The episode opens with a dinosaur walking through 19th century London. Madame Vastra and Jenny Flint arrive to investigate. The dinosaur coughs up the TARDIS. Vastra tells the constable she and Jenny will investigate. They call on Strax to knock on the TARDIS’ door. The new Doctor pops his head out, shushes Strax, and goes back inside. He reappears to explain he was being chased by a dinosaur, but that he thinks he gave it the slip. The Doctor reappears and is a bit confused. He mistakes Strax for a dwarf and only recognizes Vastra and Jenny as the green one and not the green one. Clara exits the TARDIS. The Doctor is still frazzled by his regeneration. He flirts with the dinosaur and struggles to remember his adventures with Clara. He then confuses Strax for Clara. He mumbles something about them going dark and wobbly, before shouting for everyone to take five and passing out. Jenny finally asks where the Doctor is, and Clara fills them in.
Cue new opening sequence.
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That night, the dinosaur continues stomping through London. The Doctor is still confused, not sure what a bedroom is or why his mirror is so furious, then complaining about Clara’s accent and how it’s spreading. Vastra tries to help calm him by forming a psychic link, but really just puts him to sleep. Jenny still doesn’t grasp the concept of a regeneration, and asks how to change the Doctor back. Jenny remarks that the dinosaur doesn’t seem happy. Clara is confused about why the Doctor looks so old if his face is brand new. Clara asks what Jenny would do if Vastra changed and wasn’t the person she liked anymore. Jenny reminds Clara she doesn’t like Vastra, she loves her, and that she’s a lizard. The Doctor begins mumbling in his sleep, about the world shaking at his feet, that the world and the sky has gone, and that he is alone. Clara believes he is translating what the dinosaur is trying to communicate. Strax comes to fetch Clara and bring her to Vastra’s chamber.
Some London citizens are walking thought the street. The man says he believes the dinosaur to be a fake, conjured up somehow by the government. Some sort of robot is in the street, and takes the mans eyes.
Vastra, wearing a veil, is still getting the details of Clara’s story. Clara says the Doctor was gone, but Jenny corrects her, reminding her that the Doctor is upstairs. Vastra says that the Doctor is renewed, and Jenny can’t believe that’s true, given his age. Vastra reminds Clara of how truly old the Doctor is, and that the appearance of youth isn’t the same as youth. The Doctor only appeared as a dashing young man to be accepted.
Upstairs, the Doctor sits straight up, awake. He begins crawling around the room, searching beneath the bed and listening to the radiator. He smells a piece of chalk and marks the radiator.
Vastra explains that she is wearing her veil as a judgment on Clara, because of her inability to get past the Doctor’s new physical appearance. Clara is offended, begins defending herself against what she feels is an accusation of ageism, even accusing Vastra of being attracted to her herself. Vastra explains the Doctor needs them to help him find himself, especially Clara. Vastra’s veil is suddenly gone. Clara asks when she stopped wearing, and Vastra says when Clara stopped seeing it.
The Doctor goes outside to talk to the Dinosaur, promising to get her home. The dinosaur suddenly bursts into flames and falls.
Vastra and company hear, and call for Strax to bring the carriage.
The Doctor goes towards the dinosaur and gets stuck in a tree. He relieves a carriage man of his horse to continue making his way. The Doctor arrives, as do the others, to find the dead dinosaur and mourns for her. Vastra asks who has done this, and the Doctor says that’s not the question. Strax suggests that the question is how, and the Doctor accuses him of having pudding for brains. The Doctor says the question is “has there been any similar murders.” Vastra says yes. The Doctor spots the robot man. While the others question, the Doctor jumps into the river.
The next day, Strax is having the TARDIS brought to Vastra’s home to make sure that the Doctor returns. Clara, now dressed in era appropriate clothing, finds Jenny to discuss plans for the day. Vastra is working a case. Clara finds Strax in the kitchen. She asks for water, and he offers his dirty mop water. Strax then gives her a medical examination that actually looks into her subconscious, then moves down to x-ray her body. He tells her he’s examining her to make sure she’s in peak physical condition, since they’re going to serve together. He doesn’t seem too optimistic that he’ll make it back alive.
