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I thought this episode was so-so. I enjoyed the monster movie angle of it, the mysterious creature from another dimension that’s out there in the wilderness killing anyone it finds, and I liked the ancient setting of Romans vs. Picts. There’s a fun part where the Doctor says he once lived as a Roman, which is a nice callback to the 1965 First Doctor serial “The Romans,” in which the Doctor hangs out in Nero’s court after being mistaken for a famous lyre player. But that’s about it. The stuff with the talking crows was garbage, and a lot of the emotions in “The Eaters of Light” felt forced and unearned, especially at the end. Bringing together two warring sides to fight for their mutual survival is a theme that was just explored in the previous episode, “Empress of Mars,” and as a result I found it lacked the appropriate weight here. There’s some more interesting interplay between Missy and the Doctor at the end of the episode, but that plot is starting to feel like wheel-spinning, like it’s not really going anywhere.

Luckily, the two-part season finale is up next, so it will definitely be going somewhere (I hope). The much-teased return of John Simm as the Master’s previous incarnation looks like it’s about to happen, and I’m psyched to see where it goes. (I was a big fan of Simm as the Master back in the Doctor Who revival’s third season, plus I thought he was great in Life on Mars.) The return of the Mondasian Cybermen has me equally intrigued, although less excited because I always thought they looked silly with those socks over their heads. Also, since Steven Moffat is writing these final episodes, I half expect some timey-wimey nonsense where the Twelfth Doctor’s encounter with the Mondasians now inspires them to invade earth, where he initially encounters them as the First Doctor in the 1966 serial “The Tenth Planet.”

We’ll see. Onward to the finale!

***SPOILERS AHEAD***

I don’t have much to say about “Empress of Mars,” except that I liked it a lot more than I thought I would. Not only is it a nice recovery from the dead weight of the Monk invasion trilogy, it has a real classic-Doctor Who feel to it. There were many episodes during the classic run that either lampooned or commented on British colonialism, although usually metaphorically in the distant future. (The 1982 Fifth Doctor serial “Kinda” is a great example of this, where the exploitative human expedition on the jungle planet of Deva Loka is very much an analog for the British in India.) Here we have actual Victorian British soldiers on Mars, which is quite a sight.

I’ll admit I rolled my eyes somewhat when “God Save the Queen” is found written on the surface of Mars at the start of the episode — that’s so painfully new-Who — but they gave it an explanation in the end that worked. Or at least an explanation I was willing to buy! I also liked the pacifist message of cooperation instead of war, which is something Doctor Who used to do a lot more often than it does these days.

But one of the things I found most enjoyable about “Empress of Mars” was the sheer amount of Doctor Who neepery on display! The image of the Ice Warriors standing in their hibernation tombs was very reminiscent of the Cybermen doing the same in 1967 Second Doctor serial “Tomb of the Cybermen.” The Doctor tells the Ice Warrior nicknamed Friday that he’s an honorary guardian of Tythonian Hive. What’s strange about this is that the only Tythonian from the classic series isn’t an Ice Warrior, but rather the glowing green blob in the widely reviled 1979 Fourth Doctor serial “The Creature from the Pit”! I appreciated that the helmet design of the Ice Queen is reminiscent of the helmets of the Ice Lords, Ice Warriors of advanced rank in the classic series. But the episode definitely saves the best for last, with the surprise cameo by Alpha Centauri, a ridiculously phallic one-eyed creature (pictured below) last seen — in the company of the Ice Warriors! — in the Third Doctor serials “The Curse of Peladon” (1972) and “The Monster of Peladon” (1974). I read that the actress who originally voiced Alpha Centauri in the 1970s, Ysanne Churchman, did the voice again for “Empress of Mars” — at the age of 92! Remarkable!

Next week, an episode written by Rona Munro, who previously wrote “Survival,” the last serial of the Seventh Doctor in 1989, and the very last serial ever of classic series!

I’m sorry to say it, but “The Lie of the Land” is the worst episode of Doctor Who in quite some time. This whole three-episode arc involving the Monks has been a real nadir for the 10th season, which started off so promisingly, and this final episode in the trilogy is the worst of them. Everything I thought was interesting about the Monks is left unaddressed. They’re shape-shifters, so what does their natural form look like? We don’t get to see. Their ship is camouflaged as a pyramid, so what does it actually look like? We don’t get to see. Why do the Monks require someone’s consent to invade a planet, given their enormous power and ability to control minds? We get a hand-wavy explanation about needing the brain waves of the one who gives the consent in order to broadcast their mind control to the populace, despite the fact that the one who gave the consent this time, Bill, seems to be the only one who can resist the mind control, even though it’s her brain that’s transmitting it…oh, never mind. It doesn’t make a lick of sense.

