Fear Her

I'm sorry, boys and girls, but for me that was quite possibly the dullest episode we have had since the series returned.

It's a real shame too. The story actually had some really great ideas in it, not all original, but good, strong ideas that were simply frittered away. The idea of a child's drawings coming to life was brilliantly built up in the pre-credits sequence and then very badly sidelined throughout the rest of the story. And this was symptomatic of the whole feel of it - cost cutting and down sizing to the degree that strong ideas are very sketchily developed.

And Euros Lyn seemed, for me, to be struggling to present the material in a dynamic way without blowing the budget. His direction had some very interesting touches - big close-ups moving into frame for example - but I just felt that the 'Brookside Close' feel of it all undermined any attempts to be visually interesting. There was a real struggle to generate tension too. Rose being attacked by the 'scribble' was great but it was a momentary flicker of a tangible threat within the story. And I'm sorry, but for a series that actually prides itself on being televisual, to reduce what should be the overwheming threat and fear of an abusive father to a lacklustre bit of red lighting and a shadow looming on the landing seemed to be really dismissive of the sheer visual power that the series has harnessed since its return. All that good work was undone with that cliched 'less is more' directing, lighting and editing in an ill -judged denoument.

I didn't feel that the 2012 Olympics setting was quite working either. It seemed very tacked on and a rather weak vehicle to move the story on. It was also highly predictable that the Doctor would swan off with the Olympic torch too. And Huw Edwards did this scene setting no fsvoours with his ham-fisted role as commentator.

I loved the sprinklings of humour, from the parking of the TARDIS, the mock Inspector Morse exchanges and to running gag of the cakes with the ball bearings on. Great little riffs that helped to lift it but not really enough to save it from wearing far too much of its message on its sleeve. The nods to the Doctor being a dad and the Shadow Proclamation were welcome too. The performances were, on average, very good, especially Tennant and Piper, and from Edna Dore and Nina Sosanya.

It's influences and inspirations were perhaps a little too obvious; much was lifted from 'Marianne Dreams' by Catherine Storr ( later televised as 'Escape Into Night' and the inspiration for the film 'Paperhouse' ) but also Wyndham's 'Chocky' kept nagging away at the back of my mind. There were also touches of 'The Excorcist' and 'The Omen'. However, I felt that there was too light a touch in both directing and scripting to really be able to generate any genuine scares on the back of these influences. It all felt very pale in comparison. The Doctor Who story it most resembled for me was 'Survival' and that story, as an example of the utterly fantastic erupting into mundane surburbia, wipes the floor with this. For me the fantastical elements really didn't have enough impact within the story to make it truly startling and convincingly menacing and exciting. The excitement seemed to rapidly drain out of the episode through a combination of small budget, muddled direction and variable acting.

Thematically, the episode is on stronger footing. There was an attempt to try and discuss child abuse and its affects on wives and children and the 'blame culture' that currently exists in society. I particularly thought the scene in the street where the residents seem happy to make the council worker the scapegoat for the events was strong and there was an undercurrent of racial intolerance mixed in too that made this a little more truthful.

The subsequent 'fingers on lips' scene was also for me a really good indication of how Tennant can be authoritative without resorting to a gimmicky performance.

I very much enjoyed the ideas about creativity and the mother/father complex. The child's drawings could be seen as projections that occur as the child/alien gets 'inside' other people, gets to know them and to 'create' them as characters around it/her. It's something we all do throughout our own lives. We invest life in the people around us from material in our own inner selves and this process allows us to discriminate between what is observed and what is invented to the degree that we can assemble sketches of our own personal complexes. Our own inferiority complexes can be assembled from people we end up despising. The living drawing of the father is a huge inferiority complex made tangible. And it lives in the wardrobe - the dark of the unconscious mind. A wonderfully rich notion tapping into both imaginary childhood fears and real family traumas.

The alien is symbolic of a creative impulse that must be utilised in order for it to remain healthy. Failure to use your inner potential can lead to impotence and a damaged personality. The alien uses the human girl to activate this potential in order to find 'love', to be replenished and to survive. Likewise, the creative act of singing, of using music, by mother and daughter to express positive feelings and reassert reality.

These are very strong ideas but they are rather under-developed in the story. I would love to have seen the drawings all come to life, which I believe was the intention, as I feel this would have been the powerful visual statement that, sadly, the episode excused itself from doing.

Low budget should not equal poor episode. Here, the script, full of good ideas, progresses in a very linear structure and the location is too confined. Ironically, this seems to have hemmed in the 'creativity' of the production team and despite some brief flashes of life, the way the story is delivered lacks pace and seems oddly joyless in counterpoint to the rather joyful resolution of its themes.

Good concept, good script and good performances but it ultimately fell flat.You sometimes find you can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear and no amount of back-pedalling can save you! It's a neat summation of what is wrong with this episode, I'm afraid.