Once again, Doctor Who brings us an exciting, scary, and thrilling episode with “The Haunting of Villa Diodati.” At the end of last week’s episode, the Doctor suggested going back in time to the time when Frankenstein was written. This week’s episode was another historical thriller with a Doctor Who bad-guy twist. Except for this time, the twist is even bigger than we imagined. This post contains spoilers. Do not read any further if you have not seen the episode.
Setting the stage
The episode opens in Lake Geneva in 1816. Mary Shelley (played by Lili Miller), Lord Byron (played by Jacob Collins-Levy), Clair Clairmont (played by Nadia Parkes), and Dr. Palidori (played by Maxim Baldry) are gathered in a gorgeous villa while a storm rages outside. Apparently, the weather has been terrible all year. Mary suggests Dr. Palidori or Lord Byron read a scary story. Lord Byron loves the idea, so he begins to read. Mary passes her baby boy, William, off to the maid Elise (played by Sarah Perles) to send him to bed. As Elise is putting William to bed, she passes by a door where its doorknob wiggles on its own. Right off the bat, we are getting a scary movie vibe. While Lord Byron reads the story about “the dead awakening,” there is a knock on their door. The knock is getting louder! They all head for the door to open it…guess who is on the other side? Of course, it’s The Doctor (Jodie Whittaker), Ryan (Tosin Cole), Yaz (Mandip Gill), and Graham (Bradley Walsh). They all scream in fright and the title sequence begins. What an entrance!
The Doctor, Ryan, Yaz, and Graham (the TARDIS fam) are all soaking wet and ask to come inside. The Doctor tries to use the psychic paper, but it isn’t working. There’s nothing on it. Apparently, it doesn’t work when it’s wet? All the same, Lord Byron lets them come inside to dry off and warm up. The TARDIS fam is only there for a quick visit as to not mess with history. This is the night that inspires Mary Shelley to write Frankenstein. So, no one is allowed to mention “Frankenstein…” or snog Byron.
The Doctor notices something is off
As the night unfolds, the Doctor notices there isn’t any writing going on. Lord Byron, Mary, Claire, and Dr. “Polly” teach the TARDIS fam their dance. When they’re all dancing, they begin to gossip about each other to the TARDIS fam. The dance ends, and the Doctor breaks her rule about mentioning writing. She suggests that they write the most spine-chilling story of all time.
We go back to Elise, who has just put baby William to bed. As she walks down the hall, a vase lifts up off of an end table and slams against a wall! BY ITSELF.
Now, the Doctor is explaining to her friends that something is wrong – Percy Shelley is supposed to be among them. However, he isn’t. At this point in history, Lord Byron challenges Mary and Percy to see who can write the scariest story of all time. Obviously, this isn’t happening. So, where is Mr. Shelley? Why is this day all wrong?
Meanwhile, Graham had to find a bathroom to relieve himself. Sorry, Graham, no toilets have been invented yet. As he heads up a flight of stairs, he ends up back where he was downstairs! Is this a trick staircase? One of those staircases to nowhere, perhaps? Lightning flashes and two figures appear then vanish. A painting then falls off of the wall and a SKELETON HAND pops out of it. Things are getting scary.
Next, Yaz finds Claire trying to unlock a door. Lord Byron supposedly keeps this room off-limits, and Claire needs to see if he has been writing letters about her. Claire has affectionate feelings for Lord Byron, but Lord Byron will not give her a straight answer. She describes him as an enigma. Yaz’s person is a bit different, as the Doctor is the most enigmatic person in her life. As Yaz and Claire talk, Yaz sees a flash of light and what looks like an apparition. Naturally, Yaz shakes it off as a trick of the lights. It was definitely something or someone.
The Villa starts to feel even more strange
The Doctor is looking around. Lord Byron comes into the room behind her quoting one of his pieces of work. “She walks in beauty like the night.” As the Doctor begins to quote the rest, Lord Byron (who is absolutely full of himself) is pleased the Doctor loves his work. She humbles him a bit by saying she’s a big fan of Shelley’s work and wonders where he is.
Ryan is back downstairs and is play “Chopsticks” on the piano. Terribly. Mary lets Ryan know she enjoys the piano, but she would much rather write. As the two of them talk, they notice Doctor Palidori staring daggers at them. Then, Mary explains that he doesn’t sleep well at night. He sleepwalks and is going mad.
Back to Byron and the Doctor: Byron believes the Doctor wants his latest work, but she isn’t interested. She can sense an unrelenting evil in the house…this explains why apparitions are everywhere and Graham was going around in circles on trick staircases.
