Extremis, the sixth episode of Doctor Who series ten, has just aired on BBC1. Radio Times reviewer Patrick Mulkern calls it “ingenious, breath-taking television” and has asked its writer, the showrunner Steven Moffat, to talk about the episode in detail. SPOILERS follow…

RT’s Patrick Mulkern: Cardinal Moffat, apologies if it seems I’m blowing incense up your cassock, but Extremis is a remarkable piece of television. Unusual storytelling in that it is largely two interwoven stories: one set “A Long Time Ago” dealing with Missy’s execution; the other happening in an alien simulation of the now.

You told me that you were worried by the “sheer head-f***ery” of this one. It’s mind-bending in a rewarding way – because everything should fall into place for viewers by the end. Extremis answers some mysteries and sets up more for the rest of the series. Perhaps you could expand on what you wanted to achieve with this episode…

Steven Moffat: Oh, I don’t know. Once a year – sometimes more than once – I try to push things a little bit. I started this season with a very solidly traditional approach, and a huge focus on just the Doctor and Bill.

Which is harder than you think.

The story of the week tends to overwhelm in this show, and that can be a killer when you’re trying to spotlight a new character. So the big note for me, and Frank [Cottrell-Boyce] and Sarah [Dollard], as we wrote our scripts, was to shove everything aside and make it about the two of them, come what may.

Frank opted to make his a two-hander for much of his episode’s run – which I worried about when he suggested it, but later adored – and Sarah took the bold and brilliant decision to not even explain what the monster was! That seems to break every rule, but did you even notice? Two advantages: one, we are spared lines like “It’s a Fanganoid for the planet Bing” and two, we learn a huge thing about the Doctor and Bill: for both of them, it doesn’t matter what it is; it matters only that it’s in chains. Loved that – very Sarah!

Also, I’ve always wondered why people keep travelling with the Doctor, when they encounter so much death and fear. He promises them wonders, and gives them tunnels and screaming death! Why don’t they go straight home? If your first experience of the wider universe was a Jamie Mathieson horror fest, you’d probably never come out your bedroom again.

So I wanted Bill, for the first few weeks, to encounter the gentlest, kindest sort of Doctor Who. The Doctor is the wise old man of the universe, fixing things when they go wrong – throwing back the curtains, letting in the sunshine, showing everyone that the universe isn’t evil, you just need to understand it better.

So, by the time we get to Oxygen, Bill is properly bonded with the Doctor and his lifestyle, and is ready to learn more: the Doctor can be a reckless thrill-seeker and those are real monsters slouching towards you! If that had been her first experience, she’d have left after episode one. I so wanted Bill to be one of us – which meant we had to give her a reason to stick around with the madman in the box.

Sorry, I’m rambling. But the point is, by the time we get to episode six, I thought it might be time to go darker and stranger. Time to get odd, even experimental. Now and then, we mess about with the format: Heaven Sent, Listen – Russell [T Davies]’s entirely brilliant Midnight is probably the best example. From the classic series there’s The Mind Robber, Warriors’ Gate, Kinda, Ghost Light.

If you don’t like any of those shows (and fair enough, some people don’t) I think you’d probably agree that Doctor Who is richer for attempting them. Now, I’m worried I’ve drawn some very big comparisons there, and as I type, Extremis hasn’t even aired – maybe everyone will hate it. Certainly some people will, and I’m properly, sensibly nervous. But it’s an attempt at pushing the envelope. Bending the show, trying not to break it. Crossing my fingers. While typing. Explains a lot, really, doesn’t it?

There are theories – taken semi-seriously by clever people – that what we are living in is a simulation (which would certainly explain why my coffee cup is never where I left it). Now for me, the most interesting thing about that is the idea that a simulation could be smart enough to figure out that it’s a simulation. Weird, kind of tragic.

Imagine feeling real, and discovering that you aren’t? I did that with the kids in Forest of the Dead. But if you put clever old Doctor Who inside a simulation, I bet he’d not only figure it out, he’d fight back, and send a message to the real world, warning them they’re being simulated.

That was the idea. Hope you enjoyed. If you didn’t, there’s a space pyramid on the way. And Ice Warriors. And Mondasian Cybermen, and more Missy, and John Simm’s Master. Damn it, we’ve even got Aberdeen.

Mulkern: You’ve shown how the Doctor and Nardole were reunited and took charge of the mysterious vault. Why did you decide to reveal, at the midpoint of the series, that it is Missy (Michelle Gomez) in the vault? I noticed you don’t actually show her inside it – is there a twist to come?

Moffat: Well, it’s definitely Missy in there, we’re not fooling you about that. The story now is what’s going on between them. That dangerous friendship, burning away  – who else will be lost to the flames? “Show me how to be good,” she asks him. Will the number one liberal do-gooder of the universe be able to resist?

And we gave it away early because I know Doctor Who fans – they’ll have had it figured out by the end of episode four!

Mulkern: I’m hungry for some more Missy now – and that’s not her done with until the finale…

Moffat: Plenty more Missy to come. Hopefully, when you least expect her. But she’s back in play so trust nothing and no one.

Patrick Mulkern: You have certain key elements running over several episodes. How did the idea of the Doctor’s blindness arise? Was it solely something in Jamie Mathieson’s Oxygen script that you decided to run with?

