Rassilon
Administrator
Grand Administrator
Posts: 751
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Post by Rassilon on Oct 29, 2014 9:40:50 GMT
What did you think?
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Catsmate
13th Incarnation
No longer living in a bad adaption of "A Journal of the Plague Year".
Posts: 3,730
Favourite Doctors: Thirteen, Six, Five, Two, Eight, Twelve, Nine, One, Eleven..
Traits: Eccentric, Insatiable Curiousity.
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Post by Catsmate on Nov 8, 2014 20:59:23 GMT
That was good. OK a bit too many almost-endings.
Wouldn't Melbourne be in darkness? OK they got it right for Sydney at the end though. I like the flying Cybermen? But rockets? How crude. Zombies? Meh. Do all female companions get upgraded boyfriends? Auton, Cybermen... I like Missy's umbrella, I wonder what else it can do? Nice Brig cameo.
Never trust a hug.
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Post by ninjaconor on Nov 8, 2014 21:10:17 GMT
Loved it! Surprisingly dark. Definitely hope Michelle Gomez makes another appearance as The Master. She's probably the best there's been since Delgado. And Clara and The Doctor's goodbyes at the end... perfect. She may not have had as strong a story arc as the Ponds but I reckon she surpassed their ending. Cyber-brig was a little cheesy, but that's kind of what you expect from Doctor Who. I wonder did he jet off to foil a bank robbery or something and will we see him return as a sort of upper-class English Iron Man
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Post by Escher on Nov 8, 2014 21:25:10 GMT
It was great. Very dark. A very nice tribute to The Brigadier too. I recently got my better half involved in watching the entire run of Third Doctor DVD's and she's now a huge fan. She shed a real tear at the homage to the brig and it's certainly a testament to how much those characters are loved.
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infinitydoctor
2nd Incarnation
Posts: 116
Favourite Doctors: 2nd and 4th
Traits: Run For Your Life! Technically Adept, Forgetful, Impulsive, Phobia (Snakes)
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Post by infinitydoctor on Nov 8, 2014 22:58:36 GMT
Enjoyed it, but I don't think it quite lived up to the promise of last week's, it was a bit clumsy in places. That said, there were some excellent scenes in there (but for those who thought this was Clara's last story, it isn't, she's back in the Christmas special...)
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Post by Doctor X on Nov 9, 2014 2:18:05 GMT
Thought at the beginning: Are the Cybermen going to pull a new power out of their asses EVERY TIME we see them now?
Thought at the end: If it allowed us that moment, ok.
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Post by Stormcrow on Nov 9, 2014 3:14:47 GMT
I was underwhelmed. I got a bad feeling about the whole Clara-and-the-Doctor-reversed-in-the-credits thing, which was just another Moffat trick. The whole bit about Cybermen suits just APPEARING around corpses didn't make any sense at all, even according to Doctor Who standards. I was just annoyed by "Missy" the whole time. Now Cybermen can fly, sheesh. The Brigadier bit at the end was hokey. Why didn't anyone remember the last time Cybermen appeared everywhere in the world? Making the Doctor the President of the World? Sigh.
Good parts? NO MORE CLARA!
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stahlman
3rd Incarnation
Doctor, stop wasting my time, will you?
Posts: 222
Favourite Doctors: second,third,fourth
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Post by stahlman on Nov 9, 2014 6:54:46 GMT
I liked the nanotechnology cyber-conversion idea but that is some serious biotechnology isn't it? Presumably you wouldn't even need a human skeleton-just a pile of cheese sandwiches as raw material provided you had the right brain tape to download. Hmm-well it is only a story. Liked the tribute to the brig-bored to distraction by the drippy luvvy duvy stuff with Clara and the significant other. Gomez was wonderful and stole the show.
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infinitydoctor
2nd Incarnation
Posts: 116
Favourite Doctors: 2nd and 4th
Traits: Run For Your Life! Technically Adept, Forgetful, Impulsive, Phobia (Snakes)
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Post by infinitydoctor on Nov 9, 2014 7:47:36 GMT
IGood parts? NO MORE CLARA! Um..did some areas not get the mid-credits scene with Nick Frost? And she's (fleetingly) in the trailer for the Christmas Special as well.....
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Post by da professor on Nov 9, 2014 9:39:59 GMT
I just thought it very appropriate that, on the day before Remembrance Sunday, we saw the world saved by an honest soldier willing to sacrifice himself for the greater good.
