Doctor Who: Extremis (10x06)

Wow. This was a great episode. It made me really excited for the rest of the season, while also standing on its own as a solid outing. And the Doctor is still blind! I'm getting really pumped.

Cons:

Three complaints, to start. One is big, the other two are small.

The big one: Apparently it is Missy in the vault. Literally the first thing we all guessed. I'm not too upset about this, because at least they told us now, instead of waiting and trying to pull it as a big reveal at the end of the season. That would have been a real letdown. But the fact that the thing in the vault was a known entity all along is a little disappointing. The way Nardole talks about her, I was thinking she'd be something a bit more mysterious and unknowable. I get that Missy is really dangerous, but... I don't know. I wanted something new and exciting!

Small one: We see in flashback that at one point, the Doctor was tasked with executing Missy. He of course fails to go through with this, but agrees to watch over her for 1,000 years and make sure she doesn't cause mischief. This is why he's exiled himself to Earth to watch over the vault. Okay, sure. That makes a certain amount of sense. But there was this moment when one of the executioners checked the Doctor's record and saw all the many, many deaths he was responsible for. Moments like this encapsulate everything I hate about Moffat's version of the Doctor. Why does he have to be such a freakin' special snowflake? Any and all deaths that the Doctor is responsible for are his greatest shame. The only names flashing through on that file should be the names of the Gallifrey citizenry that he destroyed. The Doctor does not make a habit of killing people, and to imply that this is a regular part of his legacy is really annoying to me. The Doctor shouldn't be remarkable for anything other than being the last of his kind.

The other small one: More of a plea than a complaint. Bill was more of a reactor than an active participant in this episode. I really want to see her take more initiative and shape the story on her own. As it is, the Doctor and Nardole are keeping secrets from her, and crazy stuff is going on and she just stands there and gapes at it. I don't have a problem with her characterization thus far. I just hope we're building to more. On that same note, we see Bill get a date with a girl named Penny, but it doesn't go anywhere. If Bill doesn't at least get a recurring love interest at some point, I'm going to be pretty livid about it. Clara and Amy both got love interests, dammit!

Pros:

The slight disappointment I feel about Missy being the thing in the vault is eclipsed by the fact that Missy is really cool. I like her a lot, and I'm excited to have her around more. She's so dangerous that the Doctor feels the need to honor his promise to keep her locked away for 1,000 years, but she's also the only person alive who might come close to understanding the Doctor's own experiences. I'm really excited to see how their relationship might develop. I'm also fairly pleased that the secret of the vault wasn't left until the end of the season, as I had initially assumed it would be.

Okay, and now we should get into the whole concept of this episode, shouldn't we? One of the most creative, creepy, surprising episodes of Doctor Who that I've ever seen. Essentially, the Doctor is contacted by the Vatican and told that there's a document called "Veritas" that has recently been translated after centuries of obscurity. Everybody who worked on the translation, or who later read the document, has killed themselves. The Doctor, being blind, has trouble reading the document right away, but eventually he does, all while being chased by mysterious skeletal beings. Bill and Nardole wander off and find a portal that takes them to a strange central room. From there they find portals to a bunch of really important places - they started in the Vatican, but find themselves variously in the Pentagon, in the Oval Office, etc. Eventually, they learn what Veritas says - they are not real. All of them are a computer program designed by an entity who wanted a "trial run" before attempting to take over the real world. This is provable because when asked to come up with random numbers, every person comes up with the same numbers in the same order. Nardole ends up dissolving into a series of numbers, and eventually Bill does too, leaving the Doctor alone with one of the creepy alien figures. The Doctor is able to send an email message to his real self before the rest of the "shadow" world is destroyed. Now, our actual Doctor knows that some sort of terrible threat with immense power is coming to destroy the world.

Like, where to even start with this? What a cool idea! The minute you introduce the idea of a written document that drives people to suicide, you've got a problem - how do you come up with something good enough to go in that document? But they did. These people aren't actually people - they're parts of a complex computer. They kill themselves in a human reaction of despair, but also in a computer reaction of futility. Their deaths are the actions of a sentient computer learning its own unreality. I love that. I wasn't expecting to be drawn in by whatever Veritas ended up saying, but I actually was. It was pretty brilliant.

There's also the fact that the episode doesn't ease you in to this idea, or give you any framework in which to contextualize things. When Nardole discovers he's not real and disappears, there's a moment where you wonder if he's actually gone. If he was ever real. If none of this was ever real. Even as I came to my senses and realized that there must be real versions of the Doctor, Bill, and Nardole out there in the world, I was still heartbroken at watching the characters who I had been following for the last hour begin to blink out of existence. This was brilliantly done. The pacing kept me on edge the whole time.

Speaking of being kept on edge, the creepy alien creatures were very effective and scary. This, coupled with the Doctor's blindness, made for a very tense series of scenes where he's running around, trying to keep ahead of these mysterious entities, all while trying to find a way to read the Veritas document.

I love that the Doctor is still blind. Far from being an easy fix, we have here some indications that his blindness might be a major plot point moving forward. He decides not to tell Bill, because he doesn't like being worried about. This puts Nardole into an even greater position of trust, as he is forced to feed the Doctor visual cues, all while obscuring the fact that he is doing so. I love Capaldi's acting, as he doesn't let the blindness be the only character trait we focus on, but he also lets it be a real part of the way he interacts with the world.

I'm growing more interested in Nardole by the second. He's got a license to kick the Doctor's ass, given to him by the late great River Song, and he proves himself a capable and strong ally for the Doctor. I particularly liked the part where the Doctor charged Nardole with Bill's safety, and then he insisted on following through with that charge, even as Bill resisted.

And hey, I gotta love the River Song mentions. I may not have been crazy about that character, since she exemplifies all my biggest problems with Moffat's writing. However, she was undeniably a unique and special part of the show's history, and it's cool to see her having a lasting effect on the Doctor even after her death.

And Bill. I did love the brief date we saw at the beginning. She and Penny seemed to be hitting it off, but Penny said that this whole thing was new to her. Just as Bill is telling her not to feel guilty, the pope comes walking in. There was this strange sense to the whole thing, as later while Bill is walking through the Vatican, the Doctor is asking her about her date. There wasn't a lot of focus to it, but there was this strange sense of added weight to the scenario that I thought was done pretty well. As the episode ends, the real Doctor encourages the real Bill to give Penny a call. I love him being supportive of her! It's really refreshing to see the Doctor encouraging his companion to have a normal life outside of his influence.

Okay. That's what I've got for this one. I'm torn about the vault reveal, but on balance I think I'm more okay with it than I was expecting to be. The very concept of this episode was so cool as to distract me from any negative feelings I may have had towards a few details here or there.

9.5/10