‘Meh’; in my youth it was the noise the ‘cool kids’ used to make whenever they thought something was just average, ok, not terrible but not great. It was also the noise I made (although I was never a cool kid) after watching ‘The Lie of the Land’.
Not that there was anything particularly wrong with this weeks episode it just didn’t live up to the build up. Series ten overall has so far been excellent and, for the first two episodes, the ‘Monks Trilogy’ had been living up to that standard; ‘Extremis’ was one of the best episodes of the series and, whilst not quite as good, ‘The Pyramid at the End of the World’ was a great second chapter. ‘The Lie of the Land’ just didn’t have a stand out moment.
The dystopian reality created by the monks had a familiarity. There was definitely a slight influence from the 2006 film ’Children of Men’. It also seemed to take an influence from ‘Doctor Who’s’ more recent past. There was than a hint of the world created by the ‘Master’ in the series three episodes ‘The Sound of Drums’ and ‘Last of the Time Lords’. Even elements of the plot seemed too had been ported across.
There were of course positives. There was some funny dialogue, especial a short skit about one of the ‘Doctor’s’ soldiers forgetting to change from live ammunition to blanks. The scenes between Pearl Mackie’s ‘Bill’ and her mum were touching again showing what a great actress she is. There was also a nice reference to 2006 episode ‘The Idiot’s Lantern’ when we caught a brief glimpse of ‘Magpie Electrical’.
So not terrible, but again ‘meh’. If this is to be this season’s bad episode then it will have been one hell of series.
Marks out of 10: 7
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