12.34: The Pyramid at the End of the World

In which the dread rises.

Broadcast: May 2017

Watched: May 2022

“I’m sorry, it’s not my first dead planet.”

[Writer] Peter Harness continues to tell a totally different type of story to anybody else: all three of his stories look like action ones at first, but end up as these talking, moral debate ones. 

This one is best described using the single word “dread”. Firstly, there’s the science sequences – the broken glasses, the hangover; then comes the vision of the future. More subtly, the monks’ “We will rule this world, but only when we’re asked” thing, the gently lowering of plane and missile onto the ground, without killing the crew, the Doomsday Clock trick... There can’t be many episodes built so entirely around saying “Something awful is about to happen, but we’re not telling you what yet”. (The other that leaps to mind is Earthshock 1? But there’s it’s implicit in the music cues etc., it’s not an actual character saying it.)

I do like the twist that the Doctor saves the world, defeats the monks... but is then defeated by, not even his own blindness, but the arrogant way he assumed he could hide it. It’s a bit dark that it means Bill giving away the world to save the Doctor – reminds me of that Jonny Morris audio where the Doctor cheerfully swaps several hundred people for Sheridan Smith, and then defends the decision [I think it’s Deimos/The Resurrection of Mars, but Jonny will be along in a bit to tell me if I’m wrong] – but Bill being willing to make the deal to save the world feels like another way in which she’s slightly at right angles from the normal companion. 

I wouldn’t call it fun. But it’s pretty effective.

Other thoughts:

• “Power must consent” – the very first Doctor Who story was sort of an argument between John Locke’s Social Contract and Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan – is this Harness being a sad fan and playing it out again? Or have I just been on this journey too long?

• The opening intercuts the “previously on” flashbacks with Bill’s date, in the present day: that’s a cool new trick. I love that Moffat was clearly so proud of his “Pope walks in” joke that he uses it again, this time with the UN secretary general.

• The Chinese/Russian/American standoff in central Asia – in the same made up country as in the Zygon story – is sort of nicked from The West Wing. (It feels slightly odd this isn’t a UNIT story?) The three military leaders shaking hands feels like something you’d only get in a Peter Harness story.

• The fact the Monks render every clock on Earth simultaneously useless might be a pretty crippling act in itself. The trick with the camera is clever.

• The lab’s in Yorkshire, but also in London’s City Hall? Weird.

• Bill is 26. No wonder she wants to leave home,

• Tony Gardner, melting. :(