Doctor Who - WORLD ENOUGH AND TIME (S10E11) Review: Time’s Wingèd Chariot Hurries Near

Steven Moffat delivers a true Nightmare in Silver as the finale begins

Oh boy. That was something.

World Enough and Time might just have some of the loftiest expectations placed upon an episode in Doctor Who history. It’s the first time two Masters have ever been seen on screen, the return of the Mondasian Cybermen and the beginning of the end of Capaldi and Moffat’s tenure on the show. Whatever people like to say about Moffat, it’s hard to deny that his writing credit on an episode is enough to drive anticipation through the roof. I personally have greatly looked forward to every episode he writes, to the extent that I’m actually quite sad about his complete departure from the show. But I can always waffle about that later. For now, we have World Enough and Time; an episode that if not for having Heaven Sent last series, I’d be inclined to call it the show’s ballsiest episode. There’s a lot to take away from it, but if I had to single it down to one thing, it would be how flipping nightmarish it all was. I thought about this thing for days. It might be difficult to tell right now just how successful WEAT is, given how we’re only halfway through the story and I’m gonna be racing through this as (at the time of writing) it’s about an hour or so until the finale airs. Let’s dig in.

SPOILERS, SPOILERS, ALL THE SPOILERS

Over the last few weeks, we’ve seen Missy gradually appear to shed her evil ways and try her hand at being good for a change. Eager to test this brewing change, the Doctor plonks her, Bill and Nardole into a situation, with the intention of seeing how she does. The situation in question? A 400 mile long spaceship reversing away from a black hole. Our characters find themselves at the top of the ship – the one closest to the black hole.

I’d assumed Missy’s allegiances would have been brought front and center for this episode, but instead we get something quite different. After a bit of larking around on the spaceship (which I’ll get to later), Bill is fatally shot through the chest by a janitor seeking to protect himself from whoever is currently hurtling up the elevators towards them – the whoever in question being particularly interested in humans. Bill is whisked away towards the bottom end of the ship by what looks like a group of hospital patients with cloth faces and attached drip stands. They say she will be repaired, but will not return.

That’s only the first 5-10 minutes or so.

There’s a lot to go over in WEAT, but as the majority of the episode is concerned with Bill’s storyline, I’ll start there. See, the black hole’s affect on gravity is distorting time – the stronger the gravitational pull, the slower time goes. That means that whilst 10 minutes passes at the Doctor’s end of the ship closest to the black hole, years have passed for Bill.

Bill awakens to find herself in a hospital ward, complete with more of what looks like the patients that we saw from earlier. There’s quite an The Empty Child vibe to a lot of these scenes, both in the aesthetic which is vaguely WW2-esque and in the atmosphere. Creepy enough as it is, Moffat also takes a cue from his Series 8 episode Dark Water, by adding a twist that’s likely to horrify adults more than children. Whilst one patient repeatedly pushes a button that calls out the word ‘pain’, Bill sees a nurse temper with his drip stand, causing the patient’s cries to diminish. The reveal that this drip stand is not medicinal, but is in fact a volume switch might be one of the more horrifying revelations in any episode of the show. Every patient in the hospital is in constant pain, yet most of them of had their volume whacked right down so others cannot hear them.

It’s this kind of work that makes the patients, who are later revealed to be the early stages of the Mondasian Cybermen, so effective and possibly the most impressive part of the whole episode. Mondasian Cybermen aren’t the best looking Doctor Who monster in the world, with Moffat saying in a 2014 interview that “…they look like boys with [sweaters] pulled over their heads.”

And yet the slow build of their appearance as the episode progresses means that we don’t just accept their slightly creaky looks but we have something of an understanding of just what they are. Obviously Doctor Who can’t go full blood and gore, but the body horror on display (a term I’ve seen thrown around in quite a few reviews) is utterly disturbing. When the full Mondasian Cyberman steps out of the shadows and begins to speak, complete with sing-song monotone and stretchy cloth mouths, I was audibly horrified. For the first time since Blink or Silence in the Library or maybe The Waters of Mars, a Doctor Who episode really freaked me out to the point where I was thinking about it for ages after it had aired. To do all this with a monster that I previously thought looked a bit naff…this really was probably the most surprising element of the whole episode for me.

