The Doctor finds out that her entire past is predicated on a lie.
SUMMARY
The Master (Sacha Dhawan) brings the Doctor (Jodie Whittaker) to Gallifrey where he forces her into the Matrix, the computer that holds all of the knowledge of the Time Lords. He reveals that he was hacking it when he discovered a hidden cache of information. It turns out that Gallifrey was once home to the native Shobogans. Tecteun (Seylan Baxter), a Shobogan astronaut, discovered a child that was capable of regenerating infinitely. Tecteun figured out how to copy the child’s ability and applied it to all of the Shobogans, making them the Time Lords. Tecteun limited the Time Lord’s ability to regenerate, but the “timeless child” can regenerate forever. The Master reveals that the Doctor is actually the timeless child, but that the Time Lords kept erasing her memory. The Doctor, as the child, was inducted into a clandestine Time Lord organization called the Division, but even the Master doesn’t know what it did.
The Master shrinks Ashad (Patrick O’Kane), allowing him to steal the Cyberium and combine the Time Lord genes with the Cybermen, creating a race of immortal “Cyberlords.” The Master plans to use these to take over the universe. The Doctor manages to escape the Matrix by showing it all of her memories to overload it just as Ryan, Graham, and Yaz (Tosin Cole, Bradley Walsh, Mandip Gill) arrive with Ko Sharmus (Ian McElhinney), Ravio (Julie Graham), and Yedlarmi (Alex Austin).
The Doctor discovers that the shrunken Ashad was in possession of the “Death Particle,” a weapon that destroys all organic life on a planet, held as a weapon for the last Cybermen. The Doctor sends all of the survivors away so she can detonate the particle, but finds herself unable to do so. Ko Sharmus appears and detonates the particle as penance for his failings, while the Doctor escapes. She makes it back to her TARDIS on Earth, just in time for her to be imprisoned by the Judoon.
END SUMMARY
So, the season comes to an end and, true to the promise, this episode delivered a revelation that changed the entire history of Doctor Who. It turns out that there aren’t just 13 Doctors, a War Doctor, and a Ruth, but that there are, in fact, probably an enormous number of incarnations of the Doctor throughout time and space. While this might seem like it’s coming out of nowhere, the episode actually makes reference to this being proposed in a much earlier episode. 44 years earlier, in fact. In the Fourth Doctor serial “The Brain of Morbius,” a machine hooked into the Doctor’s brain shows the past regenerations of the Doctor and then a host of other faces. The intention of the scene at the time had been to show a number of surprise previous incarnations of the Doctor. Later, when the twelve regeneration limit was imposed, the writers ignored the faces. In this episode, we see all of these faces again, revealing that they were, in fact, previous faces of the Doctor. So, this episode really just confirms something that the show was supposed to tell us years ago.
I definitely enjoyed the idea of the Master once again trying to create and command an army of Cybermen, but it makes a lot of sense for him to try to use the Time Lords as the basis for them in order to make the Cybermen unbeatable. Sacha Dhawan’s version of the Master is interesting, because he represents a combination of the technology of the earlier incarnations of the master, the humor of the John Simm version of the Master, and the cruel insanity of Missy. I mean, he committed Time Lord genocide… somehow. However, I will say that this episode suffers from a pointless Deus Ex Machina in the form of the Death Particle. It’s literally the exact weapon needed at the exact time it’s needed. The Master leaves it for the Doctor as a test of her principles, but it’s insane that Ashad just had it in the first place but didn’t bring it up previously. It’s even more frustrating because he could just have mentioned it WHEN HE THREATENED TO DESTROY THE EARTH TWO EPISODES AGO.
Still, while there definitely have been better season finales and the showrunners still have trouble with sincere emotional moments, it was a pretty good cap to the season.
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