Steven Moffat: I was looking for something in the middle of the run – a big twist, a shock. For a while we sat around wondering if we could blow up the whole planet Earth, but that seemed a bit drastic, and we’d have to reverse it pretty quickly anyway. It’s the kind of idea that’s too big for anyone to relate to, and you know it can’t hold.

But the Doctor blinded? When I read that in Jamie’s script, I was horrified and gripped and amazed – as I hope you all were when you watched it. Such a brutal demonstration that, yes, space is dangerous. Then, of course, he gets cured a few pages later, and somehow that weakened it. So I bit the bullet. He stays blind. For once, the Doctor takes a hit! What the hell does he do now?

Mulkern: The Haereticum/Veritas storyline (with its Catholic priests, creepy Monks and a library with a deadly text) reminds me of The Name of the Rose. Was that at the back of your mind or were there other influences?

Moffat: Name of the Rose, I loved. The Da Vinci Code was great fun. And it’s just a world Doctor Who hasn’t played much in. But there are catacombs and frocks and sinister choirs, so it’s all very him.

Mulkern: The Pope walking in on Bill’s date with Penny is one of the funniest moments in Doctor Who. It’s equally bizarre seeing him and his cardinals inside the Tardis. What qualms did you have about bringing the Catholic Church and the Pope into the Doctor Who world?

Moffat: Well, I’m not religious myself, in any way, but I’m mindful that many people in our audience are, so I tried to walk the line with care. The Doctor is always irreverent in the face of an authority figure, and the Pope could not be exempt – but on the other hand he takes his holiness seriously when he realises there’s danger in the Vatican.

Like the Doctor, we treat the whole matter with respect, but not with reverence. Offending or hurting people is never clever – but being funny is always fine. Well, I hope so, anyway.

Mulkern: At certain moments His Holiness is exempt from the Time Lord gift of translation and heard speaking only in Italian. Why is that?

Moffat: Well, the scenes just worked better with the Pope speaking Italian and being translated. I did write in the Doctor saying he didn’t really need the translation, and Nardole suggesting that he play along out of courtesy – but it glitched the scene, so I lost it in the edit. In fairness, the Doctor’s translation ability has wobbled before, so it’s just having another off moment. I tell myself it’s because of the blindness, and the concentration involved in interpreting the world through his sonic sunglasses. (Hooray, they’re back – a nation cheers!)

Mulkern: You also have a bit of fun with a bygone Pope – Benedict IX, who had a scandalous reputation in the 1100s. You’ve turned him into a sort of Wicked Lady and past amour of the Doctor…

Moffat: Yep, and it’s all true. The night, and the music, and those castanets…

Mulkern: When was Extremis filmed – before the US presidential election? How did you resist the temptation to depict the president who’s just committed suicide as either Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton?

Moffat: It was written before the election, and shot after. I noted in the script that the gender of the president was yet undetermined, but we’d know by the time we were in the studio. It’s not every day you get to choose which president to kill…

Mulkern: The “simulant” Doctor says the Monks have created “a holographic simulation of all of Earth’s history”. But I suppose they haven’t been running it for all of Earth’s history – and this “game” is something they’ve set up relatively recently…

Moffat: It was set up fairly recently, but the software simulates all of human history from the beginning. It runs much faster than real time, of course.

Mulkern: Confession time. One point in Extremis still puzzles me. Nardole says he’s followed the Doctor from Darillium on the express orders of his late wife River Song – but how has Nardole come by her diary? After River died in the 2008 two-parter Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead, David Tennant’s Doctor left her diary behind in the Library.

Moffat: Short answer: you can always get a book out of a library.

Slightly longer answer: the Tenth Doctor had no choice but leave it there – it was full of incendiary information about his future. But once that future was lived, he’d have to get it back some time. He couldn’t leave all that confidential stuff lying around in a Vashta Nerada-infested library, could he? So one day Nardole got it for him. (Actually, there’s a whole story in my head about this, but not one I’ll ever get to write now. The last time he sees River – it’s terribly sad.)

Mulkern: I don’t wish to sound rude but what is it with you and libraries that connect with virtual-reality environments?

Moffat: Books ARE virtual reality.

Mulkern: One final question: why did you call it Extremis?

Moffat: For me the whole point of the story is the Doctor is still the Doctor, even in extremis. Even when he’s not real, even when he’s a simulant on a hard drive and there is no possibility of escape or reward, he holds true to the man he wants to be. Never cruel, never cowardly – and never giving up till he wins.

RT’s review of Extremis ★★★★★

In April, Steven Moffat was inducted into the Radio Times Hall of Fame

This week’s Doctor Who was an episode of surprises, from the revelation that (spoiler alert) the whole storyline was pretty much just a computer simulation run by some evil aliens to the fact that the story wouldn’t end in this week’s episode, instead continuing into next week’s instalment The Pyramid at the End of the World.

In effect, this means that writer Steven Moffat has delivered a stealth two-part story, with episodes that were previously announced as individual standalones actually a part of a longer serialised story that nobody was expecting – and it’s fair to say he’s been planning a shock like this for years.

“The rule I’ve got is that you won’t be absolutely certain whether a show is going to be a two-parter or not,” Moffat said in 2015, when discussing the unusually large amount of two-part episodes that were included in that series.

While this effect wasn’t quite pulled off in series 8 (early production details and episode titles made clear which episodes were two-parters and which weren’t), it’s fair to say that Moffat’s desire to spring a serialised story on us has been fulfilled this week, and we can’t wait to see how his follow-up next week (co-written with Peter Harness) continues the story of the dastardly Monks.

