Skip to content
TARDIS Guide

Overview

First aired

Saturday, November 8, 2014

Written by

Steven Moffat

Directed by

Rachel Talalay

Runtime

56 minutes

Time Travel

Present

Tropes (Potential Spoilers!)

Virtual Afterlife, Earth Invasion

Story Arc (Potential Spoilers!)

Am I a Good Man?

Location (Potential Spoilers!)

Earth, England, London

UK Viewers

7.60 million

Appreciation Index

83

Synopsis

With Cybermen on the streets of London, old friends unite against old enemies and the Doctor takes to the air in a startling new role.

Can the mighty UNIT contain Missy? As the Doctor faces his greatest challenge, sacrifices must be made before the day is won.

Add Review Edit Review Log a repeat

Characters

How to watch Death in Heaven:

Reviews

Add Review Edit Review

3 reviews

I don't know about that one really, need to watch it again. Absolutely loved last week but didn't feel it was a fully satisfying conclusion to that story.

There were some fantastic character moments for The Doctor especially in there, Moffat is great at that sort of stuff but the actual plot itself didn't quite make ends meet for me. I get what they were going for with The Master creating a Cybermen army for The Doctor's birthday, she's obsessed with him and it's a nice change to to the usual ''take over Earth'' story but it was all a bit underwhelming and didn't seem to make that much sense to me.


Danny Pink I'm so f**king sorry


This review contains spoilers!

While I haven't reviewed Dark Water yet, the first part of this story, if I reviewed the whole series in order I think I would really struggle to keep at it. So, I'm going to just focus on Death in Heaven for now. Yay me, I guess, but it leaves me to talk about the more fun part later.

Yes, I follow the generally trend of ratings here, where I think Death in Heaven is a weaker conclusion to the strong set-up of Dark Water. Still, though, there is a lot to like here. I love Michelle Gomez as Missy and she is still extremely fresh and fun here. Twelve and Clara have a lot of great moments - my favourite being the two of them outright lying to each other at the end of the episode. It's pretty haunting and a thing rarely done with companions in Doctor Who. I won't be the first to say this and this won't even be the last time I will say this about a Doctor Who episode, but this would have been a very memorable ending to Clara.

Oh well. The episode does have its problems. Some of the acting around Danny or the writing of the "Brigadier's cameo" felt a little ham-fisted and overblown. It is understandably dramatic, but it falls flat after so much nonsense around Danny's character up until this point. He felt more like a nuisance than a person. That being said, that ending with Clara saving the boy instead of Pink was well done, and feeds into the episode's very memorable ending. It's not even the only memorable aspect of how the story resolves - that Missy was doing all this in some ill-conceived attempt to connect with her old friend. It is touching even knowing how horribly Missy abused people's lives and well-being, including Osgood's death (or at least one of them) which I also found really well done.

All told it is an episode with more strengths than weaknesses, but it isn't completely strong either. Like many Moffat scripts, it feels a little overwritten in some parts and underdeveloped in others. But, just like all of those scripts, it's hard to forget this writing, either, or write it off as pointless. There's a lot of creativity and energy to Death in Heaven that really helps carry the episode and make it something worthwhile.


Open in new window

Statistics

AVG. Rating587 members
3.75 / 5

Trakt.tv

AVG. Rating1,627 votes
4.01 / 5

The Time Scales

AVG. Rating184 votes
3.65 / 5

Member Statistics

Watched

1223

Favourited

95

Reviewed

3

Saved

2

Skipped

0

Owned

9

Quotes

Add Quote

DOCTOR: I really didn't know. I wasn't sure. You lose sight sometimes. Thank you! I am not a good man! I am not a bad man. I am not a hero. And I'm definitely not a president. And no, I'm not an officer. Do you know what I am? I am an idiot, with a box and a screwdriver. Just passing through, helping out, learning. I don't need an army. I never have, because I've got them. Always them. Because love, it's not an emotion. Love is a promise.

— Twelfth Doctor, Death in Heaven

Open in new window

Transcript Needs checking

(Previously)

CLARA: Danny Pink is dead.
DOCTOR: We're here to get your boyfriend back from the dead. Those are tombs. Water tombs. Why would anyone go to so much trouble?
SEB: You're dead and, and this is what's next.
DOCTOR: A Gallifreyan hard drive. Time Lord technology.
MISSY: Do you know the key strategic weakness of the human race? The dead outnumber the living.
DOCTOR: Who are you?
MISSY: Oh, you know who I am. I'm Missy. I couldn't very well keep calling myself The Master, now could I?

[Chang's office]

(Cyber Dr Skarosa stomps out of his cubicle, stops by his desk and turns, pointing his weapon at Clara, who was hiding behind it.)

CLARA: Stop! You can't kill me.
CYBER-SKAROSA: Incorrect.
CLARA: I'm a target of strategic value. Alive, I'm a tactical advantage. Dead, I'm your biggest mistake.You don't know who I am.


Open in new window