I don't mind this episode, I like that it's not really the alien thats the villain. It sounds basic, but I like this episode is really all I have to say, it's an alright episode, nothing too special about it, but I don't skip it either, if that makes sense. I do like the scene with the cat a lot however.
(Please don't take these too seriously, I am not a real life reviewer, just someone who likes the show)
It being the 2012 Olympics is such a mindfuck: for me, it feels like the same past as 2006 (late high school/early student life), but here it's the semi-nearby future. I keep reminding myself they're not dealing with a Current Events Episode, but Semi-Future One
Hey! It's the PM's assistant from Love Actually
Hee. He put the TARDIS the wrong way around
Hey! The road worker is also from Love Actually
Angry barbed wire -- thank god these special effects are styllistically bad and not accidentally bad
Maybe they're still accidentally kind of bad
“Are you deducting?” Hee
Live Long and Dr!
The Dr doesn't like cats, Rose does. This will never work out
Hee. That stash of pencils must be the most innocent hidden stash in any kid's bedroom ever
Aw, a girl and her pickaxe. Go Rose go
You know, Isolus/possessed girl, if you'd drawn a smaller earth, your plan would have worked
Oh god, I just realized that this episode is the one where a little girl menacingly draws a picture of the earth
MOM! You're very useless, I must say
This is like a counterpart to the episode where Rose gets stuck in the telly. They're both pretty low budget, deal with family life and a pivotal, televised UK-event. Here, the Doctor gets sidelined, in the other one, Rose does. Also, they're both not particularly great episodes
Ominous foreshadowing! Is Rose leaving soon? But I've already fallen in love with her
Btw, what is with this string of bad, uninspired episode titles? This and the last one are super generic
5 out of 8 TARDES. It gets a pass, but just barely
That time Doctor Who did Tales from the Hood and the Olympics
Content warning: I will speak briefly about domestic abuse at a couple of points in this review. Feel free to skip this one if that’s too much for you.
They say horror and comedy share similar beats. That the rhythms of their narrative structure are comparable. This is probably why I have always struggled with getting into the horror genre. Much like a comedy, if the premise is weak, you pray it’s brief. This is probably why one of my favourite subgenres of horror is the anthology movie. Tales from the Crypt, Creepshow, Trick-’R-Treat, The Vault of Horror are just a few. But one of my favourites of the lot is a charming film referred to as “Tales from the Hood.” Its cheeky title, an obvious riff off of the then popular “Tales from the Crypt,” franchise, told you everything you needed to know. This was a horror anthology movie made from a black perspective. It stars the electric Clarence Williams III as “Mr Simms,” the movie’s analogue Cryptkeeper. And it’s a lot of fun.
Of the film’s four different stories, my favourite as a kid was always “Boys Do Get Bruised.” In it, a young boy named Walter discovers he has the ability to affect things in the real world after drawing them. He learns this after crumpling a drawing of his bully coincides with his bully meeting a terrible and maiming accident. Throughout the story, both Walter and his mother Sissy are subject to the violent outbursts of Sissy’s boyfriend Carl (played brilliantly by an against type David Allen Grier). Walter refers to Carl as “The Monster,” and draws him as such. Toward the climax of the story, Walter protects himself and Sissy by folding, twisting, and eventually burning the image of the Monster. You can imagine my surprise then, when Doctor Who told basically the same story eleven years later with “Fear Her.”
In Fear Her, we’re introduced to the residents of the appropriately named Dame Kelly Holmes Close, a residential street scheduled to be part of the Olympic torch runner route for the then-upcoming 2012 London Olympics. The local council has taken a keen interest in beautifying their roads to allow Britain to put its best foot forward on the international stage. Only something far more troubling than potholes is afoot, and everyone knows it. No amount of beautification or proud waving of the Union Jack can hide the fact that there are children going missing. Unbeknownst to most of the residents, it all relates back to young Chloe Webber and her bizarre ability to capture people, animals, and objects within her childish drawings.
The TARDIS arrives in what may be one of the funniest materialisation scenes in Doctor Who history with the Doctor needing to readjust the parking. The Doctor and Rose exit, seemingly in high spirits. From my research, I learned that this script had been written pretty early on into Tennant’s tenure as the Tenth Doctor. Because of this, much of the dialogue was written for any Doctor to deliver. I found this funny as I feel some of Tennant’s funniest one-liners come from this episode. Such as when he muses that back in 1948 “everyone had a tea party to go to,” and then goes on to wax philosophic about those little edible ball-bearings on cakes. If that is boilerplate Doctor dialogue, I love it. That said, the Doctor and Rose’s flirting feels out of character and tacked on at times. While the Doctor is busy distracting himself with his own haircare routine, Rose gets the first whiff of danger after witnessing a cat go missing.