Assuming, of course, that it really does end there – because if he pulled off such a trick once, who’s to say he won’t try it again right afterwards to create a surprise THREE- part story? Some fans are already speculating that episode 8 (called The Lie of the Land and written by Toby Whithouse) is actually another continuation of the same story, with the “mass delusion” plot of that instalment actually all a part of the Monks’ evil plans to conquer humanity.

If true, this three-part theory could also explain why Michelle Gomez has recently been confirmed to guest star in the episode, with her appearance there capping off the mini-arc started when the Doctor elected to save her life in this week’s episode. Or, you know, she could just be hanging out.

We’re reasonably confident that this mini-serial will HAVE to stop there – episode 9 sees the Doctor and Bill meet Victorian adventurers on Mars, which would be hard to fit into the Monks’ storyline – but hey, stranger things have happened and maybe we’ll see this serialised storytelling run and run and run.

After all, if six-part stories were good enough for classic Doctor Who, who are we to judge?

Doctor Who continues (and continues) next Saturday 27^th April on BBC1 at the later time of 7.45pm

Doctor Who – Extremis achieved an overnight viewing audience of 4.16 million viewers, a share of 22.7% of the total TV audience, according to unofficial figures. This figure is up on last week’s, where Oxygen achieved 3.57m(20%).

The episode was third most watched show of the day, with ITV’s Britain’s Got Talent as usual taking the top spot with 9.13m viewers and a whopping 44.7% share of the total television audience! Second place went to Pointless Celebrities, which was watched by 4.52m viewers (28.9% share).

Consolidated viewing figures are expected to be released by BARB on 29th May, which should see Doctor Who‘s figure increase.

‘Those people you shoot at in computer games? Now you know … they think they’re real. They feel it.’

There has been a lot of chatter in recent weeks about shape. What should a series of Doctor Who look like? So far, this one has been met with near-universal praise for its back-to-back, self-contained stories. But those of us on here tend to enjoy arcs that walk on the wild side. Last week I suggested the idea of a fully serialised season with weekly cliffhangers for Generation Binge, and the suggestion was not unpopular. Yet perhaps the most exceptional thing about series 36/10 is that we’re all getting exactly what we want – the best of both worlds.

Steven Moffat has said of Extremis, “this was my last chance to see how far you can bend this show before it breaks”. Since it’s the cursed blessing of the showrunner that you only get to write the show-stopping openers and finales and Christmas specials, Moffat has taken to reserving himself one story a year to go a bit … out there. Listen pared everything down to a chamber piece with sparse FX. Heaven Sent reduced things even further to a single-hander.

This year, his signature curio is a little different. As the Doctor’s past and present collide in an epic three-part invasion of Earth, here we are faced with, if not quite the kitchen sink, everything up to the finer details of Bill’s plumbing. Advocates of the self-contained, look away now. Extremis expunges hundreds of years of backstory while propelling this narrative towards its inevitable end. It features the Pope; a dead POTUS; a mass suicide at Cern; River Song’s diary; the return of Missy – and the final reveal that the entire events have taken place inside a computer simulation.

And for those who complain that a show about a time-travelling space detective is not true to life, consider recent reports from eminent scientists that suggest our entire reality might be a construct simulated by an advanced species for reasons of their own …

‘Without hope, without witness, without reward … I am your friend.’

While “so-fine” as ever, this is a lower-key Missy than we’ve ever seen before. Hardly surprising, since we meet her facing execution at the forced hands of her best friend. But it’s nice to see Michelle Gomez allowed to chew the scenery a little less. And like most of Moffat’s larger-than-life female characters (River Song; Lynda Day from Press Gang), it’s in these moments of nuance that they really sing.

And so, unsurprising but no less sad was news that this year will prove Missy’s last stand. Gomez has confirmed that she will be leaving this series, along with everyone else, citing that she considers herself Capaldi’s Master to the last. “I’m very loyal,” she said.

But since we already know John Simm’s Master is back this year, who’s to say?

Those meddling Monks

The Monks might be a design classic in the making, and I’m not one to judge on appearances. But, given that they have the ability to simulate every event in Earth’s history so as to enact a practise invasion, am I the only one wondering why they can’t fix their dessicated faces and sort themselves some nattier threads? Still, as a species they’re as adept at flinging a thirtysomething human behind the sofa as they are at enacting long-winded plans to conquer Earth. As we’re at the start of a trilogy, we should expect dark times next week. And with everything else going on, there’s barely space to mention that the Doctor is still blind. The new purpose behind the sonic shades recalls the glory days of Geordi La Forge from Star Trek: The Next Generation. Geekier still, Moffat cheekily acknowledges that the whole premise is ripped from that show’s holodeck.

Mysteries and questions

A rhetorical question given the thousands of years of murderous plotting, but what exactly did Missy do? There must have been something big to warrant her execution at the hands of whoever-they-were. And what is their authority anyway?

Meanwhile, answers emerge amid the questions. To summarise, the Doctor offered mercy to his best frenemy, but bound by some intergalactic treatise, is now under oath to guard the (albeit still alive) body for a thousand years, hence his enforced secondment to Bristol and his recruitment of Nardole to keep him in check. And that’s the story of this year: the Doctor’s recklessness awoken by his one great weakness – a platonic young female human best friend with a big heart and lust for adventure.

Finally, with all the mention of River, dare we dream that Alex Kingston might be making another comeback this year too?

