It ’s heavily not to draw some kind of conclusion from the fact that last Saturday ’s installment of time - traveling action - drollery medico Who was obviously made for 50 cent and a Frobisher and Gleason raspberry flavored methamphetamine lolly . And it ’s the in effect episode of the year , far better than some episode that were full of money being thrown at the screen . Could it be that Doctor Who ’s at its good when it makes do with less , budget - wise ? Or could it just be that having to write a story about people in a small enclosed space , Russell T. Davies decide to go the claustrophobic - dramatic play route , and we ’re all intimately off as a result ? Spoilers ahead !
Either way , watching “ Midnight ” should put to rest any idea that Doctor Who is just a “ kids show . ” It ’s a family line drama , and has been since the early 60 ( when it regularly featured thing like a pelt trapper endeavor to despoil Barbara , and the Doctor manipulating a race of disarmer into fighting the Daleks on his behalf . ) And the show has often been at its best when it ’s done episode like this one — a horror story that has as much to do with the evil that the great unwashed are open of as it does with an external monster .
That ’s why I choose the clip above , by the way . Not only is it the best moment in this story , it ’s also the minute where the story shifts seamlessly on its axis vertebra , from monster horror to people horror . Suddenly , just like that , the people are the monster . I was crossing my digit and keep back my breath that we would n’t get an ending that explained that there was some sort of mind control or satanic influence or psychic nastiness . And give thanks good there was n’t .
Instead , these character were just love child in a crisis — under enough press , they were willing to commit execution to survive . It matte very much like an old Twilight Zone episode , or a clone of Sartre ’s No departure .
The thing that was really awing about this installment was that it used all of Russell T. Davies ’ usual whoremonger — except a lot darker than common . You have the random casting of people , each of whom gets a picayune case moment to establish them : the bitchy mom , the swash dad , the goth Logos , the wounded lesbian , the control - freak escape attendant , and then the pompous professor and his exploited grad student . Everybody gets to be just well rounded enough to be a decent imitation — and then afterwards , Russell T. twists the knife . Like the mo when the exploit grad scholar , Dee Dee , decides to establish she ’s clever by showing them how they can murder poor Mrs. Silvestry . And then a while later she protests stamp out the Doctor , and her boss Professor Hobbes set her in her home .
( By the way , Professor Hobbes was played by David Troughton , the son of the second Dr. . This was his 2nd Doctor Who role , after 1972 ’s The Curse of Peladon . lilliputian trivia moment . But consort to Wikipedia , he ’s not relate to Alice Troughton , who direct the sequence , though . )
And a lot of the episode had RTD ’s hallmark quirkiness — but it totally creeped me out instead of being campy . Just ideate if someone had described this instalment to you : “ Their ‘ bus ’ breaks down in the middle of nowhere , and there ’s a thing banging on the wall , and then it gets in and takes over a gay woman who look like Jackie Tyler . And she starts repeating what everybody says , like a parrot . And then last she ’s order stuff at the same fourth dimension as them , and then it ’s only the Dr. . And at last she ’s speaking first , and he ’s repeating her . ” You would think it ’s another utilization in fatuousness — but in praxis it ’s scary and disturbing , and the longer it go on the more jarring it beat . you could see why the other humans start want to vote down her .
Even the little laughable touches , like the peanuts and succus pack and pop medicine and cartoons towards the beginning , end up contributing to the weirdness because they anchor the installment with their banality . ( Oh and I should sum up : I do n’t always hate RTD ’s “ risible ” episodes . I loved the one with the average hoi polloi inquire the Doctor , where they turn into an ELO cover band . And there are a few other silly RTD outings that I ’ve enjoyed . When it works , his wit is fantastic — it just gets a bit tired after the 10th productive - people monster . )
The other affair I loved about the episode was David Tennant ’s operation — for once the psychical paper does n’t get him anywhere , and he ca n’t but take direction of the situation . He ’s still the cagy person in the room , but he does n’t bang everything that ’s going on . And watching him attempt to take charge , you realise how much his “ take charge ” human activity depends on movement . He ’ll say something like “ follow me , ” and start out walk at top speed in some way . But he ca n’t do that in this installment , because there ’s no position to go , almost nothing to do except await for deliverance . A motionless medico , apparently , is a much more incapacitated Doctor . And yes , he did transfer Peter Davison ’s super - vulnerable Doctor a bit . And the flood tide , where he ’s paralytic , incapacitated and ineffective to stop reprize the evil lesbian , was amazing .
( By the manner , are we supposed to think that the fact that Mrs. Silvestry startle aver thing like “ molto bene ” at the end have in mind the Doctor is fighting back the only way he can — by feeding her his weird vocabulary ? Or is it just random ? )
So yes , we ’re all monsters , and we ’re all quick to do the worst possible thing in a crisis — although , this prison term around , it turned out to be the correct matter , sort of . It ’s one of the bleakest pack on humanity I can remember ever realize on Doctor Who , and what makes it so great is that all of those characters also have moments of compassionateness or aristocracy in the same episode . They do n’t flex murderous and that ’s it — they keep curve towards murder and then away from it again .
Finally , I ’m happy that we did n’t get some kind of glib account of what the creature was , and why it was so ebil . And the Doctor did n’t suddenly reverberate back and crack a giant jest at the end , as if this experience actually get to him a bite .
To respond the question I sort of posed in the beginning , I do n’t recall I care this episode just because it remind me of old - school Who , of which I stay a huge sports fan . This was n’t quondam - school Who by any agency — it still had all the caparison of the RTD era , and was honorable for having them . I ca n’t quite guess any previous geological era of the show doing a story quite like this one — there would have been a gumshoe freak at some point , and some variety of account , and probability are the character would have been a bit more aboveboard . It would have been the crew of an exploraiton ship or something , with a few IE pilot on gameboard . Anyway , no – this was Modern Who at its good , only without quite so much money , campiness or sentimentality . Molto bene . What did you think ?
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