Doctor Who Series 10: 10 Biggest WTF Moments

5. Missy Sheds A Tear

Doctor Who Missy
BBC

Forget perverting the course of Dalek history, or putting an end to the Time War – the redemption of Missy has to be the Doctor’s most ambitious of schemes. Neither party are all that confident that it can be achieved and the audience isn’t quite prepared to accept that the Master could turn good. But the Doctor is the eternal optimist and faced with the choice of being Missy’s executioner or saviour he was always going to take it on.

He’s a pretty rubbish counsellor as it turns out, and cold turkey is probably an excuse for not wanting to face up to his own failings in the process. But the breakthrough appears to have come much sooner than he expected. 70 years of a 1,000 year rehabilitation program and Missy sheds her first tears.

It might not be an in your face WTF moment, but it’s just as shocking to witness. This after all is a character who was willing to resist regeneration in order to avoid being forgiven by the Doctor (The Last of the Time Lords). We might not have expected Missy’s redemption to be complete but it was a remarkable thing to consider the possibility and to see enough shades of grey to deconstruct the stereotypical pantomime villain.

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Paul Driscoll is a freelance writer and author across a range of subjects from Cult TV to religion and social policy. He is a passionate Doctor Who fan and January 2017 will see the publication of his first extended study of the series (based on Toby Whithouse's series six episode, The God Complex) in the critically acclaimed Black Archive range by Obverse Books. He is a regular writer for the fan site Doctor Who Worldwide and has contributed several essays to Watching Books' You and Who range. Recently he has branched out into fiction writing, with two short stories in the charity Doctor Who anthology Seasons of War (Chinbeard Books). Paul's work will also feature in the forthcoming Iris Wildthyme collection (A Clockwork Iris, Obverse Books) and Chinbeard Books' collection of drabbles, A Time Lord for Change.