Steven Moffat has been at the helm of Doctor Who since Matt Smith first donned his bow tie. I’ve enjoyed Moffat’s time with the Doctor, but his mythology episodes always leave more questions than they answer.
“Extremis” seems to have fallen into the same trap as a lot of Moffat’s other episodes. I have watched every episode of New Who and I’m still fairly confused about what happened with Eleven, River and Amy. In Moffat’s defense, I haven’t yet watched “The Husbands of River Song,” but one Christmas special wouldn’t explain “Extremis” to me.
Perhaps I’m not that smart or maybe all of my questions will be answered in the next episode. It’s not that I didn’t enjoy “Extremis;” it was entertaining and super creepy. Sometimes I just wish Moffat would draw a straighter line for a simple nerd like me to follow.
Here are some thoughts I had while watching “Extremis.”
Admission
The Doctor doesn’t want to tell Bill that he’s blind. Nardole said that it’s because admitting something makes it a reality. How often have we felt like that? There have been plenty of situations in which I didn’t want to admit the truth; admitting the truth makes it real. I don’t like to talk about my sister moving to Boston because that makes it even more real than it already is. Unfortunately, though, we can’t address the issues and hurt in our lives if we’re not willing to address them. We can’t be like the Doctor who wanted to remain blinded to his blindness.
Confusing Religion
While walking through a forbidden library in the Vatican, one of the Cardinals says that the layout is designed to confuse to uninitiated. The Doctor says that the same could be said of religion. That little exchange made me laugh. Having gone to seminary, I know that there are a lot of perplexing parts to the Christian faith. I’ve been following Christ pretty much my entire life and I still don’t understand the entire mystery, nor would I want to. As much depth and mystery as there is to the Christianity, though, it only takes a childlike faith to first embrace it. The childlike faith needs to mature as we get older, but we should never lose the wonder and simplicity of just following where Jesus leads.
“Extremis” was a good episode of Doctor Who, but I hope that everything gets answered in the next episode or at least by the end of this series. I don’t want to look back on Twelve with some of the same unanswered questions that I have with Eleven.
What did you think of “Extremis?”
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