Fear Her

📝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.

Fear Her has become one of the most topical episodes lately, for reasons both good and bad. On the bright side of things, the Paris Olympics have currently been airing on the television, placing the sports event at the forefront of people's minds once again. On the bad, Huw Edwards has pleaded guilty of creating indecent images of underage children. Both the Olympics (albeit the London 2012 Olympics) and Huw Edwards feature in this episode, the latter prompting the BBC to remove Fear Her from iPlayer. It makes me glad for physical media, as whilst Huw Edward's actions are disgusting and unforgivable, I don't believe in censorship. I think it is important that every piece of media exists in its original form, to allow for people to learn from past mistakes, instead of pretending they never happened.

I've never understood the hate for Fear Her, and after rewatching it on the 3rd August, I still love the episode the same as before. It sees the Tenth Doctor and Rose discover that young Chloe Webber has been causing kids and cats to disappear from her neighbourhood with her drawings, thanks to a lonely alien called the Isolus. It's a very creative premise, that's similar to the Harold And The Purple Crayon book, which has recently received a big screen adaptation. The episode plays with the upset caused by being trapped inside a drawing well, with the kids in the drawings looking either sad or angry at Chloe's actions.

One of my favourite aspects of the story remains the scribble creature. I have seen some people within the fandom label this aspect as 'too silly', but I find it quite a novel concept. Only Doctor Who could make a literal scribble a viable threat for one of its protagonists. I like the idea that it's made from pure graphite too. It emphasises the idea that this is a kid's drawing brought to life. How often do you get to see the Doctor and their companion encounter a threat that isn't either a human, a computer, or an alien?

Fear Her may be seen largely as quite a light episode, but it does get surprisingly dark. There's a hint at Chloe's past featuring an abusive father, who was either physically or verbally aggressive towards herself and her mother, and the poor child still has nightmares about him. When her drawing of her awful Dad comes to life, it has to be one of the most unsettling scenes in Doctor Who. You feel the fear that Chloe holds towards this terrible figure in her life, who should have been someone full of love for his daughter but instead was a monster, and his constant threats that he's 'coming to get' Chloe are horrifying.

Huw Edwards' role in this episode is quite brief. He only has a VoiceOver, commenting on the 2012 Olympics torch coverage and Opening Ceremony. He's fine, if a bit wooden, especially in the scene where everyone in the stadium disappears and he has to act shocked and confused. His part is so small that it does make me think the BBC overreacted to not only remove Fear Her, but to go to the extent of recording a whole new VoiceOver, which is supposed to be present when it goes back up. I'll probably review the new VoiceOver as an addition to this review too once the new version is available.

Possibly the most iconic sequence from this episode is the Doctor running with the Olympic Torch. It's a fantastic moment, that captures the iconography of the Games, and one of those images that stays with you long after the episode has aired. This scene was echoed in real life, only for the actual 2012 Olympic Games, they opted for Matt Smith to carry the torch rather than David Tennant. Still, it's a shame they didn't double down on the meme and given the torch to David Tennant.

Overall, Fear Her is a vastly underrated episode. It's a highly creative adventure concerning a child who can bring drawings to life. Fear Her is also much darker than the fandom remembers, delivering an unnerving subplot regarding Chloe's deceased abusive father, and includes one of the most iconic Doctor Who scenes, in the Doctor carrying the Olympic Torch. It's an episode that should be reassessed by fans, as there is a lot to love in Fear Her.

Just awful. The Olympics stuff is so fundamentally lame, the effects are a joke, the child acting isn't very good - Fear Her deserves every bit of infamy it has earned. It's a very nothing story with not a lot to offer. Billie Piper is trying something here and I can appreciate her talent but the writing just isn't there at all. The whole drawings coming to life could be interesting but this is about as bad as you can get execution-wise.

Ideal Doctor Who episode. It has everything. Meaningful narrative about abuse. Hints of Doctor backstory. The tenth Doctor thinking Rose is calling him a beautiful boy when really she's talking about a cat. Extreme calm-before-the-storm vibes. I watch this episode frequently and it hits every time.

This is the only story of the new series so far that I would describe as a complete mess. Pacing wise it’s all over the place. The first half all has the rhythm and feel of the opening 5 minutes of a TV show - it never gets going. The second half feels like it’s in a constant state of concluding. It is overly simplistic and surface level with leaps of logic and coincidences throughout - stretching believability even for the under-10s.

For Fear Her to work it would need to be shot and edited to be scarier, to be more like a horror movie. Murray Gold’s kooky sitcom score makes no sense for this story and frames it in an unhelpful way - a rare fail for him. We’re being indicated as an audience that something funny is on screen, but there is nothing to laugh at.

The one saving grace of this outing is the chemistry between David Tennant and Billie Piper. The latter half of this series has really seen their bond as actors flourish. It somewhat takes the curse off of the poor performances from the rest of the cast - primarily the child actor behind Chloe Webber and the woman playing her mum.

The ending is among the shows worst, including the forced foreshadowing. It’s among the worst productions, but luckily avoids the title of “worst” by at least 3 other stories from the first 26 years of the show.