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***WARNING: MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD!***

“Extremis” is one of those episodes where the more I think about it, the more it collapses under the weight of its own logic holes. There’s plenty love in “Extremis”: the hilarious scene where the Pope interrupts Bill’s date, the secret Vatican library of heretical books, an ancient text called Veritas that causes anyone who translates it to commit suicide, and of course the mind-blowing revelation as to why they commit suicide: the text reveals to them that this world isn’t the real world. But it’s in that last, very cool bit where things fall apart.

If the world of the episode is actually a simulation run by aliens planning an invasion of Earth, I find myself with a lot of questions: If you’re planning an invasion, wouldn’t you focus your energies on simulating Earth’s defenses? Why waste your time replicating every single person on Earth as well as their complete, lifelong memories? How would the aliens, who know nothing of Earth, which is why they’re running the simulation, know what memories to program the replicants with? And how would they be able to accurately replicate a being as complicated as the Doctor, who shows up in different time periods with different faces, and somehow also include memories of his off-world adventures, which presumably they wouldn’t know anything about? If the Veritas text stands to destroy the integrity of their simulation, why allow it to exist in the simulation at all? Why not remove it after the very first translator kills himself? It’s clear the aliens are able to remove people from the simulation, so why not objects? Are they just not paying attention? And if the Doctor is a computer simulation along with the rest of this world, then surely his sonic shades* would be a simulation too and incapable of emailing the real Doctor in the real world. None this makes sense. As enjoyable as the story is, it’s rife with episode author and showrunner Steven Moffat’s classic style over substance approach. (The cartoonish sticks of dynamite hidden under the tables in the CERN cafeteria was particularly laughable.)

There’s a nod to Pope Benedict IX being a woman in disguise, which is cool, but of course the Doctor has to mention that he had a romantic relationship with her. It’s not enough anymore for the Doctor to simply know famous women from history, he has to sleep with them, too. (I’m so ready for someone new to take this show in a new direction!)

We also learn that it’s Missy in the vault. Unfortunately, this comes as no surprise, although the manner in which she gets there does. We haven’t seen her since she was trapped on Skaro with the Daleks in last season’s “The Witch’s Familiar,” and it’s intriguing to wonder what happened between then and now. She mentions the Daleks were abuzz with news of the Doctor’s retirement — which makes me wonder why they didn’t try to take over the universe again while the Doctor was out of commission — so it sounds like she and the Daleks came to an understanding. But now she’s being executed either for a new crime or her many crimes, and her body is supposed to go in the vault. The Doctor fast-talks his way around the execution part but he does have to keep her in the vault and guard it for 1,000 years. So far so good. But then the vault rises up out of the water on the executioners’ planet for the Doctor to put her in, and I start having questions again: Why does the Doctor bring the vault to Earth afterward? Why bring it to a university where he’s forced to take on the role of teacher in order to explain his presence there? Why doesn’t he go somewhere remote in case Missy breaks out so she won’t endanger an entire university of young students, let alone an entire planet of human beings? I’m hoping for an explanation down the road, but I’m not holding my breath. Moffat tends to leave plot threads dangling. (Whatever happened to Madame Kovarian in season 6? Why was the Doctor going around erasing himself from memory banks in season 7? Etc., etc., forever.) Of course, all of this could have been explained away if the executioner had simply asked if the Doctor had a place for her body and he said yes, he knows of a place and it’s all prepared. It’s the moving of the vault to Earth, as opposed to the vault already being on Earth, that raises all these questions for me.

Continuing the Doctor’s blindness is a bold move. I don’t know where they’re going with it, but I respect it. His sonic screwdriver is back, although that may have only been in the simulation. Nardole is great in this episode because he isn’t being a nag; he has a chance to be funny and do important things. Logic holes and my obviously mounting frustration with Moffat aside, “Extremis” is an enjoyable episode and I’m eager to see how things develop over the second half of the season.

