I am – Hercules!!

While we here in the United States just finished watching the 27th season of “Doctor Who” on the SciFi Channel, the wily Brits have already seen “Doctor Who” 28.11 on the BBC. The verdict over there…

“Supertoyslast” says:

Fear Her
Written by Matthew Graham

***CONTAINS SPOILERS***

It's 2012 and the Doctor has decided to treat Rose to the opening ceremony of the London Olympics. But in Dame Kelly Holmes Close children are going missing and a young girl is drawing some disturbing pictures...

As this was written by the co-creator of 'Life On Mars' I was expecting more from this. But, as it is, this is the second budget-saving episode in a row in the run-up to the big final two-parter. Not bad by any means, just humdrum by Doctor Who standards.

The idea is solid enough - if a little thin. A girl is possessed by something. She watches children play and draws pictures of them. Then the children vanish into thin air.

It turns out that the girl's body is being inhabited by an alien child that has been separated from its billions-large cosmos-travelling family. It has found a child as lonely as it is. This alien species needs the emotional power of love to survive and can turn living things into drawings. It is trying to find as many friends as it can by turning children into pictures, but one at a time isn't enough. And then it sees the opening ceremony of the Olympics on television. A stadium full of 80,000 people. And even that might not be enough...

This was okay, with no real highs and no real lows. I did like the Doctor performing the Vulcan IDIC gesture followed by the beginning of a mind-meld. And the absolute best bit was (look away now for fear of spoilers) when Rose castigates the Doctor for being too sympathetic to an alien child when he doesn't know how evil kids can be because he's never had children. To which the Doctor replies "I was a dad once..." He doesn't expand on this, of course, but it's good to know that Susan may really have been his actual granddaughter.

Other high points include the references to The Shining and The Exorcist. Perfectly fitting for a story about a creepy kid with psychic powers. The low point was the ridiculousness of the Doctor picking up the Olympic torch and lighting the flame at the opening ceremony.

But what most people will remember is the set-up for next week. "We'll always be together, won't we Doctor?" "A storm is coming..."

Actually, that was a pretty lame and forced set-up. I dislike the idea of the Doctor having premonitions. But at least the trailer was quite good. Torchwood finally find the Doctor and confiscate the Tardis. They seem to be experimenting with an alien device which they have found and it has the power to bridge the gap between alternate universes. Now which enemy do we know that comes from an alternate universe?

Yep, the Cybermen are back. I can only pray that this does not also mean the return of Mickey. The sense of dread in the trailer was effective with Rose intoning "This is how it ends. This is the last story I will ever tell." Piper is leaving, but does Rose die in the next 2 weeks? If so, how is she going to narrate her own death?

And, God help me, if "the girl who dies in battle" turns out to die and then be revived Buffy/Neo style I'm going to throw something at the TV screen. I can't stand copouts like that. Davies had better deliver. Let her live or die but don't try to let her do both.

*** 3 stars for 'Fear Her'

**** 4 stars for the trailer (which I seem to have spent more time reviewing)

“Kelvington” says:

Doctor Who - Fear Her – A Recap and Review Very Spoilerific

Tonight’s ‘Doctor Who” is special for two reasons, first, it’s a pretty good episode overall, and second the trailer at the end, which is both foreboding and will most likely be the last time we see one of our beloved travelers.

Tonight’s show starts out in 2012 in England, just in time for the Summer Olympics, on a nice little colder sack with houses that are painted brightly, like they just pulled from “The Cat In The Hat” film. We see several people scurrying about doing their daily choirs from delivering the post, to fixing the roads. Kids playing in the garden and such. Then comes a shot of missing child poster, and things start to turn.

An elderly woman feels something in the air, as she warns a father to put his kids inside. We cut to a small child in her room drawing and singing. She appears to be drawing one of the kids playing football. The elderly woman implores the father that he kids aren’t safe, the “it” likes kids at play. Suddenly, and unseen the child in the garden vanishes. As the drawing child’s mother looks upstairs with a worried face.

This all happens before the opening credits. An excellent start. One of the touches that makes this episode great, is that it’s got a perfect “Twilight Zone” quality, I completely expected to see Rod Serling step out and say, “Imagine a neighbor, like any other, except here there is a special little girl. A little girl with a strange ability, an ability found only in ‘The Twilight Zone’.”

As the TARDIS appears between two skiffs it does something we’ve never to my recollection ever seen it do. It appears in a position that makes it impossible to exit the TARDIS from. Now I remember once when it was laying down, and once under water, but never where you just couldn’t get out. As Tennent tries to exit the TARDIS he sees he’s totally stuck, he closes the TARDIS door and it fades out, and back in again, turned exactly ninety degrees.

