It’s the Olympics!
We’re back in 2012! Though people outside are excited, someone is watching out
of their window, and an old lady knows something is up. Oh, now she’s going
crazy. Though with the music, and the way the child looking out of the window
at her is singing (children singing is ALWAYS scary in television), she’s
probably less crazy than she currently looks. The child starts to scribble
something on paper, as crazy lady starts shouting at some children to go
indoors, but suddenly one of the children disappears. As the mother of the
drawing child looks like she knows something is up, we see the picture that she
has been drawing – it looks rather similar to the child who has just
disappeared, and the picture is moving, growing bigger and opening its mouth in
a scream…
Cue title sequence…
The TARDIS
materialises between two large skips (initially the wrong way round so its door
is blocked…). As The Doctor walks off talking to himself, Rose notices a number
of missing children posters. He notes that it’s colder than usual, and then
runs off to investigate the garden where the last child disappeared from. A
passing car breaks down, the fifth today in that same place apparently, and as
soon as it gets past a certain spot it comes back to life. The Doctor is
giggling at his hand, which disturbs the father of the missing child, though he
uses psychic paper to convince him that he’s a policeman. The old lady wades
in, telling them that strange forces are at work. Everyone starts arguing,
until The Doctor shushes them by using the authority of a teacher, with the old
‘fingers on lips’ technique. Whilst the old lady pleads for help, Rose notices
the drawing child looking down at them from her window.
The Doctor uses his
best sniffing techniques to detect traces of metal in all the locations a child
disappeared. Drawing child spots a cat – gods, she’s got a quick drawing
technique. Her name is Chloe. She denies drawing the boy she drew, Dale,
looking sad, and says he made himself like that, and the cat will be a friend.
Her mum tries to engage her, but with little success. In the end, Chloe
threatens to draw her mum just to shut her up. Now THAT’S a burn moment if ever
I heard one! Outside, Rose has been stroking the cat, but it disappears after
entering a box, leaving behind a very strong metal scent. Takes a MASSIVE
amount of power, apparently.
Chloe is talking to
the pictures on her wall, annoyed that they aren’t alone but she is, and that
they don’t know what it’s like to be alone. Rose, meanwhile, is hearing banging
coming from a garage. LOUD banging. When she opens the door, some angry looking
ball of what appears to be electrical cable, or elastic bands, but is actually
graphite attacks her – it’s the pencil scribble that Chloe has just drawn. Rose
guesses it could be the creepy girl at the window, so they pop along for a
visit. They talk their way into the house, assuring Chloe’s mum, Trish, that
they can help her.
Rose sneaks off,
pretending to go to the loo, but really to see Chloe before her mum can ‘check
on her first’. She hides in the airing cupboard when Chloe runs out, and then
she sneaks into the room. After knocking some pencils over, the picture of Dale
has changed to show an angry expression. In the kitchen, The Doctor talks to
Chloe, who says she’s busy making something. She tells him how the pictures
don’t stop moaning, and that she can do something that means ‘we can be
together,’ which I can only presume at this point is something to do with her
dead dad. In Chloe’s room, Rose hears noises coming from the cupboard, and when
she pushes the clothes aside she sees what appears to be a demon drawn on the
wall, which growls ‘I’m coming’ at her. It’s a pretty badass drawing really. I
appreciate art.
The Doctor is still
trying to get answers from Chloe, when Rose screams for him from upstairs. The
Doctor shuts the closet door as Rose appears to be in a trance, moving slowly
towards the drawing. Apparently Chloe drew him yesterday, as she needs to be
together with him. Trish begins to panic, trying to get rid of The Doctor and
Rose, but The Doctor does his talking quickly thing to keep on her good side. The
explanation has something to do with ‘ionic energy’, and Chloe is holding the
victims in an ionic holding pen.
