Haunted Houses

One thing I’ve noticed with my trips around Historic Scotland’s sites is that they don’t do many that would fall into the “Haunted House” category. Possibly this is because, as my brother pointed out, they tend to the ruins whilst the National Trust tend to go more for he preserved stately residences. Anyway, the “haunted house” category was the subject of this week’s Doctor Who, Knock Knock, which saw Bill moving into a rather grand student pad with her university pals.

This is a television trope that Doctor Who has occasionally visited over the years and it is one that they usually do quite well as it is perfectly suitable material for pre-watershed scares. In fact, this one particularly reminded me of the episode Blink (the one that introduced us to the weeping angels) and having read one of the online reviews it is actually the same house in Newport that featured in that episode. When I lived in Cardiff I also lived in a large, somewhat run-down Victorian residence although that one overlooked Roath Park and the only thing that was haunted was the central heating system which seemed to send a cold shudder down my back whenever the temperature dropped to the point that it was meant to actually work.

Once again, I’ve really enjoyed this week’s episode and, again, it has more of a classic Doctor Who feel about it – taking a classic sci-fi or horror idea and shoe-horning it into the Who universe. The haunted house worked really well and some of scenes with the house “eating” its inhabitants were genuinely jump inducing but I think what made it was David Suchet (a touch of the Norman Bates about him in retrospect) who was genuinely creepy as the landlord. The makeup on his “daughter” was also quite nightmare inducing – at least until she spoke at which point the terror was gently coiled back in along with the twist and everyone living happily ever after. It is meant to be family entertainment after all.

Next week we get “Oxygen” which is written by Jamie Mathieson, one of my favourite writers from the last couple of series. And after that we also have Eurovision so it should be a night of monsters, horror, high camp, all preceded by my favourite Sci-Fi show.