ANDREW'S
DOCTOR WHO REVIEWS 
At the time of broadcast this was the longest story of the
new series – three episodes instead of just one or two. The long running time
allows for a slow unwinding of a complex story, and although it has some very
good bits in it, the overall feel is a bit of a drop in quality after what we’d
had so far this season.
The Doctor continues to hide his blindness and has some
limited vision using his sonic sunglasses. Through these he receives an email
entitled Extremis. The Pope and a group of cardinals then contact the Doctor
about a recently translated text called Veritas which causes whoever reads it
to commit suicide. A copy of Veritas is emailed to the CERN Institute and it
causes everyone there to kill themselves, before the Doctor can read it though,
he is pursued by a skeletal monk figure.
In the meantime, Bill and Nardole realise that they are
existing in strange fake version of reality, after Nardole disintegrates when
trying to leave a portal Bill finds herself in a simulacrum of the White House
where she meets the Doctor who knows that everything they are experiencing is
fake; Bill also disintegrates and the Doctor emails himself with Extremis which
explains the situation.
He opens the vault beneath the University where Missy
(Michelle Gomez) is imprisoned, he asks her to help him.
Then a 5,000 year old pyramid suddenly appears in Central
Asia. The UN recruit the Doctor to negotiate with the strange monks who occupy
it. The Monks have used their Earth simulation, Extremis, to show that the
Earth is about to be subject to a cataclysmic disaster. The Monks suggest this
will be military, but the Doctor realises it is a biological threat. He traces
it to a laboratory where two scientists accidentally release a bacteria into
the atmosphere which destroys all living tissue.
The Doctor seals the Laboratory, but because he is blind he
cannot escape himself, so Bill cuts a deal with the Monks to restore the
Doctor’s eyesight and save his life… as soon as she does that the Monks
takeover Earth.
The Monks then make it seem like they have always been on
Earth, guiding humanity. Bill and Nardole are amongst the few who know the
truth that they have only been here for a few months. They track the Doctor
down to a prison hulk where Bill confronts the Doctor who pretends to be
working with the Monks, so she shoots him. This, though, is a test to make sure
she is not under the Monks’ control.
Asking for Missy’s help, she tells them that to stop the
Monks from broadcasting their signal to humanity Bill must die. The Doctor
seeks another way to solve the problem but Bill intends to sacrifice herself,
instead she broadcasts an image of her dead mother which releases the Monks’
hold on humanity and returns the world to normal.
Missy, in her vault, tells the Doctor she is full of remorse
for those she has killed.
This long story is very confusing at times, with lots of
false realities, the Doctor pretending to be shot and regenerate and a bizarre
set up where the Monks only accept a deal from a human who will deal with them
‘with love’ (which turns out to be Bill). There are lots of people in this
story, and essentially none of them stick in the mind much, they are mostly
Monk-fodder and get disintegrated.
The Monks are gruesome looking but ultimately a bit of a
flat threat and the eventual solution feels forced and unlikely. Their plan is
reminiscent of that of the Kraals in The Android Invasion but even more convoluted
and ungainly!
The main problem with this story though is that it just goes
on and on and on, apparently getting more and more complex and more and more
grim, and it’s not until right near the end that it suddenly all comes to a
solution which has barely been hinted at before. Which is not to say the story
is bad, as such, but having had a series of very good stories this season this
one – which is the big epic in the centre of the season – feels rather, well,
dull.
It could be the fact that three different people wrote this
story, but it also feels disjointed; the first episode is probably the best,
although essentially it takes 45 minutes to tell you that this is a fake planet
Earth. Episode 3 wastes almost half its running time on the Doctor’s test for
Bill when a bit more time could have been spent, perhaps, on coming up with a
more convincing way of defeating the Monks.
Peter Capaldi, Pearl Mackie, Matt Lucas and Michelle Gomez
are all as good as ever (some of the best bits are with Bill and Nardole
together in the first episode), and you finally start to feel that Missy is
going to have some significance soon, but it isn’t enough to make this story
one of the best.
NEXT UP: EMPRESS OF MARS
© Text copyright - Raving Loony
Productions and
Andrew J. Müller,
Roy Barton
and Shaun Runham
© Photos and Artwork - Andrew J. Müller
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2022
