Doctor Who - THE LIE OF THE LAND (S10E8) Review: Kill Bill

The Doctor and co. head to Fake News Central in a good episode that flirts with being a great one

It’s bleak, it’s contentious and yet I'd be lying if I didn't say that I had a great time with Toby Whithouse's The Lie of the Land. It, along with the previous two episodes, certainly stands as one of the show’s most experimental storylines and there’s a lot to potentially piss people off here. Luckily, Whithouse is incredibly smart in his approach to the material and the result is a great sendoff to this weird little trilogy, with a smattering of excellent bits strewn throughout.

A few months have passed since Bill surrendered humanity to the Monks. In the interim, said Monks have taken over the Earth, erected huge statues of themselves across the globe and convinced the populace that they have been there since the dawn of time. The Doctor seems to have joined the Monks’ side, broadcasting propaganda TV spots that reinforce the new order, leaving Bill as one of the only ones aware of the real truth.

SPOILERS TO FOLLOW

Allusions to Orwell’s 1984 aren’t exactly subtle throughout the episode, with the Monks’ truth beam and memory correction techniques bearing similarity to Big Brother’s doublethink. Talk of an Orwellian dystopia has cropped up again over the last year or so, especially after Kellyanne Conway’s “alternative facts” gaffe earlier this year and Lie of the Land feels like the kind of episode that wouldn’t exist if not for today’s current political climate. The Doctor even calls the Monks’ transmitter room “Fake News Central”, whilst the eagle-eyed amongst viewers will have spotted a pretty sneaky picture of Donald Trump hovering in the background of one shot. It’s not exactly laying it on thin, but it’s impressive to see Doctor Who go after this kind of content in such broad, operatic fashion and the setting is admirably realised.

This episode also seems to confirm how the Monks have never really been the stars of their own story. Despite them having successfully conquered Earth, we see even less of them than last week and are told very little new information about who they are or what they want. I guess the answers are just what we can see: that they are Zombie Monks who want to rule the Earth and have decided that worldwide hypnosis is the best way to do it. That’s pretty much all there is to it, if their dearth of appearances and lack of explanation is any measure to go by. Despite this sort of problem working against Pyramid, however, here it doesn’t buoy the episode down all that much. We reach the end of the story just fine with what details we have and so we have more time to take in what else is on offer.

But anyway, we should probably talk about that scene.

This has got to go down as some of the most supreme trolling the show has ever done. It makes virtually no sense in regards to the logic of the show but, on this occasion, I couldn’t care less. For weeks sites like the Radiotimes have been constantly writing theory articles about this scene and why the Doctor will regenerate and so forth. It’s hard not to feel as though this is just a massive prank/middle finger to capitalise on the ensuing gossip regarding Capaldi’s upcoming exit and I loved it.

Having said that, I suppose we should ask whether this represents the show taking an interesting plot direction and tossing it out the window. By which I mean: should the show have committed and had the Doctor be evil for the whole episode? It’s certainly deeply unsettling that first half under the impression that the Doctor has gone bad, with Peter Capaldi really taking the chance to grasp onto the uncomfortable villainy of the moment (the pre-credits sequence is one of my favourites in Nu-Who). It definitely adds a sense of danger to the proceedings that isn’t really replicated in the rest of the episode and so I get why a person would be pissed that the show doesn’t follow through. On the other hand, I having watched the episode again the next morning, it’s incredibly hard for me to get angry, given the scene that precedes it. It’s a masterfully written scene – one that freaks you out on a first viewing, but then takes on a whole new meaning when you watch it again, knowing the Doctor’s plan. I couldn’t tell you how I’ll feel about this in a year from now, but as it stands now, I’m okay with it. Maybe that’s not enough for you, but given the good stuff that comes afterwards, it’s sure good enough for me. Speaking of which…

Ah Michelle Gomez, why must you leave this show? Every time Missy appears on the show it’s a delight and here we get to see something different from her, as she seems to offer help towards the Doctor and Bill. Yep, following up on what was hinted at in Extremis, Missy might be trying to turn good. Not ‘Doctor’ good, of course, and she's sure to make that clear:

"Your version of good is not absolute. It’s vain, arrogant, and sentimental. If you’re waiting for me to become all that…I’m going to be here for a long time yet."

Jury’s out as to whether this is all genuine or part of a thousand year-long game, but either way this makes for the most fascinating story arc of Series 10. The question isn’t whether Missy will turn good or not, rather it’s a matter of when she’s going to break bad again. The result (which I imagine will emerge in the finale) will probably be agonising.

With the advice from Missy under their belt the gang heads to the Monks’ cathedral (the pyramid) to override the device that broadcasts the Monks’ lies across Earth. Despite the Doctor’s attempt to disrupt the machine himself, it sizzles his brain and kicks him backwards across the room. Bill, realising that she is the psychic link for the broadcast, offers to fry her own brain to save everyone else. Before the machine can get to work on that, though, Bill’s mental image of her Mum bleeds through into the machine, transmitting across the globe and giving everyone a window to the truth in the form of one, uncorrupted image. Bill saves the world with love, which for some reason I’m seeing thrown around as a negative. Be cynical all you like, but I thought there was more than enough build up to it to sell the moment. It didn’t hurt that Murray Gold serves up some great music for the scene (cue my call for the release of the Series 9 soundtrack: WHAT IS TAKING IT SO LONG?).

I think it’s become clear that The Lie of the Land is something of a weird episode. Structurally, it’s a bit bizarre and there’s almost the sense that episode is really two halves of a story sewn together (with the Doctor’s break-out scene functioning as the middle point). It also has the ability to prove frustrating to those who want it to follow through on its setup. And yet, despite all of that, it’s such a rollicking good time that I can’t help but like it. I can’t imagine that writing the third part of a trilogy in which you have no previous writing credit is a particularly easy time and yet Whithouse, somehow, manages to pull it off. In fact, between the cold open and Missy’s scene, it almost comes close to being Whithouse’s best episode. As it is, it just has to settle for being really, really good. What a bummer.

Verdict:

★★★★

(Alternative title for this review: Lie Lie Land)

Next Time:

THE EMPRESS OF MARS

Trilogy time is over, which means it's time for some more one-off adventuring. What better way to kick it off than with...Victorian soldiers on Mars? Credit where credit's due: if this is Mark Gatiss' last Doctor Who episode, then at least he's going out with the most Mark Gatiss-y episode possible. I can't say I'm pumped for this one, but Gatiss' love for the show virtually always shines through, even in his weakest episodes and so there's enough to suggest that this could be, at the very least, fun.

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