Back at the beginning of the episode, we also get a discussion revolving around the Doctor’s real name, with Missy telling Bill and Nardole that it is in fact…‘Doctor Who’. More than any other writer, Moffat really has put quite a lot of attention and focus on the Doctor’s real name, often cleverly, sometimes erring on the side of overwrought (Dalek parliament, I’m looking at you). After all the times it’s been brought up, however, this might actually be my favourite. I guess when you’re writing your last three episodes and you’ve already got a reputation for mucking about with established Doctor Who mythology, you might as well have the cojones to go out their and claim that the Doctor’s name is just ‘Doctor Who’. Kind of puts a dampener on the level of importance you bestowed previously, but hey-ho. Of course, Missy could be teasing, but this is likely as close as we’ll ever get to being told the Doctor’s actual name. Hilariously, if it’s true, that would mean that all the times people have called the character ‘Doctor Who’ rather than ‘The Doctor’, they’ve actually been correct. Perhaps that answers why Moffat has referred to him as ‘Doctor Who’ for a while now – a thing which I’ll admit I’ve been quietly puzzled by.

Gah what else is there? I love the premise which is just fantastically psychedelic Doctor Who. I love the realisation of the ship, including that pan along it at the beginning of the episode. Speaking of the beginning of the episode, that (very) cold open was terrific though I’m not sure what else to really say about it right now other than ‘ooh’. Oh and John Simm’s Master disguise (Razor) is great, though seeing as we don’t see much of him out of the disguise, I’m saving most of my discussion of him for next episode.

There’s a lot to love about WEAT, though I feel slightly hesitant to go completely overboard with praising the episode just yet. The first reason is simple: there’s still a part left to go – a part that contains most of the story that we don’t really know about ahead of its broadcast. A lot has been said about the BBC’s decision to spoil what were clearly supposed to be twist endings of the episode by announcing John Simm’s return before the Series had even started. I imagine the surprise of his reveal would have shot WEAT above Extremis if not for the marketing – a statement that is worthy of its own full discussion. I’m not going to spend any more time on that here, though.

The second reason revolves around the presentation of Bill’s time at the bottom of the ship. Given the episode’s strength in selling and communicating the Mondasian Cybermen to the audience, as well as Moffat and Talalay’s previously showcased ability to sell the scope of an episode like Heaven Sent, it’s a little strange that Bill’s time aboard the ship is a little hard to grasp. When Bill stands at a window, wondering how many more years will pass before she sees the Doctor again, it kind of took me by surprise as to how much time might have already passed. The biggest indication we have is her relationship to Razor which gradually grows warmer and warmer up until his betrayal. That’s good and does somewhat ground the passage of Bill’s time, but I think these scenes needed something more to really sell the gravity (hahaha) of the situation. Maybe some more visual cues and information?

It’s a small complaint in comparison to the rest of the episode in which the writing and direction are both superlative. But it stands out enough for me to bring it up.

Really, a lot of the stuff I love about WEAT is recurrent from Moffat’s best work. It’s phenomenally written, with little touches and jokes all over the place – ones that really push the episode further but the next episode is starting in 15 minutes and I want to finish this review so I can watch it! Bottom line is: WEAT is superlative television and probably the creepiest episode of the show since before Moffat took over. Somehow it exceeded it’s lofty expectations. Let’s see how they follow it up…

Verdict:

★★★★ ½

Fantastic. Brilliant. I am pumped for the next one, which is starting in about 10 minutes!

Next Time:

THE DOCTOR FALLS

It looks great. Sorry, gotta dash!

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Some other notes:

This episode had quite a 'Classic Who' vibe to it. Obviously there's the Mondasian Cybermen and the whole 'Genesis of the Cyberman' thing (side note: amazing), but there's other things that add to this too, such as the way the black and white monitor that Bill and The Master watch makes the events at the top of the ship look like an old black and white episode (I think it was Radio Times that pointed this out, but I can't find exactly where they said it to link back to.

It also intrigued me enough to take a peek at both the 'Classic' era of the show (basically peeking around at bits on YouTube) as well as the Big Finish audio story Spare Parts. My interest in 'Classic Who' is, generally, not desperately high, so it's pretty impressive for WEAT to make me want to go back and check out some of the older stuff. I've never really given much thought to the Big Finish audios, either, so doubly impressive in that case.

Spare Parts is a Big Finish audio Doctor Who adventure starring Peter Davison's Fifth Doctor. Prior to WEAT, it was considered the closest the show would get to offering a 'Genesis of the Cybermen' storyline. I haven't got very far in the story yet (I've only finished 'Part One') so I'm not entirely sure if WEAT is incompatible enough with Spare Parts to wipe it completely from the Doctor Who canon. I do like what I've listened to so far, however.

Also, the episode's title is a reference to Andrew Marvell's poem 'To His Coy Mistress'. The whole poem can be read through this link, but I'll copy in an extract as well:

Had we but world enough and time,

This coyness, lady, were no crime.

We would sit down, and think which way

To walk, and pass our long love’s day.

[…]

But at my back I always hear

Time’s wingèd chariot hurrying near;

And yonder all before us lie

Deserts of vast eternity.

Thy beauty shall no more be found;

Nor, in thy marble vault, shall sound

My echoing song;

[...]

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