CBS Cancels 'CSI: Miami,' 'Rob' & 'NYC 22,' Renews 'CSI:NY'
Is Chevy Chase Quitting 'Community'?
Doctor Who: Fear Her
by Martin Conaghan, posted Jul 13th 2006 8:22PM
(S02E10) Now that the World Cup has sadly reached its zenith, I can finally catch up on my missed television and update everyone on my on-going reviews of the new series of Doctor Who. It's often the case that episodes towards the finale of a given season in a series tend to either fill gaps until the big reveal, or pad out the main plot before setting off on the final furlong.
It's not always the case, of course, but Doctor Who seems to be one of those shows that commissions episodes which can slot in just about anywhere in the series, with a few minor adjustments to the dialog, and then juggles them around like tracks on a mix tape for the viewers to digest.
Sometimes that mix is a hit. Sometimes it's a miss.
Fear Her was a bit of both.
Warning:spoilers after the jump.
If I stacked up every one of the recent episodes of Doctor Who since its return last year in identifiable piles, Fear Her would probably be in a stack marked "not too sure about this one".
I can't quite put my finger on what I didn't like about it. It's possibly the mix of is-this-a-baddie or is-this-a-goodie feeling the episode tried to convey, but also because it lacked the menacing drive normally associated with a typical Doctor Who villain piece.
The story of this gap-filler centered around a little girl on an ordinary council estate in the week leading up to the opening ceremony of the London Olympics in 2012. Kids are going missing, thanks to a little girl called Chloe, who is doodling them out of existence with some chilling and child-like animation drawings.
As ever, the Doctor and Rose arrive and dip their noses into the situation like a veritable Mulder and Scully, determined to hunt out the root of the problem and solve the mystery of missing children.
The viewer soon discovers that little Chloe isn't exactly a malevolent being, she's just possessed by the spirit of a race of eternal beings called the Isolus, a tiny race of empathic, intensely emotional beings who travel in pods across solar tides, using their power to create worlds of play and fun.
This particular Isolus became separated from the herd, with a damaged pod, and sought solace in the mind of Chloe, stealing children from all around to entertain itself and feed off their love. Unfortunately, in order to keep everything to itself, the Isolus has also re-created Chloe's dead father as the menace in the cupboard to prevent her from abandoning it.
I won't go into the boring details of how the Doctor manages to free the Isolus (or rather, how Rose manages to free it while the Doctor ends up inside one of Chloe's drawings), but it involves the Olympic torch -- and a rather silly ending with the Doctor picking up the torch on live television and lighting the flame for the Isolus to bathe in and ultimately re-join its family.
I can't say I didn't enjoy it, but it bordered on shark-jumping, and it's easy to be forgiving when the quality of dialog, scriptwriting, production values and acting are as good as Doctor Who has been in the recent incarnation (watch out for the Doctor shuddering in the kitchen at the thought of an alien being creeping around, for a real moment of genuine acting, if you don't believe me).
However, as I said before, this episode isn't the important one in the series -- that's yet to come in my final review of the season due out any day now...
7 Comments