Death in Heaven Review

So I'm not sure what the deal is with the Doctor being so upset about Gallifrey. Two things come to mind, either the Master was lying and it's still gone, or something happened to it. If it's still gone, then that raises the question of how she got out. It could be that she escaped from the Naismith mansion after the events of The End of Time and the Doctor didn't notice. However, I don't think that's very likely as the Doctor didn't look that distracted in that scene. One interesting bit is that Time Lords usually stay relative to one another's time streams, which means the Master must have escaped before the events of The Bells of Saint John. Either that, or she went back along the Doctor's timeline. Another possibility is that some race (such as the Daleks) detected Gallifrey's return and decimated it while it was still recovering from the war. The second scenario doesn't' leave as much possibility for the Time Lords ever returning, so I'm hoping it's still out there somewhere.

It looks pretty darn well like the Brig killed the Master. Of course, there's no way she's actually dead; she's one of those villains that the Doctor will never be entirely rid of. I mean, how many times have the Daleks or Davros been wiped out? I'm guessing she had some sort of back up inside the Nethersphere. Maybe she was inside there the whole time that scene in the graveyard was some sort of projection. I don't know how she's alive, I just know that Moffat or some future writer will come up with a way to make her alive.

So we now have confirmation that every government on Earth knows of the Doctor. Not only that, but they know enough about him to trust him as President of Earth. UNIT (or maybe even Jack and Martha) must have told the UN of his exploits and how many times he's saved the Earth and other worlds. I don't know how they would have proved that this man actually existed and they weren't just telling stories. They must have had some sort of video evidence. Maybe they used that video conference call from The Eleventh Hour. All those geniuses testifying on the Doctor's behalf must have had some sort of influence beyond that which a UNIT doctor and WWII pilot could have offered.

It's awfully conveniently timed how all this took place on the Doctor's birthday. I mean, first off, how did Missy even know? The Doctor doesn't truly know how old he is, so I'm assuming it's his birthday in linear time, rather than his non-linear time travel. That would of course mean, the Doctor isn't actually turning some particular age in this episode. Besides that, how would the Master even know that the Doctor would show up on that day? Maybe she had planned to release the Cybermen on that day all along and knew the TARDIS would take the Doctor there at the correct time.

I'm rather disappointed that no mention of the drums was made in the two-parter. That was one of the biggest issues in Simm's portrayal of the Master. Perhaps whatever got the Master off Gallifrey and into female form cut the signal. Another possibility is what the Master said in The End of Time about the link being inside Rassilon. Once the Master killed him, the drumbeat may have disappeared. My only problem with that is the scene earlier in that story where it was shown that Rassilon's assistant/other member of the High Council was the one who actually placed the signal. It's also possible that with Gallifrey in another dimension, the signal can't reach the Master. Either that, or Moffat is purposefully ignoring the issue.