Then, back with Ryan and Claire, Ryan accidentally offended Doctor Palidori. He wants to duel Ryan, but Graham tries to calm him down by forbidding it. When Palidori walks out of the room to get his pistol (yikes), the skeleton hand comes in and chokes Ryan! They manage to get it off, and Fletcher, the butler (played by Stefan Bednarczyk), hits it with a serving dish. It disintegrates. The Doctor licks the remnants and says there is nothing abnormal about the hand. It’s human, 15th century. Turns out, Lord Byron has a full skeleton in his locked room.
The Doctor tries to figure out what is going on
Everyone goes into Byron’s room and sees that he does, in fact, have a skeleton from the 15th century in there. Now, both hands are missing. This means the other one is on the loose somewhere. The Doctor asks what happened to Mr. Shelley, and Mary says he has been having visions. He has been seeing apparitions. They need to figure out where he truly is and what he has been seeing. Maybe he has the answers or clues into what is going on with the house.
Yaz, Mary, and Ryan walk downstairs talking about what they have been seeing. As they near the bottom, they end up back at the top! Trick staircases are happening again! Byron, the Doctor, and Claire are also walking in circles. They cannot get out of Byron’s office! Mary hears William crying, but she cannot get to him! As a mother, I felt her anxiety. Not being able to get to her crying baby, in a house that seems to keep changing, would be absolutely terrifying.
Thankfully, Elise is on her way. The window in William’s room is open, and as she closes it, she sees what looks like strange electrical activity and a figure outside. Then, Doctor Palidori wakes up…well actually he is sleepwalking. HE WALKS THROUGH A WALL. Graham runs to tell the Doctor, but how HE is running in circles! They can all hear each other through the fireplaces, so that’s a good sign.
What’s really happening here?
Doctor “Polly” ended up walking through the wall into the upstairs room where the Doctor was with Byron and Claire. Lord Byron hides behind Claire (how brave of him), and the Doctor checks Polly’s pulse. He’s alive, just asleep. Lord Byron attempts to flirt with the Doctor, and her response is, “No, you may not.” I think we all need to keep this in our back pockets!
The Doctor figures out it’s a perception filter! Since Polly was asleep, he wasn’t affected by it. If everyone closed their eyes or thought about where they needed to go, then the perception filter wouldn’t work. Their minds are being deceived. So, Mary closes her eyes and is able to get to her son’s crib. (Remember, Elise has already gotten him at this point, but Mary doesn’t know this.) Inside of William’s crib is a skull and the other skeleton hand! Why are the bones acting this way?
Now, the front door is missing. The Doctor found it, but she can’t get out. So, perhaps the reason Shelley never showed up was that he couldn’t get in. During this year in history, they blamed the bad weather on volcanic ash blocking the sun. This was the year without a summer. But now, people are vanishing and everything is going haywire. What exactly is going on? They look out the window and all see the “death god” Shelley had envisioned. Except, it isn’t a vision; it’s a traveler. Moving through time…
The Doctor figures it out
The traveler transmits itself inside the house…IT IS A CYBERMAN! IT IS THE LONE CYBERMAN THAT CAPTAIN JACK WARNED THEM ABOUT! This one is unfinished. It still looks partly human. Whatever it came for is hidden in the house somewhere. The house is like a giant panic room – it is trying to keep whatever the Cyberman is looking for secured. The Doctor wants to go after it, but she makes it very clear to the others not to follow her. She explains that the Cybermen were once human, but all of their emotions have been stripped away. During the Doctor’s time (played by Peter Capaldi) with Bill Potts (played by Pearl Mackie), the Doctor saw Bill become a Cyberman. She is not losing anyone else to their wretched army.
This Cyberman finds Fletcher and is asking for “The Guardian.” Then, it hears the baby crying! Oh man, talk about another stressful moment here. Elise is hiding with baby William, and the Cyberman finds them. It kills Elise and picks up the baby. It tells the baby he will be like the Cyberman, BUT IT SETS THE BABY DOWN and walks away from him.
Next, the Doctor confronts the Cyberman. It can sense her heightened sense of anxiety, while the Doctor calls it “Tuesday.” Can we all agree here that that’s how we all feel on Tuesdays? Why is that? I digress…The time hop used up a lot of power, so the Cyberman cannot use its weapons. It claims to be irritated with the Doctor, so it still feels some human emotion. Why doesn’t it have emotion inhibitors? As the Doctor stalls, it asks who “the guardian” is and what it is looking for. Maybe they need to work together somehow.
Yaz, Ryan, and Mary find a room that was supposed to be empty but has writing and papers all over the walls and floor. Mary recognizes the writing as Percy Shelley’s writing. They are symbols and numbers. Graham, Byron, and Claire are in the cellar. Someone else is down there with them…
The Cyberman goes after the Doctor and powers up using the lightning. This is terrifying, as this would mean the Cybermen have unlimited power. As the camera pans back to the Doctor, it is angled down to make the Cyberman feel bigger and stronger in the moment. The Doctor isn’t the guardian, and the Cyberman is looking for something called “Cyberium.” Next, the Cyberman begins to quote something of Shelley’s. We only know this because Mary, in the next room, can quote along with it. Why is it using his words? Did Shelley become a Cyberman?!
