*Beware of Spoilers, Sweeties*
For those Who fans looking for a break from the River Song
shenanigans, ‘Night Terrors’ provided a more traditional ‘creature of the week’
tale. The Doctor makes a house-call as he responds to an intergalactic distress
signal from a little boy called George.
Like many young children, George lives
in fear of a number of things once the lights go out even if his mother has
locked them up away from his sight in his bedroom cupboard. So it’s up to the
Doctor to figure out what’s been scaring George so thoroughly for the past few
years while his companions Rory and Amy wind up in their own spot of trouble.
Again this series shows its strengths in playing toward
universally recognized fears, this time being living dolls and the fact that
sometimes when the lights go out the terror a little boy feels is for a very
real reason. Not to mention the fear of a parent that they won't be able to make their child feel safe and protected. It was nice to see the trio on Earth in present-day dealing with
no less fantastical of a problem. If you’re used to the ways this show
typically operates then you were just waiting for the alien reveal to be the
source of the problem. And though the species was new, the same old tricks of
deception shields and psychic amplification were present and accounted for.
As
much as I love seeing the team together in their adventures, it’s always nice
to see the Doctor interact with other people. In this case it was mainly George’s
father, Alex (Daniel Mays) and George himself. Matt Smith from the very start
has had a wonderful rapport with child actors what with his quirky charms and
the sort of voice of understanding every child wishes to hear from an adult.
However the true highlight would be the scenes of Smith and Mays as they
wrestled with what to do to solve the problem. Smith never has a problem
handling comedic moments and for such a creepy episode the levity went a long
way. Mays played off of Smith’s spastic energy and verbal flights of fancy
wonderfully, he also brought a real sense of empathy to the proceedings once he found out
the exact truth of George’s existence.
Amy and Rory spent almost the entire episode away from the
Doctor as they wound up, we would later find out, actually in the cupboard. Specifically
a creepy dollhouse locked away inside of it—populated with zombie-esque living
dolls that were thankfully only seen in smaller doses. I freaking hate dolls
and this is the exact type of episode that would have haunted me if I watched
it as a kid. Until the end of the episode this decision basically amounted to a
great deal of Amy and Rory wandering around in the dark. The pacing in these
scenes made for a nice reveal of their location, but the scenes themselves
ultimately didn’t get a chance to add much to the story overall.
Every week this new Who astounds me with how gorgeously-shot
it is. The palette of colors the cinematography department, visual effects, and
set designers use are bringing so much to the tone of each episode. Everything
was so over-saturated and yellow in the outside shots of the apartment complex
just as florescent lighting makes things look at night. Not to mention the shots
of space beforehand were stunning as well. So many different colors employed to
make space look a little different every time we see it—because they’re
floating the TARDIS about in a different
part of space each time so it’s not going to look the same as it did last week.
By episode’s end, while our heroes stood back in the TARDIS
and patted themselves on the back for another job well done, an eerie image appeared
on-screen to remind us that they’re far from out of the woods. Coupled with the
standard ‘everything is creepier whilst being sung by small children’ song that
played in the dollhouse scenes, the image of the Doctor’s death in Utah on his
computer screen hinted perhaps that this was far from a one and done story.
Taken
on its own the episode was a funny, just clever enough tale that brought the
Doctor back down to (modern-day) Earth, a favorite adventure spot for both him
and the viewer. Maybe next time he pops back on this planet, he’ll have made a
wood setting for the sonic screwdriver as promised—really so much of the
episode could have been solved if he’ll just upgrade his most useful tool. But
as he said, he’s been around the super-block a time or two so he can’t possibly remember
everything—as we head on toward the eventual finale of the sixth series the
viewer would be wise to not follow his lead by keeping this episode in mind. Perhaps
we’ll be seeing another Tenza, the creature that young George really was, show
up or something related to ‘Night Terrors’ will help the finale come to its
conclusion of this storyline of the Doctor’s eventual death. It’s not like
Moffat hasn’t played this sort of game before with his stories so I wouldn’t be
shocked if it happened.
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