Rachel Talalay brought so much to #DoctorWho.

“Dark Water” and “Death in Heaven”, “Heaven Sent” and “Hell Bent”, “World Enough and Time” and “The Doctor Falls.”

She’s one of the great “Doctor Who” directors, like Toby Haynes, David Maloney, Fiona Cumming or Graeme Harper. https://twitter.com/rtalalay/status/1345807893145083905

I missed last night’s rewatch of “Dark Water” and “Death in Heaven.” I would only add that I feel like the genius of “Dark Water” is often overlooked.

It’s a compelling and emotionally grounded story, but it’s also a delightful parody of “monster reveal” cliffhangers.

In that “Doctor Who” had a habit in multi-part stories (even stories titled “... of the Daleks” or “... of the Cybermen”) of holding back on insanely obvious monster reveals until the cliffhanger.

So “Dark Water” is built around the obvious punchline of a Cybermen cliffhanger.

The Doctor spends the bulk of the episode missing increasingly obvious exposition, music cues and design choices pointing to the reveal.

The Doctor even draws attention to how he’s missing the obvious. The joke is that the audience is well ahead of him the whole time.

And, of course, the really clever structural punchline is that the “it’s the Cybermen!” joke reveal handily distracts the attention from the much more effective “Missy is the Master! and the Master is a woman!” reveal.

It’s a remarkable sleight of hand. And hilarious.