The Doctor discovers that “words can never hurt me” doesn’t apply in every case…

Steven Moffat’s mid-season story is something of a change of pace from the linear tales that we’ve had over the past few weeks, but as this is clearly part of an ongoing tale, that’s to be expected. He promised that the vault’s contents would be revealed, and they are, very early on in the episode as part of a flashback that also explains some other elements of the season.

With the Doctor still blind after the events of Oxygen, Capaldi has some very different acting to do and the script plays up to this. It also means that Matt Lucas’ Nardole has far more to do this episode – watch out for some great scenes between him and Pearl Mackie’s Bill, who is also given some good material by her creator. There’s plenty of trademark Moffat humour, particularly given the involvement of the Pope, and some real darkness.

Now that the relationships between the core characters have been clearly established, Moffat uses this episode as a pivot point for the season, and while I hope we don’t lose the clarity of storytelling that the opening stories have shown, it will be very interesting to see where he takes the show next.

Verdict: Rather like Series 1’s The Long Game, I suspect this episode will be reassessed considerably once the season has played out, but as it stands, it’s a rather different episode from the rest of series 10 to date. 7/10

Paul Simpson