Doctor Who – The Pyramid At The End of The World Review

A tale of misdirection in this week’s Doctor Who.

The Pyramid At The End Of The World carries on from last week’s episode Extremis. It opens with one of the most entertaining previously recaps that Doctor Who has ever done, we saw clips from Extremis contrasted with Bill going on a date with Penny. After that the episode then unfolded following from the promise that was set up in the conclusion of Extremis. The mysterious Monks are now ready to enact their plan and take over the world. I wanted a big alien invasion and that’s what we got, however it’s an alien invasion unlike any we have seen before.

At first it appears as if the Monks are manipulating the world’s most powerful armies but it turns out that was just a distraction. The significance of the scenes in the lab weren’t initially obvious, but then we learnt what the actual threat was and suddenly it fell into place. By the end of the episode we still don’t actually know what the Monks are really after. I always find Doctor Who stories that have twists and turns throughout to be enjoyable and this was one of those types of episodes. Much like Extremis I think this is an episode that would benefit from a rewatch.

The Monks are definitely one of the weirdest adversaries we have seen in Doctor Who and I suspect they’re going to end up being one of the most well remembered monsters. In my first few reviews of this series I kept mentioning that I wanted to see an interesting new monster and a real big bad, the Monks definitely fit that description! They’re clearly very powerful and very cunning but we still don’t really know that much about them. The scariest thing is often the unknown and the Monks are definitely something of an unknown quantity. Where did they come from? What is their ultimate end game? Why have they chosen Earth as their target?

Bill has been awesome since week one. Every week I keep praising Pearl Mackie’s performance as Bill Potts and this week was no expectation. For every companion there tends to come an episode where they are forced to make a difficult decision without the guidance of the Doctor. Think Martha Jones in 42, Amy Pond in Amy’s Choice or Rose Tyler in Dalek. I think The Pyramid At The End of The World was that episode for Bill Potts.

I’d like to know more about Penny – Bill’s date from last week and this week. It would be really irritating if the first Doctor Who companion to be in a homosexual relationship whilst travelling in the TARDIS didn’t get a properly developed relationship. Obviously it seems that Bill and Penny are just on a first date at the moment, but no one wants to see a repeat of Mickey Smith and Martha Jones randomly being paired up in The End of Time after no interaction between the two of them for what feels like little more than just ‘they’re both black and both single’.

I was a bit disappointed to find out that next week’s episode is continuing the overarching story that started back in Oxygen. On the one hand it is creating a truly epic tale with lots of twists and turns but at the same time I was enjoying having standalone episodes like we got at the beginning of the season. I guess we’ll just have to wait until it’s all concluded to decide for certain if it was worth linking (at least) four episodes together like this.

In conclusion, this week Bill continues to shine in an intriguing story that was not quite what it seemed as the TARDIS team faces one of the weirdest and most powerful enemies in Doctor Who.