The Doctor is scrounging around in a dirty alley. He meets another man. The Doctor asks the man for clothes, suggesting a long scarf and then realizing he’s already done that. The Doctor mentions that the faces he takes tends to just pop out, but he feels like he’s seen this one before (likely Moffat’s sly way of referencing the episode “The Fires of Pompeii,” which Peter Capaldi had a guest role in). The Doctor madly criticizes his own face, his aggressive eyebrows, and how surprisingly Scottish he is. He seems to come to like the idea since it lets him complain about things. He then demands the man’s coat, but the man refuses to give it to him. The Doctor then remembers having seen something written in a discarded paper on the ground mentioning spontaneous combustion.
Vastra and Jenny are also speaking about spontaneous combustion. Jenny was posing, thinking Vastra was painting her, but it turns out Vastra was just creating a map of the nine other incidents of combustion in the city recently. Clara shows up with the newspaper and points to an ad for an “impossible girl.”
Being joined by Strax, Vastra has read the rest of the paper and found nothing useful. They assume the ad is from the Doctor, but it only says to meet for lunch on “the other side,” with no further explanation. Clara figures out that it means the other side of the advertisement page, which leads her to a restaurant.
Clara is waiting at the restaurant. She smells something, and then sees that the Doctor has taken a seat next to her. She asks him about his coat, and he says he bought it from a shop. She doesn’t believe him. He says he swapped his watch for the coat. They bicker. She questions why he went through the trouble of putting an advertisement in the newspaper to ask her to lunch. He admits to being an egomaniac, or at least she thinks he does before the Doctor makes clear that he thought she placed the ad. They both realize they don’t know who placed the ad. The Doctor plucks and drops one of Clara’s hairs and realizes that here’s something very wrong with the other people in the room. The Doctor tells Clara to carefully look at everyone else in the room, and she realizes that none of them are actually eating or breathing. They get up to leave, but everyone else gets up to stop them. Clara asks what they are, but the Doctor says he doesn’t know. He says the real question is “what is this restaurant,” which he also doesn’t know. A waiter comes and starts flashing a device at him and naming organs. The Doctor realizes that these are the things they’re planning to take from them. He pulls off the waiter’s face and sees the mechanical workings underneath. They are suddenly strapped into their seats, and the seat begins lowering.
When they reach the bottom, the first robot man they saw is sitting in a chair. The Doctor realizes that they’re in an ancient spaceship used for harvesting humans. The Doctor shimmies out his sonic screwdriver. Clara struggles to toss it to the Doctor, who mumbles something about missing Amy and then uses it to free them. They examine a presumably dormant robot person and continue to search. They wonder why aliens would have killed that dinosaur. The Doctor realizes that first robot is recharging. Clara suggests that he’s actually a cyborg. The Doctor tells her to look at the hands, and realizes that they don’t match and don’t belong to the same body. The Doctor says it’s not a normal cyborg. It’s not a man turning himself into a robot, but a robot turning himself into a man.
The cyborg begins to start waking up. Clara and the Doctor leave, but as they’re leaving the Doctor gets the sense that he’s seen this before. The door closes and Clara is stuck inside. The Doctor says there’s no point in them catching the both of them, and leaves Clara behind. Clara looks for a way out, then begins acting like a robot to try to blend in, holding her breath. She slowly walks out of the room after the first cyborg leaves, but finds a hallway of others and struggles to hold her breath. Finally she has to breathe, and the others notice her. The first cyborg orders the others to bring her. After passing out, Clara has a flashback to her time as a teacher, with no control of her classroom.
Clara wakes up. The cyborg asks where “the other one” is. The cyborg says she will tell them or she will be destroyed. Repeating something a student said to her when she threatened them, she says “do it.” The cyborg backs up and threatens to torture her instead, but Clara stays resolved and tells him it will take too much time. The cyborg removes his hand, which frightens Clara, then reveals a flaming device in its place. Clara tries to bargain, question for question. The cyborg tells her that they killed the dinosaur for a material in its optic nerve, which is of use to them computer system. She realizes they must have been doing this for a long time if they recognize a dinosaur. The cyborg says something about the Promised Land, but then moves past it. Clara says she trusts the Doctor has her back, and one of the other robots is revealed as the Doctor in disguise.
