YMMV / Doctor Who S36 E8 "The Lie of the Land"

• Alternate Character Interpretation: Bill using a mental image of the mother she never knew to cope with her plight is intended as touching, but actually making her tea, talking out loud to her, and basically Talking to Themself, comes off as less than mentally sound. Worse, she displayed similar behaviour in earlier episodes, so this behaviour can't all be attributable to the current crisis. Combine this with her deciding to use lethal force as her first defence against the Doctor in the prison ship standoff, and she appears downright unhinged. Worse, the Doctor is happy she got to that point as it serves as proof she wasn't under the Monks' control, so he and his allies formulated the plan under the assumption that it was something only the "real" Bill would do.
• Angst? What Angst?: While the Monks' conquest of Earth is wiped from humanity's memory save a few stragglers like the Doctor and Bill, no one seems to be wondering what happened to all the people they killed and imprisoned over the past few months.
  • In addition, the immediate aftermath of Bill being manipulated by the Doctor and Nardole into shooting the former after she's been suffering in near-silence for six months is Played for Laughs and instantly forgotten. As noted under Broken Base, this is a 180 from what happened when the Twelfth Doctor placed a lot of angst on a trusted companion's shoulders in "Kill the Moon". And since the finished episode is on the short side, an additional scene could have dealt with this more respectfully.
• Anti-Climax Boss: Despite having Reality Warper powers, proving to be able to deal with resistance well in the previous episode, and being able to see all of humanity's history and plan for any contingency, the Monks are oddly easy to defeat. It was still difficult, mind you, (several people die getting the Doctor in and the Doctor himself is unable to hijack the signal) but given their previous showing, more was expected.
• Broken Base:
  • Some wish that the episode should have stuck with Bill's A Day in the Limelight plot for the entire episode instead of only the first fifteen minutes, while others believe that if the episode did this, it would be a carbon copy of "Last of the Time Lords", and want that episode to remain unique.
    • Further complicating this debate is that this turned out to be the only storyline of Bill's only season in which she gets to accomplish a world-saving feat in the way that other Revival Era companions do — usually in Season Finales. This is because this season's finale had to wrap up the Twelfth Doctor's Myth Arc by placing him at the centre of the heroics and resolving his relationship with Missy; poor Bill ends up being deprived of her agency upon being shot in "World Enough and Time". Due to spending most of "The Doctor Falls" as a potentially deadly Cyberman, her agency and the resultant decisions available to her end up very limited until the denouement. In a sense, Bill's Character Development ends with the Monks Trilogy thanks to the need to move on to resolving Twelve and Missy's story in the remaining four episodes of Series 10, and some fans wanted more for her.
  • Hohoho-boy, a large chunk of the fanbase started lobbing grenades when the Doctor's trailer sequence regeneration turned out to be cheap theatrics. Meanwhile, veteran fans were wise enough to anticipate a trick and laughed it off pretty well — though they still criticized how it required all the regulars to act way out of character both in the heat of the phony crisis and afterwards. In particular, Bill and the Doctor's friendship isn't affected at all by his manipulative Secret Test of Character when two seasons earlier, Clara Oswald told off and abandoned him for months -- even though she'd known him far longer than Bill at that respective point and knew he was having a crisis of identity -- simply because he chose not to interfere with humanity's fate in the moon crisis and had faith in her ability to solve the problem herself.
• Cliché Storm: As the list of Continuity Nods on the recap page attests to, the script recycles many, if not most, of its major plot beats and concepts from previous NewWho episodes, in particular "Last of the Time Lords", "The Wedding of River Song", and "The Rings of Akhaten".
• Designated Hero: The Doctor and Bill Potts don't come off too well in this episode thanks to faulty writing. While each — especially Bill — deserves credit for willingness to make a Heroic Sacrifice to send the Monks packing, a lot of people suffer for their earlier choices.
  • The Doctor's choice to fake a Face–Heel Turn and work deep undercover to undermine the Monks was probably the best one he could have made under the circumstances, but this means he helped send a lot of people to imprisonment, forced labour, and/or death for six months. The only assumption the viewer can make based on on-screen evidence is that he thought their lives were an acceptable sacrifice (contrary to how he usually regards all lives as equally precious), yet he objects to the prospect of Bill being killed or brain-damaged to stop the Monks for good and save humanity when Missy brings it up. Missy, oddly, doesn't call the Doctor out on this in her What the Hell, Hero? speech, not bringing up the lives already lost, although she implies he's showing favouritism to Bill ("I'm sorry your Plus One doesn't get a happy ending."). (It may be significant that Toby Whithouse previously wrote the Fisher King two-parter, the other story in which Twelve is this trope — for letting O'Donnell die and telling Bennett that cannot be changed, yet trying to defy the fates when it looks like Clara is to be the King's next victim. In both stories, the Doctor makes an exception to acceptable losses when it's his companion on the line.) His psychologically traumatic testing of Bill is also unusually cruel. Then again...
