Doctor Who Series 10 Episode 9: 7 Big Questions After 'Empress Of Mars'
4. What's Up With The Doctor?
It looks like Missy is set to be a member of the TARDIS crew
for the next episode, adding a whole new dimension to the perennial ‘who counts
as a companion’ debate. We all know that it’s not going to end well, but if Missy’s show of goodness is unsettling then her ominous question to the Doctor is
positively disturbing.
When Missy asks him if he is okay, it feels like a ‘don’t you think she looks tired?” moment. Last week the Doctor was certainly not himself. Having been locked up by the Monks for six months his sense of superiority had morphed into a form of mania, as illustrated by that twisted grin and some rather questionable actions including a fake regeneration.
In this episode he was back to the more relaxed personal of Thin Ice and Knock Knock, and we might have assumed that he’d got over the trauma of recent events. But Missy sees otherwise. Either she is deliberately sowing questions of doubt in the minds of the Doctor and his friends, or she senses that something isn’t right.
Is the Doctor still suffering for the after effects of his blindness in Oxygen, or was that regeneration effect not as fake as he made out at the time? It felt extreme even for him, and it might just be that his laughter at the time was an expression of nervous relief and not the joke at Bill’s expense that he turned it into. We know that the Doctor regenerates in this year’s Christmas special, but perhaps the process has already started.