orelseatlastsheunderstoodit replied to your post “me, watching “the doctor falls” three years after the fact”
What do you think about the episode, Ren?
Thank you <333
I am fresh off of watching it and will probably reblog with more thoughts in the morning after I’ve rewatched and processed more of it but it’s hard for me to go to sleep with all these thoughts so this is gonna be two parts, I guess.
Anyway tl;dr I loved it. I think it’s my new favorite series finale. It’s also emotional for me in a few ways, particularly bc again, I never finished series 10 while it was airing due to a lot of mental health + transition stuff I was going thru at the time, and I’m really happy I was able to reconnect with Doctor Who in such an emotional way at a time now, when I both really need it and I’m in a headspace to receive it. Also, surprisingly, I avoided a lot of spoilers for this episode. I obviously knew that Heather came back (that one’s hard to avoid) and I had a feeling that Simm!Master in disguise was the guy in the first part, but overall I avoided a lot.
I’ve also been wanting for like, YEARS, since 2013 at least, to see a Steven Moffat episode with Simm!Master. I really, really like John Simm and Simm!Master is a hot mess but he’s my hot mess problematic fave. He is my “you were obsessed with this thing at 14 and you will never let it go.” And I thought it was never going to happen. And then it did. And then it was GOOD. And I’m beyond happy, probably the most happiest, about having an actual canon Simm!Master episode without the drums.
He was very much a secondary character, and that’s okay. This episode wasn’t for him. The amount we got is just what I needed and I feel like having any more would’ve been overkill. Because what I most can’t get over is how absolutely amazing it was to see Missy’s character arc made literal. I LOVED watching them interact with each other. Michelle Gomez is amazing, and I think Missy is a much better Master, but there was something really satisfying about seeing it? Literally laid out like that? About how Missy is just more of a complex person in literal comparison to her past.
Idk if it was intentional but the fact that he’s like, repeatedly the King of the Wasteland. In every episode he’s in, he cannot help but burn it all down and stand in the ruins of it. The destructiveness is like, impulsive. The image of him standing over the mobilizing Cyberman army when they’re on the roof just like, gah. I love it. I love how every time we saw him and Missy together just the look on their faces was different.
I cannot get over the scene where she stabs him. I’m so happy I didn’t see any gifs of it or anything so I could watch it play out for the first time on video. Because she says it. She tells him how he burns hot, how he’s chaotic, and she loved that but she just cannot be it. That’s not the world anymore. He is straight out of the time war messy. But she’s moved past that. To an extent, Twelve has moved past that. He’s grown with and beyond his time war trauma. But Simm!Master hasn’t. And the fact that he laughs. That he congratulates her on a job well done. I just like, melted into myself. It was kind of beautiful.
I think this is the end of Missy though I don’t know. I think him killing her was really tragic, but I get it. I don’t know if she can fully complete her redemption arc and what that would even mean for the Master. Tbh, I’m not even sure she wanted to have a redemption arc? I liked what they alluded to a bit in “The Lie of the Land” of there being more than one kind of good, but I’m not convinced, in the end, her aim was anything but to do what it takes to stand with the Doctor. Morality neutral. I have some Series 12 spoilers via tumblr so I know a bit about the future, but not enough for it to really matter.
And this is not even getting into how cool an origin story for the Cybermen (well, the Mondasian Cybermen) I think this is. And the whole plot device of the black hole time relativity is so smart and such a cool conflict. And the fact that like, essentially Simm!Master ended up on Gallifrey, they fixed him up, and then they were like “please leave” I thought that was so funny.
Anyway I’m rapidly losing coherency but thank you for asking so I could go off about this. I am probably going to write something in the morning too when I’ve rewatched the episode and not coming off the excitement of just having seen it.
