Doctor Who - EXTREMIS (S10E6) Review: Heaven Sent gets a spiritual sequel

Doctor Who goes bananas in this instant classic

“Good is good in the final hour, in the deepest pit, without hope, without witness, without reward. Virtue is only virtue in Extremis.”

Since Capaldi has hopped onboard, Moffat has made no secret of his plan to gift himself at least one ‘chamber piece’ episode - one that allows him a degree of creative freedom that series openers and finales might not. The result has been ‘Listen’: an episode that has been touted as an attempt to ‘redefine’ the Doctor’s character by returning to the basic underlying truths of the show, ‘Heaven Sent’: an exploration of the Doctor at his lowest and probably the best episode the show has produced, and now with ‘Extremis’ it looks as though Moffat’s spiritual trilogy is complete.

Following last week’s cliffhanger that the Doctor is blind, we pick up from round about where we left off to find that the Doctor has been contacted by the Vatican (with the Pope himself jetting off to Bristol to convince the Doctor to help). Deep inside the Haereticum of the Vatican, a text known as ‘The Veritas’ has recently been translated. Everyone who worked on the translation (and therefore read the Veritas) has been found to have committed suicide shortly after. Now a translation looks to have leaked online, the Vatican asks the Doctor, himself, to read the Veritas.

SPOILERS FOR EXTREMIS AND HEAVEN SENT FOLLOW

Extremis is probably the strangest episode of Doctor Who to date, from its premise, to the dual narrative (the other half of the episode finds the Doctor called to execute Michelle Gomez’ Missy) down to the minutiae of the episode itself. Given how Series 10 has been billed as a softer than soft reboot that any newcomer can enjoy, I can only imagine how much whiplash any newbie must be feeling by the time Extremis ends. Never mind the episode’s ambitious twist ending, what about parading Missy around in front of the audience with not a single explanation as to who she is? Not that I mind any of this. This series I’ve been constantly talking about how the show has been softening itself up for Bill and the new viewers, slowly taking off the training wheels with each episode. For Bill, those wheels came off last episode: Oxygen. With Extremis upending the series’ simplicity, it looks like now it’s the audience’s turn.

As said earlier, this is Moffat’s weird standalone-ish episode where he gets to push Doctor Who to breaking point. Standalone is probably a little misleading, given how Extremis is kicking off a three-parter, but then it’s clear that Extremis is predominantly its own thing, with Moffat taking the opportunity to dig deep into the Doctor’s very being once again. This is where we start to see the similarities of Extremis to Heaven Sent. Despite the general rule of thumb that the main character in Doctor Who is always the companion, it seems like Moffat can’t resist the opportunity to put the Doctor through his paces and see what’s left at the end. When you’ve got the keys to the Doctor Who machine, who can blame him?

For those that need a refresher's course on Heaven Sent: the episode found the Doctor transported to a sort of clockwork, revolving castle, having just witnessed the death of Clara. The castle functions as a sort of torture chamber, with the Doctor constantly being chased by an ever-stalking creature called 'The Veil'. The point of the castle? To push the Doctor into confessing his knowledge about a threat known as the 'Hybrid'. That stuff isn't desperately important to what I'm talking about here. What is important is the resolution. At the end of the episode, the Doctor is confronted with a diamond wall that blocks the way to his escape. Piecing together the various clues strewn throughout the episode, the Doctor realises that the only way out of the castle is to punch his way through the diamond wall, bit by bit. As this means the Veil will always catch him before punching his way through, he realises this means that he will have to die. Taking advantage of the resetting feature of the castle, the Doctor confines himself to relieving the events of the episode over and over for billions of years in order to punch his way through the wall, in one of the most exhausting and brilliant montages I've seen in film or television:

Heaven Sent offered us an exploration of the Doctor when placed at his lowest, with everything from TARDIS mind-palaces and dreadful, cosmic sacrifices thrown into the mix. In the grand scheme of the character, it might just be a glimpse at what makes the Doctor tick, but by going further than any episode before it, it feels utterly definitive. Extremis, in contrast, feels more like a thesis than an exploration; a reaffirmation of the myth established in Listen and tested in Heaven Sent. We get to see the Doctor at the point of death: both his friend’s and his own. The twist? For most of this episode, the person that we’re following isn’t even the Doctor.

Extremis’ final twist that the world of the episode isn’t real (including all the people in it) places the Doctor in a situation unlike we’ve seen before. He knows that he isn’t the real Doctor and he knows that the purpose of his ‘existence’ is merely to further an alien invasion where the various possibilities are being run through an elaborate simulation. Physically and existentially, the Doctor is utterly beaten. And so it is that this Doctor, in the knowledge that he isn’t real, decides to be what he believed himself to be all along, using the inevitability of his loss to turn the tables on the Monks powering the simulation and sending a recording of the entire episode to the real Doctor who has spent the entire episode experiencing a recording of the events on the sonic sunglasses.

With the episode's resolution, I can’t help but think back to the twitter trailers for Series 10 released ahead of the Pilot. Stuff like this:

Corny? Um, yeah. But like it or not, what it's getting at is Doctor Who – a show dedicated to optimism in the face of brute force and cynicism. And, in Extremis, when the Doctor says…

“You don’t have to be real to be the Doctor. As long as you never give up.”

…it feels like a natural continuation of the lesson espoused in Listen (fear is a superpower – itself referenced in this episode). That episode's mythology-plumbing combined with Heaven Sent’s exploration. Cook for 50 minutes and you have Extremis. Add in the Pope for good measure, whilst you’re at it.

This discussion is crucial to the episode's central theme, though I do feel like I'm underselling just how crazily watchable Extremis is. There’s an audaciousness to the episode that emphasises just how good Moffat is at understanding his audience; just check out the dual-narrative, or the references to a female Pope Benedict, or the number scene at CERN which goes down as one of my favourite scenes in the episode. It’s so perfectly written to generate WTF reactions that you can’t help but audibly respond to what is going on.

However, there’s a sneakier trick up Extremis’ sleeve – one which again reminds me of Heaven Sent. The idea of virtual reality isn’t exactly one that’s unexplored in science fiction. The Matrix comes to mind as the most obvious example – heck, even Doctor Who got in on the game in Forest of the Dead. Extremis makes the idea feel fresh not because it’s unexpected, but because by the time the secret of the Veritas is revealed, we feel the impact. We understand how the simulants must feel because, up until the ending, we were sort of there with them, following their story unaware of what exactly it was that we were watching. I make the comparison to Heaven Sent, which achieves a similar level of investment. An entire episode is dedicated to watching the Doctor run the gauntlet that is laid out before him. Forty minutes later, we are treated to a montage that shows the extent of this challenge, as the episode’s events are replayed over and over for the equivalent of six billion years. The episode earns the weight and the magnitude of that loop and so it stays with us more than similar situations, such as Doctor Strange’s bargaining scene with Dormammu.

The bottom line is: Extremis should go down as one of the classics of Nu-Who – up there with Moffat’s best. It’s interesting that Moffat should take the time to make episodes like this, given his dedication to overarching stories during the Matt Smith era. Maybe he’s become aware that his time on the show is ending. Whatever the case, Extremis stands as the current best episode of Series 10 and a prime example of why I’m going to miss Moffat when he steps down as showrunner. How can you be happy he’s leaving the show, if it means there will be no more episodes as ambitious and crazy as this one?

Verdict:

★★★★★

Seriously, how on Earth is this going to be topped by the end of the Series?

#thematrix #stevenmoffat #doctorstrange #DoctorWho