Series 10, Episode 8 | Part 3 of 3 | First broadcast: 3 June 2017 | Writer: Toby Whithouse | Director: Wayne Yip
Cast
- Peter Capaldi as the Twelfth Doctor
- Pearl Mackie as Bill Potts
- Matt Lucas as Nardole
- Michelle Gomez as Missy
- Rosie Jane as Bill’s Mum
Summary
Six months into the Monks’ occupation, they have rewritten history through propaganda statues broadcasting a false narrative that they have guided humanity for millennia, while dissenters like Bill are branded criminals; Bill, sustained by imagined conversations with the mother she never knew, is found by Nardole (immune thanks to his alien physiology) and the two seek out the imprisoned Doctor, who appears to have willingly sided with the Monks — a ruse that turns out to be a loyalty test, complete with a shocking moment where Bill shoots the “collaborating” Doctor. Consulting an unexpectedly candid Missy in the vault, they learn the Monks maintain control through a psychic broadcast link tied to whoever gave the original consent, meaning Bill herself may be the key to breaking their hold. Infiltrating the Monks’ central pyramid, the Doctor’s attempt to seize the broadcast fails, but Bill’s selfless choice to link her own mind to the signal floods it with her powerful love for her mother, shattering the Monks’ lies and freeing humanity, who awaken with no memory of the occupation ever having happened.
Interesting Facts
- This concludes the loose three-part “Monks trilogy” begun in “Extremis” and continued in “The Pyramid at the End of the World.”
- Michelle Gomez’s Missy receives her most substantial screen time of the series so far, revealing she once defeated the Monks herself and expressing rare, genuine remorse for her past killings — a key step in her season-long redemption arc.
- The episode drew some of the season’s most divided reviews, with several critics singling out the sequence of Bill shooting the Doctor as a startling and, for some, poorly justified narrative choice.
- Michelle Gomez’s early scene with Missy’s eyes superimposed over a panning shot is a deliberate homage to a similar visual in the 1996 Doctor Who TV movie.
- The episode drew the lowest overnight viewing figures in the show’s history to that point, largely attributed to being scheduled directly against the Britain’s Got Talent final.
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