It was nearly impossible to go into this two-part finale without being entirely spoiled.  The reveal of the Cybermen had been posted all over the interwebs before Series 8 even began running, after all.  And how many people have heard the rumor regarding Clara’s impending exit?  It’s shocking, then, that I managed to stay spoiler-free on the revelation that Missy was, in fact, The Master.  Or, rather, The Mistress, in this particular incarnation!

 

On the other hand, it wasn’t exactly a huge shock, was it?  Who else would come up with a ridiculously convoluted and insane plan to achieve some ill-defined goal?  After all, that’s largely The Master in a nutshell.  If The Doctor goes about making things better (from his point of view) while being marginally sane in the process, The Master goes about trying to make things worse (or under his control) in similar fashion!

 

I’m not entirely clear on Missy’s plan, to be honest.  To create an army of Cybermen, Missy sets up a system by which the bodies of the deceased are collected (if possible) to be “memorialized”, while the “souls” are collected in a Gallifreyan artifact called the Nethersphere.  Within the artificial construct of the Nethersphere, the dead are led to erase their emotions, thus becoming the very example of the Cyberman ideal.  These minds are then reunited with their associated bodies (since they remain tied together somehow), and thus hilarity ensues.  Or something, as the ultimate purpose of this is not yet explained.

 

The entrypoint into this entire plot is the death of Danny Pink.  The episode goes into a lot of meandering detail about what this means, where Danny has gone, and whether or not The Doctor can (or should) save him.  Rather than do the obvious and simply use the TARDIS to jump to a point right before Danny dies, saving his life, The Doctor and Clara go hunting for the supposed afterlife.  This leads them to 3W, a company that tries to convince people that it’s a really bad idea to cremate your loved ones, considering that they continue to feel whatever happens to their bodies in their next phase of existence.

 

There is also an extended sequence that suggests, to some end or another, that Danny in the Nethersphere is not actually Danny.  Clara spends an awful lot of time and energy to explain precisely why she needs him to answer very specific questions, and his dodging is so pointed that he’s either a blithering idiot or not remotely what he seems.  I’m going with the second option, because Moffat hasn’t met an unnecessarily complex plot he hasn’t adored, and it would be a convenient way to do terrible things with Danny without it actually being Danny.  Not to mention that we didn’t see the body, and there was that recent episode which ended with the hint that Missy was ready to drag The Doctor into this situation purposefully.

 

In the grander scheme of things, if Danny is still alive and this finale allows Clara to get him back, it would make a logical reason for her to leave The Doctor: taking the final chance to be with Danny and thus put the future on the course seen in “Listen”.  As for The Doctor, this situation could finally lead to that long-delayed search for Gallifrey, especially if it turns out that Missy acquired the Nethersphere by finding Gallifrey herself.  After all, Moffat loves the long game.