After doing a bit of very obvious snooping, the Doctor and Rose have brought themselves to the attention of half the neighbourhood. It’s the concerned elderly woman, Maeve who thinks something is taking the children. Council worker, Kel, is more concerned with smoothing out the pavement of the roads to have noticed much. So the Doctor and Rose go knocking on doors. Meanwhile, Chloe Webber spies their activities from the birdseye view of her first-floor bedroom window. Whatever force has taken over Chole fears what changes these newcomers will bring and it begins to formulate a plan. But through frustration Chloe scribbles across the page, causing a tangled ball of graphite to manifest and attack Rose.
The Doctor uses a bit of sonic screwdriver magic to neutralise the threat, rendering the graphite knot conveniently travel-sized. He then takes the ball back to the TARDIS, where analysis reveals its compounds are pencil lead. I imagine much of the ire for this story comes from Chloe’s being able to draw things in and out of existence, which is fair. Personally speaking, I’ve always loved that concept, ever since I was a kid. It wasn’t just Tales from the Hood either. Eerie, Indiana did a similar story as well. I loved Kyle Rayner as the Green Lantern because he was an artist able to “draw,” things into existence using his lantern ring. I get that it may be a little too far-fetched for some, but I hold that Doctor Who is not hard sci-fi. I would argue that it’s not even sci-fi. But really, I think the weakest element of this story has got to be the inclusion of the Olympics.
For starters, this episode came out in 2006. Matthew Graham has gone on record saying that this episode was written for children. So why then, is it so far from the actual Olympics? It’s not as though this is some sort of corporate mandate from the higher-ups at the BBC to generate synergy or whatever. Maybe if the Olympics were in two years, it would have made more sense. With that in mind, it appears to be more of a conscious decision, and what a weird one. If this story was written for six-year-olds, its subject matter wouldn’t come into fruition until they were twice their age. This isn’t really a negative, I simply find it odd.
Even stranger is the fact that this story wasn’t originally supposed to take place on Earth, so the inclusion of the Olympics had to come much later. In trying to understand the usage of the Olympics, I reverse-engineered the story in many different ways to see if it could tell the same story without all of the saccharine nationalism and honestly, I kept coming back to it being somewhat essential to the story. The most likely explanation is that the Olympics are fun and that the story being set in the near future added a bit of realism. Sure, fine, but is that the only function they play?
As I mentioned earlier, Councilman Kel has been proudly minding the pavement with precision as if the Queen herself were running the torch. There’s a sort of gooey sentimentality toward Britain and its inclusion in the proud tradition of the Olympic games. But within this cloying nationalism is a hint of mockery. You can clean up the pavement and shoo away the homeless, but you can’t cover up what happens behind Britain's closed doors. Chloe Webber and her mother, Trish were both victims of horrible domestic abuse at the hands of Chloe’s now deceased father. Even after his death, trauma plagued both mother and daughter. Alienating them from one another, their friends, and even following into their dreams.
After narrowing down the Webber homestead as the source of the disappearances, the Doctor and Rose ingratiate themselves with Trish by presenting themselves as the only people open-minded enough to listen to her. The Doctor uses his famous “Dad skills,” to put Chloe under hypnosis, allowing him to talk to the entity inside. We learn that the entity is a creature called an Isolus, known for travelling in large groups like schools of fish puttering across the murky depths of space. Only this unfortunate Isolus was separated from its family. While seeking out warmth and love, it was drawn to the heat of new pavement and Chloe’s loneliness. Both Chloe and the Isolus are but lonely children seeking company, hence all of the stolen children.
After removing her drawing implements, the Doctor and Rose leave Chloe in Trish’s incapable hands. Seriously, this is the biggest sticking point in the entire episode for me. If your child has the inhuman ability to draw people out of existence, why the hell would you leave them alone? Fearing the Doctor is about to force it back into loneliness, the Isolus grabs Chloe’s coloured pencil stash out of a headless doll and gets to drawing the crowd at the Olympics. That many people gathered in the name of goodwill may be just the ticket. The disappearance of the crowd draws the Doctor and Rose back to the Webbers, but by the time they return, Chloe has also drawn the Doctor into her collection.
