While Clara attempts to fool a small army of Cybermen at 3W HQ into thinking she is the doctor,the actual doctor is attempting to fend of Missy and the Cybermen army. She is attempting to pass them off as an art installation until a lady asking to take a photo reveals herself to be an incognito member of UNIT-with her and Kate Lethbridge Stewart having Missy and the Cyber army totally surrounded. By this time the Cybermen fly into the air which,as Missy explains,will cause a rain across the Earth that will ensure the Cybermen's takeover of the planet. All the while,Clara is successful in fooling the Cybermen army on 3W into destroying one another rather than her.
Much to the doctors surprise she then tranquilizes both him and Missy together. She cites his past unreliability with UNIT as her reason for getting him to guarantee to the position she must now assign him in this planetary emergency: as the president of the entire planet Earth itself. Aboard a specialized emergency airplane,the doctor tells Stewart and the UNIT crew that the "rain" is actually Cybermen bio matter. And that they must have found some way to control the bodies of deceased humans in a centuries long plan of Missy's at 3W-all along set up as a prerequisite for the on-coming invasion.
While Danny Pink begins to notice the change inside the "neurosphere" that is 3-W,he is told the truth before the rain before the first of the new Cybermen begin to rise from graveyards the world over. Clara finds herself deposited in one such graveyard. As the flying Cybermen catch up with with the UNIT plane,Missy causes an escape plan by using her guard to escape,than killing her while the Cybermen enter and hijack the plane. In the graveyard,Clara's life is spared by one particular Cyberman. As he approaches her he reveals himself to be constructed from the body of Danny Pink. He than proceeds to beg Clara to activate the circuit that will remove the emotions which he doesn't want to have.
Escaping the broken up UNIT plane after Missy transports out and he believes Kate has been blown out into the sky,the doctor locks onto his departed TARDIS and engineers an escape to find Clara. All after Missy has revealed to him that she now knows the coordinates of Gallifrey. And that she'd carefully masterminded that Clara would become his companion. He arrives to find that Missy attempting to sway the doctor into re-joining her to return to his home world. All the while with Clara desperate for the doctor to save the life of Danny Pink. Between the two demands made on him,the doctor asks Clara to deactivate Danny's emotions so he can explain how the Cybermen's mission will be carried out. Danny explains how Missy has been controlling the Cybermen through a bracelet,which she gives to the doctor-offering him full over over the Cybermen.
The doctor defers control of the bracelet to Danny,who rallies the Cybermen as a soldier to return to the sky where the cloud they created burns away with them in it. The doctor dismisses Missy-either killing her or sending her back to her TARDIS while he goes off to Gallifrey. He was deceived by Missy and doesn't find it of course. But he does return to Clara to inform he was returning there anyway-allowing her to remain with Danny-who he thinks returned using the bracelet. Before leaving he finds Kate Stewart returned alive,apparently the doing of her now Cyberman body of her father-the "Brigadier". Of course,since it was a one way journey for one person? Danny actually had opted to send back the boy he killed in war.
While the Cybermen present,now with the ability to fly,is very appealing to Whovians I am sure? This is actually a very moving story about honesty,deception and betrayal. The science of the Cybermen being used by Missy,the new "Master" regeneration,to use bio matter of dead humans to replicate is a good new development for the classic Doctor Who adversary. Michelle Gomez's turn as the darkly comic and very unstable Missy is also a highlight. At the same time,the story actually provides an interesting and rather literary ending to the Clara/Danny Pink saga-with him apparently sacrificing his miserable and sad existence for the life of the young boy he killed in war. The idea of the doctor's discomfort with soldiers provides the arc of the story-a doctor who still doesn't quite know himself. As for whether Clara will be his companion in the future? It would appear this actually won't be the case.
Following a call from Clara whose noticed sticky notes describing her recent adventures with the doctor all over the wall,her concerned phone call to Danny Pink is interrupted by a lady who claims she just ran over him in her car. After Pink's demise,Clara receives a call from the doctor asking after her. Once on board the TARDIS, she then uses a patch aboard of the doctors to induce him into a dream state where she threatens to throw all of his TARDIS keys into an active volcano if he doesn't bring Danny back to her-rational being that she's seen him manipulate life and death.
Though decrying her behavior,the doctor agrees to have Clara connect with the TARDIS's telepathic circuit,as she did before,in order to connect herself stronger with Danny Pink's timeline-to which she is emotionally connected. Once this is done,the TARDIS takes them to what appears to be a mausoleum filled with skeletal human remains suspended in a liquid medium. The doctor encounters a manual which projects a holographic ad for 3W,apparently some type of "humane" method of life after death.
After encountering a woman who claims to be an android rep named Missy,the doctor and Clara are taken to her subordinate who claims that the name 3W refers to three words heard by the founder of the facility-who claims to have isolated the voices of the dead through white noise in the television from the dead saying "don't cremate me",indicating people still have feeling after death. This explains the name (3 words),yet the doctor is skeptical.
Meanwhile Danny Pink has also arrived at 3W,and is receiving the same story-that he is dead and connected to his own deceased corpse. He is linked by means of a localized Wi-Fi to Clara,something that has apparently never happened at 3W HQ before,where she attempts to question him as to the truth of his identity. The doctor meanwhile goes to see Missy for more information about the facility itself and what she plans to do with the corpses.
All around Clara and the doctor,without them immediately noticing the transparent "dark water" with which they are all surrounded are receding to reveal the bodies of the doctors nemesis the Cybermen. After meeting with a boy he apparently killed in war,Danny Pink is then given the option to "delete" his emotions. When the doctor discovers this,Missy takes him to the center of London-where they've apparently already been. After his attempts to warn the population of their impending doom? Missy reveals her name as short for mistress because she can no longer go by her original name of The Master.
Aside from the reveal of this series' ongoing story arc character of Missy as being a new regeneration of The Master? This story has some similarities to the classic 1985 Colin Baker serial Revelation Of The Daleks in that it deals with the deceased being used as vessels by one of the doctor's foes. In this case,its the Cybermen rather than the Daleks. The element of people's irrational fear of death,and their inability to accept it as a part of their own existence,is added into this story as well.
As for Clara's behavior at the beginning of this episode? Speak of irrationality! While the trauma of a dead loved one can cause emotional instability? Clara's self centered behavior to the doctor,whose saved whole civilizations from utter destruction throughout time,removes a great deal of likability about the character-already suffering from a poorly realized attitude this series. That Clara would actually take away the doctor's means to be heroic only to satisfy her romantic needs. As for the story itself,there is of course more to tell.