Continuity corner

At the execution, Missy queries the Doctor’s supposed retirement for “domestic bliss on Darillium,” in reference to his 24-year final date night with River in The Husbands of River Song. We can assume that Nardole has the diary because he was in league with her in that story. And Missy discovered this gossip from the Daleks – remember the last time we saw her at the end of The Witch’s Familiar, she was making a pact with the pepperpots to save her skin.

Deeper into the vortex

In more housekeeping news, Pearl Mackie’s future with the show remains uncertain. It’s fairly unanimous that Bill has been a triumph in terms of casting and character. But with a new regime incoming, the smart money has been on Pottsy being a one-series wonder, giving showrunner-elect Chris Chibnall the freedom to create his own characters. Appearing on This Morning yesterday, Pearl was giving nothing away. “It’s not up to me, I don’t think, but I feel like Peter is such a wonderful Doctor,” she said. “I think the dynamic he and I have playing the Doctor and Bill really works [but] that’s not to say it wouldn’t work with a new Doctor.”

It may or may not be a plot point, but it won’t go unnoticed by the LGBT+ community that Bill is not out to her foster mum Moira. We hope that will get resolved.

And in the week that Piers Morgan cack-handedly exploded the whole gender binary debate on to the screens of Good Morning Britain, is this the time to talk about the pronouns we’re now supposed to use for the Master and any potential female Doctor?

“The layout is designed to confuse the uninitiated.” “Bit like religion really.”

At the end of everything, the human race just DRINK.

Next week!

We’re out of the Matrix but hardly out of the woods. The Monks conquer Earth in the spoilery-titled The Pyramid at the End of the World. Writer Peter Harness penned the Zygon two-parter last time round, so expect more real-world politick.

Is the Pope Catholic? Yes. Is he in Doctor Who? Also yes. The Pontiff made a holy cameo in this head-spinning adventure, titled “Extremis”. Here’s all the talking points from episode six…

What in the galaxy was going on?

Lots to discuss in this episode, including Missy’s near-execution, Nardole’s badassery and that Papal visit to the Tardis. But first things first: what the merry heck was happening in this twisty-turny episode, written by timey-wimey, wibbly-wobbly showrunner Steven Moffat?

Well, as we understood it, evil demons The Monks (they remained unnamed during the episode itself but that’s what they were called in the closing credits) planned to conquer Earth but first needed to learn about the planet and its human occupants, so created a sophisticated holographic simulation or “shadow world” – a giant computer game, on which they could practise invading.

When the virtual Doctor worked this out, he managed to email a recording of the episode’s events to his real self, filling himself in on the Monks’ modus operandi and telling himself to save the world. Except he’s still blind, so might need the help of a certain friend…

Pope controversially used for comic effect

It’s rare enough for the Bishop of Rome to pop up in a TV drama, let alone for him to be deployed mainly for jokey purposes. Yet Moffat treated The Pope with flippant irreverence which could prove contentious among more devout viewers.

The Doctor (Peter Capaldi) casually confessed to a brief fling with Pope Benedict IX back in 1045 (historically plausible for a Papacy that ran from 1032 to 1048). There have long been theories about female pontiffs during the Middle Ages, most notably Pope Joan, and this one was something of an Angelina Jolie-lookalike temptress. “Lovely girl, what a night,” mused the misty-eyed Timelord.

It felt distinctly Sherlockian when the current incumbent (played by Italian-English actor Joseph Long, who also appeared in 2008 episode “Turn Left”) arrived at the university to ask for the Doctor’s help with ancient book The Veritas, which was causing anyone who read it to commit suicide. How? By proving to the reader that they weren’t real.

The Doctor duly hopped into the Tardis to pick up companion Bill Potts (Pearl Mackie), who was busy on a date with new-found love interest Penny (NW’s Ronke Adekoluejo). The latter was feeling guilty enough about their sweetly tentative romance until The Pope arrived out of the blue, talking in sacred-sounding Italian. Small wonder we couldn’t see poor Penny for dust.

Doctor saved Missy from death penalty

This episode’s action was intercut with flashbacks to “A long time ago” and the execution of a Timelord. Moffat playfully let us think it was The Doctor’s before revealing that he was actually the executioner – and it was Missy (Michelle Gomez), the female incarnation of the Master, who’d received the death penalty. Off with her head!

Set in a Game Of Thrones-esque landscape with Rafando (Ivanno Jeremiah, aka Max the soulful synth from Humans) overseeing an inter-galactic death squad, this was spookily grandiose stuff.

However, aided by wife River Song’s reminder from beyond the grave to be a virtuous “madman in a box”, The Doctor only pretended to stop Missy’s “two hearts and three brain stems”, instead imprisoning her in a quantum chamber and vowing to watch over her for a thousand years. The mystery of the vault was finally solved, it seemed.

Missy was typically playful throughout, first begging for her life (“Please, I’ll do anything. Let me live… Teach me how to be good… I’m your friend”), then wisecracking with her captors (“Get off, I’ve just been executed. Show a little respect” and “Knock yourself out. Actually, do that. Knock yourself right out”). Another deliciously entertaining cameo from Gomez with, we trust, more to come.

Nardole isn’t a valet, he’s a chaperone.

As well as the mystery of the vault, we also got answers about the enigmatic backstory of valet Nardole (Matt Lucas, continuing to come into his own after a slow start to the series).

