From MadCap's Couch - "Doctor Who: The Unicorn and the Wasp"

So, when I was a kid (that is, my early to mid teens), I was big into Sherlock Holmes. I listened to audio plays from various sources, read the books, and watched the Basil Rathbone movies!

. . .which reminds me, I should review those for Reel Thoughts.

However, Agatha Christie is as responsible for many of the tropes in detective stories, and has produced classics with her characters of Inspector Poirot and Miss Marple. I've reviewed a byproduct of those stories, and I probably will get around to the actual adaptations of Agatha Christie stories at some point, because there are a lot of them to go over.

Today, though, we slip back into homage...with the woman herself, Agatha Christie. I didn't mention it, but she was referenced back in Series 3, so it's neat to see a payoff for what could have just been a one-off reference.

So, with that, let's get into it.

The Doctor and Donna arrive at a garden party in the 1920's, 1926 to be specific as this episode actually does tie into a real world event. More on that later. As they use the psychic paper to bluff their way in as guests, one "Professor Peach" excuses himself to the library and makes a shocking discovery that has been hidden for several years...before a giant wasp beats him to death with a lead pipe.

After the credits, we're introduced to a few characters rapidly. There's Lady Clemency Edison, who is the host, her husband Colonel Hugh Curbishly and their son Roger, the butler Davenport, Reverend Arthur Golightly (who was introduced in the cold open), Miss Chandrakala (the head of the kitchen), Robina Redmond (Felicity Jones making her three appearance on this blog), and one...Agatha Christie.

We get some exposition about a jewel thief called "The Unicorn" that has been making the rounds through England's high society as well as The Doctor picking up one of the newspapers of exposition left over from Sliders and finding out the historical event in question - namely, the printed date is the same date that Agatha Christie disappeared, which is the real life event mentioned above and is something that still confounds historians to this day.

So, naturally, Doctor Who is going to set the record straight on what actually happened.

. . .Doctor Who is canon to real life, right?

Also, it's noted by the Doctor that Agatha has just discovered that her then-husband (Archibald Christie) had been having an affair. Agatha apparently, on this date, disappeared and then turned up ten days later at the Harrogate Hotel with no memory of how she'd gotten there.

Chandrakala goes to retrieve Professor Peach and finds him very dead, running out and hysterically screaming at the top of her lungs about it. The Doctor, being the Doctor, begins the investigation immediately and uses his psychic paper to commandeer the situation by posing as a detective inspector from Scotland Yard (and Donna as "the plucky young girl who helps me out", much to her irritation). Donna also lampshades how weird it is to find a murder mystery around Agatha Christie...and makes the subconscious reference to a Series 1 episode that I already did in the last episode.

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

The Doctor has a moment of dickishness that Agatha calls him out on, but the two begin to question suspects. Here we learn through cutaways that a bunch of the group aren't being entirely truthful about the things they are doing, a bit of comedy where the word doesn't match up with the action. In the end, however, no one has a concrete alibi about where they were when the murder took place.

The Doctor at one point references saving Charlemagne from an insane computer, his own cutaway gag showing him looking very much like he did at the end of Blink what with the bow and arrows on his back. Agatha snaps him out of it, and reveals a clue she found in the fireplace (that the Doctor saw her collect): a scrap of paper with the word "maiden" written on it.

Donna, meanwhile, has a room unlocked in the house that Lady Edison had commanded to be locked. She apparently returned from India and suffered a bout of malaria that she spent six months recovering from. That had been forty years ago. As she investigates the room, Donna finds an interesting artifact - a child's teddy bear. Donna gets to make another reference to the bees disappearing in 2008-2009 when she hears a buzzing in the curtains...and finds the giant wasp, which bursts into the room to try and murder her to death.

