are back on Doctor Who this week in "World Enough and Time". Is anyone else we know joining the party? Spoilers, sweetie.

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Doctor Who: 10×11, World Enough And Time

The Mondasian Cybermen are back on Doctor Who this week in “World Enough and Time”. Is anyone else we know joining the party?
Spoilers, sweetie.

My sincere apologies, Whovian friends, for not recapping last week’s fantastic episode, “The Eaters of Light”. It was one of those can’t-be-avoided-oh-no scenarios, but I couldn’t leave you for long! We’re back this week with “World Enough and Time”, an episode which promises Mondasian Cybermen, a deadly foe from The Doctor’s past. We also know that Missy is (maybe) learning to be good, and there might be another iteration of her popping up in this episode. (Okay, that much has been confirmed, but HOW?!)

“World Enough and Time”

  • Before we even start, the Star Trek reference? Who is circling back on him/herself? I’m guessing Missy.
  • It’s snowing, The Doctor has long hair, and he appears to be regenerating — what is happening? He’s also super not happy about it. 
  • Anyone get a glimpse of literally any feature as he regenerates? Less angry eyebrows, skin tone … ginger hair?
  • There is a truly giant ship in space, featuring seemingly different civilisations. One says “1056” in the sky and has a grey Dickensian city. One seems to have the Scottish hills from last week (again: sorry), and one might even be the wheat field from “Smile”. Oh, and they’re all hurdling toward a black hole?
  • Right at the very top, closest to the black hole, sits a little control room in which the TARDIS lands. Out pops Doctor Who — err, Missy — with an irritated Bill and Nardole in tow.
  • Missy gets the spotlight for some more of her signature quips, and man! is she fantastic. The Doctor is monitoring them from inside the TARDIS.
  • Nardole says the ship is 400 miles long and 100 miles wide. Is it possible that this entire series has taken place on this ship? … It would explain the serious lack of Daleks (two minutes in “The Pilot” and not even a threat).
  • Nardole also notices the black hole. Missy points out that it WAS moving toward the black hole, but now it’s reversing away from it, hence the distress call.
  • Yet another distress call with a seemingly empty ship? Cool cool cool. That’s not going to be scary at all.
  • Okay, maybe not empty. A man pops up on a screen, and Missy introduces herself as ‘Doctor Who’ yet again (and Bill and Nardole as ‘Exposition’ and ‘Comic Relief’ — genders, not plot functions).
  • Missy says that ‘Doctor Who’ IS The Doctor’s real name. And she dabs. I’m not sure which is more amusing.
  • The man from the screen — oh, he’s blue! Another Crespallion? — bursts into the room with a big gun. He demands to know if any of them are human. Things are using the lifts to come up because someone is human.
  • The Doctor sees that it’s serious and comes out of the TARDIS. Bill admits to being human. The Doctor tries to distract and reason with the man, giving the same speech as he did several weeks ago about being mysterious and saving everyone — more evidence that this series is just literally stacked on top of itself — but it doesn’t work.
  • The lift lands, and Bill is shot. Really shot. Giant hole in her torso kind of shot.
  • We have a little flashback where The Doctor is arguing about how Missy is ready for a trial run saving the day. He feels for her. He doesn’t really know why except that she’s kind of like him. His first friend — his man crush! They were going to see all the stars together, “but he was too busy burning them. I don’t think she saw any of them.” He thinks that, if she sees the universe, she’ll be good.
  • Bill admits that she is scared of Missy. And tries to make him promise that he won’t get her killed in the process of redeeming Missy. He agrees — with reason.
  • The lifts finally open, and a bunch of cloth-faced (uh-oh) hospital patients tell them that Bill can be ‘repaired’. They put her on a gurney, and, when The Doctor asks when they will bring her back, they answer “We. Will. Not.”
  • The Doctor leaves a message in her subconscious for when she is repaired: “Wait for me.”
  • The blue man threatens to kill The Doctor if he tries to reverse and/or open the lifts, and Missy is having none of it. “If somebody kills you and it’s not me, we’ll both be disappointed.”
  • The man claims that the ship should be empty except a skeleton crew of 50 — it’s a colony ship without the colonists yet — only there are thousands of life signs on board. The Doctor has figured it out, though. When they reversed from the black hole, they also sent a team to the other end of the ship. Then the ‘creatures’ came and took away the humans, leaving him on his own. The Doctor says he’ll never see the rest of his crew again; it’s a matter of time.
  • Oh, snap. Time moves differently close to a black hole! And the ship is all kinds of close and far away from the black hole at the same time.
  • Okay, I got there like 20 seconds before they made it really obvious. That still counts?
  • A ticking clock shows that, while it is Day 2 on Floor 0000 (where they are), it is Day 365034 on Floor 1056 (the Dickensian city).
  • Bill lives! I think. She’s opening her eyes, anyway, and there’s a man telling her that “full conversion wasn’t necessary” — yet anyway — and a day has already passed on Floor 1056 since we saw the clock a moment ago.
  • A man darts past her, noticing she is awake and telling her to ‘settle’. I’m calling it now — that’s The Master!! (Note: my husband disagrees with me. Time for a wager?)
  • Bill checks her torso where the giant hole was and receives the message from The Doctor saying to wait for him.
  • A mechanical voice is repeating the word “pain” down the hall, so she takes her IV stand and goes looking. She notices the clock — another day has passed, but it appears she is on Floor 1056 since time is moving at the appropriate speed for her there.
  • There are signs for “Conversion Theatre” (and the sound of power tools – so terrifyingly exciting!) and “In” and “Out”. She finds lots of people with cloths over their faces, and she identifies the one pressing the ‘pain’ button.
