Doctor Who Series 10: 7 Big Questions We're Asking After 'The Eaters Of Light'

By Paul Driscoll / June 19, 2017

There are plenty of wonderful moments in The Eaters of Light to delight fans both young and old. In an unusually lyrical script with shades of McCoy’s popular season 26, playwright Rona Munro (of Survival fame) puts a Doctor Who spin on the unsolved mysteries of the Pictish beast and the disappearance of the Ninth Legion.

Meanwhile, in the background, Missy is watching on, ready to review the Doctor’s performance when he returns. She’s a rather harsh critic: “Is it really up to your bleeding hearts standard?” It looks like she'll be getting her chance next week to show him how it's done, but at least for this one, Moffat and co can relax. Missy aside, the reviews are largely positive this time around.

Ask Missy to provide six more unanswered questions and I doubt any of ours will overlap. So whilst we leave Missy to stew over why the Doctor didn’t arrive earlier to see the beast in full killer mode, or why Nardole is so eager to blend in with the locals,let's take a look at some of the questions fans are asking.

7. Isn't This The Empress In New Clothes?

The resemblances to last week’s Ice Warrior’s adventure are uncanny. After the ending of Empress of Mars we might have expected to see Missy join Bill and Nardole as a companion in The Eaters of Light. Instead we are led to believe that the Doctor has dropped her back off in the vault before travelling to 2nd century Scotland. It’s a red herring and the episode closes with the revelation that Missy is in the TARDIS after all, having been forced to stay inside like poor K9 or Kamelion. Missy in the TARDIS has become the new go-to ending after the repeated visits to the vault.

But it’s far more than just the structure of the episode that is rerun here. We might be able to pass over Bill once again falling into a pit – after all, it’s a rather common mishap for the Doctor’s companions. The sentimental, sacrificial ending is another much repeated Doctor Who trope.

It’s not so easy to overlook the fact that in both stories two warring factions are forced to come together to defeat a common threat. Themes of land ownership and Empire abound in both and neither side in the conflict are presented as morally superior. Add to that the single black soldier, and the guilt-ridden deserters and it’s pretty clear that the two stories share much in common.

Whether this is a rare example of poor scheduling, or a deliberate foreshadowing of the coming conflict between the Doctor and the Master, who before his regeneration into John Simm was presented as a Time War deserter (Utopia) remains to be seen.