Doctor Who Review: The Monk Arc

Over the past three weeks, we’ve seen a three-episode arc take place around the villains known as the Monks. However, it all seemed kind of clunky, with pieces missing, and a genuinely rushed ending, like most arcs we’ve seen over the past couple of years. It gives us cause to pause.

Three-episode arcs should be Moffat’s speciality. There are only three episodes of Sherlock per season, and he does a great job of making a satisfying arc. So what went wrong here? Was it lack of help from Mark Gatiss? Was it because Sherlock’s episodes are two hours and these episodes were forty-five minutes?

There are a million variables as to why an arc may not work. But let’s take a look at why this arc felt so disjointed in what was led to be believed to be a turning point in Doctor Who.

I feel the need to set a disclaimer. I am not blaming Moffat. I understand that things happen. But also understand that as a viewer of the series, it’s always disappointing to have something hyped up so much, only to let us down.

There are a thousand reasons as to why these episodes didn’t work, many of them have nothing to do with the showrunner or the ideas, more of how it was played out.

So let’s go on to review The Monk Arc.

Are we still in a simulation?

I’m confused. We spent most of Extremis in a whirlwind because people were killing themselves because they found out we were living in a simulation world. CERN had people tied up to tables that were about to explode because of this.

The Doctor emailed himself in a previous time to show him everything that the Monks told him, but what now? Is the Doctor still in a simulation? Why wasn’t this ever mentioned again? This is a huge deal that was left hanging.

The only thing I can think of is that the library was in the center of some edge of the real and simulated world, where they accidentally wandered in through the Monks’ library. Then they found the center of the world through the monks in the porthole, and step in.

That would make the white room with the projectors, understandably, the center of the projected world. But none of that was ever proven. All we know is that the Doctor called himself for him, and the entire episode was, thereby, erased when he sent it to himself. We never heard from it again, except when he told Bill.

Bill played it off like a joke in the next episode unless she was trying to tell someone in her real life. But it certainly seemed like she didn’t think it was serious that the Doctor believed the earth was a simulation.

Another issue is, we never know what happened to Extremis Doctor after he called himself for him. Did he die? Is that how everything was okay? There were so many unanswered questions that called to be answered in The Pyramid of at the End of the World, that never was.

We know that whatever happened in Extremis never happened because Bill and Nardole didn’t know who the Monks were.

The simulation world seems like too big of a storyline to just leave as though it never happened. I suppose it could be assumed that when the Monks went away, so did their world. It just seems like the three parts would have felt more connected.

Disjointed

Which brings me to my next point: how disjointed it came out to be. The arc, presumably, was expected to have one problem that was expected to be solved. In Moffat’s previous arcs, such as Sherlock, there’s always been a bit of the final story, and then in the last episode, the final story opened using the clues we already had.

These episodes had nothing to do with each other.

Extremis was about a document that revealed a truth about the world, and the monks wanted that truth. Pyramid at the end of the World was about the monks that wanted to take over the world, but couldn’t do so unless it was asked. The Lie of the Land was about how they were lying about everything in order to make it seem like the truth.

These episodes only vaguely seem to connect. Besides the monks, these episodes could have stood on their own and done just as well. The big hype about how it was going to be a three-part episode! and the first three-parter since OldWho was unnecessary.

It also didn’t help that each of these episodes were written by three different writers. Steven Moffat wrote Extremis, Peter Harness wrote The Pyramid, and Toby Whithouse wrote The Lie of the Land. Even though Moffat looked over the episodes, wouldn’t it have made more sense to write all three episodes?

In the end, as many reviewers said, why did we care? We defeated the Monks using a technique that we’d used in the Rings of Ahkatan, no one will remember. Nothing substantial happened in the episodes, and anything that did happen was erased. The end of the arc left us with more questions than we began with.

PS: Missy

Probably the only somewhat joy of the episodes were Missy, who really only appeared in two, and then barely at all. It was only because of Michelle Gomez’s talent that made up for that sad fact, especially since this is her last season as well.

In Extremis, we see Missy on the execution block. A few witty one liners that left us remembering the scene more than most of the scenes in the arc, and then she was out — sleeping. She gets into the vault and that about answers whose in the vault. Not why, not what she did to get caught, not who the people were sentencing her, nothing. The scenes played out as a memory, and that was all.

In The Lie of the Land, she had two scenes. One where she tries to help the Doctor figure out how the Monks are controlling the world, and the very end. The first scene was just very Missy, and even as good as Michelle Gomez is, I didn’t find it incredibly memorable. The second scene, you begin to see her repent for the evil that she’s done as she remembers the names of the people she’s killed. In an episode that was truly boring, if anything, that made it worth it.