Mark Gatiss, who has written previous episodes such as “Victory of the Daleks” and “The Unquiet Dead” for the new series of Doctor Who, returns with “Night Terrors”, in which a young boy named George is terrified of something in his room, and whose cries for help are heard all the way in the TARDIS. This is the point where the Doctor, Amy, and Rory get involved, and things get a little weird from there.
Gatiss’ script taps into children’s fundamental fears, turning every shadow or night sound into potential nightmare fuel. The choice of having dolls as the antagonists provide a rich and identifiable source of terror for the story. Jamie Oram, who plays George, turns in a very convincing performance of a child who is afraid of, well, everything. Daniel Mays is also good as George’s father Alex, in turns distressed and cowed by his various predicaments in the episode.
But when all is said and done, this episode fell flat for me. I had a few issues with the episode. First, the Doctor is split up from his companions, which is a well-worn trope in the Who universe. However, Amy and Rory don’t have much interesting to do for too long a stretch. They are exploring a creepy house where things just aren’t quite right, telegraphing a revelation too far in advance (my kids had guessed where Amy and Rory really were early on). Even the Doctor tries to lampshade this when he is pulled into the same house, but it is not as clever as Gatiss would like for us to believe.
The dolls of the story- and what they can do- are creepy. But that doesn’t save the story. What was the point of pulling the old lady into the doll house? She served no purpose there at all. What results is an old-fashioned run around, and it just drags. When the Doctor finally deduces just what is really going on, it comes out in an info-dump, which is sketchy at best, and within a couple of minutes everything is back to normal. Case closed, off the TARDIS crew goes.
“Night Terrors” has good moments, but is just weak overall. Which is a shame, because it had the potential to be a smartly-written horror piece. Instead, it was just a watered-down take on horror for Doctor Who. Bummer.
Rating (out of 10): 6
Julio Angel Ortiz | Writer 
The episode was beautifully directed, but the story itself fell quite flat (and gets worse the more I think about it).
I’ve written a bit about what I see as the central problem with the Ponds this season, and would love your thoughts on the matter.
http://theoncominghope.blogspot.com/2011/09/problem-with-ponds.html
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Thanks for the feedback. I’ll check out your blog shortly. Hope you come back around here. 😉
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The episode was beautifully directed, but the story itself fell quite flat (and gets worse the more I think about it).
I’ve written a bit about what I see as the central problem with the Ponds this season, and would love your thoughts on the matter.
http://theoncominghope.blogspot.com/2011/09/problem-with-ponds.html
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Thanks for the feedback. I’ll check out your blog shortly. Hope you come back around here. 😉
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I absolutely will! I like your epithet “commentary from the ruins of the slacker generation.” I went to university at UT Austin, so I feel ya.
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Awesome to hear. Sometimes bloggers just want to promote their site, instead of true cross-readership. I look forward to seeing you around. And thanks for the compliment, once it came to me I felt it was just perfect. lol
Was checking out your blog. Love the theme; very bright and clean layout. I love black but on a blog theme it can be so… uninviting, I guess, sometimes. So I’m leaning towards the same sort of feel these day.
Anywho, hope to see you around. 🙂
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Thanks! I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about the layout/theme (way too much in fact). In the end, it’s about promoting the content in the clearest way possible. And I like white. I think it emphasizes the difference between internet commentary and printed commentary, where white space is so verboten.
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When I used to self-host my old WordPress blog, I was always fiddling with the themes, changing them, tweaking, etc. It got to the point where it was taking time away from content. Now I’m just doing bare-minimum tweaking; let the true designers handle the themes, I’ll fill up the blog.
Did you create your theme, though? More power to you if you did.
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I absolutely will! I like your epithet “commentary from the ruins of the slacker generation.” I went to university at UT Austin, so I feel ya.
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Awesome to hear. Sometimes bloggers just want to promote their site, instead of true cross-readership. I look forward to seeing you around. And thanks for the compliment, once it came to me I felt it was just perfect. lol
Was checking out your blog. Love the theme; very bright and clean layout. I love black but on a blog theme it can be so… uninviting, I