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"If you will practice being fictional for a while, you will understand that fictional characters are sometimes more real than people with bodies and heartbeats." - Richard Bach.
In Extremis Steven Moffat revisits many themes which have run through his canon of work on Doctor Who before, remixing familiar ingredients to create something that is both reminiscent of past glories, and yet wholly new. This episode celebrates the power of story, of fictional characters and fantasy. It also flirts with the notion of the Doctor having an existential crisis as Steven Moffat bookends the entire tale between the time it takes for an e-mail (with attachment) to be sent, and then received.
At its simplest 'reading' Extremis is an action-packed adventure, in which the stakes are raised as the action unfolds. It's a tale of intrigue and conspiracy which nods to novels such as those penned by Dan Brown, films such as The Matrix and computer games such as Assassin's Creed; although simpler, earlier, games such as Super Mario Bros are referenced in the text. Visited by the Pope (accompanied by a flock of priests and cardinals) the Doctor is solicited for help following the suspicious mass-suicides of several priests tasked to translate an ancient, heretical, text. Known as the Veritas, or Truth, and originally written in a lost language; the text is held in a subterranean library (known as the Haereticum) locked within a bookcage. There, at the very centre of this labyrinthine library, the Doctor, Bill and Nardole discover the last living translator: Piero.
Camped out in the book-cage, Piero is still working on the deadly text when discovered. Distraught, standing over a laptop and gripping a small hand-held pistol, he takes his life shortly after he's confronted. Thus, interestingly, this character (played by Francesco Martino) can be seen as the literal personification of Chekov's gun:
The term Chekhov’s Gun comes from something Chekhov allegedly said in the 1880s (as noted down by Ilia Gurliand): "If in Act I you have a pistol hanging on the wall, then it must fire in the last act".
Piero doesn't just fire off a lethal bullet, but an e-mail which works as a lethal kill shot. By e-mailing the Veritas to CERN that e-mail - later forwarded to the Doctor himself (Doctor!algorithm with love from the Doctor) - doesn't only raise the stakes in this episode, but is possibly the starting pistol for the mytharc which may span from here to the end of Peter Capaldi's era in the TARDIS*.
Steven Moffat has crafted this episode around a fantastic narrative twist - i.e. that nothing is as it appears; one story line nested within another like a set of Russian 'matryoshka' dolls. The translation of this forbidden text, sent from the most ancient and veritable library at the Vatican to the most cutting-edge science laboratory in Europe, is a clue to this narrative twist, as is the fact that pivotal action is set at CERN itself. CERN is the birthplace of the Internet (first proposed there by Sir Tim Berniers Lee in 1989) and it's where the Higgs Boson particle - referred to as the God Particle - was recently proved to exist. Plus, back in 2011, a French particle physicist at CERN (Aurelian Barrau) was quoted as saying:
"The idea of multiple universes is more than a fantastic invention -- it appears naturally within several scientific theories, and deserves to be taken seriously."
Thus, in this episode Steven Moffat anchors the multiverse both in the realm of quantum physics and in Classic British children's literature (and fairy tale tropes) with an oblique visual reference to C.S. Lewis's The Magician's Nephew.
In the prequel to the Narnia stories a young boy named Diggory travels to alternate worlds, with his friend Polly, by use of green and yellow magical rings via 'The wood between Worlds'. In that wood different pools of water lead to different worlds.
"Why, if we can get back to our own world by jumping into this pool, mightn’t we get somewhere else by jumping into one of the others? Supposing there was a world at the bottom of every pool." [Chapter 3]
Here the pools are made of light, not water, cast by a circle of computer towers (well, they looked more like computer towers than projectors to me!) leading to different worlds, or locations. Bill and Nardole open a door and step onto the third floor in a secure area of the Pentagon (a giant clue as to the twist in the tale, seeing they manage to duck back out before security is called) before 'travelling' to CERN. Bill then discovers the Doctor in the Oval Office, calling to mind the last time he sat there in The Impossible Astronaut. During that narrative arc (travelling with his Ponds) the Doctor faked his own death via Tesselecta. So, I can't help but wonder if the 'death' of the virtual C.G.I Doctor doesn't herald that of the corporeal Time-lord: the Twelfth Doctor.
