Cybermen aren't respected enough to lead a two part final. They've always got to throw in the bloody Master (or whoever Missy is supposed to be) or the Daleks. It hurts me as a Cyber fanatic that they appear in Death in Heaven and The Timeless Children, two of the most damaging episodes of the entire show. The silly stuff in Nemesis seems positively lightweight compared to the monumental f*ck ups in those two episodes. No doubt Russell will call them Cyber People from now on.
Silver Nemesis is actually a good story that does what DW should do more than any Cyber story since The Next Doctor. IE it is creative and imaginative and features an eclectic mix that you wouldn't find in any other show. Witches, Nazis, Cyborgs from space etc. Imagination is actually one of DW's strengths as a show, not smashing up its past to excuse lazy writing and teaching the plebs to be as good as you like Paul Cornell claims. Also Silver Nemesis was the first supernatural McCoy episode which would be the main style for the rest of the era, giving us great adventures like Fenric and Survival. The supernatural style is also what allowed the final DW era to be decades ahead of its time and do things that Buffy and Supernatural would be praised and seen as genre defining for doing years later. Also in contrast to Clara and Capaldi's toxic shit, 7 and Ace are an awesome duo in it, and rather than try and murder/suicide the Doctor, and she's so fabulous her boyfriend's love for her destroys the Cybermen. Ace is a great role model for little girls, being a proto Eliza Dushku, kicking some serious Cyber ass, and we get to see how much the Doctor cares about her when he burns two Cybermen to save her in a hilarious scene, rather than be a simp for a bitch who tried to murder suicide him (though even then Moffat forgot that Capaldi could have just snapped his fingers to open the TARDIS, mind you the Doctor had just drugged Clara anyway which totally isn't creepy.)
Silver Nemesis' only problem is that it is too similar to Remembrance and the Cybermen are a bit poorly served in some scenes, but it's an enjoyable romp that you can get a lot out of. (It even inspired a story of mine about a witch fighting robot men as I liked that part of its premise so much.)
Death in Heaven meanwhile I agree with Rushy is the single worst DW episode. It and Dark Water undid 7 years worth of good feeling among the general public built up by Eccelston, Tennant and Smithy. Whilst pretentious twats/shills on reddit might make out the Capaldi era was a golden age, when the new series stopped being a silly drama for tween girls, and was the proper thinking man's era etc. Among normal people in the real world that first Capaldi season made them universally think "f*ck this." However it's worth noting that viewers did remain stable until the end of the season, despite some complaints about certain stories like Kill The Moon, with it being Death in Heaven that was the final straw. DW shed over 2 million viewers for the next season after Death in Heaven and has never recovered barring a very brief novelty for the first female Doctor. The BBC themselves lost complete faith in it, hence why only 4 full seasons would be made after 2014 until 2024. Worse anyone normal in the fandom also f*cked off not long after this abomination, with the fandom then as a result becoming a tiny, insular, obnoxious, sex obsessed clique of hysterical neo liberal, self righteous, bullying twats and sad, middle aged twats who felt they could relive their trendy student days at scumbag college by pandering to them.
There are so many ways it was bollocks and Rushy has covered most of them but I'll just cover my main points of hatred.
Cyber Brig: Does it need said? Having the Brig become a rotting cadaver trapped in a cyber suit floating around in space forever is a horrific ending to the character, and it serves no purpose in the plot other than cheap fan service. Also the idea he suddenly knew his daughter was falling and then flew to the exact same graveyard as the Doctor somehow is ridiculous. I'd also argue that his heroic moment is out of character too. Since when did the Brig just shoot someone who was unarmed and helpless? By this episodes logic the Brig would have shot Delgado at the end of the Daemons? Also it's undone the following year as we knew it would be, so actually he helped Pissy Missy escape to kill more people.
Missy: Without doubt the single worst version of any long running villain. She has absolutely nothing in common with the Master. She lacks his motivation to conquer the galaxy, she is in love with the Doctor, she isn't hypnotic, she isn't particularly manipulative. Even Simm though not entirely faithful captured all of those elements of his character. I'd say she is the Master in name only but even then she isn't. She is just Moffat's fantasy, dominatrix girl repackaged for the fourth time. River Song, Irene Adler, Tasha Lem, all the exact same personalities for the most part, and the same stupid teenage boy's fantasy of an arc where you tame the bad girl, hell Michelle Gomez even looks like the actresses he hired to play Tasha and Irene. She also brings nothing new to the cliche either. Whilst Simm may have drawn from the Joker, Callisto and Carnage, at least he was a new take on it, even just by being an intergalactic version. In fact Missy is a worse version of the Moffat cliche, as at least Tasha, River and Irene were genuinely sympathetic in some ways, their crimes never hurt anyone, (or when River's did she was brainwashed and had been abused.) However Missy kills scores of innocent people in this story and the Doctor still likes her? He f*cking kisses her minutes after as far as he knows she has killed the daughter of his oldest and dearest friend and after she has killed an adorable fangirl? Way to make him look like a sociopath.
