'Death in Heaven' (Story Code 8.12) by Steven Moffat

“The dead are coming home, Doctor. All shiny and new. In twenty-four hours the human race as you know it will cease to exist.” – Missy

In the offices of 3W, the Cyberman that was once Doctor Skarosa trains its gun at Clara and prepares to shoot. But Clara is undaunted, and buys herself some time with the wild bluff that she is really the Doctor in a new body! Meanwhile, on the streets of London, the invading Cybermen are received not as a threat but more of an attraction, as tourists pose for selfies next to the metal giants. Missy and the Doctor suddenly find themselves surrounded by armed soldiers and plain-clothes operatives – the forces of UNIT have arrived! Chief Scientific Officer Kate Lethbridge-Stewart joins them, accompanied by Osgood; but when she faces off against the Cybermen her opponents all strike their chest panels, activating booster rockets in their boots that propel them into the sky. As the Cybermen fly off, the dome of St Paul’s Cathedral unfurls, releasing even more Cybermen into the sky. When the Doctor explains to Kate that Missy disguised the interior of the building using dimensional engineering, the renegade Time Lady (and former Time Lord) reveals that there are ninety-one Cybermen at large – one for every major city and town in the world. One of the Cybermen remains in the sky above London, and then self-destructs: the resulting explosion unleashes an ominous black cloud – the Cybermen are pollinating the planet… In the Nethersphere, the AI interface called Seb tells Danny and the young boy that they will be going home; he goes on to explain how the so-called afterlife is in fact a data cloud of the recently deceased’s minds, and how everyone is now going back to their bodies, which have been upgraded into Cybermen. The Doctor tries questioning Missy, but she is sedated by a tranquiliser dart fired by a UNIT soldier; to the Doctor’s surprise he is sedated too, and as he falls into unconsciousness he warns Osgood to guard the graveyards… The black cloud spreads over London, but curiously its rain only falls on the cemeteries below, and nowhere else. Some of the rainwater flows into the drains, quickly flooding the sewers under the city; the flow of water makes its way into a funeral home, converting the dead bodies lying in state into Cybermen – including the corpse of the late Danny Pink… The Doctor awakes to find himself handcuffed to an upright gurney in an airport hangar, as the TARDIS is lowered by crane into the hold of UNIT’s command airplane. Kate quickly releases the Doctor, explaining that she had to render him and Missy unconscious as per UNIT’s protocol for dealing with an alien incursion. The Doctor asks after Clara, but no-one has seen her, and St Paul’s is now locked down. Boarding the plane, the Doctor is shown to the operations room, where hangs a portrait of Kate’s father, the Doctor’s old friend Sir Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart. To the Doctor’s amazement Kate informs him that under protocol he is now the President of Earth, a role that makes him the Commander in Chief of every army – the Chief Executive Officer of the human race! Back at 3W, Clara continues her bluff with the Cybermen, trying to convince three of the metal giants that she is in fact the Doctor; unfortunately, despite her intimate knowledge of the Doctor’s past, the Cybermen remain suspicious. Another Cyberman appears on the scene, one that knows that Clara is maintaining a deception just to prolong her life. The Cyberman zaps Clara unconscious and then destroys its three comrades! Missy awakes in the UNIT plane’s hold, next to the TARDIS; she is handcuffed to a gurney, flanked by two guards and watched over by the Doctor. When asked by the Doctor how she escaped from Gallifrey, Missy replies that she knows the location of their home planet, but won’t tell him where it is. The Doctor leaves Osgood to watch over Missy, failing to notice as the renegade Time Lady presses a button on her bracelet… As the black cloud expands to cover the entire world, news stations cover reports of Cybermen climbing from graves – the dead are returning to life… Clara comes to in a graveyard, as all around her silver forms pull themselves up zombie-like from the earth… Aboard the UNIT plane, the Doctor and Kate listen to a report detailing how the world’s deceased are being reborn as Cybermen. The Doctor explains that the cloud is not precipitating rain, it is dropping ‘Cyber-Pollen’: minute particles that contain the plans to convert the dead into Cybermen; Missy has been using her TARDIS to travel throughout history, harvesting the minds of the recently deceased as part of her scheme to create a race of Cybermen who can weaponize the dead. Kate tells the Doctor that UNIT were already investigating 3W when they got a tip-off from a woman with a Scottish accent: for some reason, Missy wanted them as an audience for the Doctor. Meanwhile, in the hold, Missy gleefully promises Osgood that she is going to kill her. Osgood tries to ignore the woman – but Missy quickly gets free of her handcuffs, grabs Osgood by the throat and shoots her two guards with her disintegrator device. After killing Osgood for the hell of it Missy activates her bracelet, causing the plane to lurch alarmingly. In the operations room, the Doctor discovers that there is a Cyberman on the wing; he