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I'd thought about holding this post over as I only finished my review of 'Let's Kill Hitler' for This Way Up this evening - I'll link to it when it's posted - and I am, as the saying goes, somewhat Whoed out. However, no time like the present...
'Night Terrors' feels early on like a homage to the Russell T Davies era of the programme, a conscious acknowledgement that the programme has moved on but can still draw some nutrients from the layers of Daviesian compost. Even so, Rory acknowledges that viewers these days don't expect the TARDIS to take them somewhere they could have gone on a bus; but for the village-dwelling Leadworth two, the flats are more foreign than an alien planet.
Internal evidence is contradictory, but despite George's birth year and stated age, it's possible that this episode was intended to be set in 2004, just before Doctor Who returned to television in the real world. It reminds me a little of 'The Eleventh Hour', potentially readable as an authorial statement about the essence of Doctor Who as they feel it. 'The Eleventh Hour' and indeed the whole 2010 series was something of a hymn to the fan experience of waiting for the Doctor's return between 1989 and 2005, and the growth of the legend between then and now; even those who thought they had grown up were won over when he returned and were happy to go travelling with him again. (The 1996 movie fits into this scheme as well...) The Doctor listens and makes safe childhood fears, by showing children and adults how they are faced, and doing so with them. There are also nods to the post-2005 child-consumer experience, including George's identification of the sonic screwdriver as 'a torch', which is what a toy sonic screwdriver is at a basic level, and its 'much more' displayed its affinity with George's collection of space robots.
That being said, the execution is more important than we've been here before, and I am joining the crowd in saying that much of this episode felt like a page one rewrite of 'Fear Her', with the mother-daughter dynamic being replaced by Gatiss's preferred father-son. I was far more convinced by the fear of the adults, especially Daniel Mays's Alex, than I was by Jamie Oram's George. The acting award would go to the performer playing thuggish landlord Jim Purcell's dog, whose indifference to its master's fate at the fronds of a plush carpet suggests to me that he doesn't respond well to choke chains.
I'm not that convinced by parents putting frightening things in a bedroom cupboard, either. Putting something just out of sight is to make it a permanent resident of the imagination, just the other side of the dark. I can imagine parents putting things their child finds frightening in their room, but in George's own cupboard seems dangerous. Often, too, it's the items which aren't frightening during waking hours which are disturbing at night - the much loved battery-operated toy, the beloved teddy bear.
Perhaps it was this flaw which led to my not feeling as much urgency and commitment to the story as I felt; I'd have liked some insight into the minds of the wooden dolls beyond the childlike chortling, particularly as many of them were transformed people; and the thread of Mrs Rossiter's fate was lost somewhere, though leaked cast lists indicate that she became a doll. Rory's horror at losing his wife was fumbled somewhere too.
'Night Terrors' was, when recorded last September, intended to be fourth in the 2011 series, rather than ninth, and it showed. Rory is less assured than he had become in 'A Good Man Goes to War' and 'Let's Kill Hitler'; neither Amy or Rory show any sign of the traumas (delete as applicable) of having been kidnapped, running around as a duplicate, giving birth, travelling the universe looking for your wife and daughter, being kept prisoner, finding your wife and daughter, having your daughter disintegrate in your arms, finding a secretive older woman with an enigmatic relationship with your time-machine-driving best friend is your kidnapped daughter grown up, being consigned without explanations back home for several months, then finding your childhood friend is also your daughter and seeing her transform into a younger version of the secretive older woman who is proud to call herself a psychopath and is free and easy with a gun, particularly when it comes to the aforesaid time-machine-driving best friend; and then having to abandon her in the fifty-second century to 'make her own way'. My head would be more than banging after that. Then there's the line in the last scene on the estate, about Amy being present 'in the flesh', which would have been an appropriate lead into 'The Almost People'. Indeed, one feels it belonged in the season we had to imagine, of the Doctor taking Amy and Rory to honeymoon destinations. Indeed, perhaps the real reason I was impressed by the dog was that his nose was fake, and he was a bailiff from the planet Barcelona, chasing the Time Lord and the Ponds for unpaid hotel bills.
Still, good things are being said about 'The Girl Who Waited' next week; and the scheduling of a strong episode alongside the return of Strictly Come Dancing might be a vote of confidence from BBC1, whereas this one, opposite the launch of Red or Black, was placed to take the fall. While there was much to like in this episode - and unlike Mark Gatiss's previous two Doctor Who episodes, while the last ten minutes seemed rushed I didn't feel that there was an entire second half of the story missing - it was less than I'd hoped for.