Honestly, though, very little in “The Lie of the Land” makes any sense. The Doctor and Bill enter the vault to talk to Missy, whereupon we discover the vault, which we saw rise out of the water on the executioners’ planet as a complete metal cube, is apparently dimensionally transcendent like a TARDIS, with the inside looking like, well, an unused wing of the university, with a piano at the center surrounded by a protective force field. How the vault is dimensionally transcendent is left unexplained, maybe it’s Gallifreyan technology, although I had assumed it belonged to the executioners, not the Time Lords. Anyway, Missy tells the Doctor how to defeat the Monks because she’s met them before on her own adventures, but the Doctor doesn’t take her advice because it would result in Bill going brain dead. So Bill defeats the Monks in a different way, one that doesn’t make any sense involving memories of her departed mother, but her sacrifice works, except she’s fine afterward, not brain dead at all. The script doesn’t even bother handwaving that one away. There’s no explanation given.

Not that it mattered to me, because I’d already checked out of the episode long before then, following an absolutely ridiculous scene where Bill and Nardole rescue the Doctor from his shipboard prison. As tests go, the one the Doctor puts Bill through makes no sense — even he can barely explain it afterward — and the fake regeneration scene was so mind-bogglingly stupid that my interest just shut off instantly. So I guess the news is that the Doctor can fake a regeneration now? Glad it came in handy, I guess, but what was the point of it? For whose benefit was it faked? Not for Bill’s — she doesn’t know what regeneration is or even looks like. Not for the Monks — it’s clear they’re not watching the Doctor, since he immediately reveals his plan right after. Why does it happen at all?

The scenes with Missy and the scenes with Nardole were the only signs of life in this clunker. I’m interested in Missy’s path toward “becoming good,” which I’m pretty sure won’t stick, and Nardole continues to be amusing when he’s not being an unnecessary killjoy. Speaking of Missy, even though her scenes were enjoyable, she’s really a wasted opportunity. Imagine how much better this episode would have been if they’d let her out of her prison to fight the Monks herself. Instead, we’re subjected to Bill’s memory of her mother “going viral” and forty-four other minutes of risible nonsense.

***SOME SPOILERS BELOW***

I don’t have a lot to say about this episode. I didn’t think it was great, but it wasn’t bad, either. It’s clear the invasion of the Monks is meant to be this season’s centerpiece, but two episodes into the three-episode arc it’s actually interesting me the least of any of the stories so far. I’m still having trouble with the idea that the Monks can simulate all of Earth’s history, from the very beginning, including every single person on the planet and all their memories, with their technology. It just doesn’t make sense. You would have to know a great deal about the planet to create that simulation, and if you already know that much about the planet you wouldn’t need the simulation. Additionally, I suspect there would have been — or would be in the projected future — plenty of other times when the Earth was vulnerable besides this weird lab accident involving genetically modified bacteria that, thanks to a stray decimal point in an equation, is somehow turned into an airborne threat to all life on Earth. It’s all a bit hard to swallow. The invaders’ insistence on being invited to rule the Earth out of love, with consent specifically not given out of fear or strategy, also strikes me as needlessly convoluted. I get that the episode’s co-writers Peter Harness and Steven Moffat didn’t want a run-of-the-mill alien invasion with the villains simply stating that they’re taking over, but as I said it’s all a bit hard to swallow.

The Monks themselves, however, are kind of fascinating. It’s revealed in “The Pyramid at the End of the World” that what we’re seeing isn’t their true form, that they took it to simulate humans. The reason they look like corpses is because, to them, that’s what humans are, short-lived and doomed. The pyramid itself is also an illusion, a specific Earth icon purposely chosen for its recognizability. There’s an implication that the Monks are somehow outside of the normal flow of time, able to accurately simulate and observe both the past and future with their technology. They have an empathic or even possibly telepathic ability, which lets them understand people’s motivations, as well as the ability to disintegrate people with a touch. I’m hoping the third and presumably final episode of this arc next week will answer some of my lingering questions about the Monks, such as why this so-called pure form of consent is so important to them and why they seem so out of phase with time around them. I mean, even their mouths don’t move right when they speak!

I didn’t know where they were going with the Doctor’s continuing blindness, but I wasn’t expecting it to be a plot point that eventually leads to the Monk’s invasion going forward. When Bill makes a deal with the Monks to restore the Doctor’s eyesight, and thus save his life as he tries to escape the soon-to-explode bacteria lab, in exchange for the planet, I realized this had been the writers’ plan since two episodes before. It pays off very well and very organically.

Next episode, it looks like our heroes enlist the help of Missy to kick the Monks off of Earth. That won’t go well for the Monks, although I imagine it won’t go well for anyone else, either.