SPOILERS: ‘Doctor Who’ Boss Confirms Major Character Has Just Been Killed Off

Kim Taylor-Foster
TV Doctor Who
TV Doctor Who

If you saw the latest episode of Doctor Who – titled “World Enough and Time” – you’ll know about the fate that met the Doctor’s latest companion Bill Potts. SPOILER WARNING: do not read on if you don’t want to know what happens in Episode 11 of Doctor Who Season 10.

During a Facebook Live event following the episode’s BBC One premiere, which you can watch in full above, showrunner Steven Moffat confirmed that it’s the last we will see of Pearl Mackie’s Bill Potts.

In the episode, we saw her shot early on by a blue alien and then taken away to be ‘repaired’. She was fitted with a cybernetic heart before being converted into a Cyberman.

Moffat said that that was it for Pearl and her character Bill: “She’s a Cyberman from now on. She’s one of those ones in the trailer actually. She was just killing people. That’s the way it is sometimes.”

Mackie, meanwhile, joked she was going home now, and also said: “I mean, I’m quite an emotional person, so it was pretty emotional – even just reading any of it and at the read through it was quite emotional because there’s a lot of endings.”

bill potts doctor who
Bill Potts is now a Cyberman

She complimented Moffat’s writing: “I think that’s credit to Steven’s writing that you can get that kind of emotion from it when you read it that you’re supposed to get when you watch it.”

Moffat takes his leave as showrunner after this year’s Christmas special airs, alongside incumbent Doctor, Peter Capaldi.

When asked if he was actively avoiding making his departing season a nostalgia-fest, Moffat said: “You want a brand new exciting adventure pushing forward to the future of Doctor Who, which I want to be incredibly secure and exciting because I have my place reserved behind the sofa to start watching it properly again.”

He also talked about Peter Capaldi’s Doctor: “As he’s developed, there’s a wonderful contradiction. [Capaldi] plays a Doctor who thinks he’s aloof and mysterious and remote and actually, he’s an exposed nerve of raw emotion all the time. The thing about Peter as an actor is that he only has to think at the screen and you know what he’s thinking. Sometimes I think he’s not even moving his face and I know exactly the particular blend of Scottish torment he’s feeling right now.

“I think despite trying to fight his own emotions he has given us the most emotional Doctor.”

Steven Moffat, who created the successful TV series Sherlock starring Benedict Cumberbatch, has recently announced that he’ll be working on a Sherlock-style Dracula series for the BBC with Sherlock collaborator Mark Gatiss.

Kim Taylor-Foster
Kim Taylor-Foster is Entertainment Editor for Fandom in the UK. She was raised on an unsteady diet of video nasties and violent action flicks.