Yay! Loved it. Pretty much started off with successive sideways references to Adams, Lem, and Le Guin in the span of ten minutes. Maybe with a bit of Robinson's Free Lunch. That's not even counting "giant's cauldron" as a callout to Card (Which I can barely bring myself to acknowledge because, you know, fuck that guy.)
Maybe it's cynical of me to think this, but it was pretty much a symphony of scifi dog whistles. Shoot for that best dramatic presentation Hugo, motherfucker!
And man, that really, really looked like they were playing a variation of the Immortal Game with the colors swapped. Which would make sense, given that Anderssen historically played black and moved first, so you get a whole "son of man" thing thrown into an already messianic narrative (for the whole thing, I mean. Not necessarily this episode) with a bit of nerd trainspotting. Also, yes, there's a really obvious five move mate escape from that sacrifice... I didn't buy it taking the cognitive potential of millions of individuals to figure out that a three move mate was actually impossible. It's a very limited decision space, but eh. Fuckit.
Some of that might be wishful thinking, but I really wouldn't put anything past Gaiman. He's a fucking boss.
While we're at it, was Willow hitting the guy in the back of the knee a Return of the King reference, or just an incredible coincidence? And shit... didn't Gaiman write that comic where Augustus hangs out with a dwarf while they're pretending to be beggars? Easter egg or lazy recycling: You decide!
Also, Davis has aged incredibly well. You'd have thought all that Leprichaun crap would have weighed his face down more.
... and I will always feel like a shit for thinking "David Rappaport would have done this better." Especially when it's not actually true. Davis really does have the face of a Caesar when it's not covered in latex.
But even without all the incredibly dense "wait, was that a callback to whatever?" this was just a fucking tight narrative that really just picked its theme and stuck to it. Not even getting into the warm gallifreyan script vs. cold datastreams in the Inside My Head bits. Just fucking incredible all around. Have to give it a second watch. Hell if I don't wish they'd bring in more authors like Gaiman on this stuff, Brit or otherwise. Can you imagine what Stephenson would do with this? What I'm saying is we need more Neils.
My only complaint: This is not only the first time you brought kids aboard since Earthshock, but they get screwed up by Cybermen? Who, you know, killed that last kid? (Thank fucking Christ.) And this is an author who clearly had a handle on the background here, but nope... never mentioned. Not even a two second throwaway line. Though at least there wasn't an obvious, odious TomTom joke that I'd have cut off a nut to replace with anything else.