Doctor Who: The Lie of the Land Review

The Lie of the Land ended the three-episode saga involving the monks and did a pretty good job at ending the story in a way that was distinctly very Doctor Who. But let’s talk about the episode as a whole. And how not even the love of a mother and child can save what had maybe just been a too-hyped ending.

The beginning

As the episode opened we hear the Doctor’s voice telling us about the Monks, and how they’re a benevolent species, and how they’ve lived side-by-side in the universe as the human race has evolved. Mostly, they’re there to keep everything protected. It’s obviously a dystopian world, and as we see people getting arrested for different ways of thinking (knowing the Monks haven’t been there forever) or using “propaganda material” (comic books), it’s hard not to think of the Handmaid’s Tale, another show that could easily be explained by the possibility as Monks.

We hear, and eventually see Bill having a conversation with her dead mother about everything that’s happening. A figment of her imagination. She’s created this image of her mother and tells her everything that’s been going on throughout her life.

Nardole comes to visit Bill, but not without a few bumps and bruises (Bill apparently gets physical when she’s excited), but still, he comes with a plan to get the Doctor out of the monk’s prison. The plan is to sneak inside a supply boat that sends the monks their food on an offshore ship. As they begin to scope out the Doctor, Bill’s thoughts to her mom come on voiceover as they move to figure out where the Doctor is.

Credit: BBC

They finally find him, in a white room, the same room where he’s done his broadcasts, and Bill is desperate to try to find any possibility that the Doctor is being made to do it. This is one of Capaldi’s best scenes, including a quote that should have everyone thinking. Bill is distraught as it gets more obvious the Doctor is on their side, quoting that the Romans “killed a few and saved billions”. But this quote should have us all rethinking the way our world is going.

"THE DOCTOR: “You had free will, and look at what you did with it! Worse than that, you had history. History was saying, ‘Hello? I’ve got some examples here of fascism you might want to look at. No? Fundamentalism? No? Okay, you carry on.’ I had to stop you. Or at least not stand in the way of someone else stopping you. Because the guns were getting bigger, the stakes were getting higher, and any minute now it was going to be ‘goodnight, Vienna’.”And then, in a fit of “not knowing what to do next” and “everything has turned and there’s nothing left”, Bill pulls a gun on the Doctor. She shoots him, and he begins to try to regenerate…except he doesn’t. Everything was planned to make sure Bill wasn’t under the influence of the monks.But…why?Everything about the scene in on the boat just seemed too much. If anything, it seemed to add to Bill’s obvious initial move to overreact to things. She wasn’t shooting the Doctor because he was bad and she was attempting to fix it. She was shooting the Doctor because she was…angry? What exactly would that have accomplished had it not been all planned out?And why was it all planned out? What was the point of the Doctor pretending to try to regenerate if everyone knew it was faked out? What was the point of testing Bill at all? The Doctor and Nardole had obviously been in conversation because the Doctor says that Nardole came up with the idea.Bill is becoming too unstable for me. She doesn’t seem to know how to react to things, and while maybe that’s human, I feel like it’s gonna get the Doctor in trouble one day.To the vault!The Doctor brings Bill to the vault where they find Missy playing the piano, incredibly bored. There are some few great one-liners back and forth between her and the Doctor, and the ever great couple of Missy lines.As always, seeing Missy brings up any episode. It’s always bound to be entertaining.They ask Missy about the monks and she says that she’s battled the Monks before. After a fun game of “hot and cold”, the Doctor realizes it’s the statutes. Without the statues, the people will remember it’s only been a couple of months. But there’s another part, the “lichpin”. The person who gave them consent in the first place.She has to die. Well, not die, but become so brain dead that she might as well be dead.Knowing this would be Bill, the Doctor refuses this part of the plan and goes off to try to find another part of the plan.And, yeah…that’s it for the amount of time with Missy this episode. I was really hoping for more while she was in the arc, but maybe we’ll get more time in the two-part episode coming up. As we’re getting closer, it’s getting harder to believe we have to say goodbye to these characters.How to save the day: Love of course!The way that the day was saved was not through the Doctor’s large brain of a million memories but through Bill’s. This is reminiscent of The Rings of Ahkatan when the leaf that Clara had was able to sustain the God who fed off of memories because he was feeding off of what was. Honestly, I feel like this was the same thing.In the end, it wasn’t Bill’s memories either that saved her or the planet, it was the made up memories and stories she had with her mom who died when she was a baby. Whether it was pure love, or because they were fake memories isn’t clear, but it was still a wonderful way to end the episode. Even if, as an arc, it ended incredibly flat.As an episode, I give it: The Lie of the Land Doctor Who Season 10, Episode 8 B- Come back tomorrow for a review of the entire arc of Extremis, The Pyramid at the End of the World, and Lie of the Land.Published on 06/05/2017 at 1:02 AM CSTLast updated on 06/05/2017 at 1:02 AM CST THE DOCTOR: “You had free will, and look at what you did with it! Worse than that, you had history. History was saying, ‘Hello? I’ve got some examples here of fascism you might want to look at. No? Fundamentalism? No? Okay, you carry on.’ I had to stop you. Or at least not stand in the way of someone else stopping you. Because the guns were getting bigger, the stakes were getting higher, and any minute now it was going to be ‘goodnight, Vienna’.”"