“The Guardian” is found
Down in the cellar, Graham, Claire, and Byron found “the guardian.” The Guardian is Percy Shelley (played by Lewis Rainer)! Thank goodness he is still alive. He is the one who is guarding what the Cyberman is looking for. The Doctor ran from the room quickly and found the baby. Everyone else comes into the room with her to let her know they found Mr. Shelley. History is vulnerable right now. If anyone dies this night, then history changes forever. The Doctor warns everyone to hide, but Mary refuses. She does not want to be away from Percy, and rightfully so. She loves him and cannot bear to be away from him while he suffers.
Mr. Shelley is guarding the Cyberium. The Cyberman enters, but somehow Shelley is able to send it away. He has been the one controlling the house, more or less, to keep the Cyberman away from this substance.
The Doctor looks into his mind to see what exactly happened. Shelley saw something alive and like quicksilver in the lake and picked it up. Then, it began to take root in his body. He changed. No one could see him! He was the one who threw the vase across the room in the beginning! He was the apparition everyone was seeing! The Cyberium hid him within the villa. So, there were no ghosts. It was all Shelley trying to get everyone’s attention. He can see the future and the past of the Cybermen race. It holds the battle plans and data of the Cyber army. The Doctor seems to believe that someone sent it through time to keep it away from the Cybermen. Smart!
“Don’t give it what it wants”
After the Doctor sees what has happened, she tells him to stop fighting off the Cyberman. She doesn’t care about Jack’s warning. Captain Jack told her to be sure she didn’t give the lone Cyberman what it wanted, and this is what it wanted. If Shelley dies, then all of history changes. Her friends won’t exist. She cannot have that happen. One death. One ripple. The TARDIS team structure is no longer flat. She is the one who has to make the hard decisions, and sometimes she can’t win.
When the Cyberman appears, Mary gets brave and talks to it one on one. She sees there is still a man in there. A man who spared her son. She calls him a “Modern Prometheus,” which is an alternate title to Frankenstein, coincidentally. Of course, it doesn’t care about all of that. The Doctor causes the Cyberium to leave Shelley. It doesn’t obey the Cyberman and instead goes into the Doctor. This reset the house.
The Cyberman threatens to tear Earth apart unless she gives up the Cyberium. She can’t win. The Cyber army is inevitable. To save the world, she has to give it what it wants…
Apparently, the Doctor had to show Shelley how he dies in order for the Cyberium to leave his body. He will absolutely love every moment and truly love life with his family. He gives Yaz the symbols he had written down.
When the TARDIS fam is back in the TARDIS, the Doctor again tells them she will take them back home. She doesn’t want them to be involved in the Cyberwar. Yaz hands her the coordinates. They aren’t going anywhere but where she goes. It ends with Lord Byron reading, “She was the universe.” No truer words have been spoken about her.
More thoughts on the episode
What an incredible episode! I was not expecting to see the Lone Cyberman just yet, and I am really hoping we get to see Captain Jack in the 2-part finale. Jodie Whittaker’s acting was superb. Seeing the amount of emotion and anger she had when it came to not wanting to lose anyone else to the Cybermen was intense. The Doctor refuses to see anyone else she loves to be converted.
Also, there was a moment in the end when Lord Byron finally mentions something to Claire about him being interested. She totally rejects him! I would be lying if I said I didn’t cheer for her. Lord Byron spent all night hitting on the Doctor, and then he used Claire as a human shield. Take your charm elsewhere, Byron!
I want to know why this Cyberman wasn’t “finished” yet. Half of his face still showed, one of his hands was uncovered, and he felt some emotion. Even if that emotion was irritation, that is still very human of it. Let’s hope we get that resolution! I am sure we will since the next 2 episodes will be about the Cybermen. Yikes!
Fan reactions
How am I supposed to wait a whole week after tonight’s amazing episode??#DoctorWho pic.twitter.com/vUJGFH84gy
— avi 💜🖤 (@cryptid_bard) February 17, 2020
Two of my favorite worlds collided tonight. British romanticism and #DoctorWho, when combined, are nothing less than magical 💙💙
— 🇺🇦 it's ACE week 🖤🤍💜 (@wishin4aTARDIS) February 17, 2020
“I’m sorry. So very sorry.”
13 your 10 is showing. #DoctorWho— Bekah 🍀 (@lexibexwrites) February 17, 2020
It’s gotta be SO HARD to be the Doctor. Such responsibility. #DoctorWho
— Lindsey – #WelcomeHomeWynonna (@xfbard) February 17, 2020
Doctor Who will return on BBCA for the beginning of the 2-part season finale on Sunday, February 23 at 8 pm.
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