Bad news for your plus one
The conclusion to the loose Monk trilogy, although I'm not sure why they keep referring to it as a loose trilogy. None of the stories are going to make full sense without watching all three and I don't see how you can get away with calling that anything but a trilogy.
Plot Summary
Six months after the Monks took over, a police state has arisen with the Monks pushing the idea that they have always been there and the Doctor transmitting PSA's to homes all over the world. Bill continues to work, waiting for the Doctor to emerge. To combat the suggestion of rewritten history, she imagines her mother via the Doctor's photos of her and has daily conversations with her in her head.
While having a conversation, Nardole enters Bill's apartment and tells her that he's found the Doctor. He is being held on a ship moored out in the ocean off the coast of Britain. They manage to get on a supply ship with a sympathetic captain and dock with the prison ship.
On the ship, they find the Doctor's room but he refuses to come with her. He says that he has joined the Monks as the only way to preserve humanity. Bill is stunned and even tries to act as though there is a code. When the Doctor appears to alert the Monks of her presence, she grabs a soldier's gun and shoots him. The Doctor releases a quick burst of regeneration energy before stopping and congratulating Bill on passing the test. He had to be sure she hadn't been taken over by the Monks. The Doctor had already deprogramed all the guards on the ship and then sent Nardole to bring her before they escaped.
After bringing the ship back to Britain, the Doctor and Bill head back to the university and enter Missy's vault. She tells them that in her previous dealings with the Monks their central weakness is that the person who made the deal is the linchpin. If that person's mind is eliminated, it will destroy the Monk's grip on the reality they are presenting, making them vulnerable to uprising. The Doctor, unwilling to sacrifice Bill, opts for a different plan.
The Doctor, Bill, Nardole and the squad of soldiers decide to attack the central pyramid from where the broadcast signal is coming from and being sent out via the statues placed all over the world. The Doctor gives the soldiers recordings of Bill's voice repeating the truth to drown out the stronger influence of the Monk's signal. They enter in the pyramid and overcome the small number of Monk's guarding inside.
The Doctor, Bill and Nardole enter the central chamber where the Doctor attempts to interface with the mind sending the signals. It overpowers his mind and he is thrown backwards, knocking him out. When he comes to, Bill has tied his hands and informs him that she is going to interface with the broadcasting Monk. He implores her to stop but she does it anyway.
The Doctor manages to get loose as Bill interfaces. The Monk's broadcast starts to overwrite her mind but the Doctor notices that it doesn't touch the image of her mother and the imaginary relationship Bill created. The Doctor implores her to focus all her mind on that relationship as it is not historical and untouchable by the Monks. This sends the image of Bill's mother all over the world and disrupts the Monk's signal of truth. With the signal disrupted, the people rise up and overpower the Monks. The remaining Monks flee to the central ship and abandon Earth.
Afterwards the Doctor points out that the Monks were able to erase their six-month interlude from the minds of collective humanity, removing any lesson humanity might have learned. He then heads to Missy's vault where she notes the guilt she is feeling over all the people she has killed over the years.
Analysis
I was a little nervous going into this story since I'd seen some references to Martha's quest from Last of the Time Lords and I didn't care for that too much. However, I was pleasantly surprised as I found this one fairly engaging and interesting. It wasn't perfect but it was fun and I found the use of "love overcoming" a much more palatable solution in this case than had been done previously.
Jumping straight to the climax, I think the reason that the memory of Bill's mother being untouchable by the Monks worked for me is that it had some basis in reality rather than just a whim of the screenwriter. In many situations, people in isolation have invented fictional friends or personalities to keep themselves sane (see Wilson in Cast Away as an example). Bill did much the same thing. She had never met her mother but the Doctor gave her enough for her to invent that relationship and it was these conversations that helped her overcome the brainwashing from the statues. But since it was a memory built on a figment, it was untouchable and I liked that.
The Doctor was enjoyable here. I really enjoyed the first third of the story where it seems as though he's working for the Monks, although I'm not sure that that had much of a point other than to give the grand fake out to the audience. The Doctor and Nardole should have been able to tell in a less dramatic fashion if Bill had been taken over by the Monks and certainly the Doctor had no need to make it look like he was regenerating. That was a trailer moment and nothing more. But it was fun and very tense at the time. But it was also very reassuring when he returned to his normal state, complete with standard arrogance and disdain for others.
Bill was the central character in this story, but she didn't grab focus as much as you might expect. I think that worked out very well for both her and the story. She did end up solving the problem but she didn't go through this great journey to become stronger to do it. She was simply surviving, waiting for others stronger than her. Her defeat of the Monks came about because she cared about the Doctor and because she had an ace that she didn't know about. It worked and she saved things, but not in the true "hero's journey" way and I think that made Bill a more enjoyable character as a result.
Nardole didn't offer much in this story other than a few jokes here and there. Given how much the story needed to focus on Bill and the Doctor, I completely understand. Nardole didn't over-insert himself either and I think that worked given the limitations of the story for him.
I liked Missy in this story. She was a touch subdued from her normal self but there was still that edge of sadism to her. The idea of killing Bill to stop them seemed the most natural solution and one that she would easily have pushed. Missy might be suggesting that she's reformed, but that dark edge is still there and it is always fun to see.
I am curious to see where they are going with her though. At the end of the story, she seemed to be feeling actual remorse over the deaths and pain she caused. There's also the fact that we're supposed to be seeing the John Simm Master at some point before the end of the series so there is definitely a plan for Missy and I can't quite see what it is yet.
The Monks didn't do themselves much better in this episode than they did the last in terms of making themselves formidable. They had some fight in them but even with the lightning and spider web shields, the interior guard was somewhat easily overrun by the Doctor's soldiers. I'm trying to reconcile that with the near limitless power they otherwise seem to have in manipulating the environment and giving the Doctor his sight back. They have great power but are limited in actual combat and they also are fairly few in number. You would think that if they have performed this trick on other worlds, their numbers would be greater given the time for replication. In a way, I can't help but think of Treehouse of Horror II where Kang and Kodos, despite having superior technology, are driven off by Moe running after them with a board with a nail in it. There is an incongruity here that just doesn't feel right.
I thought the direction quite nice and some very nice scenery choices. I thought it also interesting in treating it like the viewer was fully enmeshed in this 1984 style world. The random cuts of the Monks and their symbols in the screen reminded me a bit of Sleep No More in their immersivness of the watcher in the world. In fact, until Nardole showed up, the parallels beteween this and 1984 were quite strong, to the point that I could easily see scenes having been directly lifted from the story.
Overall, I'd say it was a good conclusion. If the trilogy as a whole has a weakness, I'd say it's that the quality of the villain does not match the time devoted to them. Each story has good parts and less than good parts, but they still more or less work as individuals. I think this story, with a lack of reference to the past two stories, almost works better in that regard, though you would probably be a bit lost if you hadn't seen the prior two episodes. But, that aside, it's still and enjoyable watch. There are little things that don't work and they might drag it down a touch on repeat viewings, but overall it's a solid conclusion and an enjoyable story.
Overall personal score: 4 out of 5
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