A fate worse than a fate worse than death!

I really think Simm deserves some credit here. While he's not playing the Dark Master I had quite hoped for, there's a level of simmering hatred and contempt for the Doctor that he delivers here so, so much better than in his previous appearances. I thought he was an absolute, amazing stand-out here.

It was better than Clara's send off (not hard), so there's that.

Yeah, I'm gonna miss Gomez so much, assuming they don't backtrack, which I'm fine if they do.

It's not meaningfully that different from the Guardians, the Eternals, Kronos etc I can buy the Doctor might exude more interest, but this isn't his first time down that particular (heh) path.

Well no, the pilot explicitly told Bill she could give her back her old life, chips and all, if that's what she wanted. Bill wasn't obligated to travel, she chose to.

My lone complaint - I wish they'd written a line for him, rather than lifting one. Other than that, I can't wait to see how it's going to go.

Agreed that Vol 4 was by miles the best of them, but that's because they started to actually embrace some strangeness, and the implications of what a Time War might be. A lot of the early episodes are just generic (sometimes generic Dalek) runarounds that just so happen to have John Hurt in them rather than Sylvester…

I never thought of that before but you're right - that would have been absolutely lovely.

In the classic series I mean. If one is claiming that the Borg are stolen from the Cybermen then one needs evidence that predates the creation of the Borg, not post-dates it. Having them be part of a neural net now makes it look, in fact, like the Cybermen are being re-cast in a Borg-like role, rather than Whovian's…

Fair enough - as I said, I know I'm in a minority when it comes to his storyline. And the hating soldiers things was resolved - Cyber-Danny basically forced the Doctor to face up to how he felt about people in the military (Danny's sacrifice to get the Doctor the information he needs being noble and without reward)…

I used to live next to the place where Omega is finally taken out by the Doctor in Arc Of Infinity. Not very cool story bro etc

Oh yes, of course the Master loves ridiculous disguises, and he says as much here when he asks Missy if she still enjoys them as well.

That's exactly why I like it - for all the battles with monsters in space and time, for all the universe-endagering, for all the fights and speeches, it can be something as ordinary as not looking where you're going that can take someone down. It's the very normality of it that makes it work. It's very real.

I think you're going to have to back that statement up. The fact its been that bad before or again is… not the most robust defence.

Quite.

"the best Cyberman episode out of all of NewWho" is about a low a bar to clear as possible, given they've all been largely rubbish (and the only one that wasn't - Dark Water / Death In Heaven - isn't really a Cyberman story at all, it's a Master/Missy story the Cybermen happen to be in).

For once, though, the Master's disguise isn't for no reason. He specifically says (jus before he pulls off the mask) the disguise is necessary because he used to be Bill's Prime Minister. It's a bit muted in the mix, but he absolutely says the line. Moffat did give us a clear, on-screen reason.

It was just a starter before he got stuck into the scenery…

In the sense that they literally use metal to achieve this, yes.