She manages to evade it, getting out of the room and slamming the door on it, though it's stinger gets caught in the door and the Doctor and Agatha have to have it pointed out to them by Donna...in a strangely hilariously case of both failing their Perception checks. The Doctor takes a venom sample, Agatha for some reason doubts the existence of the giant wasp despite the massive honking stinger stuck in the door, 

In the kitchen, Miss Chandrakala hits on the idea that whatever Professor Peach had been asking for might have been the reason he was murdered and goes to see Lady Edison...only to be killed by a falling gargoyle because she couldn't bother to step three feet to the right. The way the shot is filmed, there's also an eternity before the camera closes in on her that she could have easily moved out of the way instead of putting her hands to her mouth and screaming.

I mean, I know it fits the clichés, but c'mon.

The Doctor, Donna, and Agatha reach Chandrakala who looks surprisingly unbruised and unbloodied for someone who had a large stone statue dropped on them and she whispers "The poor...child..." as she dies. They glimpse the wasp fleeing the scene and chase it into the house. While it corners them, Donna manages to fend it off with a magnifying glass (I think?) and it unfortunately escapes.

"So you're saying...I do this episode, and I get to be in
Star Wars? Great!"

In the study, the cast convenes to drop some references to Agatha Christie novels (of the future!) and no one expresses any knowledge of any child living in this house. While the party seems to think that Agatha should be the point woman on this (given the odd similarities to the plots of her novels), she hands it over to the Doctor. Shortly after, Donna attempts to comfort her in the garden in a properly Donna-esque fashion.

It's a genuinely good scene where Donna tries to relate to Agatha's relationship problems given some of her own. As she gets depressed about the thought of her books being forgotten, Agatha notices something interesting - a flower beds with the stalks bent over, a case having been dropped down into it. They bring the case back to the Doctor and inside they find a series of picks and other tools - the tools of a thief. The Unicorn is among their number!

As they share a drink, the Doctor drops a bit of information about the venom he took from the stinger - the creature is a Vespiform, but the Doctor can't figure out why this one is a galaxy away from its normal nesting groups or why it's acting like a character in one of Agatha's books. The Doctor then realizes that he's been poisoned, Agatha determining the poison to be cyanide by the smell. We get another attempt at comedy where the Doctor does very things to cancel out the poison: including eating walnuts, miming for something salty, Donna misinterpreting gestures, and then Donna finally snogging him right the hell out of nowhere for a trailer shot.

This also makes it where three out of five companions of the Revived Series have kissed the Doctor.

Following all of this, the Doctor expels a bunch of smoke from his mouth like he's been possessed by a demon from Supernatural.

Sure.

Also, the killer didn't poison the drinks of Agatha or Donna because...

. . .

. . .

. . .yeah, I got nothin'.

The Doctor's one-man show was not off to a good start.

At dinner that night, the Doctor unleashes his master plan: pepper! Namely, pepper in the soup they're all drinking. While not remotely lethal to humans, pepper contains piperine - a traditional insecticide. The lights go out and as the thunder and lightning crash above them, they begin to hear the wasp's buzzing. While the Doctor attempts to corral everyone into the area, they begin to sleep the sight of it, a bunch of rapid jump cuts keeping us from focusing on any one thing for too long.

The Doctor gets Donna and Agatha out, then goes back in with a cavalry saber...only to find the wasp gone. More to the point, however, Lady Edison's pendant - the "Firestone" has been stolen - and Roger has been murdered with a knife to the back.

After the Doctor gives Agatha a pep talk on her crime solving ability, being someone who so deeply understands the human heart and what motivates people to commit murder to begin with, the group is called together and (being that we are now in the last twelve to ten minutes of the episode) we get to the part in the story where you turn to page 68 to see if you were correct.

. . .yeah, I read Encyclopedia Brown as a kid. Pre-Sherlock Holmes fun. Eat me.

In short:

• "Robina Redmond" is nothing of the sort, she's the Unicorn, having infiltrated the party with the intention of stealing Lady Edison's pendant. She succeeded in the darkness of the dinner hall, but gives it up. She is not the killer.
• The Colonel, having been pretending to be wheelchair bound, can walk and has always been able to. Agatha Christie does not deduce this, but was going to say he's completely innocent...so he basically played himself (this is actually legitimately funny, by the way).
• Lady Edison brought back the Firestone from India, having fallen pregnant there, and spent six months in that one room that would later be sealed, under the care of one Miss Chandrakala. She had not told anyone.

