An Hour of Who a Day: July 13: "In the Forest of the Night"

July 13: "In the Forest of the Night"

Stuart Manning's poster for "In the Forest of
the Night" (from Doctor Who: exclusive In the
Forest of the Night poster revealed)

It's something of a coup, getting Frank Cottrell-Boyce to write an episode of Doctor Who. He's well known as a screenwriter and the author of the 2012 London Olympics opening ceremony, as well as the author of a number of children's books. So perhaps it's not surprising to find that his contribution to Doctor Who is a semi-magical fairy tale of trees growing over night, of children who've been rejected but some of whom hold the answers to what's going on.

It's a pity it's all somewhat dull, though.

I'm not actually sure what the problem is, to be honest. Is it a matter of the direction not getting across the magical realism feeling that the script is going for? Is it a more basic problem of scripting, of something being missing that should have been there to make this click? Or is it some combination of these things and more? Because this seems like the sort of story idea that should suit Doctor Who to a T -- a forest springing up overnight is a fantastic concept, and the visuals of traffic lights overgrown with greenery and Nelson's Column surrounded by trees and vines are very striking. Really, the only issue there is the lack of basically anyone else around -- for being in the center of London, there aren't many people wandering around the new forest, are there? But then that makes the students of Coal Hill's "Gifted and Talented" group more special, because they're the ones who get to explore this strange new wilderness.

To the credit of both Cottrell-Boyce and casting director Andy Pryor, the children we see here aren't thoroughly irritating or wet, but instead are both real people and rather charming (the best one is Samson, who rebukes Danny Pink's "let's all pitch in" sensibilities by getting the "team" to move as a unit by replying at one point with, "We will [do this], if you stop calling us a team"). Ruby is shown to be smart but literal-minded, while Maebh has a special affinity with the trees (so long as she's not drugged into ignoring them, in a somewhat pointed commentary on overmedicating children). In fact, the issue here is that there's frankly not enough of this; we should get a better sense of who these children are, that they are in fact real people instead of troublemakers and problem children lumped together under a euphemism, but that only happens with a couple of them, and it would have been better if they'd extended the favor to more of them.

So there are some problems here and there, but they shouldn't be enough to drag things down. However, the biggest problem with "In the Forest of the Night" is that there's no threat whatsoever. All right, there's a small wolfpack and a tiger, but these come up and then are dealt with in short order, and there's nothing to replace them, despite an early half-hearted attempt to paint the trees as sinister. The story is instead relying on the magic of the situation to sustain things, and while it works in places (such as when the tree spirit things are talking through Maebh, while the Doctor makes them visible with the sonic screwdriver), everything else sags a bit. And unlike, say, Warriors' Gate (where "do nothing" is arrived at as the correct solution only after a lot of effort to do the opposite), here we're invited to simply marvel at how wonderful nature is, able to save the planet from destruction. Which isn't a bad thing by any means, but it also doesn't make for compelling drama.

I dunno, there's not really anything wrong with what we got from "In the Forest of the Night", but there's not enough there to really keep things going. Visually this is quite nice, and the storyline is sweet (even if a bit silly -- but as we're already dealing with a fairy tale-esque story the tree stuff isn't as egregious as "Kill the Moon" was), and there are some great character moments (such as the Doctor refuting Clara's urging of him to leave Earth when they think it's doomed by a solar flare by using her words from "Kill the Moon" -- "This is my world too. I walk your earth, I breathe your air" -- which is a nice way of bringing things back around). It's just a pity there's no clear threat to really keep things moving, and so the final effort is a bit dull.

Oh, and the happy ending of Maebh's runaway sister returning at the very end is so hideously twee as to be gag-inducing.