Doctor Who - Mark Gatiss' Id - I mean "Night Terrors"

[lizbee]

It's not that this was a bad episode.  It was just that it was better when it had Sarah Jane Smith and her band of plucky kids. 



It has to be said that, in the grand scheme of Gatiss episodes, this isn't the worst. It's better than "The Idiot's Lantern" and "Victory of the Daleks". I guess I'd put it on a par with "The Unquiet Dead".

It has the usual eyerolly Gatiss things like sidelining the ladies and putting his daddy issues on display for all to see.  But since it didn't have an abused teenager being told to go make friends with his abuser, I guess I can forgive that.  I'm kind of "...what?" that we had a whole episode about a scary doll's house inhabited by scary little girl voices -- and no actual little girls.  Maybe I'd have liked this episode better if it was about a little alien girl and her adoptive human mother, but that would involve writing about LADIES.  Who are icky and have girl germs.

I feel like I want to have more to say, but really, I spent most of this episode drawing Zuko in a fez.  I was seriously weirded out that Amy and Rory, faced with a small, scared child who felt abandoned by his parent, weren't a little more reflective on account of having just lost their child. 

On the upside, next week looks like it'll be full of awesome footage of Amy fighting with swords.  And her hair looked very nice here, and I liked her outfit.

Comments

[tellitslant]

I was seriously weirded out that Amy and Rory, faced with a small, scared child who felt abandoned by his parent, weren't a little more reflective on account of having just lost their child.

This, omg. How did that not occur to anyone? Extremely offputting.

[lizbee]

Apparently it was originally written to go into the first half of the season? But ... REWRITING, PEOPLE.

[tellitslant]

Yeah, it does feel a bit like that, too. Could definitely have used some reworking.

[copracat]

Yes, until I read about that after watching I was most discombobulated by it all. I know this is a generalisation but many parents I know have some level of issue with children in peril/pain.

But then I had a really, really low expectation as soon as I saw the writing credit. I think that made me like it more than I might have if I hadn't been so forewarned. I was also pleased to see Cass from Outcasts (the actor who played the dad).

It was just that it was better when it had Sarah Jane Smith and her band of plucky kids.

As you say.

[matgb]

From what I understand, it was filmed either first or second for this year, and was swapped for the pirates very late on. Doesn't necessarily excuse it, but does explain it.

[trouble]

That makes a lot of sense. It reminded me a lot of the pirates episode, too.

[silverhare]

Indeed. The fact that there were children and they had lost their child... how could it not have occurred to him? Asdsjkf.

Gatiss really doesn't like writing about women, does he. :/

[susanreads]

At least Mum was at work, i.e. gainfully employed (was that a nurse's uniform?), not Missing Presumed Dead as they so often are. Still, as you say, the only parent-child story that gets to be told is father&son, yawn.

[fyrdrakken]

Plot hole that bothered me the most about this episode? Are they (the father and/or the Doctor) going to bother to inform the mother that the son she erroneously remembers giving birth to is actually an alien who tampered with her and her husband's memory to get them to accept him, and if so, how well is she going to take the news?

[trouble]

I thought this needed a serious re-write. It had all of the elements that made Silence in the Library and Forest of the Dead creepy, as well as the creepy aspects of the first Weeping Angels episode, but it was just boring and completely not frightening.

Any why is it always fathers and sons, omg. I think it would have been way more powerful with the accepting parent being the mother. "I may not have really given birth to you, but you're still my child and I love you."

And yes, Amy & Rory were just weird in it.