This episode sucks. Run away from it.
That's it. That's the review.
If you see Fear Her playing on your television screen, shut it off immediately. Maybe put a large, blunt object through the screen to put the poor thing out of its misery so that it doesn't have to go on knowing that it had this on it. It is literally the least you could do. Come back next week for Army of Ghosts.
...oh, alright, fine!
I haven't sugar coated it and I won't start now - this is, hands down, the worst episode of Series 2. Bar none. Even Love & Monsters from last week doesn't reach this level of crap.
We're back to the Doctor and Rose gallivanting around space and time. After a cold open in which a mysterious girl with no acting ability draws a picture of a boy and he disappears from the real world - for the picture to become animated in the last few seconds before the opening titles kick in - we see the TARDIS land. The Doctor opens the doors to find himself face to face with a storage container. Closing the door again, the TARDIS dematerializes before rematerializing again. I like to think, in that space of a few seconds, the Doctor and Rose went elsewhere.
Maybe going off to fight space pirates on a Pluto-based colony in the far future.
Or battling an invasion of a world through the use of living paintings.
Or maybe somewhere where the Doctor and Rose would have to watch paint dry on a wall.
Literally anything would be better than Fear Her.
The pair have come for the 2012 Olympics, the Doctor rambling on and on while Rose actually bothers to notice a few missing posters - the missing children...and alright, in the interest of fairness...
Rose Tyler is Awful Count: 5,055,636,277
...only lost about a hundred brain cells that time.
Along with the missing children, the Doctor notes that it's unseasonably cold for what should be the summer Olympics. The fact that this was filmed in January is definitely not a coincidence. Maybe.
cough
The whole street is up in arms, and the Doctor heads off toward one of the houses, investigating a football goal set up there while Rose helps some guy from the Council push a car out of the way and gets some exposition from him - namely that the cold started with the kids disappearing. Rose also meets the little old lady of the neighborhood that knows about what's going on...somehow. I'd say it's because she's psychic, but that never gets explained. Between her and one of the Dads on the neighborhood getting on the Doctor, an argument breaks out among the members of the neighborhood...that the Doctor stops by highly improbable means.
I'd call bullshit, but the Doctor once fixed his companion's broken leg by pulling on her ear. Figure that one out.
The Doctor manages to get everyone to put the knives away and gets them alright to poke around for answers. As they do, Rose notes the girl from the cold open watching from the window...and the girl's mother heading back into the house. Going around to the sites of each of the kidnappings, the Doctor finds residual energy traces. Back at the house of the obviously evil not acting child, named Chloe, her mother comes in to speak to her and finds her drawing...not particularly responsive and wanting to be left alone.
The Doctor and Rose pursue a cat, which the Doctor is iffy about, and witness its disappearance in a cardboard box. Chloe has drawn it. They find the same energy residue in the box. In her room, Chloe talks to her pictures in a matter that would seem insane...and creates a scribble monster while soon attacks Rose. However, the Doctor is able to use the sonic screwdriver to turn it into a rubber band ball before it can drain the episode's budget...I mean, before it can put Rose out of my misery.
They take it back to the TARDIS and the Doctor does analysis, determining it to be made of graphite. More specifically, the type of graphite that can be found in your standard HP pencil. With this in mind, Rose points out the girl in the window from earlier and starts making deductions...and both she and the Doctor are hilariously insufferable when they could just do the whole crazy GETTING ON WITH IT thing. But then the episode would be about ten minutes too short if they didn't mug, so what do I know?
Rose Tyler is Awful Count: 5,055,636,278
They get up to the front door, Chloe's mother - Trish - answering it and telling them that they cannot, in fact, see her daughter. The Doctor and Rose get back in the TARDIS, leave, and the episode is over.
...god, I wish. I wish so much.
 |
| "Hello, I'm the Anvilicious Message of Child/Spousal Abuse Man!" |
But eventually, they get in and Trish gives a bit of exposition about Chloe's father, who died a year ago...and implies that him being dead isn't a bad thing, per se. Rose pops upstairs to "go to the bathroom" and instead enters Chloe's room after the girl has left it and finding her pictures. Downstairs, Chloe comes down and reveals more of her inability to express emotions while the Doctor analyzes. Upstairs, Rose finds a drawing of Satan in the closet and everyone heads up to her scream for help.
It's apparently a drawing of Chloe's father...and the implications of abuse are high with this one before just being outright stated late. Unfortunately for the episode, it handwaves an explanation as to why Chloe would draw him, especially considering the creature that is behind it all. Trish finally sees the insanity of having a man and a woman she barely knows in her house, but the Doctor manages to fast talk and keep the plot going.
This bugged me when I first saw the episode. Why would she draw this? The worst part about it, of course, is that it leads nowhere. Chloe and Trish defeat it later through the power of a Care Bears musical number, and it offers Chloe no chance to confront her father or to make peace with the past. Plus, given the creature behind everything, it makes no sense that it gets animated later but never mind that. We have more nonsense to get through.
Downstairs, the Doctor dips his fingers into a jar of marmalade and Rose shakes her head at him to stop. I assume it's some kind of joke, but I've got no idea what it's a joke about. The Doctor not accepting social norms? Always using a spoon? Completely lost for ideas. But the Doctor determines that it is indeed Chloe who is kidnapping the kids using ionic energy. He also posits that if living things can become drawings, then drawings might be able to become living things - reference Chloe's Satan father. The Doctor performs a psychic link with Chloe, drawing the creature inside of her into consciousness.
She is possessed by an Isolus, a creature that travels the universe with several billion brothers and sisters. This Isolus was separated by the rest of its pod from a solar flare. It simply wants to get back to its siblings and was drawn to Chloe because she, like it, was lonely. The Doctor rationalizes that it won't stop with the people it's collected. They need to do something, and fast. He and Rose retreat to the TARDIS to scan for the Isolus ship...not realizing that Chloe has followed them.