Now it’s up to Rose, with a little hint from the drawing of the Doctor- use the symbolic love of the Olympic torch to reignite the Isolus’ pod. Rose deduces that the pod must have been attracted to the high heat of the tar from Kel’s roadworks. She then goes over to his council van, produces a council axe, and tears up the council’s street, revealing the Isolus pod under the bump Kel couldn’t seem to smooth out. Meanwhile, Chloe, still unaware of Rose’s endeavours, furiously draws the earth on her wall in an attempt to further expand her family. Rose tosses the Isolus pod toward the Olympic torch runner just in time, as it attaches to the now roiling flame. The sudden influx of love and warmth draws the Isolus out of Chloe, who restores the missing children and the stadium crowd.
At this point, the episode can’t decide quite where it wants to end. The torch runner gets a leg cramp or something, causing him to drop the torch. It’s beginning to look like nobody will pick up the torch and carry it the rest of the way. That is until the Doctor comes along and scoops it up revealing that not only he, but the Olympics will be alright. Only the human equivalent of a golden retriever, David Tennant, could pull off such a dopey sequence. Seriously, could you picture Eccleston doing that? But the story doesn’t end there. You see, as I said earlier, Chloe’s father was still plaguing her dreams. In order to remove him from her dreams, Chloe trapped her horrific father in a drawing on her closet wall. With the sudden influx of power to the Isolus, the drawing has come to life.
The Doctor and Rose rush back toward the house but are unable to help Trish or Chloe who are racked with terror at the bottom of the stairs. The difference here is that instead of Chloe drawing her abuser into a drawing she can then crush and burn, she is now basically powerless against her father. Except she isn’t, and neither is Trish. The two young women embrace one another and sing “Kookabura,” together as it was always the song Trish used to soothe Chloe after a particularly bad dream. I really loved how at this point in the story, it’s up to two victims of abuse to reclaim their lives and save themselves. By sticking together, they find the strength to overcome their pain. As a former victim of domestic abuse, this scene actually means a lot to me on a personal level. I’m glad they didn’t cheapen the moment by having the Doctor reverse the polarity of the neutron flow.
Now, do I actually think Matthew Graham stole his story idea from a small American indie horror from 1995? No. Stole is a harsh word. But I would be lying if I said I didn’t try to find his Twitter so I could ask if maybe he saw the movie and forgot about it. It would also be a lie to claim I didn’t google his name and Tales from the Hood. All that came up were mentions of an adaptation of “Childhood’s End,” (not that one) and an episode of Philip K Dick’s Electric Dreams titled “The Hood Maker.” Really, comparing a childrens’ episode of Doctor Who to a horror movie from the gangsta rap era is a bit lopsided. It’s like when Kidz Bop covers a particularly salacious rap song. There’s gonna be some differences.
The episode ends with what might be one of the weirdest payoffs in Doctor Who history. The Doctor finally gets his edible ball-bearings on a cupcake. With the children of the village returned, the Isolus back with its family, and the world safe for another day, the Doctor and Rose are right to feel chuffed. Everyone lives and no one has to die. A cupcake break isn’t just warranted, it’s well earned. This is why the Doctor’s sudden chilly proclamation that a storm is approaching feels like a bit of an atonal ending to what was really a bit of a daft episode.
As history has shown, the real 2012 Olympic torch was not, in fact, lit by David Tennant, much to my and many other Whovian’s chagrins. Shayne Ward was focused less on music and more on his acting career by then. The Olympics themselves turned out to be less about love and more about keeping the status quo after the 2011 riots. In a way, Fear Her has become a bit of a retro-active historical, while also acting as a time capsule of preemptive revisionism. The reality of the 2012 London Olympics is closer to what goes on behind closed doors. The monster lurking underneath the image of prosperity.
So I’m watching Doctor Whon Season 2 Episode 11 (Fear Her). The old lady who first notices that there’s something wrong in the neighborhood with the kids disappearing, her name is Maeve.
In Season 8 Episode 10 (In the Forest of the Night), the little girl who can hear the trees is called Maebh (also pronounced “Maeve”).
The old lady could sense the ionic energy being used to snatch the children. The girl could sense the trees…
What if the little girl Maebh is named after her grandmother simply with a different spelling? What if old lady Maeve is little girl Maebh?
