15 hours ago4 min read

Doctor Who Series 6, Episode 9 Review: Night Terrors

What did you think of this episode?

Sonic!
Good!
Bumpy-wumpy!
Exterminate!

I feel a bit of a fraud when I say I don't rate episodes, I mean someone like Mark Gatiss has more talent in his little finger than me. That said, apart from a couple of episodes I don't really get what he has written for the show. Which leads me to my review of Night Terrors...

A lot of the episodes Gatiss has written have the promise of being epic, Daleks in World War II, an episode of found footage, and the Doctor and co being stuck in a spooky dolls house. I expected full on horror and maybe this is a problem more for Doctor Who, it can't go overboard on the horror, or can it? The show has certainly pushed what it can do on more than a few occasions.

"Please save me from the monsters."

This story focuses on George, a boy who’s afraid of everything, especially the monsters lurking in his cupboard. Parenting wise, why would you tell your kid every scary thing they have ever seen or thought they had seen is stored safely in the cupboard in their bedroom? No wonder the poor fucker could never sleep!!

The Doctor, Amy, and Rory arrive to help, and this is really where I think the series begins to properly lose its way. Big, humungous arcs have been set up, and for the next few episodes they vanish into thin air. Amy and Rory have lost their child after a quite frankly horrific birth. Amy doesn't seem in the least bit fazed her child has gone, Rory doesn't show the slightest concern he missed helping Amy through her pregnancy.

They didn't even know they were going to have a baby really, and when they did it had vanished into a blob of plastic goo, then regenerated, then tried to kill the bloke they love, then vanish again. I want to see some trauma here guys!

Perhaps we were spoilt with Rose and the way RTD wrote her story. This is what I want to see though, the effects of actions on the person. Rose, Mickey and Jackie in the chip shop, Mickey finding his voice when Rose has used him so many times, the change of Rose being slightly bored of ordinary life to being a planet saving hero. We see that on the screen, not here.

This series is so let down by all that. The ideas are good, the arc is thrilling, the opening episodes are absolute bangers, but time and again the thread of it disappears. This series tries to be like Lost whilst still doing the old Doctor Who format of monsters of the week, and it doesn't give us a satisfactory pay off.

That is why episodes like this struggle to win the hearts of fans. Why don't Amy and Rory give a shit? Surely seeing a kid in distress would trigger them?

"When I was your age, about, oohh, a thousand years ago, I loved a good bedtime story. The Three Little Sontarans. The Emperor Dalek’s New Clothes. Snow White and Seven Keys to Doomsday, eh? All the classics."

Another problem with this episode is that it is basically Fear Her with dolls rather than scribbles.

All the scares in this episode are reduced. It could be scary fighting off the freaky dolls, but they have a massive pair of baby blue scissors ruining the vibes. A bloke being dragged into the floor of his house could be scary, but the bloke is a caricature villain, ticking every box a nasty landlord should tick, right down to his messy flat and dog.

The twist that George is actually a Tenza is alright, but again, would you not be a trifle more freaked out about your child being an alien? Does nobody give a shit about their children in series 6? Would you not be fucked off someone had been pretending to be your kid for the past few years? I'd be kicking that fucker out straight away!

I know Doctor Who only gets 45 minutes an episode so it is therfore a struggle going into a lot of depth of some things, but sometimes things are resolved way to easy. Again, I feel a fraud saying it, I have no idea what is cut, how a TV show is put together, so take what I say with a very big pinch of salt.

This just didn't work for me. Was it the story or the bigger issue of the series? Probably a bit of both.

RATING: Sonic!

BEST LINE: "Through crimson stars and silent stars and tumbling nebulas like oceans set on fire. Through empires of glass and civilizations of pure thought. And a whole terrible wonderful universe of impossibilities. You see these eyes, they’re old eyes. And one thing I can tell you, Alex - monsters are real."