Extremis

Chapter The 244th, features the Pope and some Monks inside a life-size Grand Theft Auto.

Plot:

After his final (ish) parting with River Song on the planet Darillium, the Doctor is called to a planet of executioners. The people of the planet take their responsibility seriously and have protocols for every race of the condemned. A Time Lord must be executed by a fellow Time Lord, so they want the Doctor to execute the captive Missy. Nardole arrives, sent by River to remind the Doctor to be kind or something. Taking an oath to watch over Missy for a thousand years, insisted upon by the executioners in case of later regeneration, the Doctor pulls the big kill lever... but he's sabotaged things so Missy survives. (This is told in flashbacks intercut with the main Extremis story.) Many years later, the Doctor now works as a lecturer at a Bristol university, with Nardole as his assistant and Missy locked in an underground vault. The Doctor is still blinded after an unprotected space walk in a previous adventure, but hiding this with his special techno-sunglasses. He receives an email from an unlikely source...

The pope and entourage visit to ask for help with the 'Veritas', an ancient text fabled as one that whenever it is read in translation, the reader commits suicide. They want the Doctor to read it. He agrees, and with Bill and Nardole is taken to a secret Vatican library of forbidden works. Bill and Nardole are separated from the Doctor and find a portal that can lead them to many different locations including the Pentagon and CERN, where the scientists have all read the Veritas emailed to them by one of the Vatican translators. They are about to commit a mass suicide by blowing up the building, and Bill and Nardole only just escape in time. Investigating, Nardole sees that the different locations are being projected, and when he steps out of the projection field, he disappears. The Doctor is attacked by Monk-like creatures and flees. Bill catches up with him in a projection of the Oval office. The Doctor has worked out that they only think they are real, but are in fact characters in a computer simulation that the Monks are using to trial different scenarios in advance of an invasion. The Veritas revealed the nature of the fake world, and the suicides were just people exiting the game. A monk kills Bill, but before he is killed too, the Doctor subroutine manages to email out the details to the real world Doctor.

Context:

Watched from the Blu-ray on my own one evening with a glass of wine. Perhaps I am the only member of the household (which comprises as well as me the Better Half and three children, boys of 16 and 13, girl of 10) who hasn't grown out of Doctor Who yet. None of them have watched any stories with me for some time. I think the children will come back for Jodie Whittaker's swan song The Power of the Doctor (a few days away at time of writing), but not sure about the BH, who hasn't watched any new Who since before Flux. Time will tell, it usually does, &c. 

First Time Round:

Watched this story live with the whole fam when it first went out in the UK on BBC1, Saturday 20th May 2017. It's only just over five years ago, but I can't remember any detail. It was in the middle of a general election campaign, but the UK in those times and since always seems to be having an election campaign, or referendum, or the threat of one or the other, happening, so that doesn't narrow things down. I remember being generally happy with this latest series - the dynamic between the three regular characters was good, and I'd enjoyed the first five stories of the year before Extremis. Looking back at posts on this blog from the period, I see that I was struggling to get through The Time Monster around the time of the broadcast of Extremis, and I would publish my thoughts on it in another week's time. The Time Monster and the empty, repetitive sloganeering of Theresa May; no wonder I don't want to remember! 

Reaction:

In the UK at the time of writing, Extremis writer and exec producer Steven Moffat's latest drama Inside Man just completed its first series. I started watching with much enthusiasm as the pre-publicity had indicated an intriguing premise and it had a strong cast. I did not get much past the halfway point before I bailed on it. The plot could only develop because of a series of coincidences and increasingly silly decisions by characters, to the point where it became a bit wearing to watch. The character being put under most pressure, played by David Tennant, was a vicar, and so I wonder whether this was somehow intended to be an updated version of the story of Job. A common theme with people I saw online discussing the show was that, though most were quick to say that it was far fetched and silly, they felt that it was nonetheless compulsive: they had to keep watching to see what lurid and ridiculous scenario would occur next, and what indignities Tennant's character would bring upon himself or others. Moffat is clearly someone who can plot a piece of drama tightly if he so desires, without relying on coincidence or insane character decisions. I'm convinced therefore that he deliberately structured his drama this way, for better or worse. Those online comments reminded me of something else, but it wasn't until I watched Extremis with it's big borrowings from the novel Angels & Demons (secret clues in old writings and buildings, the Pope, Cardinals, the Vatican, CERN) that I realised what it was. Operatically - even, stratospherically - silly plotting, but compulsive for the viewer / reader's curiosity at a base level. With Inside Man, Moffat was just possibly trying to write like Dan Brown.

