📝4/10

Thworping through time and space, one adventure at a time!

FEAR HER, or THE TERROR OF A SNOTTY KID!

Doctor Who’s second series winds down a bit before the big two-part finale with Fear Her, written by Life on Mars writer Matthew Graham in his Doctor Who debut (he’ll be back in Series 6!).

THE HIGHLIGHTS:

• The TARDIS materialisation gag is actually decent—I can’t believe how no one has thought of it before!
• The general concept of a deeply emotional collective alien species, the Isolus, is a good one, so it’s a pity it’s so tightly knit with a trashy story like this one.
• It’s cool to see the Doctor do some good old tinkering inside the TARDIS. The Doctor’s third incarnation is showing a bit!

THE LOWLIGHTS:

• Knowing how 2012 looked and sounded, the version of the future we see here doesn’t feel very 2012 to me—where are the smartphones and tablets?
• Chloe is an annoying kid from her very first scene—and she is genuinely one of the worst characters in Who history. Abisola Agbaje's stilted acting doesn’t help her cause at all. And since she is a central character in this narrative, her very presence throughout the episode drags it out quite a lot.
• Setting the entire story on a street in suburban London is a good cost-saving measure but makes for one of the most forgettable settings of any Doctor Who story.
• Yeah, we’re back to the good old Smuggity Smug-Face Ten and Rose, and I can’t stand it!
• The Tenth Doctor isn’t a cat person.
• The pencil scribble creature is an even stupider idea than the Abzorbaloff in Love & Monsters, and the scary daddy monster drawing in the closet is almost as bad (New Who’s take on the Malus?).
• This episode handles similar themes as The Idiot’s Lantern—but the setting, characters, and symbolic storytelling are much weaker.
• Billie Piper is really unlikeable here, like more than usual. It’s either due to the material or the fact that she doesn’t quite know what to do with it, but I don’t vibe with her at all.
• The supporting cast is so forgettable and naff—even Nina Sosanya is completely hopeless, not to mention Abdul Salis.
• The idea of an abusive father leaving traces of trauma and horror in his children is an important message, but handled in such an insensitive way here that it feels sort of offensive.
• The whole Olympics angle with the Doctor carrying the Olympic torch and lighting the flame is so unnecessary. The entire final stretch of the episode is a bit too melodramatic for my tastes.

RANDOM OBSERVATIONS:

• This is yet another story in the category “Days of Future Past”—it was set in the future on its original air date but is now set in the past.
• The Doctor does a Klingon greeting—I always love a good Star Trek reference in Doctor Who.