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Post by Doctor X on Nov 9, 2014 11:54:49 GMT
I liked the nanotechnology cyber-conversion idea but that is some serious biotechnology isn't it? Presumably you wouldn't even need a human skeleton-just a pile of cheese sandwiches as raw material provided you had the right brain tape to download. Hmm-well it is only a story. Plus, if the Cybermen can now convert people with air/water borne nanotech, why bother with resurrecting the dead? Just unleash it into the atmosphere or a reservoir and wait.
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sutekh
2nd Incarnation
Posts: 64
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Post by sutekh on Nov 9, 2014 12:39:23 GMT
I liked the nanotechnology cyber-conversion idea but that is some serious biotechnology isn't it? Presumably you wouldn't even need a human skeleton-just a pile of cheese sandwiches as raw material provided you had the right brain tape to download. Hmm-well it is only a story. Plus, if the Cybermen can now convert people with air/water borne nanotech, why bother with resurrecting the dead? Just unleash it into the atmosphere or a reservoir and wait. It can be assumed that the new capabilities of the Cybermen to convert biological matter using waterborne nanotech depended upon seriously advanced technical knowledge provided by Missy - and this ability may have been lost with her (apparent) death. Thinking about this episode and Nightmare in Silver, it looks like the production team are trying hard to find a new angle for the Cybermen that makes them scary without depicting them as yet another implacable race. They haven't quite got there yet, but at least they are trying to do something different with them. In theory. I like the concept that the cybermen are an insidious threat to the very nature of humanity rather than a group of silver thugs (as they are often depicted). There's a rich vein of drama in the self-destructive temptation of humans to willingly delete their capacity for moral choice, but it takes you into some very dark territory. I don't think that we've seen a story that really uses the new concepts properly yet, but the pieces are now in place. Death in Heaven was a bit too crowded to let the true horror of the Cybermen really take center stage - but hopefully we will get a very strong Cyberman story that picks up some of the recent threads. Personally, I'd love to see the Cybermen use their new capabilities in a classic base under siege story set in a claustrophobic environment. It would almost need to be a two-parter to allow the nature of the threat to slowly develop. Personally, I'd avoid revealing the identity of the enemy until the end of the first episode. Pace it more like a horror movie with lots of sympathetic human characters in the first part who slowly get killed off or converted by the cybermen in the second. Keep the scale of the story a lot smaller and more intimate than recent stories featuring the cybermen and give the supporting cast some room to breathe. Emphasize the sense of isolation and claustrophobia. And in the second part give each of the human characters a terrible choice - face your own mortality or survive as a cybermen.
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Catsmate
13th Incarnation
No longer living in a bad adaption of "A Journal of the Plague Year".
Posts: 3,730
Favourite Doctors: Thirteen, Six, Five, Two, Eight, Twelve, Nine, One, Eleven..
Traits: Eccentric, Insatiable Curiousity.
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Post by Catsmate on Nov 9, 2014 12:59:37 GMT
Plus, if the Cybermen can now convert people with air/water borne nanotech, why bother with resurrecting the dead? Just unleash it into the atmosphere or a reservoir and wait. It can be assumed that the new capabilities of the Cybermen to convert biological matter using waterborne nanotech depended upon seriously advanced technical knowledge provided by Missy - and this ability may have been lost with her (apparent) death. Thinking about this episode and Nightmare in Silver, it looks like the production team are trying hard to find a new angle for the Cybermen that makes them scary without depicting them as yet another implacable race. They haven't quite got there yet, but at least they are trying to do something different with them. In theory. I like the concept that the cybermen are an insidious threat to the very nature of humanity rather than a group of silver thugs (as they are often depicted). There's a rich vein of drama in the self-destructive temptation of humans to willingly delete their capacity for moral choice, but it takes you into some very dark territory. I don't think that we've seen a story that really uses the new concepts properly yet, but the pieces are now in place. Death in Heaven was a bit too crowded to let the true horror of the Cybermen really take center stage - but hopefully we will get a very strong Cyberman story that picks up some of the recent threads. Personally, I'd love to see the Cybermen use their new capabilities in a classic base under siege story set in a claustrophobic environment. It would almost need to be a two-parter to allow the nature of the threat to slowly develop. Personally, I'd avoid revealing the identity of the enemy until the end of the first episode. Pace it more like a horror movie with lots of sympathetic human characters in the first part who slowly get killed off or converted by the cybermen in the second. Keep the scale of the story a lot smaller and more intimate than recent stories featuring the cybermen and give the supporting cast some room to breathe. Emphasize the sense of isolation and claustrophobia. And in the second part give each of the human characters a terrible choice - face your own mortality or survive as a cybermen. An excellent point. Did Missy acquire the advanced Cybertech from the future Cybermen shown in Nightmare in Silver or was she responsible for that development? Perhaps some Cybermen developed their advanced future technology from samples of her work. As for the temptation of Cyber-conversion, that's handled well in some of the EU stuff. I'm specifically thinking of Killing Ground where a group of humans (the Bronze Knights) embrace Cybertechnology in order to fight them. Of course the TV series also use this theme in Rise of the Cybermen with Lumic's desire to live on using cybernetics, but it was done more superficially with no-one else being as tempted. At the risk of going off-topic this has interesting parallels with vampirism; live forever, at a price... (And Killing Ground has similarities with Pratchett's Discworld vampire novel Carpe Jugulum).
