Doctor Who: "The Lie of the Land" Review

“The Lie of the Land” chimes with the rest of its series: there are both good and bad elements, and unfortunately the less-good stuff drowns out what I actually like about the story. To try and do this review a bit differently, I’ve broken the episode down into two corresponding lists.

WHAT I LIKED

• Newcomer Wayne Yip’s direction is rather good, doing some unusual things (the scene where the soldiers break in whilst listening to Bill’s instructions is probably the standout).
• The basic idea of the episode isn’t particularly original, but it feels very timely right now, and what it does with it, it does well (although actually saying ‘fake news’ was a little too on-the-nose for me).
• The cast are, as ever, on form. It must be said that whenever Matt Lucas gets something to do, he absolutely steals the show (so it’s a shame he didn’t have much to do for the entire first third of this run).
• Initially I wasn’t so keen on Bill talking to her vision of her dead mum; it reminded me a bit too much of Watson doing the same thing with Mary in Sherlock just five months previously. However, I changed my mind when I saw the resolution to the episode, which rather neatly brings back several plot elements, and the show gets away with it because it doesn’t try and use the imaginary character as if they were still living. (I’d be fascinated to know how much of this episode is Toby Whithouse’s and how much of it is Moffat’s.) All told, though, this is a pretty solidly plotted episode.

WHAT I DIDN’T LIKE

• The moment where it’s revealed the Doctor has just been having Bill on about joining the Monks is absolutely unforgivably awful. Directly after Bill thinks she’s just shot him three times at point blank range, then everyone’s laughing? Bill is initially angry for about three seconds before the Doctor tells her to leave it, and it’s never brought up again. You can’t really trick someone into thinking they’ve just committed murder and brush it under the carpet. There should have been consequences for that scene, and the fact that everyone apparently found it really funny was horrifically misjudged (and it put me in mind of Sherlock again, this time “The Empty Hearse” and the scene in the train).
• Keeping up the Sherlock similarities, the scenes with Missy in the Vault are far too similar to Eurus in “The Final Problem” (and that’s one piece of television I was hoping to never be reminded of again). The little ‘Sherlock scan’ moment in “A Christmas Carol” was a fun meta-reference, but it feels like the two shows have altogether too much crossover these days.
• The actual effects of the Monks inserting themselves into history retroactively all feels a bit undercooked. I believe there was planned to be more of this – Doctor Who Magazine’s preview of the episode indicates there was originally to be a scene on the set of Casualty which presumably got cut at a late stage – but as it is, it feels a bit like the episode passes up a great opportunity to be more distinctive and creative.
• This isn’t a flaw with the episode per se – but this trilogy didn’t need to exist. This episode would have worked more or less as it does without the preceding two episodes. I really miss RTD’s series structure of having three two-parters per series. It’s always good to shake things up (which RTD did a few times), but at the same time the format the show used for the first five series of its revived run was so perfect (and the deviations, such as Series 7’s ‘movie of the week’ format, so flawed) that I wish they’d try it again.

So, yeah, unfortunately the ‘do not like’ section ended up a bit longer than I’d hoped there. But I feel that’s pretty representative of my thoughts on Series 10 so far – all the basics are generally there, and they’re done well, but each week there’s a few problems that get in the way of things.