In this story, nested within a story, characters exist in a virtual shadow-world until the moment they question their own existence or nature of being. Doubt leads to code rot, fragmentation, pixilation, disintegration. Metaphorically, this can be read as both a comment on television as a medium of story-telling and a comment on the power of story. Watching TV we suspend our disbelief as the tale unfolds. We believe, whilst the story is being told. In the Whoniverse itself, Martha Jones once saved the world by walking its length and breadth whilst telling stories of the Doctor:
MARTHA: "I told a story. That's it. No guns, no bombs, just words. I told them about the Doctor. I told them my story, and I told them to pass it on, to tell everyone they could so that the whole world knew."
Martha mythologised the Doctor so people would believe in him (re-empower and save him) just as Tinkerbell was saved in Peter Pan thanks to the power of children's belief. Here the story - i.e. the Doctor - believes in himself. This algorithmnic!Doctor is so true to himself that he manages to reach out from within the lines of narrative, (or computer code) and save the world.
DOCTOR: [..."You don't have to be real to be the Doctor."
This Doctor may flirt with an existential crisis (via Quantum physics and alternate realities) he might be a little less corporeal than his other self, but that doesn't make him any less real. Here Steven Moffat takes a child's imagination and childrens play as template; the C.G.I Doctor 'playing' at being the real time-lord, just as children might play at being the Doctor in the play-ground.
And, it's wonderful.
Amusingly the fictional, virtual, world created in Extremis can be seen to rest on our real one historically, scientifically, and philosophically.
The Vactican does have a so-called secret library, also known as the Papal Library. Difficult for researchers and academics to access it too is subterranean, with miles and miles of shelving housing a myriad of documents from Royalty, Governments and astronomers etc. down through the centuries. Then there's the tale of Pope Joan, who may or may not have been real and who may or may not have been the inspiration behind Pope Benedict. Masquerading as a man, Pope Joan apparently joined the priesthood, rose to the office of Pope and was only unmasked as a woman when found in labour. There is conflicting evidence as to whether or not she ever truly existed, but there is a throne at St. John Lateran with a strategically positioned hole carved into the seat, through which a prospective Pope was supposed to pop his tackle so his male gender could be verified. Truth is often stranger than fiction.
Here mathematics (or the implausibility of a group of people correctly guessing a random string of numbers) are what trigger the realisation that what is being experienced as real is illusion/simulation; a greater power (or computer algorhitm) shaping and controlling the world and those within it. Historically it was the theory of sacred geometry, or the golden ratio, which captivated the Western world. In the Renaissance period its existence was taken as proof of the existence of God. And, even in modern times, the Fibonacci numerical sequence is known as God's fingerprint.
Finally, it can be said that this episode rests upon foundations from Classical Greek philosophy, namely Plato's Allegory of the Cave (primarily a discussion on the impact of education in The Republic .) The allegory posits that prisoners chained up and staring at a cave wall on which shadow fall (shadows cast by puppets, manipulated by puppeteers positioned behind and above the prisoners in the same cave) perceive these shadow forms as reality, whilst only philosophers (or a prisoner who has broken free) can discern the actual nature of reality itself.
Here the Doctor and his companions are trapped in a manufactured, shadow, reality until a moment of realisation sets them free.
Within the Whoniverse this episode can be seen to refer back to the Series Five finale The Pandorica Opens and The Big Bang. In that two-parter the Pandorica (a cube much like the Quantum Fold Chamber) was fired into the sun, where the TARDIS was already exploding, thereby rebooting of the Universe. Symbolically that melding of Pandorica and TARDIS can be read as a form of Sacred Marriage or Heiros Gamos in the Jungian sense of transformation or, an alchemical union of opposites. In Greek mythology, traditionally, Heiros Gamos stood for a marriage between two Gods. Given the Doctor is revealed as watching over Missy (Sleeping Beauty in her Quantum prison) I do wonder if that analogy isn't going to be stretched to its nth degree this series. I also wonder whether the Doctor and Missy/The Master will end up collaborating on more than just saving the world, or if that will simply be the innuendo laden implication right before she (or he, given the John Simm rumours?) stabs him in the back, as per usual.
