Doctor Who 10.7: The Pyramid at the End of the World — The Jokerside Review
The Monk trilogy is in full swing, and a familiar edifice has appeared out of nowhere. So, is one of the last great invasions of the Moffat era more pyramid teabag or riddling sphinx?
Title: The Pyramid at the End of the World | Series: 10 | Episode: Seven | Duration: 46 minutes | Doctor: Twelve | Writer: Steven Moffat & Peter Harness| Director: Daniel Nettheim
“Maybe he’s just trying to keep you on the straight and narrow”
Last week the conspiracy, this week the negotiation.
Last week’s Extremis translated as ‘to the point of death’ — a rather pointed clue to the heavily misery-stoked concept at its end — and now everything cheers up as we move back to reality, apparently, and the end of the world. Things are certainly epic, drawing on many of the large scale adventures of the past decade and making full use of the ‘President of the World’ concept Moffat’s established for the Twelfth Doctor. But the problem with Moffat and Peter Harness’ alternative take on alien invasion is that the stakes never really engage.
Last week the truth led people to kill themselves to escape their false existence, or perhaps they’d just read ahead to this second script? If that’s a little offensive, its the kind of attitude we’re encouraged to take during this prolonged mid-series set-piece. And when dishing out parallel constructs, major conflicts and humanity’s propensity for trying to destroy itself, it’s crucial that the world hinges on a high stakes game.
But unfortunately, the veritas here just confirms the worst suspicions of last week. The events of Extremis are only really relevant as a short-hand explanation for the devoutly inexplicable Monks — or what the TARDIS crew insist on calling ‘those monk creatures’. It’s fair to point out that Extremis was only ever pitched as a build up to a two-parter rather than the first part of a trilogy. But Pyramid only serves to undermine what Extremis suggested about the Monks MO. While we’re told several times that they are powerful and have a familiarity with our world from day one… Those simulations haven’t rooted out any trouble-makers or any strong strategy to take over the planet (you might think the Dark Ages would work better than the 21st century)… It’s just taught them that the human race are liable to kill themselves.
And they’ll do that through a hangover and a guy who can’t close a door properly. Perfect ransom material bolted out, as it happens, on to a classic ‘love’ concept’. Perhaps, after recent years that have seen foes as mighty as the Cybermen undone by a single human’s love, that can be marked down as a twist. But it’s not strong enough at this point of a multi-point story, and a jarring addition after their opening appearance. It seems that some kind of comment on Christianity has worked it across into this episode… But, clearly, we’re not in the heritage of mid-season invasion epics like Aliens of London or The Sontaran Stratagem. The mix of writers and tone of the episodes show we’re in a kind of invasion portmanteu, telling parts of the story through different genres and science-fiction concepts rather than pursuing major themes. And it’s all told through a prism balanced on the wealth of the New Series.
Call in the Doctors
“Oh I’m sorry — it’s not my first dead planet”
In fact, while The Pyramid at the End of the World may be the military/ disaster side of this genre spectrum, it runs like an episode of Casualty, the 30-year old BBC hospital drama filmed next door to Who in Cardiff. Like Who, that used to have a reasonable, consistent logic, before decades of story-plumbing led to increasingly preposterous set ups and accidents pulled from the mid-section of an Omen film and stuffed around a soap core like socks in a suitcase. It’s the same in this awkward sequential drama of two scientists bodging up an experiment before the inevitable accident. Like Casualty then. But with less eye-rolling.
Apparently this lab’s work is todo with GM modification, although we only discover that through the Doctor’s supposition. Whatever it is, it’s the kind of thing that relies on under-staffed, under-funded research in a cavernous lab with an exterior that looks a lot like City Hall, and and interior packed with highly unpredictable doors. This isn’t Castle Frankenstein. We definitely don’t find anyone in the long line of Who’s scientists, marvellously mad or not. In fact, there are barely any characters of note, and if there’s a science vs God message ro be found, it’s on the Monks side (“You don’t look like Guardian Angels” they’re told, as they attempt some exposition).
No, on tenterhooks I did not get.
Any interest in the the Monks appearance being corpse-like as they’re created by humanity’s imminent destruction as much as God created man in his own image, is wasted. their look, much as their bizarre powers and Silent-like finger lightning seems to have come outside the script.
Chopping and Changing
“Bill, what have you done?”
