Well that wasn’t very inspiring was it?
There’s something unique about a Peter Harness script. For him, the central drama comes down to a moral choice or an imaginative debate as opposed to a chase down a corridor or a supernatural mystery. His 2014 script Kill the Moon set companion, schoolgirl and an astronaut in the epicenter of a Pro Life/ Pro Choice scenario. The Moon, it transpired, was actually a space-dragon egg all along. Zygon Invasion/ Inversion was possibly his most successful story taking the contemporary issues of immigration, extremism and violent retribution and successfully contriving a situation in which Capaldi’s hippyish persona could successfully raise two fingers in a sign of peace and prevent a global war. Pyramid has elements of these other scripts but the conceit is not so strong and the conflict is not so consequential and in many ways it undermines the strong morals of his previous episodes.
Much like the The Veritas - a book which kills its readers - the titular Pyramid is simply a hook, something of a MacGuffin to draw in the viewer without having very much to do at all with the central story. The conceit that Harness brought to the table is a choice that humanity faces between global destruction and accepting the authoritarian rule of an alien power. Ultimately, much like previous entry in this series Knock Knock it doesn’t feel like all of the concepts completely mesh here. The Monks are distinctive visually but as conceptual creatures they are very thinly drawn. They kill with a touch, need the right kind of consent to control a planet, have a 5000 year old pyramid as a spaceship, run simulations through projectors, have blue wires, can alter reality. It’s hard to care about them because they’re just a list of things. There’s no solid rule or conceit with them which lessens the stakes. We know that literally anything could be pulled out of the bag at the last minute to defeat them because they themselves have pulled any number of loosely connected powers out of thin air in this and the previous episode.
The Pyramid at the End of the World is ambitious, which is something to be admired. The episodes this season have all had very distinct takes on the Doctor Who brand which is an improvement over seasons like 7B, Matt Smith’s final adventures, which were eight episodes of cookie-cutter run-arounds. Pyramid does bite off more than it can chew though. We are expected to believe in an international emergency that potentially pits the three greatest military super-powers against each other but what we are shown is ramshackle clusters of people standing in deserted land and offices. The eye never truly believes that numerous static shots of our regulars standing and looking in awe off camera are connected with a majestic 5000 year old pyramid. Maybe it’s my recent experiences on film sets but all I could see was an on-location film set.
The episode is riddled with strange character choices and leaps in logic. I wasn’t a fan of the fact that in order to save the day, The Doctor waves his hands in the air and says “Since it’s not war that’ll end the world it must be science. I guess biochemistry? I feel that” Why does he feel it? Is he just magic? There is a disagreement between the military leaders and the Doctor about whether or not to go for of the Monks’ offer. The Doctor says he’ll probably stop the destruction but if he had been “feeling” the wrong thing that day the world really would have ended. The military leaders were right not to trust him. I didn’t, and due to the set up of the episode, cutting between the clownish antics in a Yorkshire lab and the events in the Middle East I knew that he was right.
There’s a rule with horror writing - if the characters are stupider than the audience then the audience will not sympathize with them. The same, I’ve discovered goes for fictional scientists. The Laurel and Hardy/ Mott and Jeff comedy of errors featuring Erica (whose glasses were broken when she left them between a door and its frame) and Douglas, a man stupid enough to remove his safety hood, open up a container of toxic, life-destroying gas, scoop out a sample of infected earth and leave two quarantine doors open (oh, sorry, hung over enough to do those things) was more frustrating than dramatic. By the end of the episode, Erica is placed in the role of wonderful person/ potential companion but an act as simple as not insisting that her lab partner wear his protective clothing undermined the gravitas of her character entirely. As delightful as she may have been
There was good in the episode too, it would have, without doubt looked promising on paper. An alien menace who needs permission to invade is a compelling concept and the intention to write a sweeping, contemporary drama was an admirable one. At the end of the day it is probably not as bad as I have made out but the stuff going on in one’s life usually has even more of an effect on one’s enjoyment of an episode than the episode itself. The Pyramid at the End of the World just promised more than it delivered. It also felt like a second introduction in a trilogy which will conclude next week (so lets hope that Whithouse doesn’t disappoint or three weeks will feel wasted). The episode also lacks the internal sense of closure which was present in Extremis. The Doctor’s got his sight back, lets hope Moffat can get his eye back on the ball.
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