S10.E06: Extremis

[hnygrl]

I seem to say this every week.

Did NOT see that ending coming! Brilliant. See what Moffatt can do when he keeps it simple? I am loving loving loving this season and just when we get to see Capaldi's doctor in his element it's almost time for him to go. I may be wrong, but I believe this is the story arc where the Doctor regenerates. This is the first time since season 6 that I've so thoroughly enjoyed a season. Every single episode only gets better and richer upon re-watching. And to be honest? You MUST re-watch this one to pick up all the nuances.

[Mabinogia]

1 hour ago, hnygrl said:

Brilliant. See what Moffatt can do when he keeps it simple?

Yes, Moffatt has written some of my favorite episodes so it mystifies me that I haven't liked his seasons very much. I think he gets bogged down in too much "cleverness" or something. IDK what it is. But I do think he can be wildly creative and great. I've loved every ep so far this season. I think the show is a lot better when it focuses on the Doctor as the lead character. Bill is a great companion in part because she is the companion, not the center of everything. If that stays, and Moffatt avoids his usual tendency to need everything to be the most epic epic storyline in the history of all things epic, I will miss him, Twelve and Bill. As it is, I already know I will miss Twelve and Bill so very much. They are already my second favorite duo after Ten and Donna (another pair who felt more like mates bumming around the universe.) Bill is a mate, not his very best friend of all time, or his true love, or the key to everything in the universe, and it makes her a million times more likable for me than the special snowflakes he's been with lately.

[tennisgurl]

You know, I would 100% watch a show about the Pope zooming around the world in the Pope mobile dealing with alien threats.

Definitely a strange episode, the weirdest one we`ve gotten this season. I wouldn't say I disliked it though, even if it was probably my least favorite of the season. I think it had a lot of good ideas, especially Bill and Nardole were a fun double act, but it all just seemed more like a meatloaf episode than a fully formed episode. A bunch of other clumps of different stories all pushed together into one product.

So, the whole episode was a simulation? All that extremis stuff doesn't even exist in our world, right? Again, interesting idea, but I don't think its as shocking and creative as the episode thinks it is. I know I've seen at least a few episodes of other shows or books about false copies of main characters realizing they aren't "real", even when we have been following them like they were the original characters. I don't think the idea totally worked, but I thought it worked alright.

As soon as Bill and Nardole came into the room with all the drunk people who were either depressed or manic, I pretty much figured out what was going on. At first I thought they had wandered into some kind of suicide cult, but when they started doing the numbers, I figured it out. Again, not a terrible twist, but it makes the whole thing rather...pointless? Yeah the virtual Doctor warned the Real Doctor about what was going on, but everyone we spent the whole episode with just disappeared, or don't exist at all.

I did like the Pope stuff, and I wish the stuff with the Vatican had been real. I just really dig the idea of the Pope calling on the Doctor to help. What can I say, I'm a fan of the guy :)

The worst thing about the episode was that it lacked the spark of life the other episodes have had. Bill brought a fun new dynamic to the show, that made the Doctor come to life again, and the show felt fun again. This episode seemed to be back to the grim glum last season. And now Missy has returned. I don't hate her or anything, but I cant say I'm super pumped about seeing her again. Missy/The Master is ALWAYS trouble, just get rid of her/him already Doctor! That sounds way better for everyone than you being stuck on Earth for a 1000 years when you could be helping people around the galaxy!

[foreverevolving]

 I think considering the monks are appearing next week it's probably likely that this episode feels a bit off and disjoined because it's part 1 of a two parter?

 

It was a good episode, any mentions of River is a good thing in my book, and her giving Nardole permission to kick the doctor's ass was all sort of awesome. And once again I actually liked Nardole! (color me still surprised by that)

I love Bill, and Missy is always a welcomed appearance, and I guess it is her in the box... honestly it was a bit too predictable, I do wish they had thrown a curve ball and done someone or something else.

