January 22: "Fear Her"

The TARDISode shows us a programme called Crime Crackers, investigating missing children in a London close (what Americans would call a cul-de-sac).  Although frankly this looks more like a silly parody than anything of serious intent, which doesn't bode well for the main event...

"Fear Her", for some reason, has become the pariah of 21st-century Who -- the most recent Doctor Who Magazine poll listed it at 240 out of 241 -- just ahead of The Twin Dilemma.  It's frankly hard to see why "Fear Her" evokes such vitriol, as the finished episode is barely worth remembering.

The Isolus encounters Chloe Webber. ("Fear Her") ©BBC

It's not perfect, but it's certainly not appalling -- unlike the aforementioned The Twin Dilemma, which really makes you work to find any nuggets of quality, there are quite a few lovely scenes in "Fear Her".  The Doctor sticking his finger in the marmalade is quietly wonderful.  The idea of the Isolus is interesting (even if, perversely, they've given such an intense family organism a name that looks a lot like "isolated"), and we finally unequivocally get the series 1 Rose back -- she's the most likeable she's been since "The Christmas Invasion", and her efforts to carry on where the Doctor left off (after he was snatched away by Chloe/the Isolus) are very well done.  Plus, the off-hand mention of the Doctor being a dad is great (and was presumably a surprise to new viewers -- though it's been established, more or less, since "An Unearthly Child"), and the gag about how the TARDIS materializes the first time is cute (even if they'd already done that joke in Ghost Light).  It's also clear that someone's put some thought into the fact that they're shooting a story set in July 2012 in January 2006, so we get dialogue about how the Isolus's ship is sucking the heat out of everywhere.

But there are still some major problems with "Fear Her".  A couple of them are production-related (such as how Abisola Agbaje isn't quite up to the task of portraying the possessed Chloe Webber (although, notably, she seems a lot more comfortable when she's playing the Isolus-free version)), but primarily the issues are at the scripting level.  Chloe's powers seem to be inconsistent (so when she draws people they're transported into her pictures, but when she draws something imaginary like the scribble creature it appears in real life (and incidentally, the Doctor's trick with the eraser is strange -- try erasing the tip of a pencil and see how far you get) -- and when she draws someone who was alive but is now dead, he appears to live in a halfway point between the two), and both endings (the nightmare dad one and the Doctor/torch one) are quite painful, albeit for different reasons.  The dad one feels awfully saccharine and twee -- essentially the equivalent of just wishing bad things away -- and the torch one tries so hard to force you to cheer that the natural reaction is to gag instead.

However, the underlying concern with "Fear Her" isn't a matter of a bad plot or an inept production.  No, what ultimately sinks it is a general smug sense of "aren't we clever?"  From the opening TARDIS gag to the Doctor lighting the torch, there's a sense in which the episode is repeatedly yelling at the viewers, "Look!  We're doing fun and interesting new things!"  If they were actually doing fun and interesting new things, it might (might) have been okay, but although they occasionally do slip a moment through, there's not really anything worth engaging with in this story.  It's a lot like a bore at a party telling everyone how interesting they are.  And as with the bore, you might find some things here and there in "Fear Her" worthwhile if you stick around, but it might just be better if you walk away.