12.10: In the Forest of the Night
In which the trees are our friends.
Broadcast: October 2014
Watched: March 2022
“We can’t have been asleep for that long, can we?”
Lovely and magical and atmospheric, but maybe a bit dependent on child actors and a belief that Doctor Who doesn’t actually need rules.
Good bits: The whole look and feel of a London suddenly covered in trees, obviously. The international news reports (“Est-ce que c’est bien le Bois de Boulogne? Non, c’est le centre-ville!”). The upsettingly convincing bit where the government decides to just set fire to shit. “Okay, you know they’re not really gifted and talented, don’t you?”
Clara’s “The TARDIS is a lifeboat, not everybody has to die” seems like a great character note – utterly practical but kind of horrible too – then actually turns out to be even better when it’s just her trying to save the Doctor. Then he doesn’t want to go because Earth is his world too now... that’s all perfect. Ditto the Doctor narrating the end of the world to a bunch of terrified kids who have no idea it’s happening (“I thought it would spoil an otherwise enjoyable walk”). Danny continues to be very cool, albeit a bit Manic Pixie Dream Squaddie. (He looks like that, AND he would never leave a child to die? Get real, girls.)
Bad bits: some of the kids are rubbish, sorry. The wolf-eyes-in-the-bushes are weirdly cheap and unconvincing. Also, I’m not sure the story logic holds up – there aren’t enough people in London, there’s not enough chaos, this is one of those stories which would obviously cause enough destruction that it can’t just be forgotten yet obviously is (Nelson’s Column *falls over*!). But since I don’t care about the moon being an egg or the Statue of Liberty an angel, maybe this is just whining.
A bigger issue, from one perspective – [writer Frank] Cottrell-Boyce feels like he’s just throwing cool stuff at the screen. There isn’t really any connection between the fairy tale stuff and the trees saving the world and the Blake poem, but they’re not Who-ish juxtapositions either, and there is absolutely no explanation for Maebh’s missing sister or her reappearance at the end. The writer isn’t breaking the rules in an interesting way, I’m just not sure he knows they’re there.
But I’m whining. It’s fun, and it’s different, and it’s mostly lovely.
Other things:
It takes nearly an hour to walk from Cromwell Road to Trafalgar Square on a good day, yet here a class of kids somehow do it pretty much instantaneously? I’m calling bullshit.
I get no vibe whatsoever that some of these kids f*cking hate each other which obviously they would, they’re 12. I’m calling bullshit on that, too.
The Doctor randomly says “in 2016” at one point – are we two years in the future?
“Furious, fearful, tongue-tied. They’re all superpowers if you use them properly” – there’s that theme again.
There’s a lot of “but trees can’t communicate” stuff considering that trees can communicate to some extent and also that this show has multiple walking tree people.
Clara wanting to solve the mystery, Danny worrying about getting the kids home is a nice twist on the Rory/Amy normal life/Doctor life tension. Also, there’s a good bit at the end when Danny tells Clara “go home, do your marking and think about it” and Clara goes back to the TARDIS.
LOL at the *amazing* finale trailer which makes it look like Clara has been a total fake out planted by Missy. Also UNIT are back, hooray.