3) Is There Still Hope For Bill?
The episode ends with a twist we probably all saw coming, but it was still a gut-wrenching turn of events due to its extreme cruelty. As the Doctor and Nardole find a Mondasian Cybermen, it announces that it used to be Bill Potts. Bill had waited at the black hole end of the space station for the Doctor, just as he had asked her to, and it led to her suffering a fate worse than death.
So, is Bill really a Cyberman? And if she is, will she stay one forever? Our gut reaction is to say: of course not. This is Doctor Who, a show whose audience is heavily made up of children. They couldn’t get away with giving the companion such a horrible ending, could they? After all, Clara looked to be killed in season 9 but the Doctor had found a timey-wimey way to make her immortal and give her her own TARDIS by the end of the season.
The final shot of the episode is a creepy one – zooming in on the Cyberman’s eye and revealing Bill crying beneath – but it does give us hope that Bill is still in there and can be saved. That said, evidence has previously suggested that Pearl Mackie would be leaving alongside Capaldi and Moffat and will not do another season. In fact, it hasn’t even been confirmed that she’ll be around for the Christmas special.
Still, even if Bill is about to make her final appearance in “The Doctor Falls,” that doesn’t mean she’ll remain a Cyberman. What if the Doctor somehow manages to cure Bill but then something else happens to take her away from him? It seems like just the sort of cruel thing that Moffat would do, right?