🙏🏼6/10 = OKAY!

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

Ten and Rose in the Scottish Highlands, a real castle setting, a scary werewolf, warrior monks, and Queen Victoria—what could possibly go wrong here?

First of all, the cold open scene of Tooth and Claw is arguably the most awkward in all of New Who. It’s action-packed and cool on a conceptual level, but the editing and stunt work in this fight scene are so horrible. Why did RTD think these warrior monks were a good idea?

RTD writes here an atmospheric ghost story and period piece, mostly relying on the Scottish setting, the presence of the Queen, and the idea of werewolves. The slow build-up of tension and the otherwise palpable atmosphere are constantly undercut with ill-placed humour.

After the fairly lengthy buildup, Tooth and Claw turns to a standard fare but fast-paced chase sequence. The werewolf slaughters people left and right, and every kill is ruined by the weird editing choices. There are some more story-building moments in between chases, but very little of it matters.

This is yet another attempt at taking a classic literary monster and giving it a Doctor Who twist. Big Finish already did this with stories such as Loups-Garoux, and they gave it much more thought, as here there's not enough time to develop things properly.

David Tennant still comes across as smug, and the annoyingly giggling and teenage-y relationship between him and Billie Piper annoys me. Tennant is beginning to show some of his quirky and fun qualities, as well as his alien intelligence and habit of taking effective charge of any situation, though, and Rose is also fending well for herself.

The lovely Pauline Collins makes a memorable turn as Queen Victoria. Classic Who fans will recognise her as the very same Pauline Collins who played Samantha Briggs (one of the best examples of a companion who never was) in the 1967 story The Faceless Ones. Collins makes the Queen a well-rounded and likeable character, but also a badass queen.

The recognisable Ian Hanmore always makes for an effective villain, and I also enjoy Derek Riddell here as a man who is visibly torn between loyalties.

There are some good jokes here: the “I’m attached to my thumb” line or the gag where the Doctor speaks Scottish and Rose tries to mimic him, only to fail miserably. Then there are the cringeworthy lines, such as the running gag of Rose trying to get the Queen to say, “We are not amused.”

The werewolf transformation scene is tense and horrifying, to be honest. Sadly, the werewolf itself is a pretty clunky CGI creation, which removes a lot of its efficiency.

The biggest takeaway here is the final scene, with Queen Victoria banishing the Doctor and Rose from the Empire for all eternity after knighting them and then setting up Torchwood to make sure that they never return, therefore laying the foundation for the Torchwood spinoff. Not to mention the suggestion that this werewolf encounter is the reason that the British Royal Family suffers from haemophilia, essentially making them werewolves.