An Hour of Who a Day: January 18: "The Idiot's Lantern"

January 18: "The Idiot's Lantern"

The TARDISode for this story is a little unusual; normally these are set before the events we see in the story, but this one seems to be set during the title sequence -- between the cold open and the start of the rest of the episode, as we see Tommy's gran get her face sucked off after the Connollys' television is delivered.

The actual episode is a bit of an odd beast. There are moments it does really well and moments that fall flat, and it never quite strikes the right balance between these two things. It might be worth noting that the episode starts to hit its stride once Rose has become a victim of the Wire, but that perhaps has less to do with Rose and more to do with the structure of the story.

That said, the bits with the Doctor and Rose in the Connollys' house don't come off the way Mark Gatiss presumably intended them to. Eddie Connolly is a bit of a bully, certainly, but it hardly seems like the best way to deal with a bully is to bully him harder. The Doctor's response to Eddie's attempts to gain control ("And I'm not LISTENING!!!") feels a bit forced, but Rose's crack about the Union Jack versus the Union Flag feels incredibly mean-spirited (and also isn't actually true). If this had been an isolated incident they might have gotten away with it -- certainly the rest of Rose's behavior (other than the bit about the Union Flag being upside down) is reasonably sympathetic -- but coming after a long string of other questionable character decisions, it just increases the sense of distaste toward Rose's character. It becomes so noticeable, in fact, that viewers at the time were wondering if they were setting Rose (and the Doctor, to an extent) up for a fall, so insufferable was their behavior becoming. Alas, it seems to be more a matter of poor script editing across stories than a concerted effort to give them hubris that they'll pay for; no one appears to have considered the cumulative effect of these more negative aspects.

Once the plot gets going, though, things improve. There are some lovely moments (everyone mentions it, but the part where the Doctor, when asked to tell the police everything he knows, starts with "I know you can't wrap your hand around your elbow and make your fingers meet," and then while DI Bishop is yelling at him the officer behind him is trying to see if the Doctor's right, is a moment of understated joy), and the Doctor is in full righteous mode (even if it seems to be the fact that Rose was affected and then left on the street that ends up being the final straw), challenging the Wire. The Wire herself is a reasonable villain, travelling along electromagnetic signals and trying to absorb the electrical impulses of the brain (though it's never clear why those signals are preferable to any other electrical signals -- nor why this causes people's faces to disappear), but her cries of "Hungry!" are awfully reminiscent of Paradise Towers (and if you think Mark Gatiss didn't know this you haven't been paying attention). Still, she provides an interesting villain, and the method of dealing with her is rather clever. The ending's a bit odd, though; we're supposed to be pleased that Mrs. Connolly has finally gotten rid of the bully in her life, in the form of her over-bearing husband, but then we get a speech from Rose about how families are super-important and Tommy should go to his dad -- even though Eddie is a bully and had earlier jokingly talked about beating the "mummy's boy" out of Tommy (and if you take seriously the subtext that Tommy's gay, this becomes even more worrying -- but as I noted under "The Unquiet Dead", subtexts tend to pass Gatiss by). It's a bit of a duff note for an ending, and certainly not the one the production team intended.

And then there's the matter of the direction. Euros Lyn is using an awful lot of low angle shots and skewed shots, trying to convey a sense of things being off-kilter -- but he takes it too far, and once you notice it it's hard to unnotice it, and you find yourself wondering if someone's just neglected to make sure the camera's level. It's a nice idea, but it's ultimately distracting. This is a shame, because there are lots of other good shots (such as the climb up the transmitter tower) that do a good job of conveying the action in interesting ways -- but that tilted camera overwhelms everything.

But ultimately "The Idiot's Lantern" isn't a terribly successful episode. I confess that I have a bit of a soft spot for it, but it's not hard to see why others wouldn't care for it. I rather like the plot with the Wire, and there are a number of good moments scattered throughout -- but if you're not impressed by the Wire, you might find this all rather tiresome. It has a few nice moments, but it's not the triumph it could have been.