Holy crap, three days to the finish line. Three days, y'all! Let's talk Doctor Who.

The Lie of the Land

(TARDIS Data Core recap)

This story is totally a commentary on the rise of fascism and how readily mankind accepts that kind of evil crap. It is also one of those stories that is entertaining enough while it is happening, but upon reflection makes no damn sense.

The story picks up six months after the end of the previous episode, and the Earth has been under the rule of the Monks the entire time. The world has descended into a brutal fascist hell in which everyone believes the Monks have always been there, from the dawn of mankind, as our benevolent helpers. Also: anyone who starts to believe differently is brutally disappeared like European Jews in the 40's, Russian dissenters in the 80's, or undocumented immigrants in America today. (The truth hurts, y'all.)

Bill has kept her memories alive by talking to the ghost of her mother. The Doctor has spent the last six months making propaganda videos for the Monks. Nardole has been... well, doing whatever it is that Nardole does. All of which leads to Nardole showing up at Bill's house, and then taking her on a rescue mission to spring the Doctor from whatever floating prison he has been kept in. Which leads to a scene in which the Doctor just straight-up supports the Monks, which leads to Bill shooting him in the chest several times with a stolen pistol, which leads to a shocking early regeneration sequence right before going to commercial break.

Upon returning, we find out that the Doctor faked the whole thing just to make sure Bill was really sincere in her hatred of the Monks. He has been biding his time, waiting for Bill and Nardole to show up. For six months. While people all around the world are murdered for thought crimes. Not to mention all of the property destruction on a global scale. 

But, whatever.

They go to get some advice on how to defeat the Monks from noted humanitarian Missy, who very helpfully suggests that they just Kill Bill.

Good Plan

The Doctor instead opts to stage a raid on Monk HQ in order to disrupt their WateverMindControl broadcast station. Except, it winds up being Bill who has to do the thing, and saves the world with the powerful memory of her dead mother. At which point, the Doctor totally takes the credit for saving the world because at one point, on a lark, he went back in time to take a bunch of pictures of Bill's mom so that he could leave them as a present for Bill. Typical dude, wiping down the counter while the woman scrubs the entire house, and then wanting a gold star.

So anyway, the Monks get their butts kicked off the planet and apparently everybody forgets they were ever there. It's not like when Martha walked the Earth to defeat the Toclafane, where time was rewound back to before the bad stuff happened. No, the bad stuff still had happened for the last six months. Presumably hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people were brutally murdered for thought crimes, and presumably all of that global property damage is still there to be cleaned up, but humanity apparently just shrugs its shoulders and says, "Wow, that must of been a hell of a party last night... I hope I didn't create a OhMyGodItsDoomsday chemical while I was hung over."

All that being said, I didn't hate it. I just wish the writer had thought through some of the logical consequences of the story a bit more.

Tomorrow:  Holy crap, it's Alpha Centauri!!!

STATS:

Doctor(s): Twelfth
Companion(s): Bill Potts, Nardole
Episode(s): The Lie of the Land
Steps Walked: 7,655 today, 3,595,953 total
Distance Walked: 4.07 miles today, 1,880.50 miles total
Push-ups Completed: 0 today, 6,747 total
Sit-ups Completed: 0 today, 1,029 total
Weight: 248.2 lbs (five day moving average), net change -59.10 lbs