The Doctor and Rose talk about the Olympics, when Rose sees several missing children flyers stuck to light pole. Needless to say they are going to investigate. The Doctor runs off to last place a child disappeared, and feels around the air and notices something. Just then a car’s engine cuts out and stops on a spot on the road, the same kind Mulder would have come out and painted with a yellow “X” in his day. It seems this same street will eventually have a torch runner coming close to it as the flame heads to the Olympic stadium.

Several of the neighbors start to gather around, and start to blame each other for the missing kids, including the local pot hole filler. Another little lift from several TZ episodes. The Doctor interjects with his psychic paper and tells every one “fingers on lips”, a phrase I haven’t heard in years and years. When they are allowed to speak again the elderly woman thinks there something there, she even calls it by the name “it”. A Stephen King fan no doubt. She then begs the Doctor to help them.

The Doctor and Rose start to bang around trying to piece together what’s happened, by smelling the residue of what’s been left as residual energy. We cut to the drawing child’s room again and see her mother walk in and call her by the name of Chloe, who appears to be drawing a tabby on her paper. Of course she can draw like Steve Austin, or Data, super fast, I mean like laser printer fast. That alone should have gotten Mum worried.

The mom notices a drawing of the recently vanished child and asks Chloe why did she draw him so sad. Chloe informs her mom that she didn’t in fact draw him like that, but that he made himself sad. That’s why she’s drawing him a cat friend.

Rose and The Doctor are still outside looking around when Rose comes across this cat. We learn the Doctor isn’t too fond of them, and as Rose watches the tabby go into a small box, she follows it only to see it doesn’t come out. I give this episode and the director extra credit for not having some fancy effect for the disappearance of the people, just clever editing and quick cuts. One minute a person is there, you look away and they are gone. This was amazingly effective and perhaps scarier than showing some great effect.

Chloe starts to talk to the drawings on her wall, saying how they have no idea what it’s like to be alone, when she breaks a pencil tip and gets very upset, she starts to draw a scribbled ball on the page, like a small child is likely to do when angered.

Rose and The Doctor have split up for a moment when Rose hears something banging around inside a garage, she lifts the door and is attacked by squiggly lines. Until the Doctor shows up, sonic screwdrivers it, and the lines compress down into a small wire ball. The effect of the squiggly lines looked at some times ridiculously silly, to almost hyper realistic, I’m not sure if this was on purpose or by accident, but it was a very uneven effect shot.

The wire ball is taken to the TARDIS and examined, where it’s discovered to be made out of graphite which amuses the Doctor to no end. He even erases part of it and dubs it the “Scribble Creature”. Rose’s brain then goes into overdrive as she susses out that the girl they saw in the window earlier is the one whom must be drawing these things.

They go the girls house and offer to help the mum with her daughter. Mom initially refuses the Doctor’s help but then quickly changes her mind. We find out that Chloe’s dad, who wasn’t a very nice person died a year ago, and that despite that Chloe is really a great kid, good grades and all. Rose sneaks off to the WC, and in turn investigates the young girl’s room. Filled with drawings of people and animals. Downstairs the Doctor meets with Chloe and even shows her that he can do the Vulcan hand gesture.

Meanwhile upstairs Rose’s hears strange sounds coming from the closet and opens it up to see a devilish drawing of Chloe’s dad done crudely on the wall, complete with glowing eyes. Rose’s screams call the Doctor and company up the stairs. Where Rose prevents the mum from looking into the closet and the Doctor investigates the drawings further.

The Doctor puts the little girl into sort of a trance and she reveals that’s there’s an alien inside her, one that has been separated from the rest of it’s family, a very large family, over four billion, and can not get back home. We see that this alien is wicked tiny and has in fact lost it’s wicked tiny ship.

They decide that they need the ship so the alien can go home, and with some luck they use the TARDIS to find it, the Doctor tells Chloe’s mum to hide all the pens and pencils while he tries to figure out what’s going on. Chloe who seems to never leave the house and isn’t to be out of Mom’s sight, sneaks out and sees Rose and the Doctor as they go into the TARDIS. She then returns to her room and pulls out her secret stash of pencils.

The Doctor builds a device to find the pod, he and Rose discuss how hard it is to deal with kids, when the Doctor quietly reveals that he too was a Dad once. Rose asks, “What did you say?”, but the Doctor never responds.

When the Doctor and Rose leave the TARDIS, to find the pod, we see Chloe is hard at work drawing the TARDIS, and the Doctor who quickly vanish. Rose furious runs into the child’s room and confronts her about the Doctor, and demands that she bring him back.

She then starts to sus out something about the pot holes, and proceeds to dig up the tiny little ship out of the pot hole that won’t appear to dry properly. She takes the ship to Chloe but she says it’s dead and can’t be used to return to it’s family in out space.

