Dear Gary—
Here we go again; another Black Mirror plot and yet another adventure that never happened. “I need to know what’s real and what isn’t real;” well, Bill, what isn’t real is this story. (Matrix tampering anyone?) Extremis is simply a set-up for the episodes to follow; it introduces the idea that there is (surprise) an alien threat to Earth that is looming, and it reinforces (to death) the fact that the Doctor is blind. As a side bonus, we finally get the reveal of who is being detained in the vault. Drum roll . . . it’s . . . Missy! (As if we hadn’t guessed that already.)
The execution sections of the story are well done but also annoying. This storyline deserves a dedicated episode; instead it is used as filler. As a result, Missy is shortchanged.
We never get to know what led to Missy’s arrest and trial (assuming there was one); we only get the end result of execution. The Master/Missy has such a rich history of evil; how did he/she finally come to face a reckoning? Then there is this: “On this planet we are proud to serve as executioners to every living thing.” What planet? Who are these executioners? How did they come to be involved in Missy’s life/death? The show doesn’t think this is important for us to know; therefore, I really don’t care. Ho hum. Missy has been sentenced to death and the Doctor (not these professional executioners) is to carry out the penalty. This mysterious and never before mentioned and probably never again referred to planet of killers is merely acting as a go-between. And since we know the Doctor, we know the Doctor will never actually murder Missy. (There was only one time, to my knowledge, that the Doctor had the will to go through with the deed, and that effort failed in traditional Doctor Who obfuscation. And, I might add, it was done in the heat of the moment after the Master—as he was calling himself at the time—had been particularly dastardly. In our present story there is no context to ascertain why the Doctor would go through with it in the cold light of day. So I repeat—ho hum.)
The introduction of Nardole into the mix as a pseudo River conscience is welcome but unnecessary; we know the Doctor doesn’t need any prodding to do the ‘right thing.’ Even so, Nardole’s quotation from River’s diary—“Goodness is not goodness that seeks advantage. Good is good in the final hour, in the deepest pit without hope, without witness, without reward.”—is hauntingly beautiful; and those words—“without hope, without witness, without reward”—are rightfully echoed throughout the episode, lending some poetic depth.
However, the entire execution sequence is by way of giving a sketchy back story to the Vault that has been hanging over the season so far. And it is only offered at this point because the show has decided that it is time to reveal Missy and get her involved in the ensuing scripts. Missy involvement is always appreciated, but her usage is so often mishandled.
Now let’s tackle this main adventure that never happened.
At this point, Gary, I want to point out that I am not necessarily a fan of sci fi. I am more of a ‘fi’ fan; that is, a fan of fiction that is well done (or if not well done, at least entertaining), ‘sci’ or not. As a Black Mirror plot, Extremis would have been some fine fiction. As a Doctor Who plot, however, it is not. It is not because it is forced; it is trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. It just doesn’t work.
Where to start? First there is the Pope. As an extremely secular—and one might argue anti-religious—show, the use of the Roman Catholic Church as the instigator of events is bizarre to say the least. I suppose Bill’s date-that-wasn’t being interrupted by the entrance of the Pope is meant to be amusing; instead it is merely head scratching. There is no reason for the Pope to consult the Doctor (much less his companion—the Doctor can easily be found in his office these days) or for the Doctor to accommodate the Pope. The story would have been much better served with the utilization of UNIT. I have to wonder if Doctor Who isn’t trying to conjure up images of The Da Vinci Code, and if so I have to say that using that particular piece of mediocre preposterousness is acutely misguided.
Then there is the Veritas. As a rule I am indifferent to these types of tropes—the ominous ‘thing’ that no one can ever know about because if one does discern the ‘thing’s’ secret one is immediately dead by some means or another. I do have to admit that the resolution of this conundrum in Extremis is about the only one that I find convincing, and once more I state it would make a fantastic Black Mirror installment. If used correctly, it could also make for some very fine Doctor Who. However Extremis shoe horns the Veritas in as a means to an end.
The ominous Veritas is a book that when read results in the suicide of the peruser. The author of the book, why and how the book came into the hands of the Pope, why the Pope is so concerned about it, why the Pope hasn’t read it himself, why those who have read it don’t warn others—none of this is expanded upon. The Pope calls in the unbeknownst-to-him-or-anyone-else-other-than-Nardole blind Doctor to read the book. And so the Veritas reinforces the blind Doctor angle. How can he read the book when he can’t see? (I’m not sure why he doesn’t use some of his regeneration energy, which he uses indiscriminately to heal, for example, River’s wrist; but that wouldn’t serve the present purpose.) The Doctor relies heavily upon his sonic sunglasses to feed him the information he needs to get around and deceive others into believing he has sight. (As a side note, why, if he is so desperate to keep his blindness a secret, why oh why would he confide in Missy of all people? He can’t tell Bill but he can tell Missy. Missy, the one being in all the universe who is so dangerous that she has to be kept hidden away in a vault that the Doctor has pledged to guard for a thousand years.) Then the Doctor pulls out some heretofore unknown Time Lord technology the show has never revealed before and probably never will use again in order to provide the Doctor with some temporary vision so that he can read the Veritas. But wait—the Monks appear to menace him before he can read the Veritas and he again loses his sight.
Oh yes, the Monks. Yet another alien race intent upon invading the Earth in the most convoluted way possible. Don’t use your apparently superior intelligence and technology to conquer the planet. No, spend endless time and energy and resources on creating countless simulated realities to study and algorithm your way into a plan of action. If the cyber Doctor hadn’t brilliantly outwitted them by recording all of the fake events and by emailing a copy of the cyber Veritas to himself, thus forcing their hand, the Monks probably would have wasted all of eternity harmlessly pouring over the data from their video games without ever actually doing anything.
Despite the ridiculous outer trimmings of the story, the events, fake or not, are compelling. The simulated reality, in and of itself, is not a bad idea; Bill and Nardole stumbling upon the inner workings of the machine and accessing the various facsimiles is interesting to witness; the use of non-random generation of strings of numbers as a means of identifying unreality is clever; the imagery of “Super Mario figuring out what's going on, deleting himself from the game because he's sick of dying” is about the only explanation for the Veritas suicides that I find acceptable. If only all of this was not simply serving as a bridge to the episodes to come. If only the reason for the simulation was not as lame as it turns out to be. If only the threat of the Monks was not blunted by their obtuseness.
If only, Gary. As Dad would say, if ifs and buts were candy and nuts, my what a merry Christmas we would have.
