Doctor Who 10: 7 Big Questions About The Pyramid At The End Of The World
From lost plot points to real-world parallels.
After the head scratching, reality bending Extremis, Doctor Who
returned to the old-school approach of series 10. There were plenty of shout-outs
to some of the show’s most fondly remembered serials, from The Daleks to The
Pyramids of Mars, and at first glance, the monks are in the classic villain mould.
They certainly rank high on the how long can we extend the vowels in “Doctooooor”
front.
But in other ways the episode is quite unlike anything we’ve ever seen. By the end, the aliens appear to have won, but the Earth’s subjugation isn’t brought about by their direct intervention. At first, through deliberate allusions to Harness’s Zygon two-parter, we are misdirected into thinking that our propensity to fight each other is what will bring us to our knees. But somewhat ironically given the number of continuity mistakes in this episode, it is human error that proves to be our downfall.
It’s not just the military and the scientists who mess up. Nobody comes out of this one looking good. Nardole fails to realise that the TARDIS will be contaminated, the Doctor gets himself trapped because he refused to admit his blindness, and Bill makes the typical companion mistake of showing too much faith in the Doctor.
Exactly what has been unleashed after Bill’s act of consent will be answered in Whithouse’s The Lie of the Land, but there are plenty of other questions worth considering in the meantime.
7. Why Is The Monks' Base Disguised As A Pyramid?
The simplest explanation is that the writers decided, 'why
not?’ The pyramid is such a stunning and iconic image, and the word looks great in the
title. The Warehouse At The End Of The World doesn’t quite have the same ring
to it. But even a show as fantastical as Doctor Who has to ensure that there is
a degree of logic and believability to its creative decisions, and so the ‘why
not?’ defence is hopelessly inadequate.
Speculation is mounting that the anachronistic landmark is far too reminiscent of a TARDIS with a faulty chameleon circuit to be coincidental. The Rani once disguised hers as a pink pyramid and in Logopolis the Doctor showed Adric how his TARDIS could take such a form. So could the monks' pyramid be a TARDIS, and if so whose?
It all hinges on the identity of the monks. There is nothing inside the pyramid to tell us what kind of ship it is, or even if it is a ship at all. There are plenty of clues that could have been added if this was a line of speculation that the writers wanted us to go down – such as a hint that the space is dimensionally transcendental, or a musical cue.
Even in the unlikely event that the pyramid is a TARDIS, the choice of form is unlikely to be random. Like the Doctor’s Police Box it has symbolic significance. Popular wisdom says that the pyramids are a gateway to the afterlife, but the ancient Egyptians also believed that the shape represented the primordial mound from which the Earth was formed. Could this be a statement of intent - the heralding of a new world order, under new management?