Doctor Who 10.8: The Lie of the Land — The Jokerside Review
The longest storyline of Series 10 grinds to a psychically boosted end. How can the Monks be defeated? Spoilers ensure…
Title: The Lie of the Land | Series: 10 | Episode: Eight | Duration: 46 minutes | Doctor: Twelve | Writer: Toby Whithouse| Director: Wayne Yip
“We were lucky it was a benevolent race like the monks”
Oh, the title’s a pun. Oh, this is going to be fun… Well, hopefully?
Those who’ve read my review of last week’s simultaneously derivative, dull and disappointing crossover with Casualty (without the Casualty bit), might approach this review with caution.
And they’d be right. The Lie of the Land doesn’t fall into the many holes that The Pyramid at the End of the World did. But it does manage to find a load of its very own.
“Like a parent clapping their hands at a baby’s first steps.
The third part of the mid-season trilogy, the reigns are again handed to a fresh writer, this time undoubtedly one of New Series Doctor Who’s best and longest serving writers, Toby Whithouse. The ambition and chance to break the mould with a continuous story broken into distinct facets - one cliff-hanger breaking through reality, the other through time - each under the storytelling of a different scribe can’t be faulted. But the result is rightly described as a trilogy rather than a three-parter.
Taking a different tone and ‘reality’ puts the breaks on a continuous, compelling story. The foes of the piece, the mysterious monks, enjoy three separate appearances, almost three separate introductions, two of which they’ve lost come the end of The Lie of the Land, one of which they’ve won. Unfortunately, as Missy puts it in the middle of this episode, these infuriatingly enigmatic and barely fleshed foes also have a tendency to chalk any losses down to experience. They’ve evidently been beaten beaten before, they’ll clearly just move on after any defeat. So, the breaks are also put on the stakes from early on.
While this experiment should crown the constant change that Steven Moffat, not incorrectly, insists the show demands, the story that began in a dark lecture hall three weeks ago doesn’t pay off.
A theme throughout the trilogy has been paying homage, occasionally inverting, key story lines of the past decade of New Who. There’s a nod to Series Four’s Turn Left in the contemporary reality created from a companion’s decision in this third part, but it’s most comfortable when it’s riffing on the Series Three closer The Last of the Time Lords.
Return of the Master
“My whole life doesn’t revolve around you, you know”
This isn’t a contemporary year of hell, or a parallel universe, but a contemporary half year of hell based on the psychic suggestion of a parallel reality. Like the Master’s greatest conquest back in 2007, there’s the fabric of psychic projection. But rather unlike the Master’s, this dictatorship is much more dependent on it. It’s a hell of an Achilles heel, especially if they’ve been beaten before, not by the Doctor, but the nefarious Master. Defeated by the Master, unheard of by the Doctor. That sounds strange, doesn’t it?
But it’s the tenuous hook that finally reveals that yes, the occupant of the Doctor’s Vault is Missy. And none of that is a euphemism. It is however, a moment dogged by homage. In introducing her to Bill, the Doctor even name checks that Series Three finale, while Murray Gold pulls in the lovely refrain of This is Gallifrey: Our Childhood, Our Home. The pair have seldom been closer, a point this series now seems intent on pointing out.
The Vault interior, although well captured by cast and director, exposes one of The Lie of the Land’s key issues, and it isn’t self-referential. It’s the return of an old problem for this Twelfth incarnation, and one removed from the universe of Doctor Who. The Doctor’s visit to Missy with Bill, may as well be Sherlock’s visit to his sister Eurus with John Watson in the finale of the fourth season of Moffat’s ‘other’ series. the comparison was easy to level at Capaldi’s Doctor from the early moments of his regeneration. In Series Eight, his quest to uncover whether he’s a good man, and purposefully rework the character away from the young scamps who’d preceded him, dragged the Doctor into some dark territory. But in terms of gruff, disassociated apathy, particularly in episodes like Into the Dalek, his dialogue was indistinguishable from Sherlock Holmes. The cultural shadow that other show cast over genre TV was annoyingly large. And the result on Doctor Who was hugely damaging.
Still, the Twelfth Doctor escaped it as he headed into his second year, until The Lie of the Land’s gave it room to roar back. Roaring like the Doctor’s Dracula-like, sea-borne return to the coast…
Unsafe Holmes
“I once built a gun out of leaves, do you think I couldn’t get through a door if I wanted to?”
Created by Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss, Sherlock hit a difficult and damaging trend from its third year. Cheating death, escaping explosions, heading undercover in the Middle East… The characters were increasingly removed from any sense of danger. Come the finale of the fourth series, we were asked to root for characters facing their own death, but it was hard to muster up any interest amid the random, inexplicable drone explosions that forced the lead actors to leap onto Baker Street from first storey windows with barely a scratch, or appear randomly on boats in the middle of the sea. Sherlock’s Series Four endured an unflattering comparison to modern James Bond in the press, but the detective now owed more to the Dark Knight detective than Rathbone or Cushing, Moore or Craig.
