Half - Face Man The Half - Face Man was a Clockwork Droid assigned to the SS " Marie Antoinette " sometime in the 51st century with the mission of finding a fabled realm of paradise . At one point , the ship crashed on Earth in prehistoric times and remained stuck on the planet for millions of years . For aeons afterward , lacking the proper technology to keep itself pristine , it stole replacement parts from the environment around it , some of which were taken forcefully from living creatures . Eventually , it had added such a large mixture of biological parts into itself with its machine components that its appearance was half - man , half - machine . Consequently , it gained vestiges of emotion and personality , letting it recognise that it was committing murder and working towards fulfilling an empty goal . Biography . Early life . The Half - Face Man was originally the control node aboard the time - travel ling ship SS " Marie Antoinette " , sister ship of the SS " Madame de Pompadour " . At one point , the ship crashed on Earth in the planet ' s distant past . With the ship damaged , the clockwork droids aboard the ship remained stuck on the planet for millions of years , replacing their parts using both organic and mechanical parts . They did this time and time again as they got older , until there was virtually nothing left of their original selves at all . ( TV : " Deep Breath " ) Harvesting organs . By Victorian times , the Half - Face Man had begun harvesting organs from human s in the city of London . This included the eye s from a man named Alf and the hands from two separate humans . The droids incinerated their targets to conceal what had been taken from them , ensuring their presence in London was invisible . The Half - Face Man at one point also acquired Mancini ' s Family Restaurant and turned it into an organ - harvesting factory , whereby guests unlucky enough to enter it would be taken down below into the droids ' crashed spaceship and their organs used to repair the ship . When a dinosaur mysteriously appeared in the Thames , the Half - Face Man extracted tissue from its optic nerve to use as part of his ship . He then incinerated the creature so as to leave no trace of his presence . This did , however , alert the Doctor , newly regenerated into his twelfth incarnation , to their nefarious activities throughout London . The Doctor and his companion , Clara , were led to the restaurant by a mysterious coded message left in a newspaper . They were then taken down to the spaceship and accosted by the Half - Face Man , who revealed to them that his sole objective was to reach the " Promised Land " . While Clara and the Paternoster Gang fought the clockwork droids , the Half - Face Man escaped to the ship ' s escape capsule , a hot air balloon made of human skin . There , the Doctor managed to convince the droid that the Promised Land did not exist , and so the robot either fell — or was pushed — to his death on top of Big Ben . His death deactivated the rest of the clockwork droids , saving the Doctor ' s companions . ( TV : " Deep Breath " ) The Promised Land . The Half - Face Man ' s mind was uploaded to the Nethersphere . ( TV : " Dark Water " ) He found himself in some sort of garden , where explained to him that he had reached the " Promised Land " — he was now in Heaven , at last . ( TV : " Deep Breath " ) The Nethersphere ultimately perished , however , following the exposure of the 3W Institute and the destruction of Missy ' s Cyberman army by Danny Pink . ( TV : " Death in Heaven " ) Abilities . The Half - Face Man was equipped with a blowtorch hidden underneath one of his human hands . He used this both as a torture device and to look threatening as well as , presumably , to incinerate his victims so as to remain undiscovered . While he was immensely clever in some capacities , his programming was also rather limited in other respects , and was , like his fellow clockwork droids , fooled into thinking an organic was a droid like him as long as they were not breathing . ( TV : " Deep Breath " ) Behind the scenes . The Half - Face Man was played by Peter Ferdinando and was thought up by Steven Moffat . " I wanted something really quite simple for the new Doctor to battle , because it ' s not really about the menace , " stated Moffat , " and I wanted there to be some sort of echo ; as a newly regenerated Doctor , he ' s meeting a man who ' s constantly rebuilding himself and can ' t really remember why . There ' s stuff to play with there . You want an opportunity to be creepy , and exciting , and fun , without having to get into too much of a worry about what the monsters are actually planning . " ( " Doctor Who Magazine " issue 477 , p . 19 ) In the stage directions from the script for " Deep Breath " , the Half - Face Man was initially described thus : " Tall , thin [ . . . ] An impossible thing [ . . . ] The man ' s head is only half there . One half is a normal face , torn raggedly down the centre . The other half is a lattice - work of steel and bone and wire — you can see directly through it , like a bird cage — and there appears to be a real eye , mounted in this grotesque structure [ . . . ] The voice [ . . . ] is rusty , rumbling , almost mechanical . " The script also referred to the Half - Face Man as having " Frankenstein style stitch marks round the wrists . " The creative team decided that computer graphics would be used to achieve the impression that the Half - Face Man was missing much of the right side of his face . Noted Steven Moffat , " We didn ' t wimp out and have him put a special covering on it to save on CGI . " ( " Doctor Who Magazine " issue 477 , p . 19 ) To facilitate the illusion that the character ' s face was incomplete , Peter Ferdinando wore a silicone prosthetic during filming . It simulated the hollow part of the character ' s face . ( DWE : " Deep Breath " ) A full - scale prop version of the Half - Face Man was also crafted . ( " Doctor Who Magazine Special Edition " # 39 : The 2015 Yearbook , p . 25 ) The dummy was operated by remote control and took a couple of months to craft . That process was begun by taking a life cast of the actor , after which the internal mechanism which allowed the dummy to move was manufactured . Prosthetic Make - Up Artist Valentina Visintin worked on the dummy . Asked if she was at all scared of it , she admitted , laughing , " Probably not any more but maybe the first days , yes . " Lastly , CGI was used to combine the two different physical elements . ( DWE : " Deep Breath " ) Steven Moffat was pleased with how the Half - Face Man turned out . " To see through somebody ' s head while they ' re talking to you seems utterly creepy to me , " he commented . " The finished effect is amazing . You can see through the half of his face ! It ' s quite something . You can see things moving behind him [ . . . ] Every time he ' s in shot , you ' re seeing through half of his head , which is just . . . creepy . " ( " Doctor Who Magazine " issue 477 , p . 19 ) Moffat also likened the Half - Face Man ' s death to a predicament in which the Eleventh Doctor narrowly avoids impaling himself on Big Ben in the teaser of " The Eleventh Hour " , Moffat saying , " The Half - Face Man succeeded where he failed . " ( " Doctor Who Magazine " issue 478 , p . 4 ) Clara Oswald actress Jenna Coleman was likewise impressed by the Half - Face Man . During a break from filming , she remarked , " Half - Face Man is terrifying . His physicality is brilliant . You really watch his walk and his movements . It ' s fantastic ; it ' s so finely tuned . " ( DWE : " Deep Breath " ) At a Q & A session immediately after the initial screening of " Deep Breath " , Coleman elaborated about how Peter Ferdinando portrayed the character , " He was scary , because [ . . . ] he did so much with his physicality , and his body , and his face , and the way he moved . So , when he looked at you , I mean it was like there was nothing there ; he was totally robotic . So , he was incredible to work against , ' cause he was seriously quite terrifying , and then you see him in make - up afterwards , and he ' s really lovely . " According to a readers ' poll which was printed in " Doctor Who Magazine " ( issue 480 , p . 11 ) , fifty - three percent of readers believed the Half - Face Man had voluntarily jumped to his death , whereas forty - seven percent thought the Doctor had pushed him . When asked what ultimately happened to the Half - Face Man after Missy uploaded his consciousness to the Nethersphere , Steven Moffat speculated , " Well , either he became a Cyberman , or she [ threw ] him away as being a bit too rubbish . I suspect the latter . " ( " Doctor Who Magazine " issue 481 , p . 6 )