Appearing at the execution disguised as a priest, Nardole explained that he had followed the Doctor from Mendorax Dellora (setting of 2015 Christmas special “The Husbands of River Song”) on River’s explicit orders – “and I have full permission to kick your arse”.

Not so much a butler, then, as a shadowing chaperone, helping keep the grieving, angry Doctor on the straight and narrow.

Forming an intrepid double act with Bill, Nardole also dropped further hints that he’s not quite as harmlessly bumbling as he first appears. “Are you secretly a badass?” asked an impressed Bill, to which he replied: “Nothing secret about it, babydoll.”

Hello, Harry Potter. Plus a Star Trek nod for second week running.

Last week’s episode “Oxygen” opened with “Space, the final frontier” and Moffat slipped in a more overt reference here, with Nardole comparing the shadow world to “the Holodeck in Star Trek”. Moffat is something of a Trekkie and once said he’d to a Who/Trek crossover “in a heartbeat” – although he had some conditions: “It would have to be real Star Trek. It has to be the Doctor meets Mr Spock – that’s the one you want.”

Indeed, this script was liberally sprinkled with pop cultural references. In the Haereticum – the Vatican’s secret library of blasphemy – Bill wondered aloud if JK Rowling’s novels were in there. “Harry Potter!” she exclaimed. “Language!” admonished the Doctor. There were also echoes of films with a simulated reality theme, such as The Matrix, Tron, Terry Gilliam’s Brazil, and the writing of Philip K Dick.

Gaming did’t get left out either, with Nardole comparing the shadow world to Grand Theft Auto and the Doctor using a Super Mario analogy. Further evidence of the show’s increased efforts to appeal to a younger audience, perhaps.

Monks were sofa-hidingly scary.

“Something is coming. Something big and something very, very bad.” In a classic case of keeping the monster unseen for as long as possible, we didn’t get to meet this story’s antagonists until past the episode’s halfway point. When we eventually did, they were suitably terrifying: clad in blood-red robes, with creepy claw-hands and zombie-esque faces which recalled The Mummy film franchise.

Combined with the trippy setting and the Doctor’s disorientating blurred vision, it lent a woozy, nightmarish quality to events in the library. Moffat loves a creepy atheneum, as evidenced in his shadowy 2008 frightener “Silence in the Library” .

The Monks’ shudder-inducing voices were provided by Tim Bentinck – best known as David from The Archers and also, fact fans, formerly the voice of “Mind The Gap” on the London Underground’s Piccadilly Line. Commuters in the capital might have experienced an extra shiver of familiarity.

Talking of scares, the “Shadow Test” synchronised chanting of random numbers at the CERN laboratory was also seriously macabre – and recalled another 2008 episode, “Midnight”, when a mysterious entity possessed Lesley Sharp and she repeated everything the Doctor said. Brrr.

First non-self-contained episode worked well.

This episode opened a loose three-parter billed as “The Monks Trilogy”, continuing over the next fortnight. It seems a smart move for a wider-ranging story to straddle the middle of the series.

If there’s been one complaint so far, it’s that the self-contained 45-minute adventures have had rather rushed endings. Now we were back into classic Who territory, complete with slow-building pace and cliffhanger endings.

This story took advantage of its broader scope with lots of international location-hopping – from the university lecture theatre and Bill’s house, all the way to the Vatican, the Pentagon and CERN in Switzerland, plus that unnamed execution planet.

Not forgetting that climactic scene set in the Oval office, where the US President – or at least a virtual one – had committed suicide after reading The Veritas. We imagine Donald Trump would be safe, though. He’d get someone else to read it for him anyway.

Script crammed with cracking lines.

There was typical Moffat wit and verve to the dialogue, which kept what could have been an overly complex episode fizzing along nicely.

A few favourites? Bill’s foster mother telling her “I have very strict rules about men” and lesbian Bill’s retort: “Probably not as strict as mine.” Nardole’s weary sigh at The Doctor and Cardinal Angelo’s wordplay: “You’d be wizard at writing Christmas crackers, you two.”

And finally, the Doctor’s digested review of Moby Dick: “Honestly, shut up and get to the whale.”

Walk like an Egyptian next week.

The Monks Trilogy continues next Saturday with “The Pyramid At The End Of The World”, which sees an Ancient Egyptian structure suddenly appear at the centre of a warzone – before an alien invasion like no other.

Will “the scary handsome genius from space” get his sight back? Will Missy reappear? And will Bill and Penny finally get to enjoy tea-for-two without the Pope interrupting? It looks to be another head-scratchingly exhilarating story, so see you back here for a debrief.

After weeks of suspense, Doctor Who series 10’s big mystery of what – or who – was in the vault has finally been solved – and it’s more or less what we all expected.

It turns out that the vault guarded by the Doctor (Peter Capaldi) and Nardole (Matt Lucas) for decades is holding none other than Michelle Gomez’ villain Missy, as revealed in flashbacks in episode six Extremis as well as present-day scenes where the Doctor whispered her name and spoke to her through the door.

While we don’t actually see Missy inside the vault (clips from the trailers do seem to show her in there, though) the resolution to this question ends weeks of speculation from fans about who or what the Doctor could be guarding, while also explaining exactly why he was bound to Earth for said vigil (he made an oath to watch Missy’s body for 1,000 years after her execution, before sabotaging the execution so he could guard her living body instead).

