Story 271: Extremis

In which the Doctor receives a strange e-mail on his sonic sunglasses. He is using these to try to compensate from his blindness as they can provide basic details of his immediate surroundings - including people.

He is sitting outside the mysterious vault in the basement of St Luke's when he receives the e-mail. He has been recalling the events which had led to Nardole and he guarding the vault in the first place. He had been summoned to an alien world to witness - and participate in - the execution of Missy. She had been handed over to a mystic sect of Executioners. They follow a principal known as the Fatality Index, and under its rules only another Time Lord can despatch Missy.

One of the attending priests had proven to be Nardole. He tells the Doctor that what he must do must be done out of Hope, and without Reward. This is a sentiment that River Song would have shared.

He is later visited by Cardinal Angelo, a leading adviser at the Vatican. The Pope seeks a private audience with him. He has travelled to Bristol with the Cardinal in person. One of the treasures of the Forbidden Index of the Vatican Library is a book called the Veritas - "Truth" - which has just been translated. However, everyone associated with the project has died, apparently by their own hand, and the most recent translator has disappeared.

The Doctor decides to take Angelo and the Pope, with Nardole, back to the Vatican by TARDIS, collecting Bill on the way. She is on a date, which is interrupted by the appearance of the pontiff in her home.

Angelo takes them to the section of the Library where the Veritas is held in a special cage. He spots a figure lurking in the shadows and goes to investigate. The Doctor finds the translator at the cage. He reveals he has e-mailed his work out to a number of people, then runs off - leaving a laptop behind.

Angelo cannot locate the figure he was looking for, but a skeletal, claw-like hand suddenly emerges from a wall to attack him.

Nardole examines the laptop and sees that the translator sent his copy of the Veritas to CERN - the research centre in Switzerland. They had replied "Pray for us". He and Bill start looking around the Library in search of the translator and see the same cowled figure which Angelo had pursued. They follow it and come to a brightly lit portal in one of the walls. Passing through it they find themselves in a room, lit by harsh white light, in which there are a number of large projector devices, which appear to be holding other portals open. Passing through one at random, they find themselves in the Pentagon in Washington DC. They try another portal, and this time emerge at CERN.

The Doctor must know what the Veritas says, so he sacrifices some of his future regeneration energy to cure his sight, if only for a short time. He sees a robed figure approach and assumes it to be the Cardinal. It proves to be a monk-like being, resembling a walking mummified corpse. The Doctor grabs the laptop and runs off.

At CERN, Bill and Nardole meet a scientist named Nicolas. He and his colleagues are in euphoric mood, gathering in the canteen and getting drunk. When he asks them to think of a number, they guess correctly each time - a mathematical impossibility. Nicolas tells them that the world is not real. They are horrified to discover explosives set up under each table in the canteen. The scientists plan to kill themselves, but do not care.

Bill and Nardole escape back to the projector room, having realised that each portal leads to a simulation. However, when Nardole moves away from one of the beams, he discovers that he is not real either, and he disintegrates into a mass of pixels.

The Doctor encounters more of the skeletal Monks and passes through another of the portals. He finds himself in the Oval Office of the White House. The President is here, dead by his own hand after reading a translation of the Veritas. Bill follows him there.

Having now read the translation, the Doctor reveals that this place is also a simulation - as is she. The Monks have created these in order to assess Earth, as part of a planned invasion. Bill disintegrates as Nardole had done earlier, and the Doctor is left alone with one of the Monks. He explains he knows of their scheme - and that he is also a simulation, as they need to know what he would do in the event they attacked Earth. They have made the simulations too well, however, and he sends an e-mail to himself in the real world - warning his real self of what is coming. This was the e-mail marked "Extremis" which he first read outside the vault.

It transpired that he sabotaged Missy's execution, leaving her only stunned. He still agrees to stand guard over the vault - now her prison rather than her tomb - for a period of one thousand years, out of Hope, and without Reward...

Extremis was written by Steven Moffat, and was first broadcast on Saturday 20th May, 2017.

It forms the first part of a trilogy of episodes involving the mysterious mummified Monks. Whilst the second and third instalments can be seen to be two halves of a single storyline - the invasion and defeat of the Monks, Extremis can be taken as a separate prequel episode, which could have been broadcast at any point earlier in the series. In fact, the trilogy may have worked better if it had been shown at a few episodes remove from what follows.

As it is, it is by far the best section - a promise which fails to be fulfilled.

Moffat had thought that the 10th series had been fairly conventional up to now, and wanted to do something big in the middle of it - preferably something quite dark (despite the fact that we had just been served walking corpses and the Doctor seemingly blinded permanently).

Toby Whithouse had proposed a story about the Earth under the control of a 1984 / Big Brother-style regime, and Peter Harness had one about kung-fu monks, so Moffat borrowed both and merged them for his own story.

The ancient manuscript / Vatican Library setting were inspired by The Da Vinci Code, and Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose.

The episode has an odd structure, as it continually jumps to the events of Missy's incarceration in the vault. Other episodes have featured flashback sequences, but here these events don't actually bear any relation to the Monks and their simulations. Moffat had to cover this ground sometime, so I suppose now was as good a time as any. He had realised that the mystery of who was in the box could not be sustained for the entire series.

There is a cosmopolitan guest cast, including actors from France and Italy. 

Playing Cardinal Angelo is Corrado Invernizzi, who had featured in the 2014 series Marco Polo, whilst the Pope is portrayed by Joseph Long. He had previously played Mr Colasanto in the Series 4 story Turn Left.

CERN scientist Nicolas is Laurent Maurel.

Bill's new girlfriend is Penny, played by Ronke Adekoluejo. Bill's foster mother Moira is also seen once again - Jennifer Hennessey.

The Chief Executioner  - a character named Rafando - is Ivanno Jeremiah.

Jamie Hill plays the Monk, though the creature is voiced by actor Tim Bentinck.

Overall, a highlight of the season. The Monks make for creepy villains, especially the way they are presented lurking in shadow or via the Doctor's blurred vision. The reveal of the fake reality might not be original (The Matrix etc), but it's so seldom used in Doctor Who it comes across as novel.

Things you might like to know:

• At one point Moffat considered destroying the Earth as a mid-series shock, but then realised the programme still needed it.
• Whilst it was okay to feature Prime Ministers and Presidents and mock them a little, the Pope was another matter. Moffat checked with the BBC top brass before including his fictitious version of the character, and it should be noted how the Doctor - and the story - tends to treat the Pope with respect for the most part.
• Joseph Long had been invited to read for the part of someone called "Paul", but quickly grasped that this was the Pope.
• The Doctor claims to have known Pope Benedict IX, who held the Papacy three times in the mid 11th Century. One of the "Bad Popes", he was reputedly gay and led a scandalous life. Here, it is claimed that they were actually a woman. One Pope of the 9th century was reputed to be a woman - Pope Joan - who reigned for two years before being discovered.
• The story is set after the Doctor's long sojourn on Darillium. However, back then Nardole had still been just a head within the Hydroflax robot. It has been stated in this series that it was the Doctor who built him a new body - so how could he be walking about on the planet where Missy is to be executed? The Doctor must have given him his new body whilst still with River. Any inconsistency with the character may arise from the fact that he was only added to many of the scripts very late in the day.