also from sees the CCTV feed that Missy is loose. As more flying Cybermen converge on the plane the Doctor rushes down to the hold, where he finds Osgood’s remains and the insanely happy Missy. Making her way through the cemetery, Clara avoids the newly-reborn Cybermen, who stumble about as they acclimatise to their new bodies. Seeing a lone Cyberman standing watching her, Clara goes after it. The giant asks where the Doctor is, but Clara refuses to give away her best friend. The Cyberman pulls a gun on Clara, but cannot bring itself to shoot her; instead it removes its mask, to reveal the gaunt face of Danny Pink. Clara is overwhelmed at the sight of her late boyfriend, and is father taken aback when he asks her to help activate his emotion inhibitor… The Cybermen begin pulling apart UNIT’s plane, breaking the windows and pulling the soldiers through to their deaths. In the hold, Missy explains to the Doctor how she has been manipulating his and Clara’s timelines to bring them together, uniting a control freak and a man who cannot be controlled. Answering the TARDIS’ exterior phone, the Doctor listens as Clara recounts her situation. The Doctor warns Clara not to help Danny, citing that as soon as she turns him fully into a Cyberman he will kill her; but Clara won’t listen, and after telling the Doctor to use the TARDIS to come and get her, she starts work on Danny’s inhibitor. As the UNIT plane starts to go down, Kate arrives in the hold. Missy is delighted and immediately uses her bracelet to open the hatch, causing Kate to be sucked outside! As the air continues to rush out of the plane Missy teleports away to safety, leaving the Doctor desperately clinging for dear life onto a strap – then the plane explodes, and the Doctor falls to his doom… Returning to the Nethersphere, Missy joins Seb in watching as the Doctor plummets to his death; however, Missy’s fun is short-lived when the Doctor falls into the TARDIS, as his ship comes to his rescue! Seb is elated at the Doctor’s escape, earning him disintegration by his furious mistress. The Doctor lands the TARDIS in the cemetery and rushes to Clara’s side; he tries to stop his friend but she refuses to listen, while Danny resolutely vows not to kill her. The Doctor tells Danny that he needs to know Missy’s plan; but Danny can only do that when he is connected to the Cyber-Hive-Mind, once his inhibitor has been activated. With the Doctor facing the terrible choice of either allowing Danny to become a Cyberman or condemning the entire human race, Clara steps in and takes the decision away from him. After ordering the Doctor to give her his sonic screwdriver, Clara shares an emotional goodbye with her lover and then activates the sonic: Danny’s face blanks over, and he informs the Doctor that the rain will fall until all of humanity has been converted into Cybermen. At that moment Missy teleports into mid-air, floating down on her umbrella like an evil Mary Poppins; she immediately makes to use her disintegrator on Danny, but the Doctor knocks it away, allowing Clara to pick it up unnoticed. Using her bracelet Missy demonstrates how she has full command of the Cybermen: she now has an army that is capable of killing and recruiting until the entire universe is under her control. But Missy has one final surprise for the Doctor: wishing him a happy birthday, she places the bracelet on the Doctor’s wrist, giving him full control of the Cybermen. Missy reveals that everything she did was to give the Doctor the power to proactively stop all of his enemies by conquering the universe – an act she believes will prove that she and her best friend are the same. Initially the Doctor wants nothing to do with his present, but then the voices of those he recently encountered echo in his mind: is he really a good man? Struck by a sudden realisation, an overjoyed Doctor kisses Missy in gratitude: she has enabled him to see that, whist he is not a good man, he is not a bad man either, just an idiot trying his best to help people. Seeing how Cyber-Danny is now comforting Clara, the Doctor removes the control bracelet and throws it to him instead. Snapping the bracelet onto his wrist, Danny takes control of the Cybermen all over the world, and then instructs the army of the dead to save the land of the living. Led by Danny, the Cyber-soldiers fly up into the skies over every land mass and then self-destruct, burning the black cloud into nothing. As the skies above clear, the Doctor, Clara and Missy find themselves alone in the cemetery. Missy tells the Doctor the coordinates to Gallifrey (10-0-11-00:02), revealing that their home planet has returned to its original location: she and the Doctor can now go home together. A furious Clara trains Missy’s weapon upon her; but the Doctor stops his friend, offering to kill Missy himself in order to save Clara’s soul. However, before the Doctor can bring himself to destroy his nemesis, another energy beam strikes and kills Missy; the Doctor and Clara turn to see a lone Cyberman standing nearby, one who points to a familiar figure lying on the ground: Kate, still very much alive. Deducing that the Cyberman must have caught Kate as she fell from the plane, the Doctor realises that her saviour can only be one person: her father, resurrected as a Cyberman, but still very much his own man. The Doctor salutes his friend, and watches as the lone Cyberman flies away…

