In The Forest Of The Night

Doctor Who is a very flexible format. From the outset it was intended that successive stories could take on the form of a science fiction story, a historical adventure or contain elements of fantasy or social comment. Despite the flexibility of the format it has on occasion become dogged down into a particular fixed format whereby there is a threat provided by the “monster-of-the-week”, lots of running about corridors or quarries and a resolution that relies upon some non-specific, pseudo-scientific, mumbo-jumbo and a wave of the magic sonic screwdriver. On occasion it drifts away from this format and on those occasions it can really split the audience. I rather suspect that In The Forest Of The Night will be one of those episodes.

Frank Cottrell Boyce chose to tell this particular story as science-fiction fairy-tale: in this case taking a rather literal interpretation of James Lovelock’s Gaia hypothesis (whereby the Earth is seen as a self-regulating organism) and marrying this to a Brothers Grimm tale of children lost in the forest. The realisation of this on screen was glorious and the pre-title sequence in which the fate of London was revealed was one of the best of the series so far – effectively condensing an “Episode 1” from the classic series into a 90 second scene. From there we see the Doctor not so much as the battling hero but more as an investigator and detective, very much in the mould of William Hartnell: narrating much of what was happening without being actively involved in it. Overall the look and feel of the episode worked well, making it a tale told for adults from a child’s perspective.

The children of Coal Hill school have appeared in several of the episodes this year and they were a major feature of this episode. There is an old theatrical saying that one should never work with children or animals and Doctor Who has a chequered history on this . Matt Smith worked wonderfully in his first episode with the young Amelia Pond and it remains amongst his most fondly remembered scenes. However, he also appeared alongside Angie and Artie in Nightmare in Silver where the children were cringe-worthy brats. The children in Forest ranged from the tolerable to the rather good – particularly the otherworldly Maebh who worked well with Capaldi and gave a good Red Riding Hood feel to the episode. Of the other children there were a few nice one-liners but their performances were generally naturalistic rather than the smart-alecky, self-aware parodies they could have been.

As for the bugbear of the “monster-of-the-week”, there wasn’t one. Aside from a couple of escaped zoo animals there were no aliens, monsters or other external threat to deal with. Seemingly the main threat was nature itself which rather derives from Blake’s The Tyger which gave the episode’s title and indicates that Nature, red in tooth and claw is as much a part of the ecosystem as the All Things Bright and Beautiful description of creation. Of course the resolution was that the seemingly threatening nature of the forest protects us as much as it frightens us. I’m not sure whether that particularly comes over that well but the idea is an interesting one.

So, overall an enjoyable episode and whilst it was possibly not quite up to the standards of the preceding two Jamie Mathieson stories it still provided a satisfying conclusion to the mini-arc of stories that began with Kill The Moon. I suppose if I have any criticism it is that I could see where the story was heading from the outset so any enjoyment was from the journey itself rather than seeing where the destination was. Next week is the first part of the series finale. As ever its worth waiting until the end before drawing conclusions but I’m hoping that it can maintain the standards of the rest of the series. Of course, with Steven Moffat, not everything is as it first appears.