And now for some Doctor Who neepery! If Missy and the Daleks did come to some kind of understanding, it wouldn’t be the first time they’ve worked together. In the 1973 Third Doctor serial “Frontier in Space,” the Master and the Daleks become allies in order to start a war between the universe’s two most powerful empires, Earth and Draconia, hoping they will destroy each other and allow the Daleks to become the rulers of the universe with the Master getting part of it for himself. The plan fails, of course, and that spells the end of the alliance. In fact, at the start of the 1996 TV movie, the Master is executed by the Daleks on Skaro! (Of course, he’s not really dead, but there’s no indication that the Daleks were in on the ruse.) Also in this episode the Doctor mentions that he is a Time Lord of the Prydonian Chapter. We first learn that there are several different Times Lord chapters, including Prydonian, Arcalian, and Patrexes, in the 1976 Fourth Doctor serial “The Deadly Assassin,” which is the first story to take place entirely on Gallifrey. And of course I have fond memories of the infamous Prydonians of Princeton, the Doctor Who fan club from the ivy league university that were always answering phones in the background during the Doctor Who pledge drives on WNJN, the public TV station out of New Jersey!

* Yes, the sonic shades are back. But at least they serve a purpose now that the Doctor is blind and relying, Daredevil-like, on their electronic input in order to “see,” unlike last season when the Doctor just thought they were cool. Ugh.

We’re approaching the halfway mark of Peter Capaldi’s final season in Doctor Who, and so far the season has been pretty strong. “Oxygen,” the fifth episode, is quite good, but it could have been great except for the fact that, like “Knock Knock” before it, it suffers from not having the courage of its convictions.

***SPOILERS AHEAD***

A hypercapitalist future where oxygen is sold to space workers instead of freely provided leads to a lot of great worldbuilding: space stations where there’s no oxygen except for what’s provided by the automated company space suits you’re forced to wear; distances measured not in meters but in how many expensive breaths would be used up on the journey; what human labor (and life) means to an emotionless bottom line when people can be replaced by automation. We’ve had episodes featuring the walking dead in space suits before, of course (the two-parter “Silence in the Library”/”Forest of the Dead” springs immediately to mind), but this is handled in an original enough way not to feel repetitive. There’s a lot of great character work going on in “Oxygen”: the discussion of prejudice with the blue-skinned alien, Bill asking what happens if you throw up inside a space helmet, Nardole getting to be a part of the action (although I’m still not liking what a nag they’ve made him), the Doctor and Nardole arguing the proper sound a space door should make, and of course the Doctor’s sacrifice to save Bill’s life in the vacuum of space. His blindness, presented as a temporary side-effect, is played in a very understated and organic fashion, at least until the end when it is revealed somewhat over-dramatically that the treatment hasn’t worked and he’s still blind, a fact he’s hiding from everyone but Nardole. It’s interesting stuff, and it will be interesting to see where it goes. Doctor Who has never tried something like this before.

We also get some more tantalizing clues as to who is in the vault. Thanks to Nardole’s dialogue at the end of the episode, we know that they will be able to sense and exploit the Doctor’s condition, and somehow they pose a threat to, as Nardole puts it, the Doctor’s “precious Earth.” I still think it’s the Master/Missy, but I’m more than willing to be surprised.

So it’s generally a good episode, but, in my opinion, “Oxygen” does something so egregious it’s hard to forgive. It kills Bill in the same manner that the rest of the station’s crew was killed, through the suit she’s forced to wear, but then, through some handwaving nonsense about her suit’s low battery power, brings her back again none the worse for wear. And of course the Doctor claims he knew she wouldn’t really die — although the other crewmembers really are dead, so it’s just Bill who is somehow only fake dead, despite looking and acting exactly like the other bodies. Was she only unconscious? Was she in a coma? Was she hanging on to life by a thread? The script doesn’t bother to explain or elucidate. It’s such a bullshit move it very nearly ruined my enjoyment of the episode as a whole. Either have the courage of your convictions to actually kill her off (which I don’t want them to do, I’m liking Bill) or do something else altogether. But relying “she’s not really dead because of [handwave]” is frustrating and ridiculous.

And now, some Doctor Who neepery! In this episode, the Doctor’s sonic screwdriver is destroyed by one of the space suits. The screwdriver was destroyed by the baddies before in the 1982 Fifth Doctor serial “The Visitation.” A Terileptil blasts it with a weapon, upon which the Doctor states, “I feel as though you’ve just killed an old friend.” In fact, that was the last time we saw the sonic screwdriver during the classic series. After “The Visitation,” the Fifth, Sixth, and Seventh Doctors all traveled without it. It wouldn’t make a reappearance until the Eighth Doctor in the 1996 TV movie. We also know from the classic series that Time Lords can survive in the vacuum of space longer than humans can, thanks to the 1982 Fifth Doctor serial “Four to Doomsday,” in with the Doctor gets stranded briefly in space between an Urbankan spaceship and the TARDIS. (Astonishingly, he bounces a cricket ball off the side of the spaceship, then catches it and uses its momentum to push him the rest of the way to the TARDIS!)

The next episode, “Extremis,” looks interesting, with its Da Vinci Code setup involving Vatican secrets, a book that kills everyone who reads it, the Doctor’s continued blindness, and the possible return of Missy.

**SPOILERS AHEAD, CONSIDER YOURSELF WARNED!**

I don’t have a lot to say about “Knock Knock.” It’s not a bad episode but it’s not a great one either, it’s just sort of…middling. The idea of a house seeming to be haunted due to alien activity is nothing new to Doctor Who — the Seventh Doctor serial “Ghost Light” did it very well back in 1989 — and “Knock Knock” certainly gets the spooky atmosphere right. (I love how Shireen calls the mansion “a freaky Scooby Doo house.”) The story, though? Well, this is another one of those episodes it’s best not to look at too closely or you’ll wind up with a whole lot of questions: Why is Pavel’s demise different from everyone else’s, getting sucked into a wall when all the other students were swarmed and eaten by the Dryads? In the past, when the Dryads were brought to Eliza’s sick room, why didn’t they eat Eliza? How and why did they turn her into an undead wooden person instead? Will Bill’s foster mother Moira, introduced in the episode “The Pilot,” ever be seen again, or will she simply disappear like Clara’s charges in season seven or Amy’s other friend Jeff from “The Eleventh Hour”? The questions go on.

One thing I really liked about “Knock Knock” is that it separates the Doctor and Bill and allows each of them to deduce what’s going on individually, which means we get to see how smart and resourceful Bill is when she’s on her own. She’s definitely not someone who just exists to be rescued or ask the Doctor questions on behalf of the audience. Also, it’s fun to see the Doctor running around the house with Harry instead, which reminds me how much I’d love to see a male primary companion again someday. Where “Knock Knock” drops the ball, though, at least in my opinion, is in not having the courage of its convictions. Bill’s friends are physically devoured by the Dryads and their energy is presumably funneled to Eliza to keep her alive. (There’s no explanation how this works. It’s all rather handwaved away.) So how on earth are these dead characters “returned” at the end? There shouldn’t have been anything left of them. Negating their deaths in such a quick and nonsensical way gives “Knock Knock” the feel of an episode of the old Goosebumps TV show rather than Doctor Who, as if to reassure children that there’s no need to be so frightened. It’s a crucial misstep in an otherwise okay episode.

And now for some Doctor Who neepery! When the Doctor asks the Landlord who the Prime Minister is, there’s a nice mention of Harriet Jones, a recurring but now deceased character who dates all the way back to the very first season of the revival and became Prime Minister in the second season. The Doctor finally reveals to Bill that he’s a Time Lord, not a human, and there are some funny lines about Time Lords’ big, fancy collars. The Doctor also mentions that Time Lords can regenerate, perhaps to foreshadow what’s to come, although he doesn’t elaborate on it. We see the vault again at the end, with its unseen inhabitant playing the piano inside as the Doctor arrives with food and the promise of interesting stories to tell. I’m now more convinced than ever that it’s the Master inside the vault, either as his John Simm incarnation or as Missy. I kind of want to be wrong, though, because I want to be surprised.

I’m still not enjoying the increased antagonism between the Doctor and Nardole. I don’t know why they’ve decided to make Nardole such a nag when he could be much funnier instead. Free Nardole!

“Thin Ice,” the third episode of Doctor Who‘s tenth season, continues the pattern of strong, standalone stories we’ve seen so far. “Thin Ice” is actually a better, more cohesive story than last week’s “Smile,” while still allowing plenty of room for the Doctor and Bill to get to know more about each other. Things take a more dramatic turn in their relationship when Bill witnesses her first death and has an important conversation with the Doctor about how he can see so much death and keep going. It’s a good scene, and though I’ve grown tired of the trope of companions getting angry at the Doctor when he can’t save someone (despite all the people he has saved), I very much liked Bill confronting him about whether he has ever killed anyone himself. She doesn’t let him make excuses, either. She makes him own it, which actually brings them closer together.

Another thing I liked about “Thin Ice” is that the speculative element turns out not to be an alien enemy so much as an animal just doing what animals do, namely eating, without any malice or plans of domination. There is a real villain, of course, someone who is exploiting the animal in question, and that’s how it should be in a story like this. (In fact, there are echoes in “Thin Ice” of “Smile” and “The Pilot,” with both previous stories featuring a speculative, non-human element that is potentially deadly without truly meaning harm.)

The script by Sarah Dollard is a strong one, taking the time to address both racism and representation in Regency England, which is not something Doctor Who often takes the time to do. When the Doctor clocks Sutcliffe for calling Bill a “creature” who should show respect for her “betters,” it’s a pretty great scene, both humorous and cathartic. There’s a funny joke about an imaginary companion named Pete who erased himself from history by stepping on a butterfly. We get a scene involving the psychic paper again, which is something we haven’t seen in quite a while. We also learn a little more about the vault, namely that, thanks to some knocking from the other side of the door, it’s most likely a person inside, which I predicted back in episode one. At this point, I’m wondering if it will be Missy. The only thing I didn’t like about this episode was that Nardole is grumpy and moralizing again. Grumpy, moralizing Nardole doesn’t work for me. Matt Lucas is hilarious; they need to let him be hilarious. I’d love to see Nardole be as funny and disaffected again as he was in last Christmas’s otherwise forgettable special, “The Return of Doctor Mysterio.” More funny Nardole, less grumpy schoolmarm Nardole!

And now a small bit of Doctor Who neepery! In conversation with the pie man at the frost fair, the Doctor asks about a man with a ship tattooed on his hand and attempts to bond with the pie man by sharing his disgust of tattoos. But, a little-known fact: the Doctor himself used to have a tattoo! Back in the very first Third Doctor serial, 1970’s “Spearhead from Space,” the Doctor is shown showering in a hospital bathroom and we see a tattoo on his forearm. (This is the only time we ever see the Doctor without a shirt on, until the 2010 Eleventh Doctor episode “The Lodger,” which revealed the tattoo is no longer there. Edited to add: A reader pointed out my oversight that the Ninth Doctor is shown shirtless in the episode “Dalek” in 2005. Notably, the tattoo is also not there.) The reason the Third Doctor has a tattoo at all is because the actor Jon Pertwee got it during his Navy days. Why it wasn’t covered up with makeup for the scene is anyone’s guess, so now the Doctor’s tattoo is canon! The tattoo itself is of a cobra, although when seen upside-down it looks remarkably like the question mark that would become a regular symbol upon the clothes of the Fifth, Sixth, and Seventh Doctors.