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Extremis is a 2017 sci-fi thriller episode of Doctor Who, where the Doctor and his companions face a deadly simulation of Earth by an alien demon. The episode features the return of Missy, the Vatican, and the Vault, and explores the themes of reality, simulation, and suicide.
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May 20, 2017 · Extremis: Directed by Daniel Nettheim. With Peter Capaldi, Pearl Mackie, Matt Lucas, Michelle Gomez. The Doctor is called by the Vatican to solve the mystery of a text called the Veritas, that when someone reads it dies soon after.
- (5.3K)
- Adventure, Drama, Sci-Fi
- Daniel Nettheim
- 2017-05-20
- Overview
- Synopsis
- Plot
- Cast
- Worldbuilding
- Story notes
- Continuity
- Home video releases
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was the sixth episode of series 10 of Doctor Who.
Most notably, the episode revealed that Missy was inside the vault beneath St Luke's University and explained how Nardole came to travel with the Doctor after the events of The Husbands of River Song.
The episode is also notably one of the few stories to exclude the Doctor from events occurring in the story. Bill, Nardole and the Doctor himself never left Earth during the story. Aside from a few selective scenes, the whole episode was set in a virtual simulation with artificial versions of the Doctor, Bill and Nardole, with the Virtual Twelfth Doctor discovering an upcoming alien invasion, beginning a three-part story trilogy involving the creatures responsible for the virtual simulation, the Monks. The Doctor is actually watching the entire adventure, as the events were recorded by his copy and sent to his sonic sunglasses.
Although the real Doctor makes a limited appearance here, Extremis is not exactly Doctor-lite as the Virtual Doctor appears in much of it.
The Vatican asks the Twelfth Doctor to investigate a mysterious book called the Veritas. All who read the Veritas immediately kill themselves. When a translation of the Veritas is leaked online, the Doctor must face up to the inevitable truth...
On a distant planet, an executioner named Rafando shows the Twelfth Doctor a mechanism specially designed for killing Time Lords. He then tells him that after the execution, the body will be placed in a Quantum Fold Chamber in case of "relapses". Missy is then brought in, and is ordered to kneel on a dais.
In the present day, sitting outside the Vault, the Doctor talks to Missy, who is inside, saying that no one can know that he's blind.
Back on the planet, while the Vault rises from the lake, Rafando announces that the chamber is prepared. Missy begs the Doctor to let her live, while he places his hand on a lever.
In the present, the Doctor is using his sonic sunglasses to mask his blindness, having modified them to give him a layout of the immediate area in a black and green grid-like view. While still outside the Vault, he gets an email titled Extremis on the glasses. Intrigued, he opens it.
In the lecture hall, 15 men file in through the back door. Angelo greets the Doctor as Nardole enters. The Doctor is told that the Pope has requested a personal audience with him. When the Doctor asks why he did not come there himself, Nardole tells him that he is there.
In his office, the Doctor is shown a piece of parchment that reads, Veritas, which literally means The Truth. Angelo tells him that an ancient Christian sect translated it, but committed suicide afterwards. A few months ago it was again translated, but again, those who did killed themselves after the translation. All of the bodies had been recovered, except one.
•The Doctor - Peter Capaldi
•Bill - Pearl Mackie
•Nardole - Matt Lucas
•Missy - Michelle Gomez
•Moira - Jennifer Hennessy
•Cardinal Angelo - Corrado Invernizzi
Time Lords
•In addition to two hearts, Time Lords have three brain stems. •One stipulation of the Fatality Index is that a death sentence of a Time Lord must be carried out by another Time Lord. That Time Lord must also swear an oath to guard the condemned's body for 1000 years in case of relapses. •The Doctor worries that, because he managed to temporarily "borrow" eyesight from his future self, his future regenerations might all be blind, or he might not regenerate at all. However, since it is later revealed that it is a simulation, it has no effect on the real world.
Individuals
•Pope Benedict IX made a personal recommendation for the Doctor in 1045. He remembers Pope Benedict, and recalls that "she was trouble, but she wove a spell with her castanets". •The Pope pays the Doctor a visit in the lecture hall. •Cardinal Angelo acts as translator for the Pope. •The Pope is also known as the Bishop of Rome. •The virtual Doctor says that the Pope doesn't "zoom around in the Popemobile, surprising people". •An Italian newspaper shows a minor story known as "Colossal-Lotto" about a lottery winner by the name Harrison O'Shea in Milan written by Paolo Ferrera. •Virtual Bill brings Penny home on a date. Penny runs away after seeing the Pope in Bill's bedroom. •Virtual Bill thought that virtual Moira would be out with "Harry" tonight, although she is corrected in that he is actually named Howard. •The last emails sent before Piero kills himself were, chronologically, to Abramo Tognaccini (We have been tricked by the devil – in French), Daryn Mcloughlan (Pray for your family), Phil Bond (Pray for us all tonight), Franco Esposito (The world is not what we think – in French), Christina Tom (Farewell), Kevein Paters (Chapel Day), Albertina Ricci (Pray for us all – in French), Bill Pullman (Thursdays meeting), Peter Dukes (The devil's work has been done), Nicia Russo (We have been tricked), Michael Finch (Missed meeting), Stefan Anchorage (Farwell on this earth – in French), and, finally, four hours before death, to CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research, VERITAS, containing the translated text. •The President is lying dead in the Oval Office. News reports say he hasn't been seen for 12 hours.