And yes, it definitely is Missy in there – head writer Steven Moffat confirmed it to Radio Times in an exclusive in-depth discussion of the episode: “It’s definitely Missy in there, we’re not fooling you about that,” he said. “The story now is what’s going on between them. That dangerous friendship, burning away – who else will be lost to the flames?”

We have to give full marks to the fans who already called this a couple of weeks ago, after noticing clips in the trailers of Missy lying on what looked like a piano (below) just like the one the Doctor gave his captive at the end of episode 4.

Of course, there are still plenty of mysteries and surprises still to come in this series, from the identity of the evil monks and the return of John Simm’s Master to why we keep seeing Peter Capaldi’s Doctor regenerating early, not to mention how exactly Missy will play into the wider action when she finally escapes/is released from the vault.

But for now, we’re just basking in the metaphorical light of ONE mystery finally solved. As the Doctor would be sure to testify, it’s nice to be out of the dark once in a while.

Doctor Who continues on BBC1 on Saturday 27th May at the later time of 7.45pm

We’re at the halfway point of series 10 of Doctor Who .

This week, our heroes answer a call for help from the Pope himself. And Missy returns. And there’s a mysterious book that kills people. And creepy monks. And a twisty thing that happens at the end.

Oh yes – it’s a Moffat episode.

So here’s your usual warning about spoilers before the review of this week’s episode Extremis.

And a second warning if you don’t like a bit of Moffat bashing.

This week, both lurk below…

Oh my days, where to start? Any episode penned by showrunner Steven Moffat is alway going to divide even the most die hard fan of Doctor Who.

As expected, he crams a lot into Extremis. Not all of it good.

Let’s start with what does work.

The Doctor’s blindness, carried over from last week’s Oxygen, is explored is greater detail. There was an almost casual treating of the condition in the previous story, but in Extremis it’s used and played with.

The Doctor’s visual impairment balances well with a premise about a book that causes people to kill themselves after being read, especially when the main protagonist can’t read the text.

Capaldi gets some great moments playing The Doctor’s struggle, while Matt Lucas brings a little slapstick humour acting as undercover guide dog Nardole.

We also got some great scenes with Nardole and Pearl Mackie ’s Bill once they get separated from The Doctor. Their scenes at CERN dance effortlessly between comic team up and horrified realisation at the scientists’ preplanned suicide pact. The random number game is outright creepy, which borders on dark.

And more than once, we get little flashes of Nardole bearing his teeth with Bill and The Doctor. Oh, there’s more to him to be sure…

Extremis delivers epic scale and visuals, bouncing from one location to another with pace. Creepy Monks are made up brilliantly and I can’t wait to see more of them next week to find out their deal. And the location for Missy’s execution is simply beautiful.

The problem with Extremis isn’t in the watching of the episode though. The problem with Extremis is afterwards, when you stop and think about the episode.

Yes, I’ve got a case of Moffatitis (probably a real word by now).

There’s the signature twisty moments that are twisty for the sake of it – we knew Missy was the one to be executed in the flashbacks not The Doctor so why try to make that a thing?

Finally, we find out Missy is in the Vault that has featured in every episode so far. But even that seemed a little obvious so why play it like a mystery only to have such a disappointing reveal?

When did Missy suddenly start begging for her life? That’s a character u-turn from her apparent final moments of series 8’s Death In Heaven. It’s light years away from The Master’s spiteful refusal to regenerate in John Simm’s day.

And then the big one, the most heinous of all Moffatisms (also probably a word), a big retcon 39 minutes in where you find out none of it’s real. It’s all a computer simulation. These aren’t our heroes and everyone’s still alive and I think that’s the sound of formerly dead Bobbie Ewing coming out of the shower? (Google it)

True, there were a few clues thrown into the episode including the brief ‘glitching’ effect at the end of the opening titles. And the fact that nothing was translating for the TARDIS team.

But the reset here undermines everything that was enjoyable about Extremis. It’s worse than Knock Knock .

A really unnerving premise, not real. The Doctor and his struggles with blindness, doesn’t matter he’s not real. The people that died? Didn’t happen.

Doctor Who can, with liberal use, hit the reset button and it works as with The Last of The Timelords in Series 3. But haven’t we had of late too many resets and fakeouts and retcons?

And then there’s Moffat just trying to be quirky. The Pope in Bill’s room, Nardole pretending to be a priest.

And…um, where did the Veritas come from?

There’s a chance I’m in the minority with my verdict of Extremis, but I’m sure I wasn’t alone in seeing the words “Written by Steven Moffat” and knew for the most part what to expect. The oh so clever twists that aren’t that clever in the end…

Let me be clear, I like Moffat. This guy brought us some of the best Who episodes like Blink, Silence in the Library and The Doctor Dances.

What we got here are two different half episodes that are really just setup for later. The Missy execution scenes just sit to reveal Missy’s in the Vault and criminally under serves Michelle Gomez.

The Simulated World scenes serve as an intro for next week’s encounter with the villainous monks.

Extremis for me was almost a two star outing. I enjoyed watching it, it just all fell apart when you actually think about the episode.

Here’s hoping it all pays off next week. Doctor Who returns next Saturday with The Pyramid At The End Of The World.

When the ‘a long time ago’ card popped up, and a voiceover kicked in talking about death, I wondered if the latest Doctor Who story, Extremis would be breaking the steady, confident style that’s been winning people over so much this run. Or at least departing from it a little. Here, the episode looked like it was going to zip about more, and that the pace was to be ramped up as a consequence. Not a bad thing depending on the story of course, but not something that naturally fits series 10 so far.

