The Inevitable Doctor Who Post

I haven't posted anything about Doctor Who for a while. Mainly this is because it hasn't been on. It came back last week with Let's Kill Hitler which turned out to be a huge disappointment. I can recall reading a Sci-Fi short-story years ago where the main protagonist goes back in time to kill Hitler before he comes to power; but on returning to the present day (or at least the 1960's) he discovers that the US and Soviets have destroyed the world and then has to return to 1930's Berlin to save Hitler, and the world. I was kind of expecting something like that and not a huge MacGuffin to give the cast the change to mess about with Nazi uniforms. It's a pity as Hitler makes for a fascinating, if somewhat terrifying, historical character and Nazi Germany is ripe territory for Science Fiction anyway. Actually, the episode was better on second viewing but I was really hoping for something better this week in the form of Mark Gatiss' Night Terrors.

I really rate Mark Gatiss as a writer - particularly the horror genre that he is quite an expert in. Not that I have liked everything that he has done and I thought last year's Who adventure, Victory Of The Daleks, was a bit of a dog's dinner. However, he hasn't disappointed with Night Terrors and actually seems to have captured some of the hiding-behind-the-sofa scariness of the show's 1970's heyday without losing the modern series' humour. I think what works here is that he has tapped into primal fears - of the dark, of the unknown - in a self contained episode.

In a way, this was very much like the classic Doctor Who - possibly due to the relatively low budget setting. Funnily enough, I watched the Peter Davison adventure Resurrection Of The Daleks with the kids in the afternoon which had arrived via LoveFilm. I remember watching this when it was first on but I never really appreciated just how incredibly violent the whole thing was. From the police machine-gunning a group of people to death in the first scene through to the Dalek exterminatathon and even the Doctor, uncharacteristically, offloading the contents of a pistol into a Dalek creature. Now, whilst I do wonder why this managed to get a PG rating, it did strike me as to why it stood up so well. It's derelict dockland setting may have made for a cheap enough shoot and the bloodbath may have kept the action quotient high, and even the plot does rely on a great knowledge of the shows history (at the point this was made, some 20 series' worth). However, this doesn't really matter as the story is kept rolling along by a very good script. I think this has always been the case with Doctor Who (and Sci Fi in general) and despite the big budget of the new series the standout episodes have always been the ones with the best scripts.

Night Terrors is very much closer to horror than Sci-Fi which will, no doubt, annoy the Hell out of the Sci-Fi purists. Personally, I'm not that bothered as long as the story makes some coherent sense and, if anything, I think it would have been better if we were merely told that little George had been adopted and his past was unknown - as often happens in real life. This could easily have fitted in the Twilight Zone series - I'm sure there was something not dissimilar. This story did make sense to me - both in terms of being about the fears that all children have and in that it was about parenting and the odd tightrope that it can entail. It is very tempting as a parent to wrap children in cotton wool rather than let them face up to their fears and, in essence, this is what has happened to little George. Here his fears and magical thinking have become realised so that they affected all of those around him and for many children their fears are quite material. I could really identify with the father's dilemma and I felt that the whole subject was very well researched which is interesting as, as far as I know, Mark Gatiss doesn't have any children of his own.

Amy and Rory didn't really have two much to do with this episode but their exploration of the doll's house had a feel of the early series where much of the first episode of a serial would involve the characters wandering about an unfamiliar setting. One of the early 1960's episodes actually involved the cast being miniaturised - I don't know whether this was an influence. However, this and the creepy dolls worked very well for me. I think this is the best script that Mark Gatiss has done for Doctor Who - even surpassing The Unquiet Dead which was one of my favourites from Christopher Eccleston's series. In fact, I think it is also my favourite from this series, surpassing the Rebel Flesh two parter. It remains to be seen what the rest of the series produces.

In terms of classic scary Who this is right up there. My 9 year old son claims not to get scared by anything although sometimes things do bother him. We watched the first Harry Potter film the other night and one scene really did startle him - it was certainly not what he had imagined from reading the book. He says that Night Terrors didn't frighten him at all: in fact he said he was disappointed that it wasn't scary which rather indicates to me that he was slightly spooked. As for the younger two I felt this was a bit too much for them so I'll save this for a later date. My younger boy suffered from real (medical) night terrors over a two week period when he was around 4 years old - and that's quite a disturbing experience for any parent.