Skip to main content

Doctor Who Season 12 Episode 10 continues to delight sci-fi fans. While The Thirteenth Doctor is dealing with the return of her longtime foe the Master at the end of the last episode, her companions have their own problems. Ryan Sinclair, Graham O’Brien, and Yasmin Khan still have to face the threat of the Cybermen, and it’s not easy.

[Spoiler alert: The following contains major spoilers for Doctor Who Season 12 Episode 10.]

Old foes and dangerous plans in ‘Doctor Who’ Season 12 Episode 10

Tosin Cole, Jodie Whittaker, and Mandip Gill of Doctor Who season 12 episode 10
Tosin Cole, Jodie Whittaker and Mandip Gill at a Doctor Who Screening & Panel |Roy Rochlin/Getty Images

The episode starts with the Master asking the Doctor to take his hand. She agrees to go with him after he threatens to kill one of the humans with her. The Master takes the Doctor through the boundary to the ruins of Gallifrey. He leads her into the destroyed capital and says that there are things he needs to show her.

While the Doctor is with the Master on Gallifrey, Graham and Yasmin are on the stolen Cybermen ship with the remaining humans. Graham says he has a plan that’s dangerous and might not work. However, he and Yasmin are familiar with plans like that. Graham’s plan turns out to be that he, Yasmin, and the other remaining humans get into Cybermen armor.

Getting ready to fight the Cybermen and finding out the truth about the Time Lords in ‘Doctor Who’

At the boundary, Ko Sharmus gets ready to fight. Ryan isn’t sure about using weapons, but Ko Sharmus says that with the Cybermen, you have to kill or be killed. Meanwhile, the Master takes the Doctor to the Citadel. He also contacts the Cybermen and tells them to come to Gallifrey and to send some soldiers to kill the humans left alive.

Back on the Cyberman ship, one Cyberman tells the Cyber leader that there is a malfunction in one of the storage vaults. The leader goes to investigate, thinking it must be the humans on the ship. Meanwhile, the Master paralyzes the Doctor and says he’s sending her into the Matrix to find out the truth about the Time Lords.

The Master then begins to tell the Doctor a story about an explorer named Tecteun, from Gallifrey. While traveling the universe, she comes across a deserted planet and finds a gateway to another place. Near it, she finds a lost girl and takes the child with her on her travels before returning home to Gallifrey.

One day Tecteun’s child is playing with a friend and she falls off a cliff. She doesn’t die, however, she regenerates. This is the first regeneration to happen on Gallifrey.

Dominant forces and experimentation in ‘Doctor Who’ Season 12 Episode 10

The rest of the Cybermen then arrive on Gallifrey and the Master greets them. The Cybermen’s leader is not impressed, however, and says he and his Cyber army are going to destroy all organic life with the death particle inside him. The Master suggests changing the plan and says that he can make the Cybermen “the dominant force in the universe.”

The story of Tecteun and her child continues with Tecteun experimenting on the child to figure out how she could regenerate. Tecteun becomes obsessed with understanding the child’s regeneration ability and eventually she does. So she decides to try to put the regeneration ability into herself.

A revelation about the Thirteenth Doctor and a Master plan foiled in ‘Doctor Who’

Tecteun regenerates into a man, who leads his people the Shobogans to a new era of growth and knowledge. He also gives the ability to regenerate to all those who live in the Citadel, and these people rename themselves Time Lords. The Doctor then wonders what happened to the child to which the Master replies that she is the child.

The Master kills the Cybermen’s leader by shrinking him. Meanwhile, for the Doctor, the story continues with her witnessing a group named the Division being formed but that’s pretty much the end of it as the rest is redacted and unable to be recovered. Graham, Ryan, and Yasmin head through the boundary to save the Doctor while the Doctor blasts the Matrix with all her memories.

The Doctor and her friends get ready to stop the Master, who has created an army of Cybermen out of Time Lord bodies. Graham, Ryan, Yasmin, Ko Sharmus, and the rest of the humans from the future put bombs on the Cybermen’s ship. They manage to escape and get back to Gallifrey, where the Doctor finds them a TARDIS to take them home to Earth. She then goes to sacrifice herself by blowing up Gallifrey with the death particle while the Master and his Cyber army are on it.

Ko Sharmus follows her and says he wants to make sure that the Cybermen are destroyed. He says that he started it by sending the Cyberium back through time and he’s going to finish it. The Doctor then takes another TARDIS off of Gallifrey to where her TARDIS is. She gets in and is about to pick up her friends when Judoon appear in her TARDIS and sentence her to life in prison.

Best in Entertainment