Extremis

In darkness there is truth.

Steven Moffat returns in what I hope will be a more interesting story than The Pilot. Certainly the promise of Missy and intrigue from the Vatican are a tantalizing premise. I'm also under the impression that the next couple of stories are going to tie together in some fashion so this story might serve as more of an introduction and be a little thinner on the overall plot. But that doesn't mean it will be a bad story.

Plot Summary

In a flashback, the Doctor is revealed to have been summoned to a planet to conduct the execution of Missy. Whilst reminiscing about this outside the vault, the Doctor receives a message called Extremis over his sonic sunglasses, which give him a limited ability to see. He downloads the file and plays the message.

The Doctor is in a darkened lecture hall when Nardole enters with several Vatican cardinals. They also bring in the pope who appeals to the Doctor for help. They have a document in the Vatican archives called Veritas where everyone who has read the document kills themselves. They now believe this document will destroy all of society and are asking the Doctor to read it and help them.

Bill arrives back at her apartment with her date, Penny, and the two settle down for a bit of tea. They hear the TARDIS arriving and a moment later, the pope walks out of Bill's room. When Bill goes to investigate, Penny follows and runs out of the apartment at seeing several cardinals in her bedroom. Bill is a bit put out but accompanies the Doctor, Nardole and the rest back to the Vatican.

At the Vatican, the Doctor, Bill, Nardole and Cardinal Angelo enter the heretical book library. They are distracted by a great beam of light emerging from a wall that subsequently disappears. Cardinal Angelo goes to check on it while the other three follow the sound of a man's voice to a cage. While they are distracted, a withered arm reaches out from the wall and attacks Cardinal Angelo.

The other three find a Vatican researcher who admits to having sent a copy of the Veritas document to scientists at CERN and other world leaders. He runs out of the cage and moments later a gun shot is heard. The Doctor knows that he is dead but sends Bill and Nardole off to investigate to allow him a chance to examine the document alone. They go forward and find the body but also find another beam of light. They follow it and discover that it is a porthole to a central projection facility.

The Doctor uses a device that borrows from his own future and temporarily allows him to see, although it is a fuzzy field. He prepares to read the document but is attacked by a withered creature in monk's robes. The creature grabs the Vertias document but the Doctor makes off with the researcher's laptop that contained a copy of the Veritas document. He hurries down the corridor but finds his vision fading before he can open it and read the document.

The Doctor flashes back to his execution of Missy when things were interrupted by a hooded monk. They stop and the Doctor consults with the monk, who it turns out is Nardole. He gives the Doctor River's diary, salvaged after her death in the Library and a message imploring him not to go to extremes.

Bill and Nardole step into one opening and find themselves in the Pentagon. They hurry back and try and different one and find themselves at CERN. They meet a Swiss scientist who invites them down to the lab where the other scientists are sitting drinking wine at tables rigged with dynamite. A clock is counting down to when they explode. They decide to leave but the first scientist, noting that they don't know yet, asks them to name a random number. Bill and Nardole name several numbers and each time they do, they both pick the same number. Soon the other scientists join in and they always pick the same number. Freaked out, they run back to the projector room just before the dynamite goes off.

In the projector room, they notice a small blood trail and suspect the Doctor has passed through. Nardole examines the projectors and realizes that everything they've been through is a simulation. Fearful, he puts his hand in a dark space behind the projectors and then disappears, realizing that he is a simulation as well. Bill panics and follows the blood trail into the Oval Office where the President is dead, having killed himself with a vial of pills.

The Doctor sits behind the desk and tells Bill that their entire world is a simulation managed by an alien entity planning to conquer Earth. Veritas noted that simulations have trouble with randomness and that when randomness is attempted in the form of selecting numbers, those numbers are always predicted by others, informing the reader that they too are part of the simulation. Killing themselves is a way to take themselves out of the game, like Mario becoming self aware and leaving the game because he is tired of dying.

Bill freaks out once more but is subsequently digitized by the alien monk. The monk informs the Doctor that their simulations are complete and they will begin their conquest soon. The Doctor then informs the monk that since he has been struck blind, his sonic sunglasses have been recording the last several hours of the adventure. He compacts the file and sends it out of the simulation to the real Doctor's sonic sunglasses before the monk can shut down the simulation.

The real Doctor finishes watching the recording and thinks back one last time. He pulls the lever for Missy's execution and she falls over, but only stunned. The Doctor admits to agreeing to watching her body for a thousand years but not to killing her. He chases off the executioners with threats to their own persons based on his own body count and places Missy within the vault.

Coming out of his memory, the Doctor calls Bill and suggest that she ask Penny out sooner rather than later. He then knocks on the vault door and asks Missy for her help in fighting the immanent invasion.

