Doctor Who Series 12: Ten Huge Questions After The Haunting Of Villa Diodati
1. Why Did Ashad Want To Be Converted?
Chris Chibnall has promised a new and horrific twist on the
Cybermen, and it looks like the character of Ashad could be it. There is
something genuinely frightening about a human who wants to go through the
conversion process and the lengths that he goes to in order to make it happen.
This might be the most emotional Cyberman we’ve ever encountered, but killing his own children and showing absolutely no remorse is as cold as ice. What could have possibly happened to make him want to do this? The same could be said of a forgotten character from the series opener, Spyfall. Lenny Henry’s Daniel Barton. The implications are potentially huge. Could they be related? Or even the same person?
Barton wanted to turn all human beings, except the chosen few, into hard drives. They would become storage for the Kasaavin, a race from another dimension with a paranoid need to spy on others. He even made his mother the first to experience the conversion, or upgrade. The Cyberium may be the ultimate advance in computer science and data storage, a journey of centuries that included Barton and VOR, and before him Ada Lovelace and Charles Babbage.
Barton wasn’t afraid to test the DNA changes on himself first, and in Ashad we have a more extreme example of a human who is prepared to lose his humanity in the name of progress and survival.
We are set for an extraordinary finale, where everything will change again, at least according to one official trailer. We should probably go into it remembering the Master’s words to the Doctor on Barton’s private jet: “Everything that you think you know is a lie.” Yes, that includes Gallifrey and the Timeless Child, but what else should we be questioning?