One thing I really liked about this episode was Bill’s ability to take responsibility for her actions. Even though she had no idea precisely what would happen if the Monks took charge, she took responsibility for having been what brought them to power. She was willing to do what it took to get rid of them without trying to blame someone else or explain why it wasn’t her fault. I thought this was extremely admirable and not something you see a lot of on TV. I had a feeling they wouldn’t actually kill her off, but I liked that she was willing to sacrifice herself for the good of the rest of humanity. She came off very well in this episode.
We also got some fairly major character development from Missy, finally feeling remorse after all those centuries as the murderous Master. I am very keen to know where that is going. I am sure the Master can’t be even half good forever, but it will certainly make things more interesting in the future.
I was very pleased to see that last week’s infection had only laid Nardole up for 6 weeks rather than killing him off. That would have been too depressing. Matt Lucas was excellent as always.
Despite the Monks getting a three parter, I still don’t feel that I understand their motivation for wanting to take over world (or any of the other worlds they had previously taken over). The method for doing it was quite clever, but it does feel unresolved not understanding why they wanted to do it to begin with. Perhaps we aren’t done with them just yet though.
This had some properly interesting moments to it, in particular the false regeneration and Bill actually shooting the Doctor. It is interesting he needed her to go so far as to kill him before he would trust her. This particular incarnation of the Doctor is definitely darker than some of the other recent ones, in that I don’t feel that 10 or 11 would have done that and even if 9 did it, I don’t feel like he would have burst into a fit of laughter afterwards.
I realize a lot of people might have thought the ending was basically love as a resolution, but I did think this was a bit more sophisticated than that. I did still think it was a properly sci fi ending as it only worked because Bill had a memory of someone who she had never really known in real life and therefore the Monks couldn’t tamper with the memory because it had never existed outside of Bill’s mind.
7/10