If Love and Monsters is the episode of Nu-Who I most loathe, then In the Forest of the Night has to be the episode which disappointed me the most.
Frank Cottrell Boyce is, after all, an award winning children's author. Thus, I assumed he was a master of plot, suspense, character development... or any one of a myriad of things that go into making a successful story on the page. On the page, way, way, before the story ever gets to the screen. Why the distinction here?
Well, I can't fault the special effects. Not the creation of a rather picturesque forest, nor the forest's consciousness which appears like a swarm of fireflies when their voice is tuned into, with a little help from gravity, and the sonic screwdriver. Various typically British, iconic, features also pop up amongst the foliage to good effect: tube station signs, a taxi, one of the lions from Trafalgar Square, a red phone box to juxtapose the blue box - a police call box no longer - forever the TARDIS.
But none of the set dressing, nor any of the special effects can rescue this lacklustre episode from itself. Cottrell Boyce has drawn his main characters with so little resemblance to the ones we have come to know, that I didn't get the sense that I was watching Doctor Who at all.
In this episode the most intelligent man on the planet has a fit of panic induced stupidity; whilst the younger, overt, big-damn-hero saves the day with an ordinary torch. The mundane wins out over the magical, the low tech over advanced alien tech. And, it is strongly implied, the greatest adventure a grown-up can have is to become a parent.
Solar storms? Once in a lifetime stellar events?
All such wonders are, apparently, pale imitations of life's ultimate gift. I'm not suggesting parenting isn't one of the most fulfilling, enriching, choices a person can make but, Doctor Who is all about someone choosing something other than the domestic! It's all about the impossible, not the probable. Doctor Who should be inspiring children to become astronauts, physicists, magicians. They may well grow-up to be parents anyway.
Over and above this emotional arc (and if you doubt it's there take a look at how Jenna Coleman plays the line in which Clara states how attractive Danny Pink is, right after he's been all quasi-paternal and responsible) there's an inattention to plot, and even less attention to world-building than normal. Clara and Danny guide children from Coal Hill School (I can suspend my disbelief and assume the secondary school has a primary school adjunct) on their unexpected walk through a forest-strewn London. But it's a London suddenly shrunken in size and stripped of its massive population. No one seeks refuge in the tube system (despite signs pointing to the underground) and there's barely a mention of the river. The Thames, by the way, does have river ferries running upon it. Was the river swamped by suddenly sprouting trees?
Far more importantly, two teachers have failed to notice that a vulnerable child - in their care - has disappeared. Not only has she disappeared but, it's over an hours walk from the Cromwell Road, where Mr. Pink states they've been at the London Zoological Museum (Not Grant's UCL London Zoological museum, rather the National History Museum with a name change) to Trafalgar Square, where Maebh finds the Doctor. Did Maebh escape from the museum (with it's security locked door) that morning? Or has she been missing all night? Does anyone notice? Or care? Cottrell Boyce drops in terms like CRB checks, to give a perfunctory nod to modern-day Britain, but there is no realistic sense of panic, from either of our two supporting characters, that they've failed to notice a child was missing. Clara and Danny don't even realise Maebh isn't with them - not until the Doctor calls to tell Clara so. And that was when my sense of disbelief collapsed.
Plus there's a rather stinging irony here, as regards Clara and her characterisation, given that she was blasting the Doctor about her duty of care towards Courtney Woods in Kill the Moon. I assume she has a far greater duty of care towards her gifted group, abroad in a much altered London. It's utterly weak characterisation, and even more ironic is the fact that the entire episode seems to be structured to show Danny Pink in the best, most responsible, commitment ready, light.
The plot is apparently centered around the idea that an intelligence (which I hesitate to call Gaia) has swathed and swaddled the planet in trees, to protect the Earth from the solar flares heading the planet's way. Solar flares which might create an extinction level event. Cottrell Boyce pits Time Lord and TARDIS against this intelligence, showing both up. He also hand-waves away the fact that NASA does monitor solar events and that, therefore, mankind might not have been caught unaware of the impending doom we faced. Worse, Cottrell Boyce utterly forgets the TARDIS' universal translator. There's no reason at all why she (and I mean the TARDIS) wouldn't have been able to tune into the intelligence as well as, if not better than, young Maebh Arden.
Obviously Frank Cottrell Boyce wanted to rework a fairy tale, and give it a timey-whimey Whovian flair. In my opinion, he failed.
Primarily, he failed because he took the central components of any fairy tale with a Whovian bent (i.e. the Doctor and the TARDIS) and moved them so far out of the centre of the narrative, as to almost make them incidental. For all Peter Capaldi's phenomenal acting (and for that see the scene where he plays a man who believes all he loves is about to be destroyed and ripped away from him - again) the Doctor resembles Colonel Runaway here, far, far, more than himself.
He gives up on the planet. The children. His other friends. The future as he perceives it, other possible futures - everything. This, from the man who carried The Moment in a burlap sack, miles from the TARDIS, to the barn at Lungbarrow. This from a man who came for Christmas and stayed three hundred years! This from the man who defeated Daleks and Cybermen.
I don't think so.
The Doctor I have come to know and love would, of course, have gone down fighting. He would never have thrown in the towel (and I really want to make some quip about Arthur Dent here, but I digress) He would have fought, ever harder, given that his adopted home planet was the one in jeopardy. And, thanks to the TARDIS's universal translator, the Doctor speaks dinosaur and baby. Thus, I assume he also speaks wolf, tiger, and tree.
