August 29: "It Takes You Away"

Promotional photo for "It Takes You Away" (from BBC One - Doctor
Who, It Takes You Away Gallery) ©BBC

The TARDIS arrives in 2018 Norway (ooh, another place the show has never visited before!), where an isolated, boarded-up cabin contains a blind girl who's terrified of a monster that's living in the forest. But things are definitely not what they seem...

Since the show came back in 2005, it's generally been the case that there's been an episode per series that pushes at the restrictions of what Doctor Who can be, whether that's due to scheduling issues (as with "Love & Monsters") or simply to see if it can be done (as with "Heaven Sent"). "It Takes You Away" is the latest entry in these "offbeat" (for lack of a better term) stories.

"It Takes You Away" (which is a rubbish title, by the way) is by Ed Hime, writing his first Doctor Who script. (Fun fact: Chris Chibnall is the only writer on series 11 who's written for the show before (although Malorie Blackman wrote a seventh Doctor short story ebook, "The Ripple Effect", for the show's 50th anniversary²⁸⁸) -- by contrast, only one writer for the previous series, Mike Bartlett, wasn't a returning writer.) It starts out with some quirky moments, such as the Doctor tasting the soil to work out when and where they are and then being worried by a sheep ("It's fine. It's only 2018," she declares. "I thought we'd leapt into the Woolly Rebellion"²⁸⁹), before investigating the house. So it starts with a kind of weird, almost horror-film-like tension, with the isolated cabin and the inexplicable boarded-up nature, and having a terrified blind girl named Hanne (played by Ellie Wallwork, who really is blind), a bellowing monster sound coming from outside, and the disappearance of her dad does a good job of ratcheting up that tension. Of course, Ryan is skeptical that there's a monster ("You're not buying that?" he asks Graham. "Her dad's done a runner and she's making this monster stuff up"), which highlights Ryan's feelings about his own father -- but the general impression is that Ryan is too cynical and that the others are ready to believe that Hanne's dad Erik was taken away by a monster.

Er, except it turns out Ryan is right (not that anyone ever points this out); Erik really has done a runner, just into a different universe where his dead wife is still alive instead of to a different town or something, and he's taken these elaborate steps to ensure Hanne doesn't go outside, including boarding up basically every possible window and running a speaker system outside to play scary noises so that Hanne can cower in fear instead of just chilling with some music or something -- and just so that she won't wander off! Couldn't he just tell her he's leaving for a few days, don't go outside?  ("He should've just got Wi-Fi," Ryan comments. Either way, Erik isn't going to win any parenting prizes, that's for sure.) But I dunno if they were worried that the episode was underrunning, or that the episode was too cerebral and they needed something exciting for viewers to latch onto, but there's a place between the two universes called the Antizone, full of flesh-eating moths and some weird dude called Ribbons of the Seven Stomachs (played by Kevin Eldon), which seems designed to add some action to the proceedings but also feels completely superfluous to the actual storyline. It's all right enough on the first viewing, but on subsequent viewings you wish they'd just get on with it and get to the other universe.

Because that part of the story is far more compelling. Placing everyone in a literal mirror universe, with all the images flipped, is a nice touch, and the stuff where the universe is an ancient sentient universe called the Solitract that got expelled from our universe for being incompatible is a nice idea, even if it mirrors the Divergent Universe stuff from the eighth Doctor Big Finish audios a bit. (And the "Granny 5" stuff works way better than the Woolly Rebellion thing.) It's also here where it becomes clear just how terrible a father Erik really is -- but that's (partly) justified because Erik is grieving the death of his wife and so isn't thinking straight ("You're not well," Hanne later tells him; "you haven't been since Mum died"), and he's willing to live in this parallel universe and effectively abandon his daughter to get his wife back. And the Solitract tries to do the same thing with Graham by bringing Grace to him, which leads to some very touching scenes between the two of them.  It's nice to see Sharon D. Clarke back, and it's heartbreaking the way Graham reacts to her presence. If they'd expanded this part of the story a bit more, they could have probably ditched the Antizone stuff without too much trouble and improved things no end.

The Solitract. ("It Takes You Away") ©BBC

Because the ending is delightfully insane. After it becomes clear that this constructed universe is destabilizing, the Doctor offers herself up in exchange for the others, which leads to the Solitract personifying itself as a talking frog. I know fandom has found the talking frog very divisive, but I quite liked the concept. I also liked how they appeared to be using an actual puppet frog -- it felt nicely old-school. (If it turns out it was a CG frog, then disregard this, but it just looks too immobile to be CG.) And there's a nice theme of loneliness present here, which manifested itself with grief for Erik and Graham but is more melancholy here, with the Solitract just wanting a friend -- but even the presence of the Doctor is too much, causing things to destabilize:

DOCTOR: Me being here is going to kill us both. You may want us to be together, but it's not working. It can never work.
SOLITRACT: You're lying to me because you want to leave.
DOCTOR: No. I'm your friend. But friends help each other face up to their problems, not avoid them. This is... You are the maddest, most beautiful thing I've ever experienced, and I haven't even scratched the surface. I wish I could stay. But if either of us are going to survive, you're going to have to let me go and keep on being brilliant by yourself.
SOLITRACT: I miss you. I miss it all so much.
DOCTOR: I know. But if you do this, I promise, you and I will be friends forever. You have to let me go.
SOLITRACT: I will dream of you out there without me.
(The Doctor backs away and blows a kiss.)
DOCTOR: Goodbye.

(from The Doctor Who Transcripts - It Takes You Away)

It's exactly the sort of thing that makes Doctor Who so great; I just wish there had been a bit more of it. If they'd spent more time with the Doctor and the Solitract interacting (or maybe even just intercutting between the relative peace and quiet there with some hustle and bustle from the others (back in our universe, in the version of this story without the Antizone)), this could have potentially been even better.

So in some ways this story works quite well; the reflected universe stuff is nicely done, and the theme of grief and loneliness is handled thoughtfully -- and the way that Ryan calls Graham "Grandad" at the end is not only a nice culmination of their relationship over the previous episodes, but it also contrasts with that theme of grief; Graham may miss Grace still, but he can move forward with Ryan. It's just too bad that they felt it necessary to add the Antizone stuff, or that Erik had such a bizarre scheme to keep Hanne inside that really falls apart when you think about it too much. Those moments hold "It Takes You Away" back from achieving the full potential that it promised; as it is it's only decent instead of marvelous.







²⁸⁸ The story itself isn't too bad, about a parallel timeline where Daleks are a force for good, but Blackman weirdly seems to think that the seventh Doctor talks like Jon Pertwee, with lots of phrases such as "My dear Ace" peppering his dialogue, which sound deeply wrong when imagined in Sylvester McCoy's voice.
²⁸⁹ The Woolly Rebellion thing seems really bizarre, even though it's meant to be more a joke than anything else, but since we're in the business of making everything fit here, we have to treat it as a serious event. It's a bit horrifying to think we're killing and eating sheep if they're conscious and sentient (you might argue it's horrifying to eat them in the first place, of course), but it's also weird that it took them so long to rebel. Given that the Woolly Rebellion apparently happens in 2211, aka about fifty years after the Dalek Invasion of Earth, maybe the Daleks did something to the sheep to make them self-aware. Or maybe they liked the way they were treated under the Daleks better than how they were treated by the humans. Or maybe this really is just daft.