I wouldn't even say Moffat's latest effort was trying to write like Brown again, as beside the superficial trappings Extremis isn't much like a Dan Brown potboiler. It's definitely very watchable, with the central mystery of the Veritas text keeping up interest, but the underlying explanation is sensible (at least compared to secret societies collecting anti-matter to blow up the world, or whatever the plot of A&D was exactly - it's a long time since I read it and I ideally want to put it behind me!). The central conceit that the Doctor and friends we're seeing are self-aware cyberspace versions of themselves allows for some impactful scenes such as the whole of the CERN staff with Bill and Nardole thinking of and chanting the same number over and over again. It is pretty easy to program multiple calls to a random number function that produce different results, but the monks had a lot of coding to do simulating the entire world, so I'll forgive them for cutting corners. More distracting was my wondering throughout why reading the text produces an instant 'suicide' in everyone. Towards the end, Moffat throws in something of an explanation for why the Monks put the Veritas in their simulation - it's to see who's clever enough to work out they're not real. As such, the Monks would presumably want such people to stay alive for study, and therefore it can't be the programming forcing these deaths on people. So, why is it so comprehensive? Perhaps it's just me, but if I found out that I was living in a computer game, I'd want to stay alive as long as possible and have some fun. Though it is effective, the simulation plot is quite slight. Only one real thing happens, the simulated Doctor sends himself an email. It's a nice moment: even a copy of the Doctor can outsmart the bad guys and get a warning out to his real life counterpart. But it does mean that the main story is essentially just treading water, and the fight against the Monks doesn't start properly until the following week's episode.

In order to bulk up Extremis, flashbacks to the origin story of the Missy vault are intercut. It's the right time in the series as a whole for there to be some answers about this, with hints having been dropped in the previous five stories. The trouble is that it has no link at all to the simulation / Veritas plot. It's just for exposition because, in the course of the Monk saga (not even in the next episode, though, but the one after that), Missy will be brought into play, and this gets out of the way the necessary explanation of how she came to be in the vault. Moffat makes an effort to thematically link the memories of Missy's failed execution in to the main plot at the end, but it's a sticking plaster. This is a criticism that would only come up on second watch, though, first time out it gets away with it. Helping things along is good direction and production design throughout. The Monks are an effective new creation, with the sequence of them chasing the partially-sighted Doctor (after he's tried to fix his eyes with a gizmo) being particularly good. The scene where Bill's date with Penny is interrupted by the Pope is one of the funniest of this period, so good they did a callback to it in the next episode. The only other minor issues I have are in the Missy execution sequences, and they're both bad habits of the writer. The first scene is worded ambiguously so the audience might think momentarily that it's the Doctor that's going to be executed; Moffat does this sort of thing a lot (another example would be when Matt Smith's Doctor says "It's mine" in A Good Man Goes to War, and could be talking about the crib or Amy's baby) and I don't know why. It adds nothing except confusion. The other flaw is another recurring one, the Doctor grandstanding in a face off with someone based on his universal reputation. He gets the executioners to back down and leaves with Missy by intimidating them with all the places in their records he's listed as "cause of death". Given that the script has just been making a big deal of his mercy and compassion, it's a bit of a bum note.

Connectivity: 

Both Extremis and Meglos are stories with one word titles that feature a religious order, and both have a character appear throughout the action who looks like the Doctor, but isn't really him.

Deeper Thoughts:

The great uncast. Long-term readers of the blog (Hi Mum!) will know that I always use an obliquely linked photograph for the banner image at the top of each post. For Extremis, it was obvious to me that this should be Dan Brown related, maybe using a movie poster for the Angels & Demons celluloid adaptation. Then, I heard the news about Robbie Coltrane's death at age 72, and went with the image of him you can see above from film The Pope Must Die(t), as a small tribute. Sometimes celebrity deaths impact me more than I would have anticipated, and Coltrane's was such a surprising reaction. I was a huge fan of his comedy work in the 1980s and his dramatic work in the 1990s. The most surprising thing is that he had nothing at all to do with Doctor Who. I'm usually able to separate the work from the person and not get any unwarranted emotions mixed in, but finding out about the passing of - just to take two examples - Jon Pertwee and Terrance Dicks hit me hard despite this. My affection for Doctor Who lowers my barriers somewhat, but Coltrane had somehow got past them despite never appearing in my favourite show. My next thought was probably obvious: why hadn't Robbie Coltrane ever appeared in Doctor Who? Two guest cast members of Extremis, Jennifer Hennessey and Joseph Long, had appeared in different prominent roles only a few years previously - they were already doubling up, but there wasn't a chance to find a role for Robbie? He might have made a good comic cameo as the Pope in Extremis, though was likely too big a star in the new series era, or maybe just not interested. The nearest he came to appearing was being considered for a role in Revelation of the Daleks in the mid-1980s, probably either as Takis or the DJ (the latter was eventually played by fellow Comic Strip and Young Ones alumni Alexei Sayle).

Who else is surprisingly missing from the cast lists of Doctor Who, new and old? Catching a bit of Strictly Come Dancing in the UK recently, I saw Will Mellor on screen and wondered which was the Doctor Who story he was in. I checked online and was surprised to find that he's never appeared in the show, nor any spin off or tie-in. I think at the back of my mind I had him appearing in maybe 42 (but that was William Ash). That seems odd to me, as he is exactly the sort of person that could have been cast anytime in the last ten years. Just because he was mentioned in a recent Doctor Who Magazine interview, I also thought about Rob Brydon. He too seemed like an obvious guest star for recent years. Just like new Who, he was made in Wales, and seemed happy to act in other BBC productions. Perhaps both Mellor and Brydon have been too busy, or not interested, or both. Of the alternative comedy generation Robbie Coltrane was part of in the early 1980s, a few people have been notable by their absence. Only two of the five main actors in The Young Ones have featured in Doctor Who proper (aside from the previously mentioned Sayle, Christopher Ryan has appeared a few times over the years), plus Nigel Planer was the lead in a touring Doctor Who live production in theatres in 2010. It was a terrible shame Rik Mayall never managed to appear before his tragic early death - he was being considered (also by director Graeme Harper, who had cast Sayle in Revelation of the Daleks) as the villain in The Dark Dimension, a special planned for the 30th anniversary of Doctor Who in 1993 that then fell through. Adrian Edmondson could easily have a guest role still; he's worked as a straight actor on lots of BBC productions, including in recurring roles in long-running series Holby City and Eastenders.

The showrunners of Doctor Who since its return in 2005 do each have something of a repertory of actors that reappear in many of their works. Both Russell T Davies and Chris Chibnall started their period on the show by casting an actor they had worked with in their last production (The Second Coming and Broadchurch respectively) as the Doctor. Davies repeated it the following year by giving David Tennant the main role in Doctor Who after they had worked together on Casanova. A lot of Chibnall's Broadchurch regulars have appeared in Doctor Who, although many - Tennant, Olivia Colman, Arthur Darvill - appeared in Doctor Who first. Still, regulars of the third series of his investigative drama Lenny Henry and Julie Hesmondhalgh were cast in Doctor Who when Chibnall was in charge. Andrew Buchan and Carolyn Pickles, who had large parts throughout Broadchurch, stick out as possible guest stars in Doctor Who in future. Steven Moffat wasn't so much of a drama writer before Who, and worked with mostly different casts through his sitcom writing years, but still managed to cast the lead of his first ever show Julia Sawalha in a Doctor Who skit for comic relief in 1999. I'm surprised he never found a role for Gina Bellman,with whom he'd worked on a couple of show, when he ran the show proper. Russell T Davies seems to have been the most comprehensive at recasting from his previous shows. There are many examples between 2005 and 2009 - Jo Joyner, Mark Benton, Debbie Chazen, Jo-Stone Fewings, Peter O'Brien, Lesley Sharp, Jessica Hynes, and others. For his second showrunner period, there are a lot of people he's worked with since that could easily slot into Who roles, such as Olly Alexander and Lydia West (with whom Moffat has also worked recently). I could probably go on like this for hours. The only way that Doctor Who can cast everyone who'd be a good fit is for it to keep going for ever! Here's hoping... 

In Summary:

It's watchable; not quite extremely good, but extreme-ish.