Doctor Who Series 10 - The Pyramid at the End of the World - Episode Review

My review of the previous episode: Extremis.

[Sorry for the lateness: spent the last two weeks settling into my internship in Washington D.C. - in related news, keep an eye out for my writing at The Weekly Standard.]

If anyone was wondering which part of this episode Steven Moffat wrote, it should be pretty obvious when Peter Capaldi starts monologuing self-seriously about death. It's pure Heaven Sent. There's a kind of Moffaty gimmick at the center of The Pyramid at the End of the World, too: the concept of all-knowing aliens who can pinpoint world disasters and prevent them. On first viewing, I had rather a hard time coping with the idea of a benevolent invasion, but the more I think about it, the more I like it.

Doctor Who Series 10 - Extremis - Episode Review

My review of the previous episode: Oxygen.

Oh, Moffat.

Steven Moffat is one of the greatest visionaries in Doctor Who history. He’s written multiple classic episodes and pushed the boundaries of the show in ways that no one has before. But there's a reason "Moffaty" exists as an adjective. And Extremis is very Moffaty.

Doctor Who Series 10 - Oxygen - Episode Review

My review of the previous episode: Knock Knock.

Series 10 had been taking it pretty easy up till now. Slowly introducing us to Bill, dropping hints about what's inside the vault, giving the Doctor (and the show) a new lease on life. All of that changed with Oxygen, an episode heavy on plot, message, and thrills, complete with a game-changing twist in the final scene.

C.S. Lewis on the Blindness of Our Age

We all know that person. They're obnoxious. They ooze arrogance. It's so blatant that their friends have begun to avoid them. But oddly, despite its glaring obviousness, they just can't see it. "What's everybody's problem?" they ask indignantly. We have a furious desire to shove their face to a mirror, screaming "Can't you see?"

In a recent conversation with my friend Elora Shore, we talked about the sins of particular eras. Some, racism in particular, we found hard to pardon. How could anyone be so blind to such an obvious fault? I paused. After all, why shouldn't the entire world, and all of history besides, think like me? I realized that that was precisely what I was thinking, and the arrogance and ethnocentricity of it surprised me. We went on to talk of other things, but the question stuck in the back of my head.

When 24th Century historians look at us, what will they find impossible to understand? With a paranoid conception of the future, I imagined invisible time travelers peering in my window and felt slightly panicky. Will they think I'm old-fashioned? Is it possible to find out now? How can we see ourselves without the skewed lens of what C.S. Lewis called chronological snobbery? I want to be ahead of my time.