10.8: The Idiot’s Lantern
In which Maureen Lipman is hungry.
Broadcast: May 2006
Watched: August 2021
“A portable television!” Although (yes, I know it was mid-20th century slang) how a TV is like a lantern if it’s not portable I have no idea. Also: “Good lord! Colour television!”
Anyway. This one surprised me in the opposite direction to Rise: that I remembered as not as bad as I’’d thought it was on broadcast (only it was worse); this one I remembered as the absolute nadir of RTD/Gatiss Who, and... I really enjoyed it? Am I just tired?
Good stuff. It has a great, creepy opening. The imagery – the faceless people, the use of Watch With Mother, the silently mouthing faces on the TV, like proto-Library nodes – is brilliant. I like the idea the authorities are capable of covering stuff up but can’t actually deal with it. I like the way that neither the faceless people nor the men in black turn out to be monsters.
And many of the guest cast are great. Maureen Lipman is perfect, even if she did turn out to be an awful Tory. But Ron Cook, Jamie Foreman and Sam Cox are all great too.
But then the guy who plays Tommy is truly awful – he just can’t carry his big speech – and for a chunk of the narrative he’s in the companion role because Rose is busy marching on the spot, facelessly.
That’s one problem. The other is the incoherence. The faceless people are clearly meant to represent the conformity the narrative is kicking against, with its obviously closeted teenager and woman who wants to throw her abusive husband out. But... the faceless grandmother is another thing the dad is ashamed of? Also, the divorce happens far too easily: in 1953 I’m not sure people would break up a marriage so casually, however abusive their husband.
There’s nothing on race in there at all (except the people at the street party are suspiciously multicultural for 1953). It’s not really thought through beyond a general “dad is a psycho who wants conformity” thing. At the end where Rose encourages Tommy to go after him. I mean, yes, he’s his dad, but he is also an abusive psychopath. It’s not that the “your abusive dad is still your dad” message is wrong, exactly, it’s that it’s very unclear what Gatiss is trying to say.
Anyway. It’s better than I remembered, and the bad things are largely because it is almost really good – unusually for Gatiss it’s about something, even if it doesn’t come off. Which makes it frustrating that he can’t (or rather: RTD’s rewrites can’t) stick the ending.
Other thoughts:
“Operation Market Stall” is quite funny, both as an idea and as a name.
Even funnier is the decision to name the monster The Wire in 2006. Actually that probably wasn’t an accident, was it? Gatiss is making a joke about a TV show that kept sucking in his mates.
Debra Gillett, the actress who plays the mum, is married to Patrick Marber. Huh.
For the second time this season, the resolution involves an annoying boy doing something with a plug.