Got all that? That last point in particular comes up, the Doctor taking over, and noting that Lady Edison had said "It can't be" when she'd heard the buzzing in the dining room. Lady Edison then, drink in hand, relates the truth she's been hiding for forty years: she had a dalliance with an alien, the original Vespiform, and had a child by him...the Vespiform being killed off in a flood in India. She gave the child away...and Agatha turns it over to the Doctor.

Basically, in short order: Lady Edison was a big fan of Agatha Christie, wearing the Firestone, and the finger finally points to Reverend Golightly, who had some men broke into his church the same night that Edison was reading an Agatha Christie novel...and righteous anger the Reverend felt unlocked his Vespiform form.

The Doctor notes that the Reverend's story of apprehending two thieves is a little ridiculous for a man in his forties...or, a many of forty exactly.

Yes, Reverend Golightly is Lady Edison's son by the Vespiform.

Apparently, the Firestone is also a telepathic recorder - meaning that it put all the knowledge of his true identity into his head as well as all the knowledge of Agatha Christie's mysteries from Lady Edison into his mind. 

He refutes this...but has a villainous breakdown and kicks into Wasp form. Agatha takes the Firestone and flees the scene, drawing the creature out. She takes a car and the Doctor and Donna are quick to follow her and the Vespiform out - the Doctor mentioning that time is in flux, Agatha Christie could easily die here and history would be rewritten. At the edge of a lake, the same lake Agatha would disappear at, she attempts to kill it - believing that if she dies, it will die too because of the telepathic link.

Donna tosses the pendant into the lake and the Vespiform goes down with it...and then Agatha begins to convulse, purple light shining over here. They hold the tension for all of a breath, and the Vespiform dies while deciding to let Agatha go. However, due to the trauma, her memories of the event have been erased.

The Doctor and Donna drop her off ten days later at the Harrogate Hotel. The family Edison won't speak of the incident (being British, they carry on) and the Unicorn can pop off back to London with no one being the wiser. When they return to the TARDIS, though, the Doctor pulls out a copy of Death in the Clouds (that is Death in the Air if you're in the US like me) and the cover displays...a giant wasp. Donna laments that Christie never knew that she'd be remembered, but the Doctor points out that no on knows if they're going to be remembered. It's what kept her writing, it's what keeps him traveling.

They both agree, however, the time has come to go onwards.

Not gonna lie, would have rather watched the Doctor
save Charlemagne from an insane computer.

The Unicorn and the Wasp is okay. Just okay. It's not bad, I can say that much. The humor doesn't always land well and while the references to Agatha's works are appreciated they aren't exactly going to be good for anyone who isn't a fan. I do like the set up and I do like that Gareth Roberts pulled a murder mystery well...although the science fiction elements almost feel like an afterthought. That wouldn't be a problem, except the story could work just as well without them and be a simple "son given up for adoption returns home and wants revenge" story.

Certain things would have to be changed, of course, but the pieces are all there. Alas, we're not getting a pure historical story, so we might as well live with it.

The Vespiform freaks me out, but I'm also not the biggest fan of insects to begin with. The CGI on it is so so.

That's really all I have to say on this episode. There are some things to cover here in the finale for Series 4, Journey's End, but I'm (mostly) trying to avoid spoilers for future episodes within the episodes I review, so that will have to wait. Needless to say, it took me until this viewing to realize what had happened and I had to give Russell T. Davies credit if this was one of the things he'd ordered Gareth Roberts to put in.

Next time, we get into Steven Moffat's contribution to Series 4 and an addition to the mythos that begins (and, ironically, ends) an arc that will carry us from here all the way to the next to last Christmas special of the Peter Capaldi era...and a character who is highly controversial to some. Next time, it's Silence in the Library.