Fear Itself

Wow, that was a better boogieman than Series 1/14 /hj

In all seriousness, this is a fine story, I like the mini character development for Darius (I remember his name!) in having a fear of enclosed spaces, which is very fun put next to The Professor having a fear of the outdoors. The stuff they did with Drake as well was pretty neat to see (is this the reveal of his robot hand/arm, or am I not remembering it before?)

The main issue is that while the central thread should work in theory, a robot learning emotions, it doesn't really work with K-9 specifically, and K-9's fear doesn't seem believable for the character. Also, they forgot the first act? I mean it was there, but it was like 3 minutes of the whole episode (including the intro)

4/10

4️⃣🔼 = UNENJOYABLE!

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

“I HAVE A BAD FEELING ABOUT THIS!”

Two hobos kidnap The Annoying Kid. I hope they get rid of him forever (they don’t!).

The dialogue is so clunky, and the characters express their feelings throughout the episode so terribly that it’s almost comical.

This one’s a mess of clunky editing and writing. But at least they have a theme they are trying to explore somewhat and learning to face our fears and live through them.

Smug Face shouting angrily at the boggart cabinet from Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban is my favourite scene of the series so far. He then follows it up with the passionately delivered line, “I could force the truth out of you!”.

All these Halloween games and talking about fear and feelings is so clunky that I get annoyed.

Smug Face and Evil Mother continue their Department stuff, and it’s no clearer here than previously.

K9 does nothing but discuss the philosophy of feelings (until the second half, where he actually gets to do something), and Dull Professor is also very useless.

This is a slow and fairly dull episode that keeps teasing a potential alien that finally appears in one of the worst action scenes I’ve ever seen.

Are we supposed to be shocked by the reveal that Smug Face has a robotic hand?

RANDOM OBSERVATIONS:

K9 calls feelings a “system error” which sounds like a very Cyberman idea to throw around!

Classic Doctor Who often drew on well established tropes and did its own version of them. The problem with this is that it’s cliched without having any kind of independent personality of its own. It’s just so plain.