In fact, what happened by the end of Extremis was that Steven Moffat cleverly, quietly, slowed things right down even more, and very much to the story’s benefit. It’s said that Extremis is to be the first in a multi-part story (effectively a three-parter, according to reports), and if that proves to be the case, Moffat explored the luxuries that a prolonged part one offers, without the need to wrap a story up.

As such, Extremis isn’t action-packed, isn’t jammed with effects, and doesn’t need extensive explanations. Its idea is in fact beautifully simple: it’s a dry run for something very big, and very nasty.

This is the kind of revelation in Doctor Who I can really get behind. How many times have we seen a plan from an alien foe be foiled by a wiggle of a screwdriver, a good speech and a bit of action? Here, the foes – whoever they ultimately prove to be – are having a rehearsal. A brutally effective one. They’ve got a plan that they want to try out first, and the test run has had such an impact, that the Vatican has got involved. Then, in theory, they can refine it for when the real thing hits, presumably over the next week or two.

Also, while the foes here are busying themselves, working against them is a significantly damaged Doctor. A Doctor willing to sacrifice a little of his own future to temporarily repair his eyes at one stage, whose speech turns mournful, slower and a little scared by the end. But also, practically, the Doctor is still blind. He’s not properly resolved that yet. And whilst I didn’t fully buy when he wouldn’t tell Bill his eyes were damaged (although Nardole’s explanation that he’s not telling because then “it becomes real” and he’d then have to “deal with it” holds water), this helped make both story perspectives interesting. Credit to director Daniel Nettheim and his team for realising all of this visually so effectively.

Practically then, it means that Nardole and Bill get paired up to do the work that the Doctor would ordinarily do, and the former in particular really proves to be an able replacement (although Bill, once again, is no slouch. How impressive is it that we take for granted already just how efforlessly strong Pearl Mackie is as the character?). Nardole’s detecting and problem-solving skills are to be admired (plus we also find out that River Song is at least in some way responsible for him following the Doctor around), and the last two weeks have seen Matt Lucas really grow into the role. I’m liking Nardole a lot, not least his moment when Bill asks him if he’s a badass. He goes from steel to whelp in a second. Yep, that’s Nardole for you. A bit of mystery, and a sublime moment of comedy.

Let’s not overlook either that The Pope was an unexpected visitor in all of this, setting up the other comedy highlight of the episode. That’d be the bit where Bill brought a girl home, only for the Pope to walk into her kitchen. You can imagine that would change the course of a date somewhat.

On the surface, Extremis certainly pulled the leg of religion a little – the blasphemous Harry Potter, for a start – but what it led to was an escalation of the threat. “Particle physicists and priests? What could scare them both?”, the Doctor asks 20 minutes in. If we needed a forewarning as to how big a threat was on the way, it was right there.

“You’d be wizard at writing Christmas crackers, you two”

I like Who episodes like this. The ones that build the threat, but not show it in full. Sure, we’ve seen the foot soldiers, but we haven’t seen the Oz behind them. And as if we needed further warning, the Doctor ends the episode urging Bill to ring her potential date a night early, because of what’s coming. We’re left in little doubt that bodily waste is about to hit the fan.

A few more things. For the purposes of this episode in particular, the focus was on The Veritas, a book that leads to anyone reading it ending their life. The Doctor sort of gets round this by trying the audiobook version effectively – I suspect he’s a Big Finish fan – but everyone who’s read it, and realised how fake their life is, has ended it there. In a speech that sees Steven Moffat ruining Nintendo games for a generation, the Doctor gravely declares that “it’s like Super Mario figuring out what’s going on, deleting himself from the game, because he’s sick of dying”. In fact, every character in every computer game now apparently feels it when they die. I for one might stick to Tetris for a bit. Add all this to the list of everyday things that Steven Moffat has sought out to put a sinister spin on during his tenure on Who.

And then there’s Missy. She’s a bit of an anti-climax this week, for story reasons, as Michelle Gomez doesn’t actually get that much time here. Not least because the Doctor has been called on to execute her. Exactly who has passed down the sentence isn’t clear, but there’s a planet that does this sort of thing (with a very clicky fatality index app), and the requirement for a Time Lord to be called in to kill another Time Lord. Not that any of us thought for a second that the Doctor would do this.

The clear impression here is that the Doctor believes Missy is in the vault. Whilst we don’t see her go in, the assumption is clearly that the Doctor is helping lock her in it in the first place. Also, given that he’s been in and talking to whoever’s in the vault earlier this series, when he talks to Missy through the door, it’s a fair bet he thinks she’s in there. He’s taken her in a take away already, remember.

But this is Doctor Who. And this is Steven Moffat. We now know that the Doctor vowed to guard Missy’s body for 1000 years, yet crucially, the card at the start of the episode just tells us this took place “a long time ago”. I think that Moffat has left himself a little bit of wiggle room here, whether he opts to take it or not.

Furthermore, we’ve now seen technology that sees the Doctor, Bill and Nardole in a shadow world, with apparently the start, middle and end of their time in said world explored in this episode. But that doesn’t mean the tech hasn’t existed before. I wonder if it’s been used earlier in the run? Also, I wonder if we’ll see the vault tech used on another Time Lord – I think you know which one – before the end of the run?

One further thing: there’s a sequence where we see the US President dead in the Oval Office. For lord’s sake, don’t tell President Tweeter, or he’ll declare war on Cardiff.