  • Bill hides behind a curtain, and a nurse (?) comes in the room with the man from before – now identified as Mr. Razor. Mr. Razor sees Bill but motions for her to stay hidden. The nurse adjusts the IV, but the man is still pressing the button.
  • The button doesn’t control medicine. It just controls the volume of the machine! It is still saying ‘Pain’ over and over, and another is silently saying ‘Kill. Me.’
  • Bill notices the big 1056 in the sky, and one of the patients is coming for her, but Mr. Razor knocks it down and offers her some tea. This show is so bloody British sometimes, it’s class.
  • Bill is worried about the patients, but Mr. Razor tells her they don’t feel pain. She is pretty sure they do, though, given what they have to say about it! He said that was just a clever lie, but she can see straight through him! He says they are people, and they are curing them! Likely story…
  • This guy is full of laughs. He’s got a little apartment in this hospital or whatever it is, and he has a screen that shows an image of The Doctor et al. on Floor 0000.
  • He says that they brought her to the hospital on the bottom of the ship to give her a shiny new heart, and she has been there for weeks, maybe many months.
  • He also says that the picture on the screen is live! It’s not a frozen image. It must be because time is moving so slowly up there compared to where they are.
  • Okay, that’s exactly what it is.
  • Oh, catch up, folks! It’s all about gravity!
  • After the briefest of interludes with The Doctor up on Floor 0000, lots of time must have passed down below. Bill is wearing real clothes now. Mr. Razor says that The Doctor has been raising his ‘sarcasm eyebrow’ for a week now.
  • The nurse interrupts, asking why Bill is in the apartment. Mr. Razor says that Bill works for him now, but the nurse says that everyone works for her and tells her to mop the floor. She also tells her that her new heart will stop working outside the hospital.
  • More time keeps passing on Floor 0000, which means SO MUCH time has passed down below. The clock eventually tells us it’s Day 365433, which means Bill has been there for 399 days so far. Poor Bill.
  • A window pops open, and, when Bill tries to look too closely at what’s outside it, all the patients turn to her and a warning beeping starts up. She remembers The Doctor asking her to wait – but how for many more years?
  • Bill asks Mr. Razor more about the patients. Conversion is permanent, and everyone on the ship is dying. The patients “are the cure. They are the future” – but they still ask to die.
  • Mr. Razor says he’ll take Bill outside, and the memory of The Doctor seems to be warning her off it. They go, though, and everyone is sick and grey. Evolution isn’t fast enough to keep up with the ship’s rust and fumes and OHHHH HE JUST SAID ‘UPGRADED’!
  • Operation Exodus to take command. Huh. There are many dangers.
  • An expedition to Floor 507 to a solar farm never came back. Is that, maybe, the wheat field? More stacking!
  • Bill’s heart starts to zap her and fail, and she must return to the hospital … though she’s also being watched from a window, so maybe it was on purpose.
  • One morning, Bill notices The Doctor is at the lift. He must be coming for her!
  • Nardole suggests that, since it’s been ten minutes for them, it must have been years for her. Maybe they could just use the TARDIS to go back and get it right?
  • Oh, the TARDIS isn’t accurate this close to a black hole. Black hole meet plot hole. Oh, no, where’d it go?
  • Bill is very gullible for being so clever, isn’t she? Or am I just reading too much into this idea that Mr. Razor = The Master?
  • He says she mustn’t ask about the lifts. If she asks him, he’ll have to answer. He’s either simple or very manipulative. I don’t know, maybe I’ve got him all wrong. It’s been years now, and he hasn’t harmed her.
  • Okay, more thoughts about the series stacking – is it just me or are the clothes Bill wears at different times quite like the ones from other episodes? The big wooly jumper, the entirely-grey ensemble… Thinking aloud here.
  • Man, that mask makes Mr. Razor completely unidentifiable!
  • He takes her to the operating theatre, where some of the patients (‘work in progress’) are slumped in corners. One has a silver hat – looking more and more like Cybermen to me!
  • The nurse and doctor from her earlier surgery sneak up and say it’s Bill’s turn for conversion. Mr. Razor sold her out.
  • They keep saying it’s for her own good. The world isn’t made for flesh. They can stop her from caring about the pain – with a Cyberman helmet!!!
  • The lifts finally open. The Doctor leaves Missy to check out the computers.
  • Mr. Razor wants to interact with Missy. He is excited. She is less so. He says it took him a while to work out who she is.
  • The Doctor and Nardole find an operating theatre. Is it a different one? Are they too late?
  • Missy starts to realise that the ship isn’t human. It’s like a twin planet to Earth. This is at the same time that Nardole discovers Operation Exodus, and The Doctor finds a complete Mondasian Cyberman.
  • Mr. Razor has a gun on Missy. He says The Doctor will never forgive her for what she did to his little friend. She protests, but he insists that she did – just a long time ago.
  • The Cyberman recognises The Doctor. Uh-oh.
  • BINGO! Mr. Razor IS The Master! Vindication!
  • The Cyberman is also Bill Potts. She has the wee tear in the eye now!
  • The Genesis of the Cybermen, eh? A bit on the nose?

I don’t know what anyone is going to do at this stage. Is Missy going to stay on The Doctor’s side? Is The Master going to bring her back to his madness? Is there ANY way to save Bill? Is this all a game? A projection? What does it mean if the series has actually been stacked in this ship all along? I have so many more questions than answers!

If you want to see how the BBC marked this particular special episode, check out what they did in Cardiff with Steven Moffat, Pearl Mackie, and a 90-piece orchestra!

Let us know your latest theories for the finale next week and how much you’re enjoying this series of Doctor Who by chatting with us on Twitter using #PWDW and @PopWrapped. Remember that you can see Doctor Who next Saturday in the UK on BBCOne at the even earlier time of 6:30pm (#StopItBBC) and in the US on BBCAmerica at its regular time of 9/8c.

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