“Bill, what have you done?”
By Peter Harness and
Steven Moffat
“The
Pyramid at the End of the World” is the second part of three of the story that
features The Monks and their attempt to take over the world. This story was co-written by Peter Harness
and Steven Moffat and it more or less sets up what will happen in the next
story “The Lie of the Land” which will be written by Toby Whitehouse and is the
conclusion of this three part story. Like
what I wrote last week I really cannot grade this story until I see all three
parts but so far I liked “Extremis” a lot better than “The Pyramid at the End
of the World”.
While
“Extremis” gave us the setup for this story and introduced us to the new threat
of the Monks we see in “The Pyramid at the End of the World” the power of the
Monks and how they plan on taking over the world. The way they planned on doing it I thought
was pretty clever. They wanted someone
to ask for the Monks help and in exchange for their help the Monks would get
the world. But the person asking for
help had to be sincere and really mean it.
Which we found out from the first four really weren’t and were just
doing it as a sense of duty. But the problem lies with Bill who really meant
it. Since The Doctor had already foiled
the Monks plan by destroying the bacteria it would cost him his life as he was
still blind. Letting Bill know this and
the fact that she loves The Doctor as a friend she asked the Monks for the
Doctor to get his eye sight back in exchange for the Earth. While The Doctor is saved the Earth now
belongs to the Monks. Thus setting up
the next episode and have us all guessing some more about how The Doctor is
going to save the day yet again.
“The
Pyramid at the End of the World” didn’t really offer up anything that we
haven’t seen before in Doctor Who except we got a different spin with the Monks
being the protagonist. We had the usual
stupid military method that has been done for ever on Doctor Who and yet again
we see them fail and fall flat on their faces.
We see the companion do something incredibly stupid to turn the tide for
the bad guys which is nothing we haven’t seen before and of course we have some
scenarios that are a lot simpler to resolve but yet are made more complicated
by the writing which is a staple of Steven Moffat’s writing. For instance why would a facility that
specializes in harmful bacteria have a ventilation system that would release
the bacteria into the atmosphere without a proper filter system or at least an
incinerator to burn the air before it is released? In the real world it would be but I guess for
the sake of the story it can get a pass.
One
thing I am glad that is finally resolved is the Doctor being blind. I really did not like how long they kept the
storyline going but seeing how it was resolved made sense in a way but I just
did not care for the blind Doctor all that much and thought it went on a tad
too long. The thing is you knew it would
be a stupid decision by the companion to help get his sight back.
“The
Pyramid at the End of the World” isn’t the best story of this new series it is
the weakest but in all honesty it isn’t all that bad as Steven Moffat has
written worse stories than this one. In
any other series this would be one of the better stories but in a series with
so many really strong stories this one just falls a tad short.