They all go up to
Chloe’s room. Using a Vulcan Mind Meld (no, I’m not joking), they speak to the
entity inhabiting her body. It refuses to give up Chloe, saying it just wants
its friends, as it’s alone. It’s an Isolus, an empathic race who require the
empathic link between itself and its four billion siblings to stay alive. They
play with each other whilst travelling through the stars, creating imaginary
words, and feeding off the love this generates with each other. This Isolus
accidentally fell to Earth following a solar flare. The Isolus starts to get
agitated, waking the demon in Chloe’s closet, and Trish has to sing to her to
get her to calm down.
The Doctor and Rose
head off to build something to find the crashed Isolus pod, so they can help
return it to its family, but it follows them. It/Chloe draws The Doctor and the
TARDIS, causing them both to vanish. Rose goes sick at the Isolus, who wants to
be left alone with Chloe, before realising that the pod would have sought the
hottest point on the street, which would have been a freshly laid tarmac patch.
She takes a pickaxe to a piece laid six days ago, and uncovers a very small
Isolus spaceship. Returning to the house, she is too late to stop the Isolus
making the crowds at the Olympic venues disappear. Huw Edwards is bloody
confused by it all. In reality, it is trying to collect four billion people in
its imaginary world through its pictures, to replace its four billion lost
siblings. Rose and Trish confront the Isolus, but it has started drawing the
Earth, and threatens to unleash the demon in the closet if they stop it,
because it thinks its spaceship is dead. Rose tries to argue that a heat source
will charge it up again, before The Doctor’s picture changes to point to the
Olympic Torch. Racing outside, Rose heads to the Olympic Torch parade, which
just so happens to be taking place on the same estate. The pod begins to wake
up, as Rose throws it close enough to the Torch to charge it up again. The
Isolus departs, as Chloe is returned to her mum, along with all the other
missing children and Olympic spectators.
Of course, all the
drawings coming back to life means the demon in the closet will too...It locks
all the doors of the house before Rose can get back into the house. She tells
Chloe that her fear gives it energy, and by singing she will destroy it, which
she does. Presumably through ‘love’, not the terror of their singing. Or
possibly because she’s now calm. Something like that.
On the TV, the Torch
bearer collapses, and so The Doctor takes over and carries it to its final
destination at the Olympic Stadium. The Isolus pod, now fully recharged heads
off back to the stars. Rose and The Doctor are reunited, and all is well with
the world. Except that The Doctor can tell something is in the air.
A storm is
approaching.
Following on from one of the most unpopular new-Who episodes comes another of the most unpopular new-Who episodes. Now, this is far from my favourite episode, but I think some of the criticism is a little unjust. There's some very funny moments, an alien with a good mystery and deserving of a lot of sympathy (it's a lost child for crying out loud), and strong performances from all of the cast. However, it's well known that this episode was targeted at children, so there are bound to be plenty of reasons adults aren't so taken with it. To be honest, it's far simpler to outline all the negatives in this case than the positives, as beyond the pros mentioned above I kind of feel it just sort of fits into the 'yeah, it's alright' category. It is, however, miles better than Love & Monsters.
The whole episode hinges on one or two overly-convenient factors, in truth. In addition to the one above, the fact that the Olympic Torch happens to be passing by at the exact right second is just too much of a stretch. A general fire wouldn’t do, because the Torch is ‘a symbol of love’. I know that there needs to be a willing suspension of disbelief (I’m normally more than happy to have one), but there have been plenty of other episodes that don’t hang on such a huge coincidence (pretty much all of them, really). I’m not sure of the reasons why people seem to dislike this episode in general, but for me it’s these plot resolutions mentioned above that seriously drag it down. Until you realise that the Isolus pod is still in the torch, it also seems stupid that The Doctor would carry the Torch on its final leg, but at least there’s a sort of reason behind that. Still not a fan of it though.
