'Dark Water' (Story Code 8.11) by Steven Moffat

“You know the key strategic weakness of the human race? The dead outnumber the living.” - Missy

Walking through the park, Danny gets a phone call from Clara. She tells him she loves him, and then waits for Danny’s response. But it never comes. Instead a distraught woman comes onto the line and tells Clara that Danny has just been hit by a car… Danny’s death hits Clara hard, her grief turning from denial, to fatalistic acceptance, and finally to anger… Joining the Doctor in the TARDIS, an overly-cheerful Clara asks to see a volcano; but as her friend sets the controls, Clara surreptitiously collects all of the Doctor’s spare TARDIS keys from where he has secreted them about the ship. Clara then slaps a sleep patch onto the Doctor’s neck, rendering him unconscious… The Doctor wakes to find himself lying outside the TARDIS, which is perched on a ledge high above a pit of molten lava. Standing before him is a very angry Clara. Holding up the seven TARDIS keys she took earlier, Clara threatens to throw them into the lava unless the Doctor uses the TARDIS to change history and save Danny. But the Doctor refuses, knowing that such an action would cause a paradox that would damage Time. As Clara throws the keys away one by one, the Doctor remains resolute in his response – in fact he actually orders Clara to cast them into the pit. Having destroyed all the keys, Clara sinks to her knees in tears; but the Doctor tells her that he knows their situation isn’t real: the patch didn’t send him to sleep, it created a shared dream state – they are both still in the TARDIS. Waking up, the Doctor explains to Clara that he allowed the scenario to happen so that he could find out how far she would go. When Clara asks what happens next, the Doctor replies “go to Hell”; Clara takes this to mean he wants her to leave, and is astonished when the Doctor tells her that, despite her betrayal of his trust, he will help her find a way to save Danny. Switching off the TARDIS’ safeguards and navcom, the Doctor plugs Clara into the ship’s telepathic circuits and orders her to think about Danny; to their astonishment, the TARDIS dematerialises… Meanwhile, Danny wakes up in a drab office, where he is greeted by a suited man named Seb, who asks him to fill in some administrative forms. Confused, Danny opens the room’s curtains and sees that he is inside a skyscraper in a massive metropolis, which covers the interior of a vast sphere. Seb explains that Danny is dead and now in the Underworld, otherwise known as the Nethersphere and the Promised Land… Having located the most likely place in Clara’s timestream that will re-intersect with Danny, the TARDIS materialises inside a huge, columned hall. Stepping out of the ship the Doctor and Clara discover that they have arrived inside a mausoleum stacked with hundreds of glass tanks, each filled with a clear fluid – and a skeleton seated on a chair. Wondering why anyone would build tombs with windows, the Doctor and Clara walk further into the mausoleum; they fail to see the skeletons turn their heads to watch them go… The Doctor finds a holographic device that welcomes him and Clara to the headquarters of ‘3W’, an organisation devoted to finding a better life for the deceased. The Doctor and Clara then meet Missy – who promptly gives the Time Lord a crazy, full-on snog! As the stunned Doctor gasps for air, Missy explains that she is a ‘Mobile Intelligence Systems Interface’ a self-repairing welcome droid maintained by one Doctor Chang. Missy then yells for said doctor, who immediately appears and offers the Doctor and Clara his condolences and the opportunity to speak to a dead person. As Chang leads his astounded guests away, the insane Missy turns to look at a black orb with red lights, which floats in the air nearby… In the Nethersphere, Seb takes Danny to a balcony atop the high-rise and proceeds to ask more questions for his forms. When asked if he ever killed anyone, Danny has a flashback to his time in the army, to a time in combat when he inadvertently killed an innocent civilian. Hearing from Seb that he has a visitor, Danny turns and sees the boy he killed waiting for him… Doctor Chang takes the Doctor and Clara to his office/laboratory, which contains another of the tanks with a seated skeleton, this one labelled ‘Doctor Skarosa’. Chang explains that