The priest guy checking up the doctor on his watch, growing more and more anxious by the data was a bit uneasy to watch yet cool non-the-less.

Next week looks interesting.

[call me ishmael]

I don't think this one worked.  I'm still not convinced that the aliens would need the simulation and it bothers me that they sound like the Silence (been there done that).  But what really gets me is the Veritas.  What reason would they have to create that (it has to be part of the simulation)?  So they could see how humans would react if they learned that they were really all part of a computer simulation?  That is useful information for an invader how?

[Tara Ariano]

In case you missed it, here's the Previously.TV post on the episode!

 

Additional Points Of Interest On Doctor Who's Simulated Earth

Visiting a virtual reality opens up a whole matrix of possibilities.

[Notwisconsin]

i'd like to tell you about the Doctor's old friend Pope Benedict IX. He was a twelve year old devil-worshipper and....yeah you heard that right. He was pope on three different occasions, and was kicked out of the Vatican for the last time when he was 25. I'm not making this up. I figure that someone told Moffett he was the very worst pope of all time, and it would make the 15 of us who know who he was and like Dr. Who at the same time giggle.

[Lantern7]

I thought Capaldi said Benedict I. I'm probably mistaken. Also: what would be a more fun teamup: the Doctor with Francis I, or with the pope that resigned? Maybe he abdicated the office to keep an eye on the truly weird shit nobody else knows about.

[proserpina65]

Other than it being Missy in the vault (which was so predictable that everyone here predicted it), I liked this episode a lot.

[proserpina65]

On ‎05‎/‎22‎/‎2017 at 4:02 PM, tennisgurl said:

You know, I would 100% watch a show about the Pope zooming around the world in the Pope mobile dealing with alien threats.

So would I.

[sugarbaker design]

17 hours ago, Notwisconsin said:

i'd like to tell you about the Doctor's old friend Pope Benedict IX. He was a twelve year old devil-worshipper and..

But didn't they refer to the Pope Benedict as 'she'?  Didn't the Doctor say 'Lovely girl, what a night.'  And wasn't that a picture of a woman?

Edited May 24, 2017 by sugarbaker design

[MarkHB]

1 hour ago, sugarbaker design said:

But didn't they refer to the Pope Benedict as 'she'?  Didn't the Doctor say 'Lovely girl, what a night.'  And wasn't that a picture of a woman?

A woman indeed; if the Wikipedia article on Benedict IX is correct, that was a painting of Angelina Jolie.

I'm thinking that the producers figured that the Vatican wouldn't mind anything the show said about Benedict IX; the free online Catholic Encyclopedia called him "a disgrace to the Chair of Peter."

[jhlipton]

One of the advantages of being a newbie is that I don't know squat about Missy of River or Moffat, so I can enjoy this season in and of itself.  And I liked this episode a lot.  Very silly and contrived -- reminding me of the earliest of the Dr Who episodes.

On 5/20/2017 at 10:37 PM, TheOtherOne said:

"Doctor, here's a tip. When I'm on a date, when that rare and special thing happens in my real life, do not, do not, under any circumstances, put the pope in my bedroom!"

Don't you hate it when that happens!!!

[Eneya]

Moffat getting credit for making "reality itself scary" rubs me the wrong way. The idea that the world is a simulation has been around for quite a long time. And in all of those analyses, I have always loved the undergoing comment that "that doesn't really matter". Excuse me?? Computers are not good with random numbers? What??

[ganesh]

Computers aren't good with random numbers. You'll never be able to generate a truly random sequence. There's an entire field of math dedicated to it. Even modeling a nuclear reactor can be problematic if the design is too complex because you can't capture the random nature of the neutrons. I can buy that there's problems with randomness in the simulations shown on the show last week. Everyone repeating the same numbers is a little much, but it was a tv-cheat to tip us off that something was wrong. 

There's enough stuff to criticize on Doctor Who because the plots barely hold up, but this isn't one of them. I thought it was a clever take. 