Hmm, it’s a bit of a leap for Rose to go from scribble, to child’s drawing (fairly, because children scribble things out) to creepy Chloe at the window. Yeah, it’s logical to us because we’ve been watching her draw, but Rose and The Doctor have absolutely zero knowledge of this. Just seems too big a leap to me. Am I being unfair? The Doctor’s impressed with her deducting, but…
Destroying the demon by ‘calming’ Chloe? Or is it by giving her love? Even with the singing, she still looks pretty terrified to me. I know that’s one of the plot points, that calming her stops the demon, but it’s a bit shoddy to finish with.
So what does it do well? Really, it's the humour behind the script that mostly stands out. 'Shayne Ward’s Greatest Hits’? Oh,
Doctor Who, how you jest! Weird how quickly some jokes go out of
date…but it’s a funny one all the same! ‘Look at the hairs on the back of my manly hairy hand.’ Good one Doctor, good one. This is my type of description!
The Doctor: Hello! I’m The Doctor and this is Rose. Can we see your daughter?
Chloe’s Mum: No, you can’t.
The Doctor: OK, bye!
Wonderful use of near-reverse psychology
I love when the council worker berates Rose for digging up a council road, using a council axe, stolen from a council van, after talking about the special council tarmac recipe...I work for a council and I don’t think our tarmac fitters are this strange, but I’d love to find out!
Sometimes, it’s not just one line but lots together that make you appreciate just how good the scripts are in Doctor Who. The Doctor calling his ‘police assistant' (Rose) Lewis, the manly hands line, The Doctor thinking Rose is calling him beautiful when she means the cat, needing to locate the source of whatever is ‘stealing children and…fluffy…animals’…it’s all brilliant. Even if this isn’t the greatest episode, the dialogue is still top notch. That’s why Love & Monsters hurts so much, really. It should be at least fun to watch just from the script, and it isn’t.
It’s completely random, but at one point The Doctor takes the lid off a jar of jam and starts eating it with his fingers. Rose coughs and shakes her head as Trish looks disapprovingly at him, and he sheepishly puts the jar back down. It’s very funny and very out of the blue, especially at such a serious part of the story, yet it’s just another simple reminder that The Doctor really is an alien.
In a wonderful Star Trek reference, The Doctor initially greets Chloe using the Vulcan ‘live long and prosper’ hand greeting. To show that she is willing to talk to him about what’s going on, she later uses the same greeting to him. He then performs what is clearly a Vulcan Mind Meld. Not subtle at all, but great to see.
The Doctor shushing everyone with ‘fingers on lips!’ is eye-wateringly funny when it happens. Already the attempts at humour are far better than in
Love & Monsters (barring the wonderful Jackie Tyler, of course).
The overall reason behind the ‘evil’ taking place is tragic. The alien being a child, lost and in need of its family, finding Chloe because they are both lonely and just wanting to be loved...it’s nice to have a villain that isn’t wholly evil. Rose says she thinks that it’s just having a temper tantrum and shouldn’t have too much sympathy, but I’m on the side of The Doctor. I’m an attachment parenting person, and I don’t do controlled crying.
The actress playing Chloe does a fine job (not something you
can always say, though thankfully in Who
they tend to pick children who can act well), but the moments where she has to
put on a breathy whisper to signify the demon inhabiting her are so annoying
that I can’t remember anything else except this from the first time I saw this
episode. Luckily, I’ve found a lot more to appreciate this time round, but I
still find these moments ridiculously grating. It’s not the actresses fault at
all; how can you make someone’s breathy whisper less annoying, when EVERYONE’S
breathy whispers annoy you?
The piece of music that plays when The Doctor performs his Vulcan Mind Meld on Chloe is absolutely breathtaking. So simple, yet so atmospheric, it perfectly conjures the image of a man come to save a little girl.
Torchwood Mentions
None that I can recall
Overall
I really don't think it's as bad as people make out, and children will certainly enjoy it more than adults, though adults should enjoy some hilarious parts of the script. Overall though, it's just 'alright', nothing better.
6/10
