I’m usually a fan of Toby Whithouse. He had a stellar pair of Matt Smith episodes entitled The God Complex and A Town Called Mercy these episodes were presented as stand-alone but he used the, perhaps, uninspiring briefs of “Do a Cowboy Episode” and “This one’s a bit like the Shining” to introduce well rounded minor characters, good jokes and reflect on not only the Doctor’s character but the series as a whole. Whithouse was the creator and lead writer of Being Human, a show with an incredible cast, funny, relevant writing and just enough horror to please a teenage me. The show was a magnificent re-imagining of vampire, werewolf and ghost lore which played contrasting and powerful emotions in its audience. It was responsible for giving Craig Roberts his breakout role, presenting Aidan Turner with his first chance to truly prove his abilities and it also brought Thin Ice writer, Sarah Dollard to the shores of Britain. Whithouse’s legacy in British television is secure. The Lie of the Land, whilst not bad or unsatisfying does feel like the work of a writer who has had his best ideas and is now, simply practised in presenting his old ones in shiny packaging.
The Lie of the Land sees off The Monks trilogy in true Moffat fashion. Much like his other show Sherlock the Monks have featured in three stories, loosely connected by a gentle arc. As ever, the Moffat script is the most experimental, most divisive and by far the most interesting. The middle episode feels inconsequential, a link between a strong start and a strong end and the final episode struggles to deliver on all of the wildly irresponsible promises made by its predecessors. The Lie of the Land sees Bill in a dystopian present-day England where colour has been privatised and consequently no-one can afford to use much of it and everyone wears long coats and drinks tea to get through the day. The Monks have installed great big statues of themselves in every major city just to remind everyone that they’re in this episode even though they rarely appear. The Doctor has taken to broadcasting pro-monk propaganda from a boat off the coast of Britain which means that Bill and Nardole - who has gotten over his poisoning last week - to track down the Doctor and rally the resistance.
There is a lot of imagination here. I was pleased with the almost subliminal representation of the Monk’s mind-controlling through the flashes of the “Truth” logo that recur throughout the episode. I also thought that Capaldi was on top form, relishing the opportunity to play a devious, authoritarian Doctor who preaches against the Doctor’s usual mantra. The episode’s opening scenes of the fake history lesson which writes the Monks into millennia of human history is a nice concept which plays to both the unpleasant reality of “alternative facts” and a certain comical twist on the horrific Monks who look absurd being presented as benevolent parents to humanity. It reminded me, personally of the Conservative political ad which suggested voting for David Cameron because he was watching his son’s football match. All the while Cameron’s smooth, ever-loosening face (the result of the loss of fat which hadn’t quite taken the excess cheeks with it) was making him look more and more like a crab person masquerading in human skin. Whithouse’s inspiration was probably not taken directly from said video. Fundamentally this episode is a series of very good scenes and ideas for scenes - Bill’s therapy with her imaginary Mum, the assault on the pyramid, Missy as Hannibal Lectre - but it doesn’t have the time to fully lead into or pay off these scenes in that connective tissue we call “story”.
The problem with the Monks trilogy (besides its eponymous and under-developed villains) is the fact that it is a trilogy with two first parts and one third part. Extremis introduced the villains and the notion that they would be invading soon. Pyramid introduced the Monk’s powers and their curious dependence upon a loving human host. Lie of the Land is a conclusion without build-up. A middle part of a story should take the concepts introduced and raise the stakes. It should introduce complications and take our characters to their lowest points. Steven Moffat has said that he doesn’t view these stories as a three-part story but as a trilogy, the distinction being that a three part story is one story, split but a trilogy is three stories connected. That said, none of these stories works in and of themselves. They are dependent upon each other. Extremis wouldn’t matter if it didn’t lead into a real life invasion. Pyramid wouldn’t have any weight if it weren’t setting up a post-apocalyptic earth-takeover. And Lie has the opposite problem because has too many underdeveloped concepts from the other stories to justify. This story is too big for 45 minutes. And, in brutal honesty, it isn’t original enough to justify two stories.
Once again in series 10 we see a story which is splattered with moments from other episodes. When Bill ties an unconscious Doctor down and says goodbye before attempting to wire her brain into a machine she is following in the footsteps of River Song in Forest of the Dead, although River’s death seemed to be a little more debilitating than Bill’s. The Monk’s mind-control techniques bare startling resemblance to The Master’s in the series 3 finale, although this time everyone broke free by thinking about Mrs Potts at once, as opposed to thinking “Doctor”. Even the Monks themselves, living in a pyramid, zapping soldiers with their finger-electricity bare so much resemblance to the Silence that it’s no wonder I’ve already forgotten everything else about them.
All in all, The Lie of the Land is not a bad episode of anything. It’s entertaining, funny and exciting enough but it comes in a mid-series slump of season 10 and it’s not strong enough to reinvigorate my enthusiasm for Who as a whole.
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