It was especially difficult to ignore the reference in the first half of an episode devoted to Bill and Nardole tracking the Doctor to an abandoned prison ship in the North Sea. Who’s requirement for a suspension of disbelief may never have been greater. This is a journey packed with of randomness. It’s not a focussed Martha Jones trek across the planet to incite rebellion (Last of the Time Lords), that seeds into the resolution. It’s almost entirely arbitrary, disconcerting filler. and if it exists purely to conjure menace and tension, it inversely removes attention from the monks, reinforcing quite how dull and passive they are.
Big Brother
Alas, not a reference to the television show as cute as the one in the finale of the first series. This episode’s designed to knock you off-guard, kicking off with the Doctor’s role as a kind of Big Brother, endorsing the down-trodden dystopian society the monks have created, as Bill’s struggles through an evident psychic influence. That psychic reveal is saved for a reveal it doesn’t quite deserve later on.
On top of this, there’s the oddness of Nardole’s survival following The Pyramid at the End of the World’s cliff-hanger. I might suspect in an oddly structured episode that this was a chopped necessity. But what’s really odd about The Lie of the Land is that things get more mysterious the more answers it tries to serve up.
Doctor’s rounds
”I fought against it for you”
The Doctor’s pretense is drawn out, the explanation for it rather woolly. It’s difficult to take anything for granted in a trilogy that took over an episode to painfully point out that the monks have not only studied the human race and past history at length, but are aware how dangerous the Doctor is. As the pre-title sequence shows, they’ve even taken the time to write the Time Lord out of history and replace him with them.
the Doctor’s pretense all comes down to something unique. The Doctor encouraging a companion to kill him, while in her right mind, to the point of doing so. Perhaps this pretense and resolution should balance with the morbid modes of escape that Extremis promoted at the front of the trilogy, but it sticks out as utterly bizarrely in the Who canon.
It would take too long to list everything that’s extraordinary about Bill’s reunion with the Doctor — from the inexplicable fake regeneration that even manages to undermine the Tenth Doctor’s aborted regeneration in The Stolen Earth — to the Doctor’s assembling of an army. But strangest of all must be what comes just afterwards: the grimace or mad rage as the Time Lord returns to shore on a ship, presumably crushing several men on the way. Truly utterly bizarre. You have to pinch yourself to remember that Moffat and Whithouse were involved in that scene.
Back to 1984
“So relax… the future is taken care of”
A pit stop to consider the real shining inspiration behind The Lie of the Land. As mentioned, this is Doctor Who’s 1984. The show’s tackled dictatorship and dystopia before, but never so brazenly Orwellian. It takes the bold step of making the Doctor Big Brother, but it never convincingly explains how that was a great help to the Time Lord who could skillfully keep a great deal of information from the invaders. And presumably that’s because it’s not a main focus.
That falls to an increasingly blunt piece of satire. It’s a concerted effort to address the mix of the nice and believable and the inexplicable and fake that the other parts of the trilogy have toyed with. This is a forced Orwellian nightmare, with the truth rewritten and maintained by a mass disorientation. But it’s also the starkest exploration of the utterly topical idea of fake news. That’s the main focus of The Lie of the Land, to the point that the Doctor’s actions resist too much scrutiny, and even quite what the Monks get out of all this is rather irrelevant.
Monking about
“The monks have only been here for six months”
The suspicion was there from the start, but by this third episode, the Monks have become the ‘other’ Silents, this time rewriting the truth to appear through history rather than actually playing their role. It would have been easy for them to replace the Silents throughout time if the originals hadn’t developed that habit of disappearing from memories. Where was I? Oh yes, if only the Silents hadn’t developed that habit of disappearing from memories.
As with their tall forbears, a satisfying conclusion for the monks fails to materialise. Come the end they just look a little uncomfortable and promptly scarper in their subtle pyramid, usefully relocated from a war zone to the middle of London. That obtuse convenience says a lot. As does a governing model taking many cues from many Earth Empires, not least the British. The monks maintain control through numbers far more limited than they appear. A budget-friendly idea, but any links to the actual Empire seen in Thin Ice etc, fall by the way-side.
Keeping mum
“Bill’s mum just went viral”
The Lie of the Land does have moments that lift it above the previous episode. Most likely the highlight of the trilogy comes with the storming of the monks’ pyramid base, as strange as that is with the Doctor leading an armed force. Still, director Wayne Yip stages a glorious assault, overlaid with Bill’s disconcerting voice-over, constantly reminding humans what they’re fighting for.
It’s a bold and broadly successful attempt to drag us into the strife of humanity. It stands out for its empathy. But it’s also tellingly dependent on the late discovery of the monk’s gene-linked telepathy, which would have benefited from seeding into this technologically advanced race’s story early on.