Director Daniel Nettheim’s drawn a bit of a short straw this series. Two erratic episodes, each cut up with a disparate clunky secondary story line. Last week’s delve back to the origin of the Vault was at least filmic; this takes two great actors — both seen very recently in high profile BBC One dramas — and feeds them some dross dialogue (the conversation about throwing up in the protective suit just before things kick off is particularly dire). Two scientists that could wipe us out by the drudge of mundanity. You can almost see where that was going - but as much as it should counter-balance the military dimension, it never hits home. Everyone in the episode is some kind of cipher, fulfilling a point in the story to the point of diluting any message.
Add into that the laboured montage cut-aways as we follow the scientists’ morning, convincing us that all events are informing some inevitable catastrophe, and I struggle to recall a clunkier episode of the series. There’s a strong dash of The End of Time and The Zygon Invasion in both parallel time lines, as Moffat’s homage to the past decade of New Who continues. But those episodes had memorable set-pieces and chilling moments that stuck in the mind (yes, even The End of Time). Not so in this Pyramid.
Promising set-up
“Your tutor has strange dreams”
It all starts promisingly enough that mirrors current events with a recap of last week, albeit inexplicably in a time zone slightly delayed from Extremis’ simulation. And top marks for wheeling out the Pope joke again, that’s worth it.
But the whole, refreshing and welcome Bill experiments are soon washed away in what feels like a cast-off script from former companion Clara. I thought her arc may be the pinnacle of ‘companion as story’ — but Pyramid manages to be one of the most nagging yet stories where the companion is proxy for the Doctor. As the situation’s explained to Bill in her tutor’s absence, an American general chews down the phone to the Secretary General, “You haven’t told her?” No, of course he hasn’t. But that inevitably leads to the Doctor and Companion’s relationship being at the heart of the story.
Companion balance
“You’ll know there’s a line in the sand”
That balance, or reverting to the balance of Series Nine where the companion is an incredibly informed, story exacerbating liability, is a real problem. Compare it to the fascinating, small-scale secrecy of Bill becoming a student to the Doctor’s tutor. Pyramid recalls the idea in the script, but as the story demands the return of the overblown ‘President of the World’ level, all that secrecy is exposed as utterly irrelevant. Last week’s review found the Doctor’s hubristic emailing himself as a sign the show’s in danger of eating itself. But if that was a flaw, Pyramid’s compounding flaw is that it leaves to nothing. Any advance the real Doctor gained from his shadow-self’s sacrifice is irrelevant as the Monk’s simply turn up anyway, and the UN escort him to them.
It’s like the large scale of the adventure that unravels is served up to diminish the Doctor’s reputation for preventing invasions and nefarious plots across the universe. At least previous adventures had the involvement of UNIT, a great and nostalgic bridge back to the TARDIS of old. In abandoning the, now monikered Unified Intelligence Task force for the rather thinly sketched characters representing the UN, America, China and Russia, the absence is particularly notable.
The evocation of the Doomsday Clock seems a trope in the classic Moffat mould, but stands up to little scrutiny. Far from urging cooperation, it would surely discombobulate 7 billion people as much as it panics them.
Any contemporary satire is inevitably a bit laboured (even if a Trump joke finally arrives), but any set-piece show-downs are ruined by the lack of insight the monks. Mystery can be a powerful thing, but none of this race’s technology or ability is explained, so any wonder inspired by their tractor beams and teleportation fails to sizzle. The submarine appearance is just one of the story elements that should grip and surprise. Instead it falls flat to the point of, dare I say it, predictability.
Choosy invaders
“If your consent is impure it will kill you”
In all, the Monk’s hook is a terrible one. Alittle too Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, but with more wind-chime fibre optics and disintegration. No other invasion force in Who history has had the advantage of complete models based on all Earth history, no other story has told us that so much. By that logic, they’ve no doubt surveyed every previous invasion attempt and how the Doctor foiled it — at least since the universe rest in Series Five.
And still, they use that to choose the moment of a bacteria plague created by a hangover (cut: the bottle crashes). There’s no doubt, that impassioned pleading for the monks’ help doesn’t require stock footage of a completely empty world.
The day we’ll fight back!
“Being smart is not giving away your planet”
Come the end, there more than a few things a bit Independence Day about Pyramid. This really is Moffat’s greatest stab at disaster science-fiction. So what a shame that when watching the emergency CCTV feed kick, the sparsity of the inexplicable battlefield, the interior of the Pyramid or the UN plane is all a bit same old, same old.