“Nardole, are you secretly a badass?”

Final thoughts, then. Wrapped into a growing sense that Capaldi’s end in the show is going to be addressed overtly and soon – you caught the line about how he might have damaged his future regenerations? – Extremis is more about setup than payoff. But it’s really good setup. The initial concerns I had about the episode melted away quickly, and by the end, I found myself really caught up in it. A lot. Hopefully, what follows lives up to what’s been put in place thus far…

Warning: this article contains spoilers from Doctor Who episode ‘Extremis’.

After this week’s confusing Doctor Who episode ‘Extremis’, it seems that the Doctor, Bill and Nardole are heading to more challenging terrain next week.

In a trailer for ‘The Pyramid at the End of the World’, we see the trio visit a 5,000-year-old pyramid.

Except there’s a problem – the structure was not there the previous day, and the creatures inside have been studying the people around it to arrive at that exact time.

Doctor Who showrunner Steven Moffat is preparing to hand over the keys to the TARDIS after an “overwhelming” but “amazing” ride — but first, he has “some real belters” in store for fans of the cult show.

Moffat, the lead writer and executive producer known for his labyrinth plots with complex twists and reveals, is preparing to hand over the TARDIS keys to Chris Chibnall.

He said he has achieved everything he wanted to in his six series of Doctor Who.

“I’ve been in this job so long that I’ve done everything that I could think of twice, probably,” he said.

Moffat said the BBC had basically given him free rein, and never said no to any of his ideas or stared over his shoulder — even though he always invited them to.

“They let you go with it and execute you if it doesn’t work out. Fortunately I haven’t been executed yet,” he joked.

Whovian influences

Growing up, Moffat’s main fictional influence, like most others who have worked alongside him over the years, was predictably Doctor Who.

“Even if I was too scared to watch it, I was fascinated by it,” he said.

“It’s a show that seems to encompass every other genre so it’s your one stop genre-shop.”

He also cited other as major influences Star Trek and Star Wars, Narnia, the Hobbit and Dr Tom’s Midnight Garden — which he admits “I’ve been consistently ripping off for decades now.”

But it was the magical aspect of his favourite books and television shows that fascinated Moffat, rather than the science fiction side of things.

“I know that will make some people cross,” he said.

“But Doctor Who has always been more like that, more the magical end of things — it’s about the wizard and the magic flying box which looks like a phone box.

“It’s got that feel to it, which is why I think it entrances children.”

Feckless thrill seeker or demi-god?

Moffat said there is one aspect of Doctor Who’s character that he continues to explore in his mind.

“I was always quite interested in the idea of, for all we know he’s just a bumbling, attention-seeking, adrenaline junkie running around the universe, but he must appear to everyone else as an awesome god who sorts everything out,” he said.

“Are there places where they worship him, does he have a reputation that’s completely at variance with the feckless thrill seeker we know him to be? I still find that interesting.

“He’s not really keeping the universe in order, except by default, but people think of him that way, understandably, and sometimes he plays up to the image and he’s not really that at all. I’ve always found that quite interesting.”

But how old is the Doctor? Is he really 900 years old, as once said?

“Because of all the time travelling in a time machine he does, there’s no way he would know how old he is,” Moffat said.

“You can’t take entirely seriously anything the Doctor says. He’s not in the business of telling the truth about anything, there’s an endless stream of distraction coming at that man.

“If he hasn’t told you his name why would he really tell you his age? And in any event, how could he possibly know what it is?

“I think he makes up an age that sounds cool.”

The final TARDIS trip

Moffat said he would finish his tenure on a high note with “some real belters” that are coming up in his final series.

And as his diary entry for the last day of shooting looms, the man who has a self-described “pretty epic” workload and hasn’t had a weekend off since 2009 is planning what he will do after the final wrap — “go on holiday”.

This is a man whose wife has had to book a separate hotel room for him to work in while on family holidays.

Moffat is pragmatic about what will come after the holiday.

“I’m not short of offers and I’m not short of ideas,” he said.

The new guy

He acknowledged that handing over to new showrunner, Broadchurch writer Chibnall, is not without emotion.

“I’m sure I’ll feel very sad. Particularly when Chris’s new version of the show goes out and the circus comes to town and I’m not in it anymore,” Moffat said.

“I’m sure I’ll have my moments of ‘what have I done?’

“But that aside, it’s good to have an exciting past to look back on, and it is time to get on with new things.”

He said he wants Chibnall to have the best time ever with Doctor Who, and to be happy he was persuaded to do “the most difficult job in the world”.

“He’s just starting to realise what it’s all like. He will have the best time and do an amazing job. It’s overwhelming but it is amazing. It is amazing,” he said.

The last time we saw Missy she was in a sticky situation, at the mercy of a handful of Daleks in The Witch’s Familiar – but this weekend’s episode of Doctor Who sees the Time Lord make a (well-publicised) reappearance.

Michelle Gomez’s inclusion in series 10 was first revealed by the woman herself, back in October last year, but it’s not yet clear what her “very clever idea” to escape the Daleks was…

Still, a new clip for episode six, Extremis, shows Missy and the Doctor coming face-to-face once again as they catch up on one another’s news (the last she saw of her friend/nemesis he was shacked up with wife River Song).

But one of the pair is the prisoner of mysterious captors – and we’re not quite sure which…?

Doctor Who is on Saturday at 7:25pm on BBC1