YMMV / Doctor Who 2016 CS "The Return of Doctor Mysterio"

• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • Grant's infatuation with Lucy is presented as cute and romantic, but he could also be seen as a creepy stalker who's been obsessed with the same girl for 24 years without ever saying anything, and who's gone to such lengths as becoming a full-time nanny for Lucy just so he can keep an eye on her. The fact that Lucy reciprocates Grant's feelings in the end is no excuse for his creepy behaviour, because he didn't know she liked him too until she told him so. In all fairness though, he didn't exactly keep track of her after high school and seemed genuinely surprised she remembered him when they ran into her again by chance (depending on your view of how much influence the Reality Warper stone that gave him his powers had on events), only for her to fall for his best friend instead of him.
  • Is Nardole growing a spine due to spending 24 years inside of Hydroflax and the Doctor's influence? Or is this his natural personality, with his actions in the previous story him pretending to be meek in order to keep below Hydroflax's radar?
• Broken Base:
  • The Alternate Character Interpretation that the Twelfth Doctor actually misses Clara and not River is at least partially the result of continued debates over which woman he loved more and how each relationship played out. Some fans have chosen to Take a Third Option and say the Doctor misses both equally.
  • Mr. Huffle. Although the squeeze toy (and its associated mantra, "Mr. Huffle feels pain") appears to have been little more than just a bit of fun, a way of giving Lucy some extra character and perhaps provide a little bit of metaphor for the Doctor's supposed anguish, some fans have been critical of its inclusion.
• Continuity Lockout: Primarily averted, and in fact one of the main aims of this episode was to be as standalone as possible given the imminent relaunch of the series for Season 10 and the fact it had been a full year since the last episode. It mostly succeeds, but for newcomers and even fans who chose to skip Series 9 or the 2015 Christmas special, a few questions remain:
  • The significance of River Song; in addition, much of the Doctor's behaviour and melancholy is also related to the loss of his companion Clara Oswald, of whom he only has partial memory. Both require knowledge of not only the 2015 Christmas special, but events in Series 9 and earlier, going back to Series 4.
  • Where did Nardole come from and why is he travelling with the Doctor? A lot of this is intentionally a case of The Unreveal, but it still requires knowledge of the events of "The Husbands of River Song". "Extremis", the sixth episode of Series 10, went on to fill in most of the details.
• Heartwarming in Hindsight: The Doctor's quote to Lucy and Grant about things ending and beginning becomes either poignant or happy reassurance after Peter Capaldi's announcement that he would be leaving Doctor Who during the 2017 Christmas special, an announcement that was made a month after this episode aired.
  "Things end. That's all. Everything ends, and it's always sad. But everything begins again too, and that's... always happy. Be happy. I'll look after everything else."
• He Really Can Act: Justin Chatwin has put his name in a much better light with this episode, after being weighed down for years by Dragonball Evolution.
• Magnificent Bastard: Dr. Sim is the leader of the Shoal of the Winter Harmony, a species that replace the brains of hosts with themselves. He plans to colonise the Earth, having replaced many important figures and intends to do so to the World Leaders. Sim oversees the construction of Harmony Shoal buildings, capable of withstanding four atomic bombs, in all of the capital cities of the world. He intends to destroy New York city with a spaceship rigged to explode, so that only the Harmony Shoal building would remain standing, making the World Leaders take refuge inside said buildings where they would be easy targets, a plan that even impresses the Doctor. Sim is only defeated due to the intervention of Grant Gordon / The Ghost, after which he evades capture by swapping vessels with one of the UNIT soldiers sent to apprehend him.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • Many have joked that Lucy got out more information from the Doctor in a few minutes by using a plush toy, than the Time Lords, who utilised the Doctor's Confession Dial and received nothing after 4 and a half billion years.
  • The casting of Justin Chatwin as Grant/The Ghost hasn't gone unnoticed by the Dragon Ball fandom, who starting joking that Chatwin's role in this episode is his redemption for starring in the infamously bad Dragonball Evolution.
  • And then there's the whole angle of Goku playing a Superman Substitute that has people thinking about their clashes in DEATH BATTLE!.
• Special Effect Failure:
  • The aerial shots of New York City somehow manage to look vastly worse than the similar shots from the "Daleks in Manhattan"/"Evolution of the Daleks" two parter, despite that story being made almost ten years before this one.
  • When the Doctor is climbing in Grant's window, you can see his feet flailing around behind him, but once he's actually inside, his feet are tied up again.
  • The Ghost's cape fails to flap more often than not as he flies.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: Even though Matt Lucas gets second billing in the opening (though with And preceding his name, unlike most companions), Nardole gets little to do of importance to the plot, serving as more of an occasionally-wisecracking sidekick to the Doctor than a traditional companion. However, this episode was setting him up as a recurring secondary companion in Series 10, where his character was considerably fleshed out.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: Introducing a bona fide superhero into the universe of Doctor Who could have been a good way to contrast the Doctor using his brains to save the day while The Cape just punches all the bad guys until they die or surrender. Instead we just get the Doctor working with a Captain Ersatz to thwart yet another alien invasion. To be fair this is a staple of both classic Doctor Who and Silver Age Superman stories and it should be noted that Titan Comics did launch a spin-off comic book series immediately after the episode aired in which the Doctor returns to visit Grant and Lucy several years later from their perspective and travels for a time with them as his companions, with one issue focusing on this idea where Grant's attempts to fight a supervillain proves ineffective while the Doctor's plan to reason with him ends up saving the day.

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