#koni and i started out frowning at each other every once and a while

[pasiphile]

hey out of curiosity for Doctor Who (which I used to live but stopped watching because I lost hope for it), what happened that fucked it up this time? I don't care about spoilers, I'm just curious about how Moffatt keeps ruining good things

Okay, so, I’m gonna try to sum it all up, but if at any poit you think wait what this makes no fucking sense, that might just be the episode rather than me not explaining coherently. 

So:

(cw: suicide, derealisation, dissociation. Seriously.)

Ep starts with the Doctor receiving an email with title “Extremis”. The screen then goes briefly static, opening theme starts playing like usual, and we’re up at the first scene, which is: a bunch of cardinals and the Pope, coming to the Doctor for help, because they don’t know who else to turn to. Apparently there’s an ancient text in the Vatican that used to have a translation, but the translation got lost after the sect who took care of the text committed mass suicide. Now, the text has been retranslated, but the translation’s gone lost again and everyone working on it has, again, committed suicide. So can the Doctor please come help? And why did they come to the Doctor? Apparently he got recommended by Pope Benedict the Ninth, who the Doctor describes as “a lovely girl” and “what a night”.

(Main offences: continuing the trend of the Doctor as basically Jack Harkness shagging his way through the universe; and using the fucking Vatican as the generic help-demanding damsels in distress. You know, I get already a bit miffed when they start using the Pentagon or the American President or Downing Street and portray them as fucking likeable and a bit helpless, but the fucking Vatican as the heroes?)

Next scene: Bill is taking a date home. A bit of haha-clueless-foster-mum as she tells off Bill for bringing a date home, then relaxes when she sees it’s a girl ‘cause obviously it’s not a date, then. Anyway, foster-mum (I think it’s her? No explanation whatsoever here) leaves and the girls go drink tea together. Bill’s date’s a bit nervous because “she’s not used to all this,” and Bill gives a lovely little speech about how “this isn’t anything yet if you don’t want it to be” and generally being full of reassurance and kindness and loveliness, well done Bill. She ends with “this is nothing to feel guilty about” - at which point the Tardis lands in another room in her house and the Pope comes storming in, talking in Italian. Bill’s date freaks out, runs to the other room, finds a bunch of cardinals in Bill’s bedroom and runs away in a panic. Bill, annoyed, tells the cardinals “they’re all going to hell”.

(Now, see, this would have worked for me if it was a thing they followed up on, like Bill being aggressively gay at the Pope and the Doctor choosing her side or something. But the way it’s played, it’s a gratuitous throwaway joke about religion and lesbian guilt, which, fuck no.)

The Doctor, Nardole (new sorta companion? idek how to explain him) and Bill go to the Vatican, where they’re keeping the text. The entrance to the hall of texts is a portrait of Pope Benedict IX, who turns out to be young and conventionally pretty and feminine. Doctor makes another flirty remark about her.

(THE DOCTOR IS NOT JACK FUCKING HARKNESS CHRIST FUCK)

 As they head to the secret room, they pass a strange glowy portal that briefly appears, then disappears. One of the cardinals stays behind to examine it, and as everyone moves on we can just see a creepy red-robed hand reaching through the portal for the cardinal - who is never mentioned again, nor does anyone feel like checking up on him. Anyway, they go to the cage where they keep the text, where they find a panicked priest - the last surviving translator, holding a gun. He panics and runs off, leaving behind his laptop, where they find he sent the translation of the text to CERN. CERN wrote back an email saying “Pray for us”.

(they use the fact that hard scientists revert to religion as a sign of how bad things are, but it’s just - stupid and heavy-handed and simplistic. Booh.)

Bill, Nardole and the Doctor discuss the text, the Doctor tries to send them away after the man with the gun. Bill says something along the lines of “we don’t even know if he’s still alive” - at which point we hear a bang, and the Doctor’s sensors give a “no life signals detected” warning for the guy. And there’s a line like “guess we know now”.

(suicide as a throwaway joke)

The Doctor convinces Nardole and Bill to go off exploring while he looks at the text. There’s a cringe-inducing moment where Nardole, the bumbling assistant, gives this meant-to-be-authoritative speech to Bill about how she needs to stay behind him for her safety. Bill is impressed and obeys, saying “Are you secretly a badass?” all admiring.

(Cringe. Ugh. There was something incredibly patronising about that speech.)