The Doctor and the cyborg both realize that the cyborgs weren’t the ones who sent the message. The Doctor tells Clara to say the word. They both say “Geronimo” and Vastra, Jenny, and Strax arrive. Vastra says they disabled the facility and called the police. The cyborgs call in reinforcements to destroy them. The cyborg says he’s looking for the Promised Land, and the Doctor says there is none. The cyborg leaves in an escape castle, but the Doctor follows.
The police arrive and find the restaurant in shambles as the cyborg arrives. The police flee and decide to keep everyone else out. The Doctor speaks to the cyborg, saying he’s afraid he’s going to have to kill him and offers him a drink. The Doctor says they can’t escape, they can’t patch up a spaceship with human remains, and that thought again sounds familiar. The cyborg begins to launch and tells the Doctor they’re powering the pod with skin.
The Doctor realizes the ship is the Mary Antoinette, sister ship to the Madame de Pompadour (seen in the episode “The Girl in the Fireplace”), though he struggles to remember. The Doctor tells the cyborg to look at the view. The cyborg says it’s beautiful, but the Doctor says it’s just far away. The cyborg insists that he will reach the Promised Land, that he’s not dead. The Doctor tells him he’s replaced so many parts that he’s not the same being he was to begin with. The Doctor and the cyborg struggle with each other.
Down below, Vastra and the others continue fighting the robots. They are almost overcome, but Clara tells them all to hold their breath and the robots yield. They struggle to hold their breath while Clara tries to use the sonic screwdriver to open the door.
The cyborg says that self-destruction is against his basic programming. The Doctor says murder is against his. The Doctor says one of them is lying.
Strax takes a breath and the robots resume their attack, briefly, before shutting down.
The head cyborg is impaled on a weathervane.
The Doctor and the others return to Vastra’s home to find the TARDIS gone.
Clara goes inside and speaks with Vastra. With the TARDIS gone, Vastra welcome her to join them, but Vastra says that she has it on Clara’s own authority that the Doctor will return, noting Clara’s change into modern clothing. They hear the TARDIS returning, and Clara rushes out to meet the Doctor.
Clara enters and finds the Tardis rebuilt. The Doctor mentions he misses all the “round things” he used to have on the walls. He explains his history, having lived for 2000 years, saying not all of those years were good. He’s made a lot of mistakes, and that its time he fixes some. He tells Clara he’s not her boyfriend. She says she never thought he was. He says it wasn’t her mistake. They begin discussing who might have placed that ad. They remember that Clara got a number that attracted the TARDIS from a woman in a shop, and that means someone is trying to keep them together.
The Doctor asks if she wants to stay. She says she doesn’t know who he is anymore. Her phone rings and the Doctor teases that it’s her boyfriend. She leaves the TARDIS and answers the phone and it’s the Eleventh Doctor on the phone, calling from Trenzalore before he regenerates. He’s calling to warn her because he senses it’s going to be a whopper of a change. He tells her that the man she’s with is even more scared then she is, and that he needs her. The Doctor pokes out of the TARDIS. Both Doctors ask if that’s the Doctor. The Eleventh Doctor asks Clara to help the Twelfth and not to be afraid. The Eleventh finally says goodbye to Clara.
Clara cries a bit. The Doctor asks if she’ll help him. Clara says she shouldn’t’ have been listening, but the Doctor says he wasn’t listening, he just remembers. The Doctor asks Clara to see him for who he really is. Clara thanks him for calling and the hugs him. The Doctor says he’s not sure that he’s a hugging person now, but Clara says he doesn’t get a vote. They realize the Doctor accidentally brought them to Glasgow instead of Clara’s home. They decide to go have coffee.
The Cyborg wakes up and is greeted by someone named Missy, who says she hopes that her boyfriend wasn’t too mean to him. She tells him he’s made it to the Promised Land. She welcomes him to heaven. The camera pans out to reveal an idyllic courtyard.
