It's all thanks to the Monks

Saturday 3 June 2017

*Spoilers*

I didn't write much about last week's episode because I really didn't like it that much.  I've mentioned before that I prefer self-contained smaller scale stories to big story arcs and the whole planet mobilising against a threat.  I particularly don't like the idea of the Doctor being made President of Earth.

Anyway, tonight's episode picked up events six months later, and our hero has apparently turned into a sort of modern day Lord Haw-Haw, broadcasting about how the wonderful Monks have always been there, shaping humanity's progress.  I wonder how they got on with the Fendahl, Fenric, Scaroth and all the other aliens who have been guiding humanity over the millennia?

Ha! Trick question!  Because of course they didn't get on with them at all, as they weren't really there. It is all a lie. Martha still knows this, but struggles to keep her grip on reality.  Of course the Doctor must be a prisoner, and being forced to help the Monks, mustn't he?

Until the end of the scene on the prison ship, the episode promises much. But having thrown everything at what turns out to be a gigantic fan wind-up, it rather runs out of steam after that.  There are some obvious parallels between this episode and Last of the Time Lords. Both start from a point where the earth had been taken over by aliens at the end of the previous episode, and the action starts some months later with the companion, the  being in the aliens' power. The ultimate resolution, using the alien's telepathic gizmo against them, is also the same.  And they both feature the Master (or Mistress.) The one significant difference here is that Missy is not responsible, and having (almost) turned over a new leaf, she provides the Doctor with the clue to the Monks' weakness.

All in all, despite great performances from Pearl Mackie, Peter Capaldi and Michelle Gomez, I found this rather dull.

Faith and the Doctor

Saturday 27 May 2017

"When I'm on a date, don't under any circumstances put the Pope in my bedroom!" Martha's ruined date was a moment of humour in an otherwise disturbing episode.  But what other programme would use the pontiff for a throwaway line like that?

This got me thinking about religion and faith in Doctor Who. Before I start, I should make plain that I am an agnostic whose  only real belief is in what Jerome K Jerome called 'the cussedness of things in general' and is otherwise known as Sod's Law.  (Yes, I did put the garden furniture out on the hottest day of the year to date and the weather changed.)

Faith and belief is not always positive in Doctor Who.  For a start, there is the faith/belief versus science and reason theme which appears in many stories (Meglos, The Face of Evil and The Mutants) to name but three. More recently, the whole tenure of the Eleventh Doctor was defined by a story arc in which events are manipulated by a religious order whose primary belief is that the Doctor must be prevented from answering the oldest question on the fields of Trenzalore.  On a smaller scale, faith (in anything) proves lethal in The God Complex.

In contrast, faith proves helpful in holding back Haemovores in The Curse of Fenric, and in Last of the Time Lords the Master is ultimately defeated by a form of faith in the Doctor, magnified by the Master's own Archangel network.

Tonight's episode, in contrast was not about faith, but about love, or at least the Monks' need to be loved.  With the bleak ending, we need hope next week.  Is the Monk trilogy actually based on 1 Corinthians 13?

"And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love" (1 Corinthians 13.13 New International Version)