each skeleton is encased inside a special support exoskeleton, which is rendered invisible by the ‘Dark Water’ inside the tank, a special preservative that only shows organic matter. Back in the Nethersphere, Danny tries talking to the young boy, but his apologies fall on deaf ears, and the boy runs off. After using his psychic paper to pass himself off as a government inspector, the Doctor listens as Chang explains how ‘3W’ was founded by Doctor Skarosa after he decoded the white noise heard over television transmissions; using a translator Skarosa heard the three words “don’t cremate me”, which led him to the horrific realisation that the dead remain conscious, and still connected to their bodies in the corporeal world. In the Nethersphere, Danny hears the same information from Seb, and recalls with mounting horror that he too is to be cremated. As the Doctor denounces 3W’s operation as fakery, Clara becomes distracted by a beeping noise; to her astonishment she then hears Danny’s voice issuing from the computer on Chang’s desk – 3W’s systems have telepathically scanned Clara’s mind and identified a match in the Nethersphere. After instructing Clara to ask specific questions to confirm whether or not it really is Danny, the Doctor rushes off to investigate 3W further. Meanwhile, by the tombs, Missy claps her hands – and all the skeletons stand in abeyance. Acting as one they reach out their skeletal hands and activate their tombs, causing the Dark Water to begin draining away. When the Doctor and Chang arrive on the scene, Missy confesses that she is actually Chang’s boss, and then kills her minion with a disintegrator. Looking at the tombs, the Doctor watches as the Dark Water level drops to reveal what really stands within: Cybermen! The Doctor orders Missy to stop the release of his old enemies, but she just ignores him and turns to look at the floating globe: the Nethersphere. However, the Doctor recognises the device for what it really is, a Matrix dataslice hard-drive – Time Lord technology! Missy explains that she has been uploading the minds of the dead into the Nethersphere and then editing them to remove their emotions; after upgrading their original bodies into Cybermen, Missy then reinstates the minds of her captives to create her own army of Cybermen from cyberspace. The Doctor is furious, and demands to know who Missy really is; but all his adversary will admit is that she is a Time Lady. Rushing to the mausoleum’s doors the Doctor bursts outside and discovers that he is actually in the heart of London – 3W is inside St Paul’s Cathedral! Back in Chang’s office, Clara vows to Danny that she will find a way to be with him; but Danny forbids her to throw away her life, and deliberately tricks Clara into thinking he is an imposter. As Clara turns off the communicator, Danny breaks into tears; Seb offers to help him, giving Danny the option of using the iPad to delete his feelings… Seeing that the skeleton of Doctor Skarosa has been transformed into a Cyberman, Clara leaps to her feet and runs for the door. Throughout 3W, the tanks open and the Cybermen step out; marching in unison they stomp out of the cathedral and into the surrounding streets. The Doctor tries warning the assembled crowds of Londoners and tourists, but his cries are declaimed by Missy. When the Doctor again demands that Missy reveal her identity, the Time Lady finally relents: ‘Missy’ is short for ‘Mistress’ – the female equivalent of ‘Master’! The Doctor is shocked at the return of his old nemesis… the Cybermen march out over London… and in the Nethersphere, Danny struggles with the decision to delete his mind, and then sees the reflection of the young boy standing behind him…


Peter Capaldi (The Doctor), Jenna Coleman (Clara), Samuel Anderson (Danny), Michelle Gomez (Missy), Joan Blackham (Woman), Sheila Reid (Gran), Chris Addison (Seb), Andrew Leung (Doctor Chang), Bradley Ford (Fleming), Antonio Bourouphael (Boy), Jeremiah Krage (Cyberman), Nicholas Briggs (Voice of the Cybermen), Nigel Betts (Mr Armitage)

Directed by Rachel Talalay
Produced by Peter Bennett
Executive Producers Steven Moffat and Brian Minchin
A BBC Wales production

TX (BBC 1 & BBC 1 HD):
1st November 2014 @ 8.15 pm


Notes:
*Featuring the Twelfth Doctor, Clara and Danny

*To preserve the mystery of what happens next, there was no 'next time' trailer after the episode