Something I’ve noticed with the cinematography of Series 10 that I have not seen in any previous series of Doctor Who is that we almost never see Bill from behind, or at an angle where her face is obscured.
I like doing ‘faceless’ imagesets, and let me tell you that it’s been an absolute bloody nightmare to get decent shots of her at an appropriate angle for that.
But that’s brilliant, isn’t it?
Across every director in Series 10, they have all gone out of their way to focus on Pearl Mackie’s face – her expressions, her emotions, her reactions. It’s all about her story, which is reinforced by the cinematography at every turn.
And that further accentuates what her becoming a Cyberman robs her of – her face. It’s a brilliant confluence of the cinematography and the writing that The Doctor Falls focuses more on showing us Bill as she sees herself, only occasionally showing her Cyberman form during specific moments to visually show us the emotions she’s feeling that are not on-display.
Take her exchange with The Master, for instance, where he gloats about how he tricked and manipulated her for ten years, with Bill (as a Cyberman) responding “I am not upset” to deny him the pleasure of his cruel jibe, only for the transition to show Bill’s actual expression where she’s clearly distraught.
It makes the catharsis of her story’s resolution all the more satisfying where she becomes a being that can literally reshape atoms and states of matter.
HEATHER: “I can make you human again. It’s all just atoms. You can rearrange them any way you like. I can put you back home, you can make chips, and live your life, or you can come with me. It’s up to you, Bill.”
The ultimate outcome is that she gets to decide who and what she wants to be, in totality.
It’s just really good to see that there was clearly conscious though put into Bill’s expression as a fundamental aspect of her character, which is why the Doctor notices her in the first place – when she doesn’t understand something, she doesn’t from like most people… she smiles.
She’s enamoured with a new mystery, not in the way that Clara was where she’d throw herself into it with reckless abandon (like the Doctor), she is driven by a passion to understand.
And Pearl Mackie plays that mixture of awe and excitement and raw emotion so damn well, it’s wholly understandable why none of Series 10′s directors wanted to have her face obscured or do any big landscape reveal shots from behind – they all understood that these things were present in-service to her character, for Pearl to play off of in her own brilliant and unique way.