Two weeks later, Clara wakes from her sleep to hear Danny’s voice calling her. Stepping into her hallway Clara sees a bright white vortex floating in the air, as Danny uses the last vestiges of the control bracelet to open a doorway from the dying Nethersphere to let one last person through. However, instead of Danny, out steps the young boy: Danny’s final act of heroism. Speaking across the void Clara and Danny exchange a final goodbye, and then the bracelet falls to the floor and its power fades… Sometime later, Clara meets the Doctor in a café. She tries to tell him about Danny, but the Time Lord jumps to the conclusion that her boyfriend returned safely from the Nethersphere. The Doctor he expects Clara to stop her travels in the TARDIS to be with Danny, so when his friend asks if he found Gallifrey, the Doctor lies to her, not wanting to tell her that all he really found was empty space. Clara in turn lies to the Doctor, telling him that she and Danny are happily together. After sharing a goodbye hug, Clara watches as the Doctor departs in the TARDIS; she then walks away, ready to resume her life…

A short time later, the Doctor sits alone in the TARDIS. But as her reflects on recent events he is interrupted by a knocking at the door. Turning around the Doctor is greeted by an astonishing sight: Santa Claus has come to visit!


Peter Capaldi (The Doctor), Jenna Coleman (Clara), Samuel Anderson (Danny), Michelle Gomez (Missy [The Mistress / Master]), Chris Addison (Seb), Ingrid Oliver (Osgood), Jemma Redgrave (Kate Stewart), Sanjeev Bhaskar (Colonel Ahmed), Antonio Bourouphael (Boy), Shane Keogh-Grenade (Teenage Boy), Katie Bignell (Teenage Girl), James Pearse (Graham), Jeremiah Krage (Cyberman), Nicholas Briggs (Voice of the Cybermen), Nick Frost (Santa Claus)

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):
8th November 2014 @ 8.00 pm


Notes:
*Featuring the Twelfth Doctor, Clara, Danny, Kate Stewart, Osgood, UNIT and Sir Alistair Lethbridge-Stewart

*This season finale is sixty minutes long

*The title sequence for this episode credits Jenna Coleman before Peter Capaldi, and features Clara’s eyes instead of the Doctor’s

*As the credits started running they then stopped for the sequence with the Doctor and Santa Claus, before resuming once more

*A short animated sequence, 'Fear is a Superpower', was released online on 20th May 2020, during the 'lockdown' period of the COVID-19 outbreak. Written by James Peaty, produced by Emily Cook, with artwork by Mike Collins, and nrrated by Richard Ashton, it followed featured Danny Pink, now reborn as a Cyberman, reflecting on the words of an angry man he once met as a child - words that inspired him throughout the rest of his life, and beyond...