Aside from f*cking up the Master and being a pathetic attempt by Moffat to win favour with his millennial critics who called him a sexist. Missy is an absolutely shocking excuse for a female villain. Hilariously you'd think feminism had never happened. Every single aspect of her character is about winning the male hero round. Then there is also the fact that he goes easier on her because she is a woman. It reeks of old pulp stories from the 30s and 40s where the female villain had to be let off with it (something that the Adam West Batman in the 60s took the piss out of as old fashioned and sexist) and she was in love with the male hero, because duh, that's all women were interested in, finding a man. A view shared by Moffat btw, look at this quote from him.
There’s this issue you’re not allowed to discuss: that women are needy. Men can go for longer, more happily, without women. That’s the truth. We don’t, as little boys, play at being married – we try to avoid it for as long as possible. Meanwhile women are out there hunting for husbands.
That completely explains Missy doesn't it? All I can say is far from feeling threatened by Missy as twats on reddit and twitter have said, I think thank f*ck I grew up with female villains who were genuinely scary and threatening and not ones whose whole thing was wanting to shag the male hero and who he went easy on because ah well she's just a little woman.
Yeah thank god Missy is finally going to give women a chance to be a formidable archenemy, who is a legit threat to male characters. Never seen that before ever.
In all fairness the first two videos clearly made me and that generation of little boys grow up to be masochists LOL, (especially 1:17 in the Glory video, Jesus Christ James Marsters must have had to have taken about 40 cold showers before filming that scene. Lucky bastard. According to rumours he shagged the actress who played Glory not long after. I wonder if she brought out the chains again? I'd have insisted.)
Still that's a lot better than a faux badgirl like Missy who in spite of killing people is apparently a soft marshmallowy, piglity sort of creature. (PS I'm not having a go at whoever made that fan vid of Missy and 12. That would be a really shitty thing to do, take someone's video and mock it online and encourage others to dog pile on it. I kind of did that when I shared the Missy/Doctor erotic art once, even then it was more of a look how far these characters have come, but I still feel sick over that with guilt. I'm only using this video as it's a good way of showing the sappy stuff Moff put in their relationship overall rather than just one scene. Also I respect this person for actually admitting that is what Moffat intended. So many others will say that there was no romance between Missy and the Doctor, whilst saying there was between Delgado and Pertwee! If you have to deny reality that much to justify Missy, maybe you should just admit she's shit?)
Of course I'm not saying you can never have a female villain be redeemable, or even in love with the male hero. I don't want to go too much down one way, but still when you have a female version of a male villain who wants to take over the universe, and she in contrast wants to be with her fella above all else, and she cries, compared to the male version who is an asshole, yeah that's quite frankly a sexist piss take.
Osgood's death: Okay fair enough, I am in love with Ingrid Oliver LOL, but honestly that's not the reason this scene annoys me. I mean hey I'm also in love with Claire Stansfield and my favourite role of hers sees her get stabbed, blown up, electrocuted. To be honest I feel bad for Ingrid in that this was her first proper serious scene that should have given her a chance to flex her acting muscles but it is absolute bollocks.
As I've pointed out before the guards are like the ones in Monty Python guarding the prince. They don't react when Missy puts her lipstick on, showing she got free, and they are standing right next to her, and she has threatened to kill everybody there and best of all one of them doesn't react when the guard next to him is shot! Also how the f*ck did Missy put the handcuffs in Osgood's pocket and how did she manage to teleport around the room? Also it serves no purpose in the story whatsoever and was clearly Moff making it up as he went along. He obviously didn't want to kill Osgood off as Ingrid is a great actress, adored by the fans and enthusiastic about the show, so he had to undo it a few episodes later, which once again helped to undermine the show by making it look like a toothless Disney show where nothing matters and nobody dies.
The only even remotely effective bit of Osgood's death is Missy counting how many seconds she has left to live, but even that wasn't original. Believe it or not Moff stole that from Xena. Hilariously my favourite female villain Alti does exactly that. See here at 2:25 (oh ignore the title, that's click bait, she just gives her CPR which isn't a kiss unless you're Peter Griffin LOL.)
So yeah even that scene comes from something else. It's even a dork fan girl of the main hero that's the victim. I don't mind people taking things from others to be clear, but when that's the only worthwhile thing in the entire episode it does feel like it's only good because Moff took it from something else. (PS why can't Alti in that outfit invade my dreams and hurt me?)
I suppose the only good thing to come out of the Osgood scene and the episode in general is that a lot of horny fans were inspired to write fics where Missy and Osgood became a lesbian couple and were into bondage, though even then as hot as Michelle Gomez and Ingrid Oliver shagging is, it's kind of ruined by the fact that this is what their characters actually are underneath.
Yeah sorry I'll never understand Moffat and Chibnall's desire to make bog monsters from classic who into things they find sexy? (See also Cyberboobs and the Titlurian.)
On top of that its tone is all over the f*cking place. We have brutal, drawn out, sadistic psychopathic killings, disturbing ideas of the dead being aware, mixed in with Santa Claus? It's a f*cking mess from start to finish.
I think those are enough reasons to view it as the worst story pre Timeless Children LOL, and Rushy's list covers everything else I despise like President Doctor.
What kind of an evil plan is that? "Oh, these two are kinda dysfunctional, better make them friends so they can... ?"