Technology
•A machine has been arranged to execute Missy. •The Doctor gets an email on his sonic sunglasses, which the virtual Doctor has sent from the Shadow World simulation. •The Doctor uses his sonic sunglasses to scan people's data, as he cannot see them. Data the Doctor can detect are gender (including male and female), age (in years), height (in centimetres), weight (in pounds), heart rate (in BPM) and temperature (in degrees Celsius). •He can also get a sense of the architecture around him, again using the sonic sunglasses as visual aid. However, the glasses psychically "project" a vector map of the surroundings and do not actually show him what his eyes would see if they worked. •The Doctor employs a reading aid with circular Gallifreyan script on it, which he hopes will temporarily restore his sight. He confirms that it's deadly. •Bill notes that the Haereticum has WiFi, and the Doctor says of course it does, as it's a library. •According to a plaque at CERN, its Large Hadron Collider, which was first tested on 10 September 2008, is the world's largest and most powerful particle accelerator. It has a diameter of 27 kilometres, and, to work, requires the magnets to be cooled at -271.3 °C, a temperature colder than outer space. To achieve this, much of the accelerator is connected to a distribution system of liquid helium, to cool the magnets, as well as to other supply services. •Piero has a laptop computer. He emails the translation to CERN. •The CERN employees all have TNT explosives wired under the canteen tables. •The countdown to destruction at CERN happens on a flatscreen TV. •A flat screen is seen in the White House, as well.
•The list of names seen as recipients of emails sent by the translator before committing suicide include a number of individuals with real-life connections with the Doctor Who franchise, including Bill Pullman, who played Oswald Danes in the Torchwood Miracle Day arc - which also dealt with a scenario that changed the status quo of the entire world.
•The typeface/font used for the display in the sonic sunglasses in this episode is the Android Insomnia font.
•Rafando mentions the tendencies of Time Lords to have relapses of life after death. After dying on the operating table, the Seventh Doctor was still able to regenerate hours later. (TV: Doctor Who)
•Virtual Bill mentions how her attempts to change home didn't work out. (TV: Knock Knock)
•Missy mentions "domestic bliss on Darillium", (TV: The Husbands of River Song) as "the word among the Daleks". (TV: The Witch's Familiar) Missy asks what happened, but is met with silence, and gives condolences for his loss. (TV: Forest of the Dead)
•The Doctor still experiences blindness. He lost his sight saving Bill's life in the vacuum of space. (TV: Oxygen)
•The Haereticum is a library of heretical and forbidden works maintained by the Vatican. Since his first incarnation, the Doctor has also been a patron of the Library of St John the Beheaded, a similar collection also established by the Vatican, which was hidden in London. (PROSE: All-Consuming Fire, White Darkness, Millennial Rites, The Empire of Glass, Dragons' Wrath)
•Virtual Moira goes to the pub. (TV: The Pilot)
DVD & Blu-ray releases
•This episode was included in the Series 10, Part One DVD and Blu-ray boxsets in region 1/A on 6 June 2017, in region 2/B on 29 May 2017 and in region 4/B on 31 May 2017. •This episode was also released as part of the Complete Tenth Series DVD and Blu-ray boxsets in region 1/A on 7 November 2017, in region 2/B on 13 November 2017 and in region 4/B on 29 November 2017.
Digital releases
•In the United Kingdom, this story is available on BBC iPlayer.
Extremis is the sixth episode of series 10 of Doctor Who, featuring the Twelfth Doctor, Nardole and Bill. It involves a mysterious book that kills anyone who reads it, a virtual simulation of Earth and an alien invasion by the Monks.
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Extremis was the subject of an email that the virtual construct of the Twelfth Doctor sent to himself in the real world from a simulated world created by the Monks. Within a simulated world created by aliens called the Monks, there existed virtual constructs of most people on Earth, including...
The Doctor saves Missy from her own execution and places her in the vault.
- 2 min
- 1.1M
- Doctor Who
May 20, 2017 · The Doctor, Bill, and Nardole face a deadly alien simulation and a forbidden text that drives people to suicide. Read the recap of the season 10 episode 6, written by Steven Moffat.
May 20, 2017 · Well, Steven Moffat’s “Extremis” -- the first installment of a three-parter -- not only raises that very question, it actually tricks the viewer into experiencing the sensation in a way as...
