Doctor Who Series 10: 7 Big Questions We're Asking After 'The Lie Of The Land'
3. Shouldn't Bill Have Died?
It was inevitable that the Doctor would fail in his bid to
save Bill from sacrificing herself for the Earth. The Twelfth Doctor has been
characterised as arrogant and over-confident, more so in this series than any
other. He reaches the height of that hubris when he thinks he can not only
break the mind control of the Monks, but can also reset human memory in such a
way as to eradicate racism.
Missy warned him that his concept of goodness was flawed because of his arrogance and sentimentality and her words seem prophetic as he fails spectacularly. Inevitably it is left to Bill to be the hero of the hour. But with the Doctor failing, is it plausible that Bill’s brain isn’t fried when she’s connected to the Monks transmission?
Come to think of it, how realistic is it that she even got that far? Why didn’t the Monk recognise her when she boarded the prison ship with Nardole?
Even if you discount Clara Oswald because of her stay of execution (despite the fact that she is risen without a pulse or a heartbeat), Doctor Who has not been averse to killing off sympathetic characters: just ask Matthew Waterhouse (Adric) or Jean Marsh (Sarah Kingdom), or consider in recent years nearly companions Lynda with a Y (Journey’s End) and Rita (The God Complex).
The specially filmed trailer introducing series 10 hinted at a deadly fate for Bill Potts and with the news that Pearl Mackie is only signed up for this series, it is still possible that her adventures with the Doctor won’t end well. Perhaps she survives here, just as she did in Oxygen, because she has an even more salvific death to come in the finale.