'Night Terrors' feels early on like a homage to the Russell T Davies era of the programme, a conscious acknowledgement that the programme has moved on but can still draw some nutrients from the layers of Daviesian compost. Even so, Rory acknowledges that viewers these days don't expect the TARDIS to take them somewhere they could have gone on a bus; but for the village-dwelling Leadworth two, the flats are more foreign than an alien planet.
Internal evidence is contradictory, but despite George's birth year and stated age, it's possible that this episode was intended to be set in 2004, just before Doctor Who returned to television in the real world. It reminds me a little of 'The Eleventh Hour', potentially readable as an authorial statement about the essence of Doctor Who as they feel it. 'The Eleventh Hour' and indeed the whole 2010 series was something of a hymn to the fan experience of waiting for the Doctor's return between 1989 and 2005, and the growth of the legend between then and now; even those who thought they had grown up were won over when he returned and were happy to go travelling with him again. (The 1996 movie fits into this scheme as well...) The Doctor listens and makes safe childhood fears, by showing children and adults how they are faced, and doing so with them. There are also nods to the post-2005 child-consumer experience, including George's identification of the sonic screwdriver as 'a torch', which is what a toy sonic screwdriver is at a basic level, and its 'much more' displayed its affinity with George's collection of space robots.
That being said, the execution is more important than we've been here before, and I am joining the crowd in saying that much of this episode felt like a page one rewrite of 'Fear Her', with the mother-daughter dynamic being replaced by Gatiss's preferred father-son. I was far more convinced by the fear of the adults, especially Daniel Mays's Alex, than I was by Jamie Oram's George. The acting award would go to the performer playing thuggish landlord Jim Purcell's dog, whose indifference to its master's fate at the fronds of a plush carpet suggests to me that he doesn't respond well to choke chains.
I'm not that convinced by parents putting frightening things in a bedroom cupboard, either. Putting something just out of sight is to make it a permanent resident of the imagination, just the other side of the dark. I can imagine parents putting things their child finds frightening in their room, but in George's own cupboard seems dangerous. Often, too, it's the items which aren't frightening during waking hours which are disturbing at night - the much loved battery-operated toy, the beloved teddy bear.
Perhaps it was this flaw which led to my not feeling as much urgency and commitment to the story as I felt; I'd have liked some insight into the minds of the wooden dolls beyond the childlike chortling, particularly as many of them were transformed people; and the thread of Mrs Rossiter's fate was lost somewhere, though leaked cast lists indicate that she became a doll. Rory's horror at losing his wife was fumbled somewhere too.
'Night Terrors' was, when recorded last September, intended to be fourth in the 2011 series, rather than ninth, and it showed. Rory is less assured than he had become in 'A Good Man Goes to War' and 'Let's Kill Hitler'; neither Amy or Rory show any sign of the traumas (delete as applicable) of having been kidnapped, running around as a duplicate, giving birth, travelling the universe looking for your wife and daughter, being kept prisoner, finding your wife and daughter, having your daughter disintegrate in your arms, finding a secretive older woman with an enigmatic relationship with your time-machine-driving best friend is your kidnapped daughter grown up, being consigned without explanations back home for several months, then finding your childhood friend is also your daughter and seeing her transform into a younger version of the secretive older woman who is proud to call herself a psychopath and is free and easy with a gun, particularly when it comes to the aforesaid time-machine-driving best friend; and then having to abandon her in the fifty-second century to 'make her own way'. My head would be more than banging after that. Then there's the line in the last scene on the estate, about Amy being present 'in the flesh', which would have been an appropriate lead into 'The Almost People'. Indeed, one feels it belonged in the season we had to imagine, of the Doctor taking Amy and Rory to honeymoon destinations. Indeed, perhaps the real reason I was impressed by the dog was that his nose was fake, and he was a bailiff from the planet Barcelona, chasing the Time Lord and the Ponds for unpaid hotel bills.
Still, good things are being said about 'The Girl Who Waited' next week; and the scheduling of a strong episode alongside the return of Strictly Come Dancing might be a vote of confidence from BBC1, whereas this one, opposite the launch of Red or Black, was placed to take the fall. While there was much to like in this episode - and unlike Mark Gatiss's previous two Doctor Who episodes, while the last ten minutes seemed rushed I didn't feel that there was an entire second half of the story missing - it was less than I'd hoped for.
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