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Overview

First aired

Sunday, February 16, 2020

Written by

Maxine Alderton

Directed by

Emma Sullivan

Runtime

49 minutes

Time Travel

Past

Tropes (Potential Spoilers!)

Celebrity Historical, Ghosts

Story Arc (Potential Spoilers!)

The Lone Cyberman

Inventory (Potential Spoilers!)

Psychic Paper

Location (Potential Spoilers!)

Villa Diodati, Earth, Switzerland

UK Viewers

5.07 million

Appreciation Index

80

Synopsis

The Doctor and her companions visit Mary Shelley on a fateful night in 1816 when she creates Frankenstein but all is not as it seems. The rooms of Villa Diodati keep shifting around and ghosts are stalking the halls. And the group soon remember a familiar warning: "Beware the Lone Cyberman. Do not let it have what it wants". But why is Percy Shelley not where he should be according to history?

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8 reviews

This review contains spoilers!

It's stylish enough, and even a little substantive for the standards of Chibnall. In spite of others liking it I don't really get much out of this episode. It's fine. Unusually coherent for a 13th Doctor episode, but still kind of pointless. Ashad has some of the biggest build-up of any Doctor Who villain ever and it really feels like it doesn't amount to anything. He's just going to get tossed away in a couple of episodes. Who cares?

It reminds me a lot of some of the stuff we've heard about what production was like during this era. Rushed, to the point that scripts were delaying filming - and the writing shows for it in stuff like this. I bet people could watch this and be disengaged enough and unable to follow things to the extent they would have no idea Frankenstein's writer was involved in the story at all!


dema1020

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This review contains spoilers!

The good Chibnall-era episode, with sharp writing, humour and wit. With an honestly impressive ability to juggle characters and have them all be fleshed out, with added characterization for Thirteen (that genuinely makes me excited to listen to her inevitable Big Finish audios, providing they use this as a template as to how to do Thirteen right). With mood, atmosphere and stakes.
Similar in ways to a couple of my favourite stories from Doctor Who, Like The Impossible Astronaut/Day of the Moon for the haunted house vibes of the second part, similar to The Chimes of Midnight for being about a house where weird stuff takes place filled with fleshed-out cooky characters and similar to Master for it being a story completely carried by the character-work.

Altogether, it is just brilliant writing, and It was a breath of fresh air to those of us who dreaded every new episode of Who after realizing that it had lost everything we held dear about it.
It was clearly an overwhelming success for those who didn't like Chibnall Who (like myself) as I heard several people say she should be the next showrunner, which I personally think is a bit far for a completely new writer to the show with one great episode and nothing else, but I certainly get the gratitude.
9/10


RoseBomb

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This review contains spoilers!


I have to admit, I don't really get the love for this one. It's a really solid episode, delightfully creepy with great atmosphere and set design, but that's pretty much where my praise for it ends.

The Lone Cyberman was hyped up quite a bit, but I don't really get his deal. If I remember later episodes correctly, he isn't even properly utilised in them. A Cyberman without an emotional inhibitor is an interesting idea, but I don't think it's done well here.

I feel like, for being the most famous person in the episode, Mary Shelley was sidelined quite a bit. Everyone knows Frankenstein, but I don't think I've ever heard of any of Mr. Shelley's writing. I think the guardian thing would have worked better if it was Mary who was holding the Cyberium, instead, but for all I know they were drawing from real life for the way it effected him.

It was also just a bit slow. A lot of it was building up the tension, sure, but it was a bit too much for my taste.

I do love Thirteen in this episode. She has a few fantastically odd moments, as well as some great speeches, but that's not really unusual.


uss-genderprise

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This review contains spoilers!

There is no other word for that episode than utterly fantastic. I loved the spooky haunted house vibe, the stuff with the constantly changing house and Ashad The Lone Cyberman. Its design is impeccable, and the Cyberman  having no emotional inhibitor is  unique.

Jodie Whittaker's speech about sometimes not always being able to win and not wanting to lose someone else to the Cyber-conversion is going to go down in Who history as one of the all-time greats. Yet another instant classic after three already in one series.


WhoPotterVian

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This review contains spoilers!

Haunting of Villa Diodati

Another long title from Chibnall, this episode is what Captain Jack tried to warn Thirteen about 2 episodes ago.

Thirteen and "the fam" meet Mary Shelly on the night she writes Frankenstein, which is also the night Eight meets her, when he directly influences the story.

Percy Shelly is missing and a Lone Cyberman walks the halls. This is the first appearance of Ashad a half converted Cyberman. Supernatural occurrences are happening at Villa Diodati, "The Fam" must do something.

 


Dullish

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Quotes

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DOCTOR: Words matter! One death, one ripple, and history will change in a blink. The future will not be the world you know. The world you came from, the world you were created in won't exist, so neither will you.

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Transcript + Script Needs checking

[Lake Geneva, June 1816]

(Thunder, lightning and torrential rain, probably thanks to the eruption of Mount Tambora the previous year which caused severe global cooling as the ash blocked out sunlight around the world. A woman holds her young child as she looks out of the window of a villa.)

[Drawing room]

BYRON: Confined again. I cannot bear it.
MARY: The very world itself seems sick.
POLIDORI: A most ungenial summer. I've never known air as dank and frigid.
BYRON: Oh. Dank and frigid. Who does that remind me of, I wonder? Oh.

(Snaps his fingers and points at Polidori.)


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