And just when you think it’s all a terrible disappointment, it goes and gets even worse.
Endings
“In fact pretty much everything is going to go through the roof, because I’m going to blow up the lab!”
That’s a great line, and probably the joint-highlight of the episode along with the euphemism one. But as much as the Monks ability to halt disasters is never explained, here they have the Doctor to save the day for them. His imperfect, but effective and marvelously destructive solution isn’t how the ‘Monk creatures’ have their wish for loving compliance granted. they get that through saving the Doctor, at his companion’s request. The Doctor should never be the story — when he has been, it’s brought us horrors like The Wedding of River Song — but here he’s the cliff-hanger.
It shouldn’t feel that way with Nardole incapacitated, Bill in the Monk’s lair and the enslavement of all humanity unavoidable, but it does. As Moffat build-ups go, though the Doctor’s blindness has crossed three episodes, it’s rather gutting to find it resolved in this way. The Monks’ power remains vague, and it all comes down to a that door’s magically shut and for some daft reason can only be opened from inside. I mean, all the doors in that lab had wonderful ajarability earlier in the story. And as it goes, that’s a hell of a flawed door.
It’s Bill makes the sacrifice, selling out all humanity in the hope that the Doctor’s survival can help her redemption. It’s a tortuous set-up for a final part. One that takes the edge off any Earth-shattering focus Pyramid was aiming at, and is a huge step back for Bill’s characterisation. Well, apart from when she calls the Doctor “the stupidest idiot, ever”
“Enjoy your sight Doctor, now see our world”
Strangely anti-climactic, the Monks are proving monsters an unwelcome element of this tenth series.
Stunning moment
Tricky this week. Pyramid’s an episode that reaches everywhere but produces little worthy of its concept. At a push we’d have to opt for Douglas’ gruesome demise. Man, that guy had a bad day.
Everyday hook of the week
Again with Douglas, proving that hangovers truly do get worse the older you get. For aliens, you’ll always be scuppered if you rely on CCTV.
Doctor look of the week
Well, it could be not so much the look as the deadpan dismissal of Bill’s reasonable supposition that the Monks are like vampires. Whether that’s a fine recall to Classic Who or boredom with the script remains ambiguous. . No, it’s got to be the Doctor’s moment of horror when the lab door fails to comply with any reasonable rules of narrative. Or given his astonishingly arrogant ranting in the minutes before, shortly after purposefully mistaking himself for God, that he truly has been a stupid idiot.
Production touch of the week
Ina broad scope there’s nothing spectacular. I mean, that is City Hall right? Oddly, and perhaps it’s a major reflection on the episode, I was particularly really taken by the production design of the UN’s meeting room. Often shot from one side, with two distinctive vents on the inside wall for the Doctor and Bill to pace past. I know, right? It’s just so patchy as a concept I can’t think there was very much for anyone in the production too get too excited about.
A Jokerside view
Well, the Monks using their incredible knowledge and technology to eliminate the competition and invade. Wouldn’t that be a good idea?
Vault action
Well, nothing much. Nothing much at all. That confidante still hasn’t appeared. Pretty sure Missy will surface to help resolve this mess, but whether she’d care after a cooped-up 1000 years is another matter. Also, surely she’d age as a Time Lord caught in one time stream… Maybe, all-in-all, those Monks do have some kind of Time Lord connection…
Rating: E
“The end of the world is a billon, billion tiny moments”
The Pyramid at the End of the World is terrible slump for Series 10, recalling the worst companion Doctor dynamics from the New Series era more than the epics it hopes to homage. And I really don’t think anyone was aiming for that. It tries to be globe-trotting, but through no particular fault of the director, ends up like an episode of the show’s studio-mate Casualty. The impressive waste of guest stars and potentially enigmatic monsters sends out a distinct message in opposition to the Pyramid of the title: “drop it”.
Next week has a great deal of work to do if it hopes to pull this series back on track as we hit the home straight and the final days of the Twelfth Doctor.
I’m genuinely jealous of the Gallifreyan and Omega conspiracy theorists who’ve managed to have their knickers twisted by this multi-parter. And to think these were the writers who brought us the supeb Zygon invasion story line in Series Nine, a series fast looking like an inversion of this. Gah, and twice gah!