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Post by Stormcrow on Nov 9, 2014 17:20:08 GMT
I don't think the Cybermen needed anything to distinguish themselves from the Daleks, which is what I assume you mean by "yet another implacable race." The Daleks are hysterical, devious, and they hate you; the Cybermen just bulldoze their way through everything, and they genuinely think they're doing something nice for you by turning you into one of them.
The Cybermen in this episode didn't bulldoze through anything and they weren't trying to make you better. They were just zombie-puppets. Except for the ones who inexplicably weren't.
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Post by ninjaconor on Nov 9, 2014 17:33:38 GMT
I liked the nanotechnology cyber-conversion idea but that is some serious biotechnology isn't it? Presumably you wouldn't even need a human skeleton-just a pile of cheese sandwiches as raw material provided you had the right brain tape to download. Hmm-well it is only a story. Plus, if the Cybermen can now convert people with air/water borne nanotech, why bother with resurrecting the dead? Just unleash it into the atmosphere or a reservoir and wait. They did mention that the rain would come again and turn everyone into Cybermen, but invasion wasn't Missy's plan. She wanted to give The Doctor an army and if you think about it, raising the dead into that army doesn't really hurt anyone. It's an offer that could realistically have tempted him. Except for the ones who inexplicably weren't. Pretty much ever since the Cybermen have appeared in the new series the conversion process has been shown not to be 100% effect. For example, in Doomsday Yvonne Hartman retained her personality after conversion and turned on the other Cybermen. Maybe Lumic cheaped out on his emotion-wiping software
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thereviewer
3rd Incarnation
Posts: 278
Favourite Doctors: Jodie Whittaker, Matt Smith, Peter Capaldi, David Tennant, Christopher Eccelston, John Hurt, Paul McGann, Sylvester McCoy, Peter Davison, Tom Baker, William Hartnell
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Post by thereviewer on Nov 9, 2014 19:26:02 GMT
Having watched the finale last night at the Long Island Who 2 Convention (and met Paul McGann, Daphne Ashbrook, Yee Jee Tso, Nicola Bryant, Terry Molls, Frazer Hines, Wendy Padbury, Terrance Dicks, and Deborah Watting,) here are my thoughts on the episode.
*SPOILERS* (duh)
The only real bad thing I didn't like was Osgood's death. I actually bumped into a friend from High School was dressed as her, and after the screening, she said she was receiving all these condolences. I really hope they don't forget about her. I think she still has a sister, so maybe she could take her place. Or perhaps maybe the Osgood that died was the Zyggon one from Day of the Doctor. It's always a possibility, but I hope they either find a way for her to live on, or find a suitable replacement.
I also kind of hope that The Doctor and his new friend manage to get Danny back in the 2014 Christmas Episode. It actually reminds me of the game Saints Row IV where they had the players rescue Santa in the North Pole in one of the DLC missions. Also has some touches of inspiration from Alien in there which I like a lot also. I also think The Doctor's reaction to not finding Gallifrey should've been handled better, but hopefully he'll gain more insight as the series continues.
Now onto the good.
In my opinion, Missy has earned herself the title of 'The Master' despite her gender. The Mary Poppins thing had me roaring with laughter. I also loved her whole plan of creation Zombie Cybermen which reminded me of 'Return of the Living Dead,' although somebody told me that someone who saw it early described it as 'Plan 9 From Outer Space,' though I don't see the connection.
I think Danny also had a pretty decent farewell all things considered. And I understand why he sent the kid through. I mean if you killed someone and had the chance to send them back, but didn't, could you actually live with the guilt? Could you sleep knowing that you could've made a difference?
Also loved The Doctor's fall from the plane to the TARDIS. Very action-packed.
And the Brigader. Ah, the Brigader. I was watching this in a no-noise area, so everyone had to be silent, but as soon as we realized who the Cybermen that saved Kate was, the WHOLE audience burst out into cheers. Admittedly, I felt it was a bit to much to be the Brig, but looking back, I'm happy because it gives The Doctor the chance to say goodbye that he was never was able to do.
