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.
