{"id":2043,"date":"2017-05-28T14:59:22","date_gmt":"2017-05-28T14:59:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/?p=2043"},"modified":"2017-05-28T14:59:22","modified_gmt":"2017-05-28T14:59:22","slug":"so-what-did-i-think-of-the-pyramid-at-the-end-of-the-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/2017\/05\/28\/so-what-did-i-think-of-the-pyramid-at-the-end-of-the-world\/","title":{"rendered":"So… what did I think of The Pyramid at the End of the World"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Part ones are arguably far easier than concluding part twos. Creating mysteries, locked box conundrums, impossible life-or-death situations is far, far easier than providing solutions which manage to be simultaneously surprising, satisfying, and with hindsight seem inevitable. Recent Doctor Who is (understandably) littered with examples of part twos which fail to live up to the promise of part one, and sometimes even tarnish the memory of part one.<\/p>\n

A notable exception is last year\u2019s The Zygon Inversion<\/em>, a co-pro between showrunner Steven Moffat and Wallander scribe Peter Harness, the conclusion of which is still for me a high water mark for the series as a whole (up there with Human<\/i> Nature,<\/i> Dalek <\/i>and, yes, I suppose, Blink<\/i>).<\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t really review Extremis<\/i> last week, but suffice to say I thought it was a fairly empty and meaningless exercise. A glorified \u201cand it was all a dream\u201d ending which makes very little sense on any level. So, I had rather mixed feelings sitting down to watch this week\u2019s installment.<\/p>\n

I needn\u2019t have worried. This is masterly stuff, playing to both writers\u2019 strengths. I suspect Moffat\u2019s hand in the chain-of-chance plotting which leads lab workers Rachel Denning and Tony Gardner to accidentally create a bacterium antithetical to all life. And Harness\u2019s contribution I imagine is likely to be the stunning pair of moral dilemmas \u2013 first those faced by the three generals, and then the even greater one faced by Bill at the very end.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s also very well worth pointing out that \u2013 for perhaps the first time since Matt Smith took over \u2013 this is serialised storytelling done right. Doctor Who 1963-1996 was always fundamentally a serialised anthology series. Even linked seasons like The Key to Time <\/i>or (gawdelpus) The Trial of a Time Lord <\/i>fell neatly into self-contained sections. Parts two, three and four might be a little hard to follow if you hadn\u2019t seen last week\u2019s episode, but every part one was a new story, and all you needed to know was the Doctor travels in time in a police box and you could start watching.<\/p>\n

But in 2005, the television landscape was very different. Post Babylon 5,<\/i> post Murder One,<\/i> post The Wire,<\/i> audiences were happy with \u2013 maybe even expected \u2013 a series arc at the very least. Russell\u2019s approach to this was cautious. Mentions of Bad Wolf, Torchwood or Mr Saxon could be picked up by devoted watchers, safely ignored by casual viewers.<\/p>\n

When Moffat and Smith took over in 2010, we were post Breaking Bad,<\/i> post Man Men.<\/i> And Moffat was keen to show that Doctor Who could compete. However, not wanting to sacrifice variety, the end result was a pretty ghastly muddle at times, with \u201carc\u201d stories rubbing up against \u201cnon-arc stories\u201d sometimes in the clumsiest of ways (see Night Terrors <\/i>for arguably the worst offender in this regard).<\/p>\n

Under Capaldi\u2019s reign, things have been a bit smoother, with stand-alone-stories generally being the order of the day, but we\u2019ve still had to suffer end-of-season gibberish like Death in Heaven.<\/i> Now it seems like the balance between these two forces is being struck perfectly. Both this episode and the preceding one stand alone, but they work better together. In fact, Pyramid<\/i> retrospectively flatters the earlier episode. I\u2019m considering bumping it up from two stars to three.<\/p>\n

Back to the episode itself. The structure is more sophisticated than, say, Robot<\/i>, but far simpler and far less OCD than many recent stories. The Doctor madly scrambles to figure out what the monks in the pyramid are up to, but we know he\u2019s looking in the wrong direction. Finally, the Doctor\u2019s blindness pays off \u2013 he figures out how to find the source of the impending catastrophe.<\/p>\n

Here the physical geography of the lab is a little confusing. It would have been better to have found some way in the scripting or the shooting to clearly demarcate which areas were compromised and which were safe, but the key elements of the problem are assembled very neatly. The Doctor on one side of a door. The TARDIS on the other. Nardole, incapacitated inside. And the Doctor\u2019s sonic glasses totally unable to read the numbers on the combination lock. As a piece of plotting, forcing Bill to sacrifice the stewardship of the Earth out of pure love, it\u2019s basically perfect.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s have a little talk about that prop though. The actual combination lock itself looks like a child\u2019s toy and no lab in the world ever had a combination lock like that. Surely it should be a keypad? That\u2019s a problem if Denning knows the code, because then the Doctor can enter it without looking at it, but surely a better solution would be to have the code be 10-12 digits long \u2013 so long that Denning and Gardner keep it written down. Now Denning doesn\u2019t know it, and any sighted person would be able to read it and we don\u2019t have to have that ridiculous looking Duplo prop.<\/p>\n

This is a minor niggle, and I hate giving episode five stars when there\u2019s a conclusion still to come, but this is really, really good stuff. The regulars are on great form, the UN quartet do everything that\u2019s asked of them, the effects are all top notch and director Daniel Nettheim generally keeps things moving. I\u2019m going to keep half a star in my back pocket though. 4\u00bd stars and onwards to The Lie of the Land<\/i>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Part ones are arguably far easier than concluding part twos. Creating mysteries, locked box conundrums, impossible life-or-death situations is far, far easier than providing solutions which manage to be simultaneously surprising, satisfying, and with hindsight seem inevitable. Recent Doctor Who is (understandably) littered with examples of part twos which fail to live up to the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[11],"tags":[18,19],"class_list":["post-2043","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture","tag-doctor-who","tag-reviews"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5JY5l-wX","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2043","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2043"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2043\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2048,"href":"http:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2043\/revisions\/2048"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2043"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2043"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2043"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}