Love & Monsters

Many years ago, Blue Peter ran a competition for young Doctor Who fans to design their own monsters. The winning entries, the Steel Octopus, the Hypnotron, and Aquaman, were built by the BBC special effects department and filmed in the studio as a reward. Wisely, this was as far as the prize went. Unwisely, when the Blue Peter ran a similar competition in 2006, Russell T. Davies thought it might be a good idea to actually feature the winning entry in Doctor Who itself. And thus В‘Love & MonstersВ’ came to pass. Forced to write an episode revolving around a green fat man in a thong however, Davies does the only sensible thing and plays it for laughs; the result is arguably the single most divisive story of the new series to date.

В‘Love & MonstersВ’ is unusual, but at its heart is a great idea. By sidelining the Doctor and Rose, Davies tells the story from the point of view of an innocent bystander whose world has collided with that of the Doctor, and in doing so he portrays the Doctor as almost mythical figure who leaves chaos in his wake. This is essentially a very sound concept, and allows Davis to revisit the idea he briefly touched on in В‘RoseВ’ in more depth. EltonВ’s speech at the end, and the revelation of his motherВ’s death, shows the Doctor as an engine of fate, who may be wonderful and magical, but who is always accompanied by pain and tragedy; thus, Elton is drawn slowly into the DoctorВ’s world and loses everything he held dear, first his mother during a childhood encounter, and subsequently all of his friends as they fall prey to the Absorbaloff, who is trying to track the Doctor down. Ominously, Elton ponders, В“Maybe thatВ’s what happens if you touch the Doctor, even for a second. I keep thinking about Jackie and Rose and wondering how soon theyВ’ll pay the priceВ” which brings a sense of foreboding in the context of the series as a whole, especially given the announcement that Billie Piper is to depart at the end of the this series.

This is not the only preoccupation of В‘Love & MonstersВ’. The members of LINDA represent an unsubtle and rather patronizing but ultimately affectionate swipe at Doctor Who fans (because of course weВ’re all eccentric and socially awkward), which ends up resulting in an episode that for the first half an hour feels rather sweet and endearing. For the first time, DaviesВ’ insistence on crowbarring emotional relationships into Doctor Who works, partly because it doesnВ’t involve the Doctor and Rose flirting at inconvenient moments, but because it feels natural in an episode that focuses on a close knit group of friends. Incredibly, one side effect of this is that Jackie actually works well, and Camille Coduri, who usually makes me want to put my foot through the television whenever she is on screen, puts in a decent performance. The scene in which Jackie does all of EltonВ’s infiltration steps for him is genuinely entertaining, whilst her predatory seduction scene is quite terrifying. For the first time, her sadness over RoseВ’s absence feels poignant rather than merely tedious and is entirely appropriate to a story that explores the consequences for those caught up in the DoctorВ’s life. And when she realizes that Elton is looking for the Doctor, her furious response, as she tells him, В“IВ’ll never let her down and IВ’ll protect them both until the end of my lifeВ” is well acted and a far cry from the usual shrill harridan turn we get from her. In fact she comes off better than Rose here, who in her brief scene at the end strides out of the TARDIS, ignores the Absorbaloff and shrieks, В“You upset my mum!В” Strident cow.

The rest of the cast is also very good, with Mark Warren excelling as endearing simpleton Elton, but it is inevitably Peter Kay, in an example of sort of guest star casting that John Nathan-Turner used to get lambasted for, who grabs the attention. IВ’m not sure whether the casting came first or the script, but KayВ’s performance works because above all else, В‘Love & MonstersВ’ has a sense of both the ridiculous and the grotesque. Victor Kennedy is rather Grand Guignol, and his constant reminders about his В“eczeemaВ” are quite amusing, Kay clearly having fun. The character verges on pantomime, but the flashes of anger and occasional urgency ring true. Once Kay switches into the Absorbaloff costume however, things go massively over-the-top in a way that is obviously intentional; the Absorbaloff is ludicrous and treated as such, from its writhing in disgusting ecstasy as it digests its victims, to the hilariously unpleasant sight of it running along in its thong and roaring menacingly (mercifully, Davies decides that it isnВ’t really called an Absorbaloff; Elton and Ursula fumble for names for the creature and then it delighted proclaims, В“Yes, I like thatВ” when they hit on Absorbaloff). ItВ’s utterly grotesque, but not nearly so much as Ursula, rescued from death by the Doctor and turned into a concrete fellatio machine, which is profoundly disturbing.

Some of the humour works less well, most notably the cringe worthy Scooby Doo nonsense with the Hoix and the buckets (and Davies is really pushing his luck with EltonВ’s, В“I just put that bit at the beginning В‘cause itВ’s a brilliant openingВ”), but there are some great lines and in particular EltonВ’s, В“ThereВ’s two women live there now, and theyВ’re a bitВ… severeВ” made me chuckle, as did the DoctorВ’s urgent, В“Elton! Fetch a spade!В” On the down side, Davies canВ’t resist sticking in references to not only Torchwood but also Bad Wolf and Raxacoricofallapatorius and the Slitheen, which somehow manages to be more self-indulgent than anything else in the episode.

Inevitably, В‘Love & MonstersВ’ is going to prove controversial, and quite possibly hugely unpopular, but itВ’s fun, itВ’s silly, and itВ’s an attempt to do something new within the series. And that in itself is worthwhile, even if posterity judges the experiment a failure.