Analysis

I have read that this is the first of three episodes that will make a loose trilogy as they all feature this alien monk as the principle antagonist. As such, there is not really a satisfying ending to this story, but I think that's okay. This story does fairly well in introducing the players and also having a pretty good "what is reality story."

This is not the first story that has feature a premise of characters in a simulation or game becoming aware of their state in Doctor Who as I think you can go back to Castrovalva for a similar situation. But unlike that story, I think it was handled quite well overall and the revelation of the nature of the simulation was done fairly well, especially as it involved the leads discovering the nature of their existence at the same time. It also gave the story the leeway to effectively kill the leads, which is something that you can only do in stories like this.

I listened to one review of this story and heard it compared to The Android Invasion and that's a pretty good set up. However, I think this is done somewhat better and without the nagging plot holes of that previous story. Of course, it does have it's own set of plot holes in that if the world is a simulation, how does a document like Veritas come into existence? Yes, people might figure out the nature of the truth of their existence through experience, but why is there a secret document that can allow the whole system to crash? The aliens running the simulation should have been aware of this glitch and taken steps to rectify it long before it reached the critical mass point of destroying the simulation. What's more, unless this glitch was a byproduct of programing, the simulation has been running for some time to allow the creation of such a document. But why do so? If the aliens are planning an imminent attack, why allow a simulation to run longer than several months or even one year? Backstory can be programmed in via observation and we are never given evidence of other flaws being in the system such as those that led to self discovery in Castrovalva.

The Doctor is good here but his lacking of eyesight has taken his edge off a bit. He does still have a bit of wit, especially when interacting from the folks from the Vatican, but there is a decided slowness in how he handles things throughout the story and it seems to tie in whenever he is hampered by the lack of eyesight. In fact, the whole story has a slow unfold very much like a suspense movie but punctuated by a bit more comedy. I think things might have worked a bit better if there had been a touch more dread surrounding these slow moments of the Doctor since the main elements of the plot were more clearly defined with Bill and Nardole.

Much like Oxygen, Nardole is finally getting some time to stretch out on screen. He is still his slightly cowardly and funny self, but he is showing more elements of backbone as well. He still has his squeaks and cries of fright but especially when away from the Doctor, he shows strength and a willingness to step into the Doctor's role with Bill. He puts together the puzzle much sooner than Bill and perhaps even the Doctor, although the Doctor is dealing with less information. But I still think this story showed that Nardole is not solely relegated to comic relief.

Bill was decent in this story but also not given much room to do anything. She was completely out of her element and served mostly as a vehicle to explain the plot to the audience towards the end. That put her more into the role of generic companion rather than emphasizing any of her inherent talents. But that is a consequence of being the companion and I don't feel that being in a diminutive position harmed Bill's character in any way. She just didn't get a chance to shine the way Nardole did.

I think it speaks of the power of Missy that even though she's only in a couple minutes of the overall story and flashback at that, she is still just so enjoyable. I'm sure the circumstances of her capture, conviction and death sentence will never actually be revealed but she is just so enjoyable to see on screen. Even in a moment of pleading for her life, she can't help the sarcasm and sharp wit we've seen in the past. I'm not overly surprised that it was her in the vault, although I'm trying to recall if Nardole actually used a gender pronoun when asking about the piano in the vault at the end of Knock Knock. He might have said "he" but I could have misheard that. Still, I'm now itching to get Missy out of the vault and into her full strutted glory. I think my biggest potential disappointment for the departure of the Twelfth Doctor at the end of this year is the likelihood that the Master will change as well.

There's not much to say about the villain since this was a light introduction. The design is a bit strange with that withered look and generic open mouth speaking, which calls back to the Mondasian Cybermen. I doubt there will be a direct connection between the two but it is one thing that popped into my mind, given how prominent the return of the Mondasian Cybermen have been. As far as the monk is concerned, I'll reserve judgment until I can see him operate in a more direct manner in the following two stories.

The look of the story was quite atmospheric for the most part and I liked the look. I also liked the look of all the other locations as there was a strong sense of believability about them. I think the only thing that struck me as odd was the method of death in the CERN lab. I find it rather unlikely that the occupants of the lab would have found coils of dynamite like a Looney Tunes cartoon. I also find it odd that they would put them under the tables like some elaborate booby trap. Far more likely (and a better use of the countdown clock) would have been the overcharging of the collider itself, which would have destroyed the facility easily and taken out much of the above ground structure as well. That did bug me a bit given how seriously everything else was played.

Overall, I'd say I enjoyed this one. I think one's overall enjoyment of it will change based on how the overall arc holds up. If the alien monks turn out to be good villains, this story might go up. If they turn out as garbage or if Missy's backstory into the vault has no real tie in except to expose that, it may go down. But for me I think it worked well. It wasn't perfect, but I look forward to going back and watching it a second time with an eye to the clues knowing how the story ends.

Overall personal score: 4 out of 5