 |
| A forest shoots up overnight - All over the world! |
1 episode. Approx. 47 minutes. Written by: Frank Cottrell-Boyce. Directed by: Sheree Folkson. Produced by: Paul Frift.
THE PLOT
Danny and Clara have taken a class of special needs students on an overnight field trip to a museum. When they wake, the curator has difficulty opening the door for them. Danny pushes - and finds that on the other side of the door, London has been completely overgrown. A forest has sprung up overnight!
The Doctor has materialized in Trafalgar Square, which is so overgrown as to be unrecognizable. Maebh (Abigail Eames), one of Clara's students, finds him. Not long after, Clara and Danny find him also, but he has no idea where this forest has come from. Then they all learn that a solar flare is about to hit the earth. It's the end of the world - and there's nothing the Doctor can do...
CHARACTERS
The Doctor: His first thought on seeing the forest is that it's just a new freak of nature for humanity to endure."When the Ice Age was here, you lot managed to cook mammoth. Now there's a forest, you'll just have to eat nuts... Farewell to the Ice Age, welcome to the tree age!" He connects Clara's fear of the forest to old fairy tales, revealing his theory that the forest itself is what humanity fears. When it's revealed that a globally devastating solar flare is soon to hit the planet, he becomes desperate to save Clara. When she protests that he can't save the human race, he earnestly replies, "I can save you!"
Clara: Maebh's psychic powers (don't ask) pick up that Clara was thinking about the Doctor even before seeing the forest. Danny is less than pleased about that, and about Clara's absolute faith that the Doctor will "sort everything out... That's what he does!" Danny's determination to get the students back to their parents above all else impresses her - but doesn't stop her from taking a ride in the TARDIS to witness a rare event at the episode's conclusion. In one of the few good moments in this episode, Clara declines the Doctor's offer to save her even if the human race is doomed, telling him (not without some pain at saying it to him) that while she wants to live, she doesn't want to be the last of her kind - doesn't want to be him.
Danny: Is a sturdy presence, projecting reliability and stability. Works mainly as a contrast to the Doctor. Still, I can't help but continue to notice what's been glaringly clear the entire second half of the season: That while Danny is likable, and actor Samuel Anderson does well with what he's given, Anderson and Coleman have no chemistry at all. In an episode that sees them on-screen together quite a lot, it's all the more glaring. Capaldi and Coleman find energy even in weak material, while Coleman and Anderson have no energy at all.
DON'T HARM THE TREES - AND PLEASE PUT DOWN THOSE PILLS!
"Please don't chop, spray or harm the trees. They're here to help. Be less scared. Be more trusting." Because trees, y'know, they're like, nature, man. You should hug one and be one with them. And let the trees speak to you. Like the voices in your head, man. Those voices, they're good. And medication to treat them - That's, like, bad, man. Because schizophrenia is, like, nature too. It will expand your consciousness, dude. And, like, trees are good, and stuff...
What a bunch of mind-numbing, stupid, moronic, would-be hippy horsecrap! Forget "the moon is an egg." This is the most patronizing, cheap, pathetic thing we've seen this season. Or last season. Or, really, since Cartoon Winston Churchill sent his army of X-Wing Spitfires against the Dalek Death Star!
If it was just the heavy-handed environmental message, I'd roll my eyes, sigh impatiently, and give this a "3" for a few good character bits in the midst of the trite nonsense. But then the Doctor - the trusted authority figure for the viewing audience - grouses about giving medication for mental illness as if that's the stupidest thing in the world. Yes, the Doctor is morally disgusted that medication is given to a young girl who hears voices no one else hears and bats at things in the air that no one else sees. Charming.
I'll acknowledge that this almost certainly unintentional. Not so much a message ("Don't take your anti-psychotic meds, kids!") as an accidental side-effect of some very bad writing. Still, not only is that worst possible reading a viable one - It isn't much of a leap to get there. And that is something I find more irresponsible and wrong-headed than the wielding of a pair of scissors could ever be.
OTHER THOUGHTS
OK - Stepping back from the trite silliness of the environmental sledgehammer and the unintended mental illness anti-message, I will admit that there are some nice moments. The visual imagery of the forest is effective, particularly when the Doctor and Clara reference the forests of fairy tales. The wolves' eyes visible in the brush behind Maebh - That's a terrific little directorial flourish. The call-backs to Kill the Moon and Mummy on the Orient Express in the Doctor and Clara's "farewell" are obvious, but still passably effective. The performances of the three leads are good, and the now-effortless chemistry of Capaldi and Coleman helps to make up for the largely inert drama.
Still, that wouldn't be enough to save this episode from a very bad score, even if the script didn't already scrape down a very wrong nerve for me. It's not quite as painfully bad as Victory of the Daleks - but neither is it an enormous amount better.
Trees may be, like, good, man... But unfortunately, this episode isn't.
Overall Rating: 2/10.
Previous Story: Flatline
Next Story: Death in Heaven
Search Amazon.com for Doctor Who
Review Index
No comments:
Post a Comment