Ahem…Meh.
So we had the standard creepy swing to kick this episode off, followed by half an episode of Rory and Amy running round a dolls house. To be honest I got a little bored - I mean I like things like the in-joke that crops up when Rory announces that he’s dead again, but the progress speed of this episode just wasn’t friendly. The villains looked scary enough in the trailer, but writer Mark Gatiss didn’t seem to have a lot do with them. Allowing about 25 minutes of the episode to pass before revealing them properly. Since they’d already been seen in the trailer their appearance wasn’t exactly shocking. Their ability to make others like them was kinda scary, but also exactly the same as that of the empty child, which doesn’t seem very original to me. However, to stick with that comparison, I have to admit the bit with Rory and Amy trying to hold off the doll thing on the other side of the door was more creepy than the empty child.
Oh for all those not happy about Rory growing a pair of testicles recently, you’ll be just thrilled to see that he’s rapidly getting back to whiny, annoying old self.
It’s a nice change to see Amy negatively affected by the aliens for once and not Rory being used a device for showing how mortal the companions are. It’s also nice and original to see the popular companion made faceless, all her personality stripped away and her body placed at the mercy of the baddies - oh my mistake, it’s exactly the same thing Gatiss did with Rose in “The Idiot’s Lantern.”
This lack of originality doesn’t detract majorly from the shock factor of seeing Amy like this, but this kind of formulaic writing does irritate me sometimes. But do you know what definitely wasn’t unoriginal, the fact that the principle cast were miniaturized, in order to be placed inside another setting - wait a minute!
Another thing about this episode, was that I found it a bit predictable and the end reveal a little obvious. I guessed that the kid was behind it all in the first five minutes and consequently lost a fair bit of interest in the whole investigatory part of episode.
What I will say is that Matt Smith pretty much carries heaps of this episode and the really prominent performance stuff comes in the obiter - the Doctor playing around with the little kid is quite fun to watch and it allows Gatiss to throw in remark to remind everyone that the Doctor once had children. He also throws out a teaser in that the Doctor implies that he’s about 1000 years old now, meaning he’s only got roughly 100 years left to live (but next episode involves time accelerating, so maybe even less than that).
Not really much else to say, this episode is a fairly undisguised metaphor for childhood fears (everything George was afraid of, he had made up himself).
It’s quite Freudian the way George’s fear of rejection manifests as Panophobia, but I got the impression that it was designed that way for all the parents watching. Not to my tastes, as I really prefer to have my sonic screwdrivers and daddy issues presented in separate programs.
I’m giving this one a solid ‘meh’
Oh and I’m like 90% sure that the reason no one knows what “the question” is, is that it’s being hidden by some sort of perception filter…
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