What is well seeded, is the resolution. Harking back to The Pilot all those weeks ago, the use of Bill’s positive fake memories to eradicate the monks negative fake memories in undoubtedly the innovation of the trilogy. In drawing out some real emotion from a rather preposterous, Bond-style finale, it’s a testament to the professional, talented, and experienced Whithouse that it packs a punch. Something relatively inventive about he fake memory deleting the fake news. There is something innately fresh about the companion’s uncorrupted image cutting through the monks’ fake news, way beyond the use of Amy Pond to rewrite the universe and rediscover the Doctor in the fairy tale of 2010’s The Big Bang. How society has moved on since then. There’s even a script link back to the sacrificial avatars of Extremis in the mention of sub-routines to go with Bill’s actions. Yes, it’s a bit modern-companion-saves-the-day (“You clever, brilliant, ridiculous girl”) complete with convenient timed knots binding the Doctor’s hands, but far it’s superior to the previous cliff-hanger.
”Doomed to never learn from their mistakes”
The real verdict on this bold experiment comes at the last. After a further reminder that humans have ridiculously convenient memories — there was no reset this time round, but they’ve even forgotten that the Doctor’s face televised around the world — a bit of a format-breaking issues that’s brushed under the TARDIS. But the true conclusion hits a suitably odd tone. It closes with the two Time Lords. The last of the Time Lords and the other one. If the hint is that the Doctor’s millennia-long therapy has an inherent danger, pointing towards the end of the series, it’s an odd one. It almost entirely hangs on the reveal of Missy’s (assumed) previous incarnation, who was last seen successfully dominating the world in The Last of the Time Lords. And of course, his return came in a coming soon teaser trailer, not in confirmed story. Hinged on a mighty dose of suspicion and supposition, it’s an odd way to leave a three part epic, so in its odd way feels quite fitting.
Stunning moment
Oh come on, that Celebrity Love Island joke was as funny as it was gratuitous and nonsensical. But no, it has to fall to the Doctor’s commandos Pyramid assault. Yes, it was oddly militaristic, predictable and while genuinely creepy, predictable (monks can fashion shields, monks disappear, concluding with yet another Star Trek reference from Nardole (strike three this series), but it was stylishly done.
Everyday hook of the week
“Fake news central”
The general apathetic forgetfulness of the human race is not new to Who, but seldom has the Doctor been so riled by it — that at least adds some spice to a further invasion cop out. However, the crux of this episode, and as interviews have tried to frame the whole trilogy with a healthy dollop of hindsight, is fake news. It’s zeitgeisty, we can’t move for it out here inw hat we assume is the real world, and Who has confronted it and wiped it all out!
Doctor look of the week
There is a small mercy in the weak cliffhanger that led into The Lie of the Land. The Doctor’s regained his sight. And boy does he use it in his preposterous North Sea pretense.
“This is real? You’re actually doing this?” Bill pleads. The Doctor’s sheepish yet steely return look is priceless. Top credits to Capaldi and Mackie, pulling out stunning performances from some unbelievable tripe. Close is the desperate “Everything alright, Allen?” moment during the pyramid incursion. Wonderfully underplayed — there’d be huge mileage in Sgt Doctor and his hilarious Catch-22 antics with this bunch of soldiers if it just wasn’t so un-Who.
Production touch of the week
There is a sense of the North Sea to the… North Sea scenes. Considering the preposterous ways the seafaring adventures end, that’s an increasingly unflattering and faint compliment. That suit the Doctor dons when he’s dark and serious however, I like the cut of that hem.
A Jokerside view
“They just chalk it up to experience”
An affable sitcom, following a lovable pyramid of a few monks as it flies around the universe, and they attempt to enslave race after race, inevitably failing and moving on to another galaxy. Oh the larks. Happy endings all round, it’ll run for years. Well, until we all forget when it started.
Vault action
“He had to do this he said, he had to open the Vault”
Well, that was an anti-climax. If any mystery remains it’s what Missy did in there, before her recent acquisition of a piano. Pursuing the angle of the character’s millennia-long redemption seems minimally interesting: she either is or ain’t. Does anyone think she won’t revert even if her attempts are genuine?
“Like it or not I just saved the world because I want to change”,
Rating: D
“Humanity and the monks are a blissful and perfect partnership”
If we were, this may go down a lot better.
The Lie of the Land is… Puzzling. Very puzzling. It takes a number of brazen liberties with Who history, in 45 minutes that just hasn’t the heft to make them interesting if not fuse them together. Even the resolution, elevated above the usual love conceit to reach back to seeds sewn early in the series, seems odd for that reason. I’ve no idea how the monk trilogy will be taken in years to come or quite how it can be described now. A clashing diminishment of the sum of its parts seems a fair summary.
Small set-pieces, unexpected jokes and the central acting make up for a lot, but the core plot problem is all-too familiar in the Capaldi era. It isn’t even enough to muster up that much passion in Bill’s passion. How’d she put it? “Oh my God, I’m going to beat the shi…”
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