Doctor Who: Series 10, Episode 8 – “The Lie of the Land” (2017)

Well, that was a thing.  By all appearances, the “Monks” three-parter is done and dusted, and it’s safe to say that, for me, this was not a multi-parter in which the final act brought it all home.  A few spoilers for “Extremis,” “The Pyramid at the End of the World,” and this episode to follow.

So, after Bill’s drastic action from last week, the Monks are the new official rulers of the world.  They’ve altered the minds and memories of everyone on Earth to make them think that the Monks’ “benevolent” authoritarian regime has always been there, inserting themselves throughout history.  Bill fights against their influence, struggling to retain hold of the truth, and she gets with the Doctor and Nardole to find a way to take the Monks down.  A solution presents itself, but despite the desperate circumstances, it’s a road the Doctor doesn’t want to go down.

It’s… look, there are good points.  The Monks rewriting history is really creepy, and I like how team TARDIS works their way around the influence of the telepathic signal the Monks use to alter people’s minds.  There’s a pretty decent appearance from Missy, Nardole gets in a few great bits, and I appreciate that Bill is ready to own up to her bad decision from last week (in-show time, six(!) months ago,) prepared to take responsibility in a big way.

Overall, though?  It just doesn’t work for me.  There are major fakeouts thrown in purely for the sake of having fakeouts, and the Doctor himself gets to do depressingly little.  But most of all, it feels toothless.  It’s the latest in, “This is so terrible, the stakes have never been higher, there’s only one possible way to fix this and if you do you will most definitely, no-doubt-about-it die, but if you don’t, the entire world will suffer endlessly- oh wait, yeah, we fixed it, no big.”

I feel like this absolutely has to be a cardinal rule in genre television:  your resolution has to be at least as big as your build-up, and if the fate of the world is at stake, the answers can’t be painless.  When these huge things happen, it has to matter.  If it’s all going to be reset anyway and the heroes can make the hard choices without losing anything, then what’s the point?  This episode was written by Toby Whithouse, but having seen it, I have a really, really hard time believing that, because it doesn’t feel like his M.O. at all.  In his work, there’s rarely an easy way out, and sacrifices count.  Here, I don’t get that in the least.  What even happened here?

This is where, in particular, we have to talk about Bill.  Last week, she straight-up gave the Earth to the Monks in order to save the Doctor’s life.  That’s huge.  We see her here wrestling with the guilt from that decision and fighting to make it right, even preparing (with fear and sadness, of course) to give her life in order to do so.  But none of it matters.  She’s able to save the day – not only without dying, but without even losing anything – and in the end, the Doctor isn’t even pissed at her for what she did.  How in the name of storytelling does that happen?  How can a character do something so massive with such devastating consequences and then just hit an undo button and fix everything because she “believes hard enough” or whatever?  I know I said I wasn’t looking forward to the Doctor and Bill’s delightful friendship taking a serious hit due to the fallout of her decision from last week, but seriously.  Having pulled the trigger on that plot point, you can’t just walk it back.  It has to mean something, or else why do it?  I’m still apprehensive about Chris Chibnall taking over as showrunner, but after an episode like this, I’m a lot more ready to give him a chance.