Under normal circumstances, I would give this a 4 or a 3/5, but this earns a 5/5 for one of the greatest cliffhangers and casting choices so far... SANTA FROST!!!!!
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Post by imajica on Nov 10, 2014 16:22:09 GMT
Nope. That was Cybermen for the sake of having an iconic thing in the 2-parter. They didn't actually get to do anything. Apart from being able to fly now. Missy/The Master didn't really live up to the hype built up over the series. Best part of the whole episode was Santa Frost. And I'm not even going to rush to watch that.
Going to go out on a limb here and suggest Who needs to take a break for a few years, get some new ideas together. This series hasn't really been up to spec, IMO.
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Post by angelicdoctor on Nov 10, 2014 17:06:18 GMT
It was just ok for me. Maybe it was because I and the family have spent the last year or so watching Doctor Who starting with Eccleston to Capaldi just about every weekend and not a few weeknights, but I find that I am just about tired of seeing Cybermen. The Missy character was hysterical and a bit over the top as if Moffat and co. were trying just a bit too hard to make a compelling villian, one that the audience could really detest, kind of like Batman's Joker (more Nicholson than Ledger).
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Post by starkllr on Nov 10, 2014 19:21:07 GMT
Taken just in itself, I mostly liked "Death in Heaven". As the conclusion to the season, and for the way that a lot of things (weren't) wrapped up or even remotely explained, not so much.
Loved Missy, and would love to see more of her.
Didn't like/care enough about Danny to really feel what they wanted me to feel at his sacrifice, or Clara's loss.
Hated Osgood's death. I see why they did it, though, and I'm not sure who else could have been in that position to have the same impact.
Capaldi was fantastic.
So was Jenna Coleman. I loved her opening bluff, pretending to be the Doctor. And she did a great job with writing that did her no favors.
The plot made no sense, really, but it wasn't any sillier than a lot of Who plots, both in the old and new series, so that's OK.
The problems come with looking at the season as a whole:
I kept waiting for some sign that the Doctor had been trying to find Gallifrey, or bring it back, or, really, anything at all to do with it, all season. I really expected that we'd have some revelation in this episode - that the writing on the chalkboard all season, and his odd theorizing (as in "Listen", or his jumping straight to the idea of trying to take the TARDIS to the afterlife in "Dark Water") - were part of his ongoing search for Gallifrey. But, nope.
Missy's explanation that she picked Clara for the Doctor and kept them together because she was a "control freak' fell totally flat for me. Out of all the people in all history across the whole universe, Clara Oswald was the single most apt person to get the Doctor to do what Missy wanted? Really? I would have bought it if she picked Clara because in previous incarnations, she'd seen Clara interfering in the Doctor's timestream (since, per "The Name of the Doctor" she intervened in every one of his adventures to save him from the Great Intelligence's interference). That would have made sense from Missy's warped, love/hate perspective on the Doctor, and also just as a followup to "Name" which really has yet to be done.
No explanation at all about how Missy escaped from Gallifrey? The Doctor doesn't even bother to ask? He isn't curious what's happening there? Seriously? Sure, Missy would probably lie, or tell a twisted version of the truth just enough to hurt the Doctor as much as possible, but he at least ought to have asked.
Just a lot of missed opportunities, and the usual lack of follow-up or coherent explanation from Moffat, I think.
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thereviewer
3rd Incarnation
Posts: 278
Favourite Doctors: Jodie Whittaker, Matt Smith, Peter Capaldi, David Tennant, Christopher Eccelston, John Hurt, Paul McGann, Sylvester McCoy, Peter Davison, Tom Baker, William Hartnell
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Post by thereviewer on Nov 10, 2014 19:55:22 GMT
Give it time. I think he'll get to it. After all, look at how long it took us to find out Eleven's Story as a whole. I'm sure it'll be explained in due time.
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Post by garethl on Nov 10, 2014 20:44:22 GMT
Maybe I missed something, but how did the bracelet end up with Danny in the Nethersphere? Shouldn't it have been destroyed when Cyber-Danny exploded?
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Post by Escher on Nov 10, 2014 21:09:33 GMT
Maybe I missed something, but how did the bracelet end up with Danny in the Nethersphere? Shouldn't it have been destroyed when Cyber-Danny exploded? Come to think of it, wasn't Missy wearing a similar one? I'll have to re-view it again but I think we got a glimpse when she was restrained with Osgood...
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Catsmate
13th Incarnation
No longer living in a bad adaption of "A Journal of the Plague Year".
Posts: 3,730
Favourite Doctors: Thirteen, Six, Five, Two, Eight, Twelve, Nine, One, Eleven..