  • Bill consented to the Monks conquering Earth in the Cliffhanger of the previous episode to save the Doctor's life against his wishes, so their reign is her fault to begin with — as she admits and the Doctor points out in his test! Again, it might have been the best choice for her to make (had the Doctor died, the Monks would likely have found another potential disaster to exploit to force humanity's hand, this time without having to worry about his interference), but it causes a lot of needless suffering for others. And her choice to instantly resort to lethal force against the same man she sold out Earth to save, not even considering other options to stave off "capture", isn't exactly noble.
• Fanfic Fuel: Just one line from Missy: "I've had adventures too!"
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • The Unsmile of the Twelfth Doctor turned up in the Series 10 trailers and fans loved it, posting screenshots on Tumblr and gushing over how adorable it was. The Radio Times theorized it would come from the scene where his eyesight was restored at last. Turns out he's already able to see again... and he's smiling because he's a spokesman for the Monks. It returns to its original form when it turns out he was just undercover.
  • The entire fake regeneration scene that is Played for Laughs, with him shrugging it off and cracking jokes as he reveals his Secret Test of Character to Bill. Three episodes later, a Flash Forward as the opening scene shows the Doctor seemingly regenerating for real, with him screaming a Big "NO!" as it happens.
• Like You Would Really Do It:
  • The idea that the Doctor is Not Brainwashed and has sincerely joined the Monks is teased, but since him making a straight-up Face–Heel Turn would completely upend the character and series (even if he returned to the goodies at the end, the fallout of his actions would have to be addressed in later episodes) in the end he can only be either Brainwashed and Crazy or Pretend to Be Brainwashed. Turns out to be the latter.
  • The Next Time trailer ends with Bill shooting the Twelfth Doctor in the chest several times, but this is also the story with the "regeneration" teased in the Series 10 trailers, and by that point promo materials had already confirmed he would make it to the Season Finale as Twelve, not Thirteen. He's going to come out of all this somehow — after all, the BBC isn't going to leave one of its biggest internationally-known shows without a protagonist. While Bill really does shoot him, it turns out the gun was loaded with blanks.
  • Bill Potts is told she has to die to save the day and she goes into the climax willing to do so, but ultimately doesn't have to. Once again, a Doctor Who companion faces death without dying. And come season's end she does it again!
  • Upon its initial airing, few viewers believed that Missy/The Master was actually capable of the Heel–Face Turn this episode suggested she was attempting to make, if only because s/he's the franchise's most popular standalone villain and has personality that the Daleks and Cybermen do not. As it turned out, she was capable but her previous self wouldn't have it and killed her. This, combined with the Master's Joker Immunity, resulted in most people being unsurprised by the next incarnation being evil again when debuting less than two years later.
• Strawman Has a Point: Although he's faking his Face–Heel Turn, the Doctor's Motive Rant to Bill makes legitimate points about how History Repeats, humanity isn't good at using its free will, and The Needs of the Many outweigh those of the few — and as Elizabeth Sandifer's review of the episode notes, she doesn't attempt any real counterargument as to why those things shouldn't be a reason to take the side of the Monks and institute a Police State on the planet.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: Perhaps the core of this episode's poor reception. All the promotional material promised an episode where Bill would face a Sadistic Choice dealing against a Brainwashed and Crazy Doctor in a Villain World controlled by an all-powerful enemy, complete with a regeneration. After the first 15 minutes or so, Mood Whiplash strikes and the plot abruptly becomes a Cliché Storm about The Power of Love and Third Act Stupidity. Suffice it to say after two episodes of buildup, making this the only three-parter of the revival that is not also a Season Finale, this was regarded as a massive cop out by many professional critics and casual fans, many accusing the creators of being too wimpy to examine/address such ideas as what it would take to brainwash the Doctor into a Face–Heel Turn and whether the Strawman Has a Point (especially when the Dystopia doesn't seem too bad going by what the audience sees). In addition, the promotions teased that Missy had a more active, bigger role in the story than she did, which also could have been extremely interesting.
  • The Doctor and Nardole both manipulate Bill badly, knowing she's in a fragile state, and laugh it off even as she's upset with both of them once the truth is revealed. Sweet as the denouement scene with the Doctor and Bill discussing what makes humans special/annoying is, shouldn't they be discussing trust issues, especially given the choices each made in "Pyramid at the End of the World" and the impact they had not only on each other but the human race?
• Took the Bad Film Seriously: Whatever else is said about this episode, virtually everyone agrees that the acting from Peter Capaldi and Pearl Mackie is staggering throughout, reaching its apex with the chilling standoff aboard the prison ship. Michelle Gomez and Matt Lucas are also in excellent form in their smaller roles.
• Villain Decay: The Monks go through this big time in this episode, having suddenly lost their Reality Warper powers in favour of Silence-style electricity blasts, a weakness to bullets, and a decision to immediately surrender and flee the second humanity turns against them. They almost feel like completely different monsters from those of "Extremis" and "The Pyramid at the End of the World".

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