Doctor Who 10x06 "Extremis" Review

SPOILERS

“Extremis” was a trippy episode. I kept vacillating between whether I liked it or not. I think I was a little too critical while watching and didn’t enjoy it as much, but in retrospect, it was pretty good.

I was a little surprised when they brought the Pope in, someone I believe they’ve mentioned before but we have never seen. I think it made sense to put him in this episode, though, because of the turn the episode takes, which I will talk about in a minute. The Pope comes to the Doctor for help, asking him to read this old text called “Veritas”, a text which has driven all who have read it to suicide because the truth of the text is a secret too horrible to live with. I was trying to figure out what exactly this could be. If it was something like, there is no Heaven, then people wouldn’t be rushing to kill themselves. So what could it be?

Ah. Everything is a simulation. We are living in a computer game. It was a bit creepy when the scientists all started rattling off the same numbers, but the explanation made sense: computers don’t do random. So I started thinking that perhaps the Doctor was real and the other two were a simulation, since he was separated from them for a long time in the episode. But he was a hologram too, and all seemed lost…until he emailed himself using the trusty Sonic Shades and brought us right back to the beginning of the episode with him opening the email outside of the vault, which, the first time I was the scene, he had just never read it, getting distracted by the Cardinal. He now knows there is a big threat to Earth, and he has to stop them in the typical Doctor way.

Missy faces her executioner, her oldest friend.

Of course we have to talk about Missy, who was intermixed throughout the episode. She is finally being executed for all of her/his crimes and the Doctor is the one who has to flip the switch of this special “Time Lord Killing Machine”. He does, but he tweaked with the wiring beforehand and she is just shocked. He had promised to guard her body for a thousand years, and he does. She’s in the vault, completely alive. The plug about River from Nardole was very sweet, since they make it clear this is right after he leaves her to go to the library. Never thought we would see her diary again.

Here’s my prediction, and I can’t believe how obvious this is getting: because the Doctor spared her life, Missy gives him some regeneration energy to fix his eyes, a bit like River did with Eleven when she regenerated from Mels. This means that Missy will have to regenerate, and who else would she regenerate into but John Simm’s Master? It makes perfect sense.

9/10