TV Review: Doctor Who Series 10 Episode Eleven - "World Enough and Time"

"Just Promise Me One Thing. Just Promise You Won't Get Me Killed..."

One of the most obvious and thrilling elements of this week's episode of Doctor Who was the surreal and reckless sense of abandon which show-runner Steven Moffat clearly has come to terms with, with the talented, and sometimes controversial, scribe clearly at a stage in which he sure well knows his time, much like Peter Capaldi's Twelfth Doctor, is coming to an explosive climax, and with "World Enough and Time", Moffat has successfully created a finale first act which ticks all the boxes in regards to what I personally look for in all the classic Doctor Who stories. Suspense. Threat. Horror. Three key elements that usually end up in creating some damn fine science fiction, and whilst the rather annoying pre-release press storms have felt it necessary to show off a rafter of key details and spoilers before the episode even aired, "World Enough and Time" is still undeniably and far and away the best episode of Series 10 so far, and with twists and shifts which set the battleground for next week's explosive finale, it too has the potential to become the definitive Moffat/Capaldi exploration of the famous Time Lord.

Within the episode's many successes, the return of the Mondasian Cybermen is an absolute stroke of genius. Whilst the 21st century incarnations of the famous Who foe have never really managed to get the characterisation and fear factor bang on, the utterly insidious look of the classic era baddies results in "World Enough and Time" genuinely being one of the most terrifying episodes of Doctor Who in years, with the body-horror type sets in which they are painfully hooked up to an unknown liquid harking back to not only the gas-mask people in "The Doctor Dances" but looking too like something out of a classic horror movie convention. The threatening nature of the Mondasian Cybermen aside, the inevitable links between the fate of the First Doctor within "The Tenth Planet", an episode which featured the very first appearance of the Cybermen on Mondas, and Capaldi's current incarnation are inevitable, particularly when regeneration energy is so clearly seen to be seeping out of our beloved hero. Overall, "World Enough and Time" is an excellent episode of Doctor Who, and whilst the episode would have been better served to be left to its' own devices in terms of unravelling its' secrets itself, grab the popcorn and get ready for a concluding piece next week which so clearly needs to keep to the standards set so far. Oh, and John Simm though.

Overall Score: 9/10