Saturday 10 September 2011

Doctor Who : Night Terrors

The late Jon Pertwee once said that there's nothing more scary than coming home and finding a yeti sitting on your loo in Tooting Bec.
Which, whilst quite the mental image, is true and so therefore it's a bit of a shame that televised Doctor Who has only in this millenium got round to spending serious energy in showing the fantastical in recogonisable real-life settings. (Yeah, I know 7th Doctor companion Ace was grittier but in a middle-class-writer's view of grittiness)
And Night Terrors is a very solid example of how effective the show can be when things are pared down and it's just the Tardis crew in our world.


Yeah, you can predict the twists. A fellow Caravanner worked out where Rory and Amy were pretty quickly.
But it was the humour (Rory wondering if he was dead again) and the strength of the acting that really made this.
It reminded me an AWFUL lot of RTD's Dr Who novel Damaged Goods, set on a Thatcherian council estate beset with drug-dealers. Which is a compliment.

There was much brow-beating about things being hidden in plain sight. And before we get too excited about that as any kind of clue to this year's story-arc, we need to remember that this was originally going to be shown in the first half of the season when Amy was a Ganger.

All told, rather good, which is what we've come to expect from writer Mark Gatiss.

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