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Fridge Brilliance
- Saxon is sent to his TARDIS as he is about to regenerate…on a ship full of Cybermen.
- Noticeably, by the end of the episode, Nardole is shown waiting for the Doctor after some time has passed, which would mean months, if not years (or more) passed in the Cybermen's floor, without any attack. He states that's because they'll take a while to reform, but what if actually the Master took them all with himself?
- The Affably Evil A.I. Seb, Missy's right-hand "man" in the Nethersphere, effectively has the same function as Saxon's Mr. Razor masquerade in leading the souls of the dead to delete their emotions and become Cybermen; perhaps she got the idea for Seb from her previous self's actions?
- Of course Twelve doesn't want to regenerate. Not only has he admitted that it's painful, his last four regenerations have been very traumatic.
- The Twelfth Doctor remembering Clara implies that the memory block of her has finally been lifted.
- The First Doctor was the original incarnation of the Doctor's first regeneration cycle. The Twelfth Doctor is the first incarnation of the Doctor's new regeneration cycle. And the First Doctor regenerated because he let his original body "wear a bit thin"... something it seems the Twelfth Doctor is in danger of doing as well. In sort, both Doctors had the same kind of difficulty in letting go of their original incarnation and allowing a new Doctor to take over. No wonder the TARDIS brought the latter to see the former.
- The Doctor kept insisting he would save Bill, but there was no way to save her from the Cyber-conversion. And she knew it. (Rule 1: the Doctor lies.) Although in this case, he wasn't lying, he just wasn't right, either.
- Maybe Missy bringing Clara into the Doctor's life wasn't a malicious act. Missy states that she is much more empathetic than Saxon, so giving him a Distaff Counterpart would be her crazy way of extending an olive branch. (Like buying him a puppy.)
- Mondasian Cybermen being flight-capable seems like an incongruity unless one considers that Missy may have gotten the idea to give her own batch of Cybermen that ability from fragmentary memories of having seen them as Saxon. The real inventors of flying Cybermen would be the surgeon-engineers of level 1056, which gave them that ability so they could penetrate the levels without having to use up shuttlecrafts or pass through the tactical bottleneck of the lifts.
- Twelve is actually the Doctor's fourteenth life, thanks to the War Doctor and the Meta-Crisis, and he's clearly sick and tired of regenerating. Maybe that's common among Time Lords, and why they only have thirteen lives?
- The Doctor says that Cybermen exist whenever people are desperate enough to survive that they begin mutilating and cybernetically enhancing themselves. Beyond Cybermen proper, this description could include the Toclafane and even the Daleks.
- There's even precedent for it, as several episodes feature humans converted into Daleks: "The Evil of the Daleks", "Revelation of the Daleks", "The Parting of the Ways", and "Evolution of the Daleks".
- The Ice Warriors were also the desperate inhabitants of a dying, drying world who partially converted themselves with cybernetic shells, though they didn't lose their emotions (though we never see a baseline Martian). Notably the cybernetic armor was specifically brought up in the recent Empress of Mars.
- The First Doctor was noticeably absent from most of "The Tenth Planet", in particular all of the third episode in the serial. If the setting he's in is indeed Antarctica, his chance encounter with the Twelfth Doctor and subsequent would explain why he's up and vanished. And because their meeting puts the timelines out of sync, he won't remember any of it and thus it won't alter the course of events where the story is about to undergo. Alternatively, the First Doctor got a good head start on Ben and Polly upon his return to the TARDIS when he was on the verge of regenerating, so we might be bearing witness to an unseen moment where he started to rebel against the imminent change and the Twelfth Doctor crossed paths with him. It might even provide a better and clear explanation as to what set off his regeneration, a desperately searched for answer beyond "wearing a bit thin" 51 years in the making. Plus, there's there's the fact this adventure is the first to feature the Cybermen as a whole and in their original models, so it might also retroactively rewrite the raid on the Antarctic base as "Operation Exodus"!
- The Doctor is refusing to regenerate, over and over, carrying on what he feels needs to be done despite what is apparently quite painful injuries. This is the Doctor who dragged himself through a day and a half of agony, several billion times until he finally self-destructed in order to do what he felt needed to be done to save Clara.
- The Doctor who started his incarnation with the shortest ever regeneration (a second or two at most) will end up being the Doctor who ended it with the longest ever regeneration (an entire episode and change).
- At first Missy's Heel–Face Door-Slam, courtesy of Saxon's counterattack, seems like a let-down: she'd intended to stand by the Doctor against the Cybermen and redeem herself, but never got the chance to actually do it. But the central point of the Doctor's final speech to the two Masters is that it doesn't matter if a person's efforts to do the right thing fail, so long as their attempt at doing so is sincere. Simply by turning away from the lift and taking a single step back towards the battlefield, Missy completed her Heel–Face Turn, for all that Saxon prevented her from demonstrating that change-of-hearts to the Doctor in person. And, just like Twelve, she lost her life upholding that newfound commitment, and fell where she stood. In the end, the Missy side of the Master beat the Saxon side, redeeming herself by Twelve's own standards, even in succumbing to their Mutual Kill. So, she really did stand by the Doctor's principles without hope, without witness, without reward.
- The Saxon Master deciding to kill Missy instead of letting her join the Doctor seems unusual for someone who valued his own life more than anything else. Then again, this is exactly what he already did in Last of the Time Lords - letting himself die instead of regenerating and joining with the Doctor, who was begging him to. It seems this incarnation of the Master does value annoying the Doctor more than his own life.
- Bill waited for ten years while the Doctor gave his explanation of time dilation and finally got moving to go rescue her. He missed her by twenty minutes according to the Master. But, it's pretty clear that it was only because the Master waited until they were on their way down before setting Bill up for conversion. In fact, by delaying so long, the Doctor made it possible for the development of the pain suppressor, so if he hadn't talked before going, she would have been converted with an older technique, perhaps one she would not have been able to resist so well. The pain suppressor at least made sure she didn't suffer nearly as much as she could have.
- While it seems like the Saxon Master coldly declines any opportunity of redemption; his next chronological appearance shows him (as Missy) creating an army of Cybermen for the Doctor to use. So maybe the speech did get through to him.
- It is noted in "The Pilot" that Bill and Heather's names are references to William Hartnell and his wife. In hindsight this is foreshadowing the 1st Doctor, originally played by Hartnell, appearing at the end of the series.
Fridge Horror
- If the ship had not encountered the black hole, the ship's versions of the Mondasian Cybermen would not have been created.
- There's also a chance that the original Mondasian Cybermen seen in "The Tenth Planet" wouldn't have been made. The ship was made to evacuate the planet, but it hadn't arrived at Mondas yet. It's likely that the people of Mondas turned to Cyber-conversion out of desperation because the ship never arrived.
- It's not likely that big battle took out even half the Cybermen. Eventually, they'll find that floor Nardole and the survivors fled to.
- The Master's first query about the Doctor's previous experiences dying was "Have you burned?" Talk about Ask a Stupid Question...!
- When Twelve is doing his Badass Boast and listing off all the places he's beaten the Cybermen before, he's creating a Stable Time Loop and giving them a list of potential targets.