It was here where the Doctor mentions that he was a Dad once...something that Rose reacts to with utter shock. I imagine this is because, despite knowing that he's 900+ years old, Rose cannot imagine or will tolerate the thought of anyone ever having not only had sex with the Doctor much less them producing any offspring together.
Rather than what Russell wants us to think is the reason that she's shocked. So...
Rose Tyler is Awful Count: 5,055,636,279
 |
| "It's a Liefeldian!!!" |
...no, I'm not actually giving Rose a point here. The kid is really, really annoying.
Rose works out where the ship is thanks to the man from the Council, using a pick axe to break into some pavement he's just redone. While this is in the service of the plot, she is destroying the good work of a poorly-paid civil servant and then being unbearably smug about it afterward to him, so...
Rose Tyler is Awful Count: 5,055,636,280
Meanwhile, Chloe begins to draw the Olympic audience, which vanishes. The announcer sounds far, far less than concerned than he really should be. Because of the lack of people, the Isolus needing around four billion people, Chloe begins to draw the entire Earth! Rose tries to break into Chloe's room with a pick axe after finding the door locked and barred. Rose finally breaks in, but the Isolus threatens to unleash Satan from the closet if she stops her from drawing.
...and drops that the pod needs more than heat to fly.
...it needs love.
You read that correctly, love.
...LOOOOOOOOOOOOOVE!
NEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEW EARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR-anyway, yes. Apparently the pod doesn't just need heat, it needs love. Seeing a picture moving, Rose sees the Doctor pointing to an Olympic torch drawing that he somehow was able to create in the ion dimension. If he has that degree of control over it, I'm not sure why he can't get himself out of it, but I'm not the writer of the episode so what do I know? The television of exposition, meanwhile, has been talking about the ongoing events and mentions that the Olympic torch is much more than a symbol of just light and heat...it's a symbol of love!
Rose rushes out, tries to get to the torch, and is immediately stopped by a policeman. Unfortunately, I don't get the joy of Rose getting committed for insanity, but I do get Rose throwing the pod and making the highly improbably shot that has it landing in the torch to power up. Just before the Isolus finishes the drawing of Earth, it senses the pod being reactivated and bids Chloe goodbye before leaving.
All seems all well and good and storybook, but the Doctor isn't back and Chloe's Satan father drawing is apparently still active in spite of all the other drawings being freed. And, unlike Rose's statement that the drawings "came back to life" as a handwave-y explanation, I acknowledge that Chloe's Satan father was never alive to begin with, so this tension of all of five minutes is breathtakingly stupid. Not the stupidest thing of the episode, but it's close.
...it's the third one. After the spaceship powered by love and what is about to happen.
So, Chloe and Trish manage to banish Satan Dad with the song Trish would sing when Chloe had nightmares, Kookaburra, and Rose is moody that the Doctor isn't back yet to the point of being whiny and annoying about it.
Rose Tyler is Awful Count: 5,055,636,281
On television, it seems that the bearer of the Olympic torch is growing weaker...he falls and it seems that the Olympic torch is going to fall...and then the Doctor runs up, picks it up, and runs up to the torch to light it...completely robbing a man of something he'd probably been waiting for for a long, long time and not even bothering to check on him. Was he exhausted? Did he have a heart attack? Did he just drop dead on the spot? No idea. But the Doctor gets to mug before a crowd and go light the torch...and we're expected to take this as a good thing.
Holy shit, Doctor...you are really an asshole!
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| "Hehe...that man I took this torch from might be dead!" |
But the Isolus flies off to parts unknown never to be seen or mentioned again (thank God) and the Doctor returns to Rose. As they head off to the games, Rose mentions how their enemies try to split them up but they never ever will. The Doctor tells her to never say never ever. Rose is sure, though, that they'll always be okay...but the Doctor sees a storm approaching...because Russell wants us be dreading the oncoming finale.
I don't think I need to make this any clearer than I have - this episode bites. The child possessed by a creature that is supposed to suffer from the heights of lows of emotions can't act, the spaceship powered by love thing is ridiculous even for this show, and as we established just two paragraphs ago - the Doctor robs a potentially dying or dead man of glory and everyone just takes it as the most wonderful thing in the world.
I'm not kidding - people actually wanted David Tennant to light the Olympic torch in 2012 because of this episode. Although, funnily enough, Matt Smith did carry the torch for a bit in Wales before the actual 2012 Olympics. It's funny how life works like that, sometimes.
A lot of the episode's problems get a far more obvious culprit when you realize that it was a last minute alternate replacement for an episode that would have been written by Stephen Fry. His original idea, whatever it would have been, was deemed to expensive to produce and so Russell T. Davies pushed it back to Series 3. However, when Fry couldn't do the rewrites it was ultimately dropped. Writer Matthew Graham was brought in to fill in the gap and, given the time, probably did not have too much time to fully form and flesh out the ideas presented here.
Budget and time will always be enemies of Doctor Who, more so than almost anything else. I don't want to rag on Matthew Graham too much. He did end up writing The Rebel Flesh and The Almost People, which are significantly better than this was. But Fear Her is a mess. Maybe with a few more rewrites it might have been something but, unfortunately as it stands, this is the worst that Series 2 has to offer. Avoid it unless you're a sadist or you just have no other choice...or are feeling like a palette cleanser after last week's painful entry.
Next time, we head into the finale. Series 2 is gearing up and the Cybermen are back...but the episode doesn't want you to know that until about halfway through, thinking it's a mystery when it already got ruined in the trailers.
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