Doctor Who’s recent two-part finale saw the untimely demise of two beloved characters – former soldier turned maths (not PE) teacher Danny Pink, and UNIT’s sweetheart, the queen of workplace-appropriate cosplay, Osgood.
It also saw the unexpected rescue of second-generation UNIT officer Kate Stewart by none other than her father, the late Brigadier.
(I guess you could add Missy to the body count as well, but let’s face it: the Master only stays dead until another writer has a cracking good story idea for them.)
I always find myself raising an eyebrow when I hear someone talking about Doctor Who executive producer and writer Steven Moffat’s tendency to kill characters – and this is something I’ve heard with surprising regularity from various corners of fandom. Far be it from me to raise my hand and utter any statement that begins with “actually” or “technically” over the internet, but it turns out that if you take a closer look, Moffat has basically resurrected more characters than he’s permanently killed.
Speaking at a recent screening of ‘Death in Heaven’ at the National Museum of Wales in Cardiff, when asked about the number of characters he has snatched back from the apparently rubbery jaws of death, Moffat had this to say:
“Do you know that? I’m sentimental; I am, I’m sentimental. I actually quite like people not dying, in real life and in fiction. When I watch a show and somebody dies unfairly, I always want them to come back to life at the end. Like in The Lion King, where’s his dad? What about the mother in Bambi? Fiction has control over death, bring the nice people back!”
There’s also certainly been a lot of talk about Michelle Gomez’s delightfully mad performance as the Master, or as she likes to be called in her present guise, Missy.
Prior to her reveal in ‘Dark Water’, quite a few fans conjectured that Missy could be the Rani, a rogue Time Lord played by the late Kate O’Mara, who appeared opposite Colin Baker and Sylvester McCoy’s regenerations of the Doctor, and who made up for her total lack of morals with an abundance of scientific genius and attitude. But now that the Master has resurfaced with another new face, does Moffat think it’s possible that we might see the Rani make a return in a future series as well?
“I’m not sure,” he says. “People have asked me about the Rani, and I’m never quite sure if outside of the circle of Doctor Who fans that she’s really a character that people know about.”
It sounds as though the answer is a resounding probably-not, but given that we’ve seen a host of other classic characters reappear elsewhere in nu-Who, I suspect the real answer is a resounding if-and-when there’s a story that absolutely demands her presence. But maybe that’s wishful thinking.
As to the Master’s new female face, the reaction from fans has been far more polarised than anything we’ve seen in-universe; rather, Moffat has presented us with a cast of characters who simply accept without question that Time Lords can indeed change gender when they regenerate. Here’s what he had to say about the thought process behind the decision:
“I’d never written a Master story – and there have been a number of Masters in the show’s time, from the amazing Roger Delgado all the way to John Simm – and perhaps because I could never think of a way to do it that I thought was interesting,” he said.
“And I just thought, if you could, you know, smuggle her in plain sight into the show… and then once and for all absolutely establish in plain sight, so not any doubt about this whatsoever: yes, Time Lords can do that. That just expands the show.”
There’s an unspoken implication beyond this decision: that is to say, it certainly also leaves the door wide open for the possibility of a female Doctor at some point down the line, though I’m sure we haven’t seen the last of that particular debate either.
At the very least, it has now been confirmed on our screens that it is very much a possibility, regardless of what else the future holds for the Doctor into Season 9 and beyond.
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How do you feel about characters being killed off? Would you like to see the Rani return? Do you think we’ll see a female Doctor one day? Let us know below…