Just as the Olympics opening ceremony begins, Chloe starts to draw the crowd and they all disappear, all eighty thousand of them. Much to the amazement of the announcers, who were obviously back at the studio, because their colleagues at the stadium also disappeared.

Even with eighty thousand new friends, it’s still not enough and Chloe blocks the door to her room and starts to the draw the entire Earth on her wall. Rose and Chloe’s mom break into room, and Chloe tells them, if you try and stop me, I’ll let dead dad out of the closet. Rose sees the Doctor’s drawing again and along side of the Doctor is an image of the Olympic torch. Rose being the smart girl that she is, figures that the heat from the torch might be enough to bring the wee tiny ship back to life.

The Olympic flame carrier is only a block away as Rose tires to get to him to him, but she can’t get near enough. So she tosses the little ship at the flame, and it has just enough power to fly into it and start to warm up. Sensing this, the alien leaves Chloe and heads for the torch and it’s ship. The children and animals who all disappear start to come back, but there is no sign of the Doctor. But before everything ends in hugs and kisses, dead Dad can start to come out of the closet. Mom and Chloe trapped inside their own house as demon Dad starts to come after them, when Rose tells them they can stop it, so they wish it away, they wish away into the corn field, or something.

The torch bearer gets close to the stadium but falls and whom is there to pick up the flame and carry it to the end, but none other than the Doctor himself. Who light’s the Olympic flame and sends the alien back into outer space where it belongs.

The Doctor and Rose start to leave the happy little block, and watch the fireworks, when Rose suggests it will always be like this, and the Doctor pauses and says he senses a storm is approaching. We then hear a different sting than normal as we are taken to next week’s trailer.

I don’t normally talk about trailers, but this one is worth it. It fades in on Rose as she voice overs, “This is the story of war on Earth”. We hear the devil’s prophecy about the valiant child who will die in battle as we see flashes of Jackie and a woman who looks so much like Gillian Anderson I had to pause the video just make sure it wasn’t her. The trailer is filled with Cybermen, and what looks like Dalek weapons fire and the like.

It’s such a cool trailer I threw it up on YouTube you might be able to find it here before they tear it down.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fc1jgYeQk4o

Overall it was a great episode, many will say a thousand times better than last week’s. While I didn’t hate late week’s show, it certainly will stand out as the “Shades Of Grey” of the “Doctor Who” world for some time to come. There were many nice touches and scary moments, particularly when dealing with the story of lost children. As much as I enjoyed this one, I can hardly wait for next week’s two parter, where I suspect something terrible might happen to someone we care for very much.

Just my 2¢

“Phil Connors” says:

Doctor Who review: episode 29.10 - "Fear Her" review.

This is the first chance I've had to comment on an episode, and by the Seal of Rassilon I'm gonna take it. Well, this second (or 29th) series has certainly had some highs and lows. The highs, like Tooth and Claw, School Reunion, Girl in the Fireplace; and the lows, like New Earth, the disappointing Cybermen two-parter and especially Love & Monsters. Tennant has finally gelled with the role in my eyes, despite me being a huge mark for Ecclestone. With that infernal Peter Kay ep last week, I was praying for some quality this time. But the trailers were not encouraging. They're on modern-day Earth! Again! Another low budget episode that fails to test the scope of the show's concept. So it wasn't a case of "Fear Her" as much as "fear of another clunker". But I was, thank god, surprised.

The Doctor and Rose land in 2012 London to see the Olympics. At first we see a hilarious moment where the TARDIS has one of its famous accidental landings and materialises between two shipping crates with the door facing one of the crates so they can't get out. Later, the dynamic duo (did i say that?) find a neighbourhood in fear. Children have been going missing, vanishing into thin air. And only the standard issue Mad Old Woman knows what's really going on: "There's evil here!" The only clue is a mysterious little girl who never leaves her bedroom, spending all her time drawing pictures of the same missing kids, and who has a mother who is afraid of her... What seems at first glance a deliberately cheap, inexpensive episode (made so to save money for the no-expense-spared, let-it-all-hang-out two-part series finale) soon reveals itself as a highly entertaining trip through suburban paranoia. There are some great moments here. When the mysterious child, Chloe, scribbles out a drawing, Rose finds herself bieng attacked by a scribble monster. The demonic drawing of Chloe's Dad that lives, of course, in the closet. The population of an entire Olympic Stadium vanishing at once. The Doc lighting the Olympic torch (if this doesn't happen in 2012, I want a refund on my Licence Fee). The performance of the child playing Chloe. So many great things. Ok, this wasn't as awesome as "The Impossible Planet/The Satan Pit", but what the fuck is? It was still Good Who, and that'll do.

At least it didn't centre itself around a hack comedian giving a bad performance in an alien fat suit while the lead actors filmed a better episode. "Fear Her" didn't make me embarrassed to be a fan of Doctor Who. A good ep.

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