To digress further, for a moment:
Best friends can be as much powder-keg as treasure in childhood. From a child's perspective, Missy stands as the Doctor's best or oldest friend. There is a great deal of complex history between them (all the more potent when 'she' was the only other Time-lord who had apparently survived the Fall of Gallifrey) their friendship one of slights and bullying, and of truces held in the face of greater adversity. In modern vernacular I'd say the term Frenemies (first coined 1953) best fits their relationship. And whilst one can read their canonical relationship symbolically, relating it to warfare in school playgrounds exploded out onto a near-immortal and intergalactic scale, I'd say there are more overt shades of sibling rivalry in how they're written. A recent caveat to that, of course, is Missy's retort to Clara in a town square (The Magician’s Apprentice) where she likens herself and the Doctor to a promenading couple, with Clara as their bitch dog. Given Missy was ambivalent, at best, about Clara's life I do rather wonder what Bill Potts’s fate might be, subsequent to her meeting Missy.
The opening scenes of this episode, set 'A Long Time Ago' (in the best tradition of fairy tale narratives) take place on a world which invokes medievalism as much as it does the Stargate universe, thanks to C.G.I (unless that magnificent castle on the cliff top is real) and costume design. Missy is brought to this place of execution under the watchful gaze of the Doctor, who is then meant to watch over her body for a thousand years - her Quantum Fold Chamber designed as sarcophagus, not prison cell. All dolled up in Victorian dress (or is that Edwardian?) with arched eyebrow and a perfect coiffure, Missy truly believes she is about to be executed like a cast-off wife of Henry VIII, even if the props department haven't built a chopping block for her to place her head upon.
In the hour of Missy’s doom; standing next to her in silent judgement - yet also in friendship- is the Doctor. Missy may be evil (although the reading offered in this episode alone probably fits a definition of naughty or selfish just as well) but facing her final death she invokes centuries of friendship, and that invocation is answered. Later, lost in the dark, robbed of his sight, it is to Missy that the Doctor turns. The as yet unseen consequences of that choice taunt, as the episode credits roll. In Who canon (and possibly through the entirety of this series) if the Master is selfish, rather than simply cartoonishly evil, then the Doctor is an altruist. The moral thread (and/or plot arc) which may knit this episode to those which follow is, undoubtedly, the prayer uttered by Nardole, high priest of the late River Song. He appears quoting her sacred text, or diary:
"Good is good in the final hour, in the deepest pit without hope, without witness, without reward. Virtue is only virtue in extremis. This is what he believes and this is the reason, above all, I love him. My husband. My madman in a box. My Doctor."
River's words wind through this episode. Spoken first by Nardole, repeated by the Doctor, then finally spoken with sincerity by Missy as she kneels to face execution, they are enough of a litany that I wonder if they'll re-appear later in the series - If River's words will prove to be a catalyst for Missy's motivations and actions.
Whilst Extremis is primarily an action adventure which proceeds at a cracking pace, it has as many layers (textually and subtextually) as the alien monks virtual world has locales. This layering and subtextual enriching of an episode is a feature of Steven Moffat's work in the Whoniverse, at times albeit with varying success. Extremis may not be as brilliant as Blink, or Heaven Sent, but it's probably my favourite episode of this series so far.
Acting-wise Pearl Mackie and Matt Lucas continue to have really nice chemistry, coupled with cracking banter. They also have really good comic timing. Rather than evoking the days of Rose Tyler and Captain Jack Harkness, I'm reminded of Harry Sullivan (Ian Marter) and Sarah Jane Smith (Elizabeth Sladen) caught up in dangerous escapades alongside the Fourth Doctor, Tom Baker.
A gem of an episode.