Doctor Who Review: Dark Water

Season 8 / Episode 11 Wow. What a way to start off the season eight finale. I do think we deserved a smart, action-packed episode this week after last week’s boring dud, and boy, did Steven Moffat deliver. There’s a lot to get into, so let’s just start off at the beginning. “Dark Water” immediately digs right into some heavy sorrow with Danny Pink’s death. Seriously? Dude gets killed just as Clara is making her ridiculously emotional declaration of love? Cue all of the feels—and we’re not even 15 minutes into the episode. We already know that this isn’t the end of Danny, and we know that this is the route we’re going to take into the Nethersphere, where we’ve been heading all along. But it’s still a daring choice to make because we get hit with this (although not as hard as Danny is hit … too soon?) before we even get a chance to settle into the episode. It’s also tough because we know Clara’s been having a rough time this season, what with saving the world and battling aliens and balancing her lives with the Doctor and Danny, and she chooses that moment to really express to Danny what he means to her and come clean about everything. Oh irony, thy name is Moffat.   Lesson: Always wait to declare your undying love and devotion to your significant lover when they’re not about to walk into traffic   Jena Coleman gets to show off her acting skills yet again (though to be fair, she’s had to do a lot of that lately, with this being such a Clara-focused season) as we see C…