Doctor Who Series 10: 7 Big Questions We're Asking After 'The Lie Of The Land'

5. Is There Anything Left Of The Original Nardole?

We are still no closer to learning who Nardole is, or perhaps more importantly who he was. Instead we were teased with yet another throwaway line about a replaced body part (this time his left hand). Either this is a joke gone too far, or it’s leading to some great revelation about who Nardole was in the first place. There is a reasonable possibility that there is in fact nothing left of Nardole's original body.

With the Mondasian Cybermen set to feature in the series finale, could Nardole’s story be related to them in some way? The big existential question about the Cybermen is how far an individual's pre-conversion memories and emotions can be recovered and what happens when it is, a point made several times in the new series with largely tragic consequences (e.g. the Doctor switching off the inhibitors in Age of Steel, and the resistance of Yvonne Hartman in Doomsday and Danny Pink in Death in Heaven).

I'm not suggesting that Nardole is really a Cyberman turned into a humanoid, although the idea of a de-converted Cyberman is long overdue, and the Doctor did travel with the bodiless Handles at one point. But more plausibly, Nardole’s spare parts, Morbius-like conversion could be used as a foil or an alternative to that of the Cybermen. Either way, it’s hard to see his backstory not having some significance.