[Starchild]

On 5/21/2017 at 4:47 AM, wayne67 said:

Those executioners were weird, did they not look up the doctor before asking him to be an executioner? He should be known as someone not prone to killing someone in cold blood.

Didn't they say they needed a Time Lord to execute a Time Lord? And that Time Lords are currently very hard to find?

On 5/21/2017 at 11:05 PM, LiveenLetLive said:

As for the Master, frack it, just admit that the Master and the Doctor have always been secretly in love and be done with it, LOL.

Could they actually be brothers? That would certainly explain the life-long love/hate relationship.

On 5/22/2017 at 4:02 PM, tennisgurl said:

Missy/The Master is ALWAYS trouble, just get rid of her/him already Doctor! That sounds way better for everyone than you being stuck on Earth for a 1000 years when you could be helping people around the galaxy!

I wonder why they didn't just store the vault inside the TARDIS, then the Doctor wouldn't be trapped in one place for 1000 years.

By the way, did I miss the explanation for why Nardole is around?

Edited May 27, 2017 by Starchild

[Eneya]

3 hours ago, ganesh said:

Computers aren't good with random numbers. You'll never be able to generate a truly random sequence. There's an entire field of math dedicated to it. Even modeling a nuclear reactor can be problematic if the design is too complex because you can't capture the random nature of the neutrons. I can buy that there's problems with randomness in the simulations shown on the show last week. Everyone repeating the same numbers is a little much, but it was a tv-cheat to tip us off that something was wrong. 

There's enough stuff to criticize on Doctor Who because the plots barely hold up, but this isn't one of them. I thought it was a clever take. 

I work with random number generators... 

[ganesh]

So do I. That's also a bit unfair on your part because you didn't qualify your expertise in the initial comment which would have changed my response. It read like you didn't think generating randomness in computer simulations wasn't a challenge. Then you know what I'm talking about, and I didn't mean to waste your time. 

Edited May 27, 2017 by ganesh

[call me ishmael]

I'm still stuck on why the Veritas was there in the first place.  Why would the Shadows bother to place it in the simulation?  What purpose would it serve to see how humans reacted to learning they were in a simulation if the attack was going to take place in the real world?  I just don't get that.

[rur]

4 hours ago, Starchild said:

By the way, did I miss the explanation for why Nardole is around?

In the 2016 Christmas special, Nardole told the Doctor, "You put me back together to have someone to talk to." (or something like that)

[KirkB]

15 hours ago, call me ishmael said:

I'm still stuck on why the Veritas was there in the first place.  Why would the Shadows bother to place it in the simulation?  What purpose would it serve to see how humans reacted to learning they were in a simulation if the attack was going to take place in the real world?  I just don't get that.

See, I have been wondering the same thing. The monks created the simulation to understand how humans think and react to various things. That makes sense as preparation for an eventual invasion or whatever. And if all life turned out to actually be a simulation then it makes sense they would want to see how humans might respond to that revelation. But here they got to see simulated humans and their simulated responses to something that wasn't really happening. It was kind of pointless, unless the aliens were wrapping everything up and decided to do it just for kicks?

Edited May 28, 2017 by KirkB

[John Potts]

On ‎27‎/‎05‎/‎2017 at 8:21 PM, Starchild said:

Could they actually be brothers? That would certainly explain the life-long love/hate relationship.

That's a fairly popular Tinfoil Hat theory that's actually been mentioned on air (in Utopia, I think, certainly NuWho Season 3):

Martha: So this "Master" - is he your evil twin brother or something?

Doctor: You've been watching too much bad TV!

...so mentioned and evaded on air, FWIW.

[Llywela]

For over 40 years, the show (and spin-off media) has consistently told us that the Doctor and the Master were classmates and best friends when they were boys, who have taken very different courses in life over the centuries that followed but still retain the nostalgia of that early friendship. Trying to claim now that they are actually related in some way would be an enormous retcon.