Someone should have reminded the writers.
At the start of the episode Maebh is a child lost in the woods of Trafalgar Square. Woods she believes she called forth from out of a dream, inspired by the voices in her head. After all, the forest has apparently grown up over night like the forest of brambles which protected sleeping beauty for a century. She finds the Doctor and knocks on his door to get help. And he does help her, he does unsnarl the voices in her head and so heal her (which, is an absolutely awful subtextual nod to the Doctor as doctor) but he doesn't save the day. All he does is follow Clara's instructions and runaway. Yes, yes, he does have a eureka moment of realisation, and run back, but really that doesn't give the character agency in this episode, at all.
When the Doctor first opens the TARDIS doors onto this landscape, we're reminded of Merlin as wild man of the forest, of Merlin as Tennyson imagined him, imprisoned in a crevice of an oak tree. The exterior of the TARDIS is made of wood, after all, but all other subtext in this episode is overtly turned into text, thereby stripping it of it's power. I didn't need to have little red riding hood spelt out to me in the dialogue. With Maebh dressed in school uniform, plus a distinctive red anorak, I can draw that correlation myself as she runs through the trees.
If Cottrell Boyce wanted to tell a story of a child touched by magic, or otherness, drawing on myths and legends to do with English forests, he could have done worse than to take a look at P.J. Hammond's Torchwood episode Small Worlds which places the fey, and fairies, in the modern world as a malicious force. Here the great tree intelligence is given form as a swarm of fireflies, or sparks of darting light, reminiscent of Tinkerbell as she was depicted in the stage play of Peter Pan. Imagery used to denote fairy, though there is no overt nod to any of the myths, nor the W.B. Yeats poem The Stolen Child. Instead we're meant to imagine that Maebh's missing sister Annabel (who appears at the very end of the episode) was swallowed by a hydrangea bush. And that Maebh is away with the fairies (to use the traditional phrase) due to the medication she's been on since her sister disappeared.
Apparently; Hydrangea symbolizes heartfelt emotions. It can be used to express gratitude for being understood. In its negative sense hydrangea symbolizes frigidity and heartlessness.
Given that Maebh's sister reappears from out of a blue Hydrangea bush, I do wonder at the possible negative symbolism towards the Doctor and TARDIS. The gratitude? Well it's Maebh's gratitude that her sister came home, Maebh's mother's that both her children are safe and, that then extrapolates that outwards to all parents and children on the planet.
Cottrell Boyce probably didn't intend to mark Clara as other by having her run off to hang above the earth's atmosphere and watch the solar storms with the Doctor, but that is what the visual does. Above all Clara (it is therefore implied) is grateful for the Doctor. Usually her role as companion marks her as the viewer's entry point into the drama. Usually she is the every-woman. Here Maebh's harried mother bikes into that role, while Maebh's friends and classmates act as mini-companions and mirrors to the younger viewers tuning in.
I find it extremely interesting that in the episode which proceeds the two part finale, Clara should be so clearly marked, once again, as other. I'm hoping it's not incidental and that Cottrell Boyce, or Steven Moffatt did so purposefully.
In theory, this episode could and should have worked. Magic should have followed from the moment Maebh slipped her small hand into the Doctor's larger one and told him to look up at the miracle that is a forest-wrapped Trafalgar square. But, no. Instead, everyone is running with very little purpose. A greater intellgence than the Time Lord and his TARDIS saves the day. And the the wonders of space, exploration, and possibility are found to be wanting - versus the mundane magic of domesticity and family life.
Frank Cottrell Boyce was inspired by the famous poem by William Blake:
"Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,"
Hence the literal tiger (escaped from London Zoo) in this celebration of the natural world. Blake's Songs of Innocence and of Experience Showing the Two Contrary States of the Human Soul juxtaposes and laudes the natural world - and the innocence of childhood - above the cold, ungodly, world of rationality science and the scientific revolution. That he should place the Doctor purely in the latter category speaks of a lack of imagination and a lack of understanding of the character.
Never, ever, have I felt that a story which made its way into the Whovian universe was originally planned as something other and then shoehorned into a space in which it doesn't fit. That is what I felt while watching this.
It is worth noting that Abigail Eames who played Maebh was charming. I loved her hand flapping to illustrate that the thoughts she was picking up on were a swarm buzzing around her head. It's also worth noting that Peter Capaldi is a dman fine physical actor, and I loved the moment when he mimicks that hand flapping. None of the other children impressed particularly, though collectively they were sweet. And, I did like the fact that they wrote, recorded, and issued a statement to the adults of the world.
Doctor Who is family viewing. It's almost children's progamming. But that doesn't mean weak pacing, plot or writing can be excused or hand-waved away. The tradition of children's literature and children's drama in the UK is particularly strong. Under the umbrella of works for children the most compelling, magical, wonderful, and well constructed works of art have been created. I'm thinking of Lewis Carroll, C.S. Lewis, Mary Norton, E. Nesbit, but also, in terms of modern writers, of J.K. Rowling, David Almond... (read or see Skellig.)
Writing In the Forest of the Night it's as if Frank Cottrell Boyce forgot pacing, plot, characterisation and all of the elements of wonder that make up Doctor Who. That is the truly unbelievable thing about this episode. Luckily, he reminds us in words spoken by the Doctor, that we're very good at forgetting things. This episode cannot be forgotten fast enough!