An Hour of Who a Day: March 20: "The Unicorn and the Wasp"

I dunno. I understand that "The Unicorn and the Wasp" wants to be silly and absurd and fun, without too much angst or drama getting in the way, while it pastiches the murder mysteries that Agatha Christie is famous for. I even think it does a good job with them. I just don't find it particularly funny.

The nice thing about this episode is that it imagines to be both a trip back to the 1920s, with some elements of flappers and large estates throwing parties thrown in just like we've seen on TV in other shows (or Black Orchid, if Doctor Who is the only thing you ever watch), and a loving tribute to Agatha Christie's novels (along with some of the dafter installments of the Doctor Who strip that TV Comic put out in the 1960s, in case you're wondering what giant wasps have to do with Roaring '20s England). We also get Felicity Kendal, Christopher Benjamin, and Fenella Woolgar, and a host of other actors who've been in period pieces like this before, so they hardly put a foot wrong as they go through this unusual murder mystery. And it is a lot like an Agatha Christie mystery -- deliberately, we later learn -- with guests being bumped off in isolated circumstances and everyone keeping secrets from each other.

The culprit of this mystery, however, is an alien wasp called a Vespiform which can take human form, and which formed a psychic link with its human mother while she was reading The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. It's an odd and silly idea, but as it's deliberately designed to be absurd it's hard to be mad at it. Plus they do a nice job with their CGI wasp -- the Mill certainly have come along since "The Lazarus Experiment".

But for me, at least, it never fully coheres into a unified story. There are definitely funny moments (Colonel Curbishly admitting he's not crippled is a good one, but I also really like the moment where the Doctor chases the Vespiform down a hallway: "There's nowhere to run! Show yourself!" the Doctor cries, only for six people to emerge from various doorways), but they never feel like they're part of the main event -- rather, it's like an interlude before we get back to the main plot. (It doesn't help that a couple of the jokes -- like Donna giving Christie ideas -- were used before in Roberts' last Who script.) And by necessity, the resolution has to be more serious in nature, which does weaken the more good-naturedly silly bits.

I know a number of people who quite adore "The Unicorn and the Wasp", and while I can admire what it's trying to do, it just doesn't come together for me the way it should. For me, it tends to look a lot like someone trying to be clever and not quite pulling it off. You can applaud the attempt, but you wish it had gone better.