This episode is just a mess. There are several directions it could have gone in, but instead it's just a bunch of random shit thrown together for no reason. There's sort of a mystery, but the solution is just some meaningless technobabble. There's sort of an adventure, but the characters just sort of wander through it without ever facing any real adversity. There's obviously supposed to be some emotional impact, but it's incredibly forced and artificial so it doesn't work at all. Nothing works in this episode.
 |
| I'm not even going to bother looking up her name because she does nothing.. |
The crew arrive in Norway (which is irrelevant because this could be set literally anywhere and it would make no difference) where they find a fortified house in which a blind girl (whose father has vanished) is hiding from the monsters she thinks are outside. They make a big enough point of her blindness that you think it must have some plot relevance later on but it doesn't. In fact, she's pretty irrelevant to the plot herself. The house could be empty and basically nothing would change. Anyway, Graham finds a magic mirror that leads to a cave.
 |
| This episode of Doctor Who actually has more connection to Hansel and Gretel than Tell Me a Story does. |
The Doctor uses a piece of string to mark the path they take through the cave and the camera lingers on it to let you know that something's going to happen to the string and they're going to get lost at some point. But although the string does end up being cut it doesn't actually prove to be a problem. When they need to find their way back through the cave later on they do so without difficulty. There's also a creepy alien dude in the cave who agrees to help them in exchange for the Doctor's magic wand.
 |
| The alien looks pretty cool so it's a pity he's completely pointless. |
Only he betrays them for no reason and then gets killed by some large moths. It's not really clear why he's there or what he wants, he's just a random encounter. And although he seems a bit menacing, he's not around long enough to actually have any impact and he just dies by doing something dumb. He's also the one who cuts the string, but like I said, that doesn't actually cause any problem. Then they get to the other side of the cave where they find the girl's father and supposedly dead mother, and also Ryan's grandmother.
 |
| Even Graham doesn't really seem to buy it. |
They try to play it as ambiguous whether she's really her or not but she obviously isn't. Like, there's no question at all. Then the Doctor just realises what's happening, and it's some stupid bullshit that makes no sense. There's a magic alien that's lured them here because it's lonely but if they stay there then the universe will be destroyed, and that actually sounds a lot less dumb than the way they explained it in the show. The Doctor basically tricks it into sending the others home and then convinces it to send her home as well. And that's it.
 |
| Also the alien looks like a frog for a while because it likes frogs. Fair enough. |
At first I thought this was going to be one of those "why are you pretending this is sci-fi when you clearly want to be writing fantasy" episodes, but it's actually much worse than that. It's just a bunch of random ideas that don't fit together or lead anywhere. Even if this was a show about magic it would still be a worthless, terrible episode because it's just badly written in every way. I don't know how something like this actually gets made. Like, multiple people read this script and went "yep, this is good enough." Unbelievable.
 |
| This dude can't believe it either. |
No comments:
Post a Comment