Doctor Who: The Pyramid at the End of the World

"We must be wanted. We must be loved. To rule by fear is inefficient."

In just a couple of episodes the character of the season has shifted smoothly into what looks much more like an arc- or mini-arc at least- and there are ominous signs that this Doctor's days are numbered, as he first appears with a monologue which, I suspect, applies as much to himself as the situation as he ponders mournfully that "The end of your life has already begun", surely referring to more than the juxtaposed footage of two scientists having an off-day. This kind of thing is our first hint that Peter Harness and Steven Moffat (he'll be missed) have excelled themselves here.

This is a sequel both to last week, when we discovered how the monks have been running a deeply accurate simulation of Earth in order to conquer it, an to the Zygon Invasion two-parter which established both the fictional nation of Turmezistan, a (presumably) Central Asian hotspot where war threatens to break out between the USA, China and Russia, and the precedent that the Doctor is President of Earth during alien invasions, a conceit that saves us so many potentially tiresome scenes of the Doctor not being believed by the authorities. It's also nice to see a doing over of Bill's date with Penny, this time interrupted not be the Pope but by the Secretary General of the United Nations.

The big visual centre of the episode is, of course, the 5,000 year pyramid that has suddenly appeared, at an acute global flashpoint, but it's really all about ideas, as all the best ones are. The conceit of the doomsday clock helps to mount the tension, as does the monks' confident assertion that force is not necessary as they will simply be invited to assume absolute global power. The alternative is that life on Earth will soon end "by humanity's own hand"- and the truly clever bit is that the threat of nuclear war is just a very big red herring; there's a reason why we keep following those two scientists and their increasingly bad day.

All this is narrated superbly in a tightly written and philosophical script, and I love the concept of the threads.

An added layer of brilliance is that the monks need the true consent of someone on Earth with power- but any motive other than love won't work, and the supplicant summarily dies. And so we come to the deliciously horrifying ending; the doctor tracks down the lab in Yorkshire, saves the world, but is doomed to die because he's blind and can't use the combination to escape from the airlocked room. At last he has to confess to Bill that he's been blind, he's been lying to her, and her response is to surrender Earth to the monks and save the Doctor's sight, and his life. The moment arrives with a crushing inevitability and leaves us waiting impatiently for next week.

Wow. This season!