Spoilers The Pyramid at the End of the World (Grade & Discussion Thread)

We arrive at the second half of this series to find Moffat making a joint effort with Peter Harness.



For those of you not getting lashed in the motherland this week, this is the space to comment.

 

You do take this rather seriously, shame that doesn't translate into your opening post.

 

To be honest, the plot of this episode just makes me think "Look at us, we can watch the news!"

 

Hmmm! Pyramids and Monsters, my kinda episode. Pyramids of Mars was a great Epi, I wonder how they new Death cult aliens will play into this latest Pyramid romp, not seen since the 1970s. Well, with the exception of the pyramid in the Heist episode, where the ole' Doc was trying to upstage Clara's boyfriend. I'm interested to see how this one plays out tonight!

 

I'm going to be disappointed if the Pyramid isn't on a space station in the year 5.5/apple/26.

 

So, in addition to Pope Francis, we now also have a Ban Ki-Moon lookalike.

With Tony Gardner in on the act, we could have a My Parents Are Aliens crossover to boot!

 

That was shit.

 

Needed to work on the end of the world storyline, found the way the accident happened very unbelievable.

 

Good episode for me though Bill was clearly acting out of fear not just love so it cannot be pure.

 

First near stinker of the season for me.

I'm getting vibes of that Ten / Master story. the one with Doctor Dobby in a cage, Martha in the resistance.

iOS too slow to elaborate...

 

Yeah, I'm afraid that one didn't do anything for me. Felt more like something from last two seasons, which is a shame since so far this season has been doing much better.
A thin and lifeless script with no sense of real urgency or tension, the villains are neither scary nor threatening and everyone just seems to be sleep walking through the plot.

The preview of next week looks like a very derivative and dreary mash-up of several old 10th & 11th Doctor stories. Like 'Last of the Time Lords' crossed with 'The Big Bang'.

 

Is the text input too slow and jerky? I get that on my iPad but I thought maybe it was cuz I had too much open at once or a weird connection thing.

 

How the foop didn't Bill figure out that the Doctor's still blind? He was walking around in dark glasses not looking anyone in the eye, with Nardole narrating everything that's happening to him. She seems to have dropped 50 IQ points from the start of the series.

 

I liked it but then I've pretty much liked every episode this season

 

I liked the basic premise of the episode and the nature of the Monks' plan, but the execution of the episode was very clunky from beginning with the U.N. secretary general showing up at Bill's flat (how did they know Bill was The Doctor's current companion?) to the near Rube Goldberg set-up of the biological disaster (broken glasses, Douglas' hangover and sheer stupidity, The Doctor's blindness and inability to tell Bill about it, Bill's inability to notice said blindness). There was also something rather fake about the three military leaders but I couldn't put my finger on it. Very disappointing, especially after the excellent episode last week.

The rapport between the core three continues to be great but that was't enough to lift the episode from the sloppy storytelling.

One particular aside also bothered me: Why include the U.N. now after years of them not wanting be affiliated with the show since its return? Further, why wasn't U.N.I.T. involved even if they're not a U.N. task force anymore? I guess Moffat didn't want to put Kate in a position to be killed.

The 45 joke (I don't use his name) was funny but hardly necessary and was rather distracting from the fact that he wasn't the one who died in the simulation last week. Plus, I hate to think he exists in the Doctor Who universe.

Yeah, I was likewise reminded of those two episodes, particularly the former, which isn't good because I hate that episode.

Spoiler: The final shot of the preview

Also, the preview provides a possible explanation regarding the regeneration clip we saw in the season trailer. I suspect that The Doctor's regeneration is somehow a tool that undoes the Monk's time and space manipulation of Earth, which leads to a big reset including The Doctor's regeneration.

Ugh, I hate how predictable that all seems, especially since its written by the very reliable Toby Whithouse. Hopefully because it is him, I'm completely off the mark.

 

Good write up @Emh I agree it was a little clunky in places, but the UN sec general showing up and ruining Bill's date was a funny reprise on the pope doing the same last week. I think you're spot on with much of what you say, but for me it hung together well. Bill really should have picked up on the blindness though! Especially once Nardole was basically pulling a Knighmare (look it up non UK cousins! )

Remember though, it might not seem predictable to the general populace.

 

Yeah, I know but that shouldn't be where the bar is set. After binging on House of Cards for the past week in preparation for the new season, I suppose the predictability stands out a bit more than usual.

I've heard of Knightmare but I don't know any details, so I confess I had to look up the reference.

Forgot to mention another thing that bothered me: The whole shtick about The Doctor being the president of the world. I guess that was from the season 8 finale (I've largely blocked out that rubbish from my mind) but it's still very annoying.

 

Next week is definitely giving me Last of the Timelords vibes, also a big of "The Big Bang" as people have said, along with perhaps some of the Silence episodes. Mostly Last of the Timelords though.

I'm unsure about this weeks. I reckon I'll need to re-evaluate upon a re-watch, doesn't help that I fainted briefly and banged my head half way through it I reckon this was probably one of the weaker episodes though, felt weaker than last weeks. As I say though, I need to re-evaluate.

 

1. The Monks are very reminiscent of the Silence.
2. The blue berets are back.
3. The whole combination business could have been averted had they used a more conventional keypad instead of the rotating discs.
4. It looks as if we're in for yet another Doctor-death charade next week.
5. The repeated musings on "consent" had some interesting undertones.
6. Given that they air during an election campaign, many episodes this series feel as if they ought to have "That was a party political broadcast." played at the end.

Overall this episode tried to appear far more interesting than it actually was. In this respect it is similar to The Zygon Inversion.

 

In the 50th Anniversary Special there was a wall with a lot of photos of the Doctor's former companions inside the Vault. It's safe to say UNIT has some sort surveillance system to track down not only the Doctor himself but the people that are constantly seen with him as well.

I think they contact the companion first because they perceive them more as "professional assistants" instead of people that he cares about. Or maybe they are too afraid of approaching him first... He has a history of distaste for authority and being "drafted by force" to solve problems makes him annoyed, so they try to make things easier using the companions as proxies.