They find the portal, go through and find a round room full of glowy lights, with a circle of pillars in the middle and portals all along the wall. They head through a portal and end up in CERN, where they bump into a man in a white coat drinking from a bottle, who seems cheerful in a desperate way. He invites them along and they end up in the dining room, where a bunch of other scientists are all sitting looking scared, and a timer counts down from five minutes. Bill looks under the tables, where bombs are strapped. She gets into a discussion with one of the scientists, who tells her they’re killing themselves to save the world, that this isn’t the real world, and when she doesn’t believe him, he asks her to say a random number. Each time Bill says a number, Nardole says exactly the same number at the same time, and after the first few tries the rest join in, each time giving all the same numbers. The scientist calls it a shadow test. With only a few seconds left on the timer, Nardole drags Bill away. They run off, and the scientists get blown up.

They end up in the round room with all the portals again, where Nardole says the pillars remind him of projectors. He realises what the shadow test is for, saying it’s possible the people at CERN where right and that they are just a projection - but he doesn’t understand, because he checked the coordinates on the Tardis and they were real. Unless...  Then Nardole, with an expression of pure fear, muttering please let me be wrong, walks slowly to the pillars/projectors. As soon as he puts his hands beyond the projectors, he starts falling apart in pixels, screaming in terror I’m not real, Bill! I’m not real!

(do I... do I even need to explain how disturbing this is?)

Bill, in a panic, goes to find the Doctor. The Doctor has started to read the text but got interrupted by scary monsters in cardinal robes, who tell him when he yells this isn’t a game,  “this *is* a game”. But the Doctor escapes, with the text. Bill follows his traces through a portal which leads to the Pentagon, and the Oval Office, where the Doctor is waiting and someonelse  eis sitting with his back to us, slumped in a chair. “Is that the president?” “Was the president.” There’s a gun next to him.

(I lack the words, tbh)

The Doctor then finally explains. The text talks about how an Evil Monster wants to conquer the world, so it creates an exact holographic simulation copy of the real world to practice in, full of simulation-versions of real people. But the simulation is so good that the simulated people start developing independent intelligence. The people at CERN and at the Pentagon were simulations; their suicide wasn’t desperation but an act of resistance, preventing the Evil Monster from learning from them. The shadow test is mentioned in the text too; computers aren’t good with random numbers, so one test to see if you’re a simulation or not is to write down what you think are random numbers, then see if someone else got the exact same numbers. Bill, scared, says she gave the same numbers as the others too. The Doctor says I know, and Bill, terrified, dissolves into pixels. The monsters then come back in (they’re properly scary, btw, look like decomposing corpses) and tell the Doctor that he can’t do anything, that they’re keeping him alive to learn from his suffering. The Doctor almost gives up, then remembers something River once said (real goodness is goodness when there’s no hope, no reward and no witness) and he - somehow - sends an email with the entire recording of everything that happened since they went to the Vatican to the real Doctor (he was wearing his sonic sunglasses the whole time because he’s blind - long story, but they recorded what happened). 

Screen goes to static, and we’re back at the very first scene, with the Doctor receiving the Extremis email and looking at it. He calls Bill, asks her if she’s on a date - she’s not - and then encourages her to call up the girl from the date, even though Bill says she’s way out of her league, because Something big and evil is coming and we’re going to be very busy soon. Roll credits; writer: Steven Moffat.

There’s also a sideplot with Missy being executed, only the Doctor backs out of the execution at the last moment and instead locks her up in a vault for thousand years which he vows to protect. Missy begs for her life and calls the Doctor her friend, and at the end of the episode the Doctor leans in to the vault and asks for her help. Horribly out of character, in short.

So. Plotwise? Bollocks. Really. Nothing makes sense. A simulation complex enough to mimic the entire history of the Earth can’t do random numbers? (it’s the same trick he used in a Christmas Special, btw, where it was a Dream Test - originality is not Moffat’s strong point). Some people have to kill themselves, while others just dissolve? How does a simulation send an email to a real person? etc etc.

Then there’s the implications. The whole thing is steeped in derealisation, suicide is fucking everywhere and actually treated as a solution, the Vatican and the Pope are cuddly allies and religion is everywhere. I didn’t see the end of the credits but I do fucking hope they put in the usual helpline-thing the BBC adds after showing triggering content.

We’re right back at the worst of Moffat’s last few seasons. For five episodes we’ve had villains who turned out to be not actually evil but simply the victim of severe misunderstanding; we’ve had curiosity and wanting to help as the Doctor’s main motivation; we’ve had explicit pacifism; we’ve had enemies that basically come down to “capitalism”, “racism” and “the patriarchy” (no, really, I swear). 

And now, it’s another generic Big Evil Monster, it’s throwaway gay jokes with no follow up, and it’s arguably the most fucked-up underlying message I’ve ever seen in a Doctor Who episode. I mean, I thought the billion-years-of-repeated-torture was an unbeatable high in making me feel disgusted and uncomfortable, but I’ve never been as grossed out as I was during this episode.