| FEAR HER by Matthew Graham |
| Story 20 Synopsis: The Doctor brings the TARDIS to London, 2012, to take Rose to the opening night of the Olympic Games. But they land in a small street where several children have gone missing in the last week. Ion residue points the Doctor to note something alien has stolen the children. Rose soon spots the culprit, a little girl called Chloe Webber, who stays up in her room, drawing children - the children who then vanish. The Doctor manages to contact the creature inside Chloe - an Isolus spore, crashed on Earth. It's used to company, and helps Chloe to find company. The Doctor works out the crashed ship is in the street, but Chloe traps him and the TARDIS inside a picture. Rose digs up the ship, but it needs powering. She gets it into the Olympic torch, where it begins to power up. The stolen children are restored, as is Chloe's drawing of her father, who died a year before, but mistreated her. Rose gets Chloe and her mother to conquer their fear of it, which works. The Doctor gets to light the Olympic torch, sending the Isolus ship back to its kin, and Chloe is released. Rose is reunited with the Doctor, but he thinks there's trouble ahead... |
| Review:- Back down to Earth, and small-town terror... This episode was apparently planned for series 3, but with the delays (and now eventual loss) of Stephen Fry's script, it was brought forward. Graham has come to prominence this year as the brains behind time-travel cop drama, Life On Mars. Here, he brings an eye for the human experience to a story of a lonely, trapped alien, and a family tragedy. The Doctor and Rose soon come to Dame Kelly Holmes Close, and become drawn up in the mystery of disappearing children. They soon find a likely culprit, and have to unlock the secrets, or be drawn into a grim fate... Some have drawn comparisons between this story and The Idiot's Lantern, although personally I didn't find that at all. Here, Rose becomes the warm, rounded character she is often publicised as being. The Doctor has the wisdom and the experience to translate the basic facts, such as presence of ion residue, into the truth, which turns out to be the Isolus factor. The idea of being trapped in a drawing is compellingly scary, and the use of the cliched wardrobe-monster works pretty well. It also provides both a depth to the family tragedy which drives the plot, and also an added drama at the end, which brings Trish and Chloe closer. In some ways, this is an excellent story, with the small cast almost all compelling in their parts. In other ways, it's cringe-makingly bad. Blatant and sniggery homages (or rip-offs, frankly) of The Exorcist and The Shining (and others, I'm told) make the show look like a juvenile pantomime. Then, after the stadium is magically emptied of 80,000 people, poor Huw Edwards has to say ropey dialogue to reflect what has happened, and then say garbage about the Olympic torch becoming a beacon of hope. These are the sorts of political non-phrases which mark out the deluded charlatan, and do no-one here credit. To really hammer the final nails into this segment, and the elliptical Olympic theme, the Doctor has to light the Olympic flame. Utterly silly. So, hardly a qualified success, but still an improvement on the episode it followed. |
| Disclaimer: I have watched this story. |