Traits: Eccentric, Insatiable Curiousity.
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Post by Catsmate on Nov 10, 2014 21:44:13 GMT
Maybe I missed something, but how did the bracelet end up with Danny in the Nethersphere? Shouldn't it have been destroyed when Cyber-Danny exploded? Come to think of it, wasn't Missy wearing a similar one? I'll have to re-view it again but I think we got a glimpse when she was restrained with Osgood... The one that she gave to the Doctor in the graveyard?
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Post by garethl on Nov 11, 2014 5:34:52 GMT
Come to think of it, wasn't Missy wearing a similar one? I'll have to re-view it again but I think we got a glimpse when she was restrained with Osgood... The one that she gave to the Doctor in the graveyard? Yes the bracelet to control the Cybermen. She gave it to the Doctor and he gave it to Danny.
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Post by ninjaconor on Nov 16, 2014 13:43:12 GMT
Wait a second! Just thought of something. If Danny is dead, then how did his descendant Orson Pink ever come to exist?
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Catsmate
13th Incarnation
No longer living in a bad adaption of "A Journal of the Plague Year".
Posts: 3,730
Favourite Doctors: Thirteen, Six, Five, Two, Eight, Twelve, Nine, One, Eleven..
Traits: Eccentric, Insatiable Curiousity.
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Post by Catsmate on Nov 16, 2014 14:31:53 GMT
Wait a second! Just thought of something. If Danny is dead, then how did his descendant Orson Pink ever come to exist? 1. Maybe Orson isn't descendant of Danny. 2. Danny impregnates someone, not necessarily Clara, using <insert gimmick here>. 3. Aliens/time travellers impregnate Clara using Danny's genetic material. 4. Clara is pregnant. 5. Time paradox. 6. Danny returns from the "dead" using <insert gimmick here>.
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misterharry
Dominus Tempus
Dalek Caan's Lovechild
Posts: 3,235
Favourite Doctors: Second, Third, Fourth, Eleventh, Thirteenth
Traits: Empathic, Face in the Crowd, Insatiable Curiosity, Stubborn, Phobia (Heights), Unadventurous
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Post by misterharry on Nov 16, 2014 17:29:01 GMT
Wait a second! Just thought of something. If Danny is dead, then how did his descendant Orson Pink ever come to exist? 1. Maybe Orson isn't descendant of Danny. 2. Danny impregnates someone, not necessarily Clara, using <insert gimmick here>. 3. Aliens/time travellers impregnate Clara using Danny's genetic material. 4. Clara is pregnant. 5. Time paradox. 6. Danny returns from the "dead" using <insert gimmick here>. 7. The timeline in which Orson Pink lived has been wiped and he will no longer exist. I've read a discussion on another forum about option 4. Apparently (and I stress that I haven't gone back to check this), among Clara's post-it notes when she was phoning Danny is one that says "3 months". Perhaps this is what she was actually intending to tell him on that call...
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Post by angelicdoctor on Nov 17, 2014 15:32:18 GMT
Good Lord, I hope not.
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Post by Curufea on Nov 18, 2014 7:23:54 GMT
Theoretically the nanotech does not have to create matter at an elemental level (like a Star Trek replicator does) for the dead Cybermen creation - all the material that made up the corpse would have decomposed into the surrounding area. It's just a matter of putting it back together again and recombining organic molecules - based on whatever scanning technology Missy was using to capture a mind of a human (or mostly human in the case of the robot in Deep Breath) at the moment of death.
On a side note - the Celestis (formerly the CIA) were known to recruit agents this way as well, capture at the moment of death.
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Catsmate
13th Incarnation
No longer living in a bad adaption of "A Journal of the Plague Year".
Posts: 3,730
Favourite Doctors: Thirteen, Six, Five, Two, Eight, Twelve, Nine, One, Eleven..
Traits: Eccentric, Insatiable Curiousity.
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Post by Catsmate on Nov 18, 2014 11:19:18 GMT
Theoretically the nanotech does not have to create matter at an elemental level (like a Star Trek replicator does) for the dead Cybermen creation - all the material that made up the corpse would have decomposed into the surrounding area. It's just a matter of putting it back together again and recombining organic molecules - based on whatever scanning technology Missy was using to capture a mind of a human (or mostly human in the case of the robot in Deep Breath) at the moment of death. You'd still need all the elements to make the Cyberman, whatever metals go into the armour for example. On a side note - the Celestis (formerly the CIA) were known to recruit agents this way as well, capture at the moment of death. It's a classic in time travel fiction, right back to Leiber's Change War ( The Big Time) in 1958, if not earlier.
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