An Hour of Who a Day: 01/13/15

January 13: "Tooth and Claw"

This episode's TARDISode: a meteor crashes to Earth, and then 300 years later someone's attacked by a giant wolf in Scotland...

The actual episode proper opens with an incredibly stylistic, heavily choreographed fight scene, as orange-clad Scottish monks perform kung fu (er...) as they flip and fly around a courtyard. It's an extremely frenetic sequence that promises an action-packed story.

Unfortunately, the rest of "Tooth and Claw" doesn't quite deliver on that particular promise. There's a lot of action to be sure, as characters run up and down corridors in fine Doctor Who tradition, but none of it seems quite as energetic as that opening sequence. There's also the problem that, after their balletic moves, the Brethren don't do much beyond shoot at anyone trying to open a window of the house -- they're there to keep people in, not to kick ass in excitingly visual ways. It's therefore to the story's benefit that the primary threat of the werewolf is realized convincingly enough to help carry the day. ("Finally, a werewolf story!" they proclaimed at the time, ignoring things like Mindwarp and The Greatest Show in the Galaxy.) It often feels like Russell T Davies is attempting to recapture the feel of a Hinchcliffe-era story, with a small group of people under threat from a single creature. (Actually, it's most like Horror of Fang Rock, which is technically the first Graham Williams story.) And to his credit and that of the people making this, they just about pull it off.

One drawback to this approach, though, is that owing to the comparatively short running time, "Tooth and Claw" can't spend much time slowly building up the werewolf as a threat or giving our heroes much time to come up with a defense against it. Instead we get a story that, once it gets going, moves at full pelt the whole time. So you sort of wonder why, given the time constraints, Davies wastes it with the "We are not amused" bit, which is incredibly unfunny and makes Rose seem extremely callous. (In fact, "Tooth and Claw" marks the clear start of the degradation of Rose's character -- sadly, she'll become increasingly shallow and unlikeable as the series progresses.) I understand that he needs a reason for Queen Victoria to banish the Doctor and Rose from the Empire (yeah, that worked) and set up Torchwood, but making Rose (and the Doctor, to some extent) seem like unfeeling gits feels like the wrong way to go about it. And while we're at it, the resolution of this story is awfully bizarre -- it hinges on some major implausible coincidences (the Brethren just happened to choose Torchwood House, the place where Prince Albert and Sir Robert's father spent their last few years creating an elaborate trap to destroy a werewolf, and Victoria just happened to have the Koh-i-noor on her when she was there, allowing Albert's trap to be sprung), as if Davies is in such a rush to get to the conclusion and the subsequent denouement and founding of Torchwood as an anti-Doctor agency that he stops worrying about plausibility. (Oh, and the color grading they've applied to make that first windswept meeting with Queen Victoria look like a bright sunny day, despite the clouds looming overhead, has the side-effect of making David Tennant's skin look incredibly blotchy.)

Fortunately, there are enough positives going on to outweigh the plotting concerns. It's really lovely to hear David Tennant use his natural Scottish accent (and the little in-joke of calling himself "Doctor James McCrimmon" is a nice touch), and most everyone in front of the camera is doing a great job -- Pauline Collins (who you might remember as Samantha Briggs from The Faceless Ones) is incredibly good as Queen Victoria, giving the sense of a somewhat overwhelmed but extremely resolute woman, and Derek Riddell is great as Sir Robert, conflicted between loyalty to the queen and love for his wife. And while we're here, can we just note that Michelle Duncan (playing Sir Robert's wife Lady Isobel) has incredibly beautiful blue eyes?

It has some odd moments and some questionable script decisions, but "Tooth and Claw" ultimately succeeds, thanks to the cast's performances and some assured directions from Euros Lyn, as an entertaining return to the style of some of the more claustrophobic stories of Doctor Who's past. It's really not trying to do much more than provide some tense and exciting moments for 45 minutes, and so while there are those missteps, they ultimately don't significantly sully the final product.