The Pyramid at the End of the World is very much a Peter Harness script.
Much like Kill the Moon, The Zygon Invasion and The Zygon Inversion, the climax of the episode boils down to a set of characters in a contained set making an impossible moral choice in the abstract. Harness very much writes Doctor Who in the grand tradition of science-fiction allegory, the use of the show’s absurd framework to ask broad philosophical questions about the human condition in general and this political moment in particular. Harness is writing Doctor Who in the great political tradition of The Happiness Patrol.
Without a thread of doubt.
Harness is a writer with his finger on the proverbial pulse. The Zygon Invasion and The Zygon Inversion were essentially metaphorical explorations of radicalisation and immigration, touching on two of the hot-button political issues of the season. The Pyramid at the End of the World essentially updates the root metaphor for the current climate. The Pyramid at the End of the World is essentially a story about what it takes for people to make truly unconscionable choices. At what point does an ordinary decent person consent to be governed by a monster?
This is very much in tune with the popular consciousness in 2016 and 2017. After all, the British public voted for Brexit largely in support of xenophobic platform that borrowed imagery from Nazi Germany. The American public elected a leader who believed that most Mexicans were rapists and that all women wanted him to sexually assault them. At what point do these objectively horrific ideas seem palatable to the average person? The Pyramid at the End of the World reaches the same answer as Harness’ other Doctor Who scripts: when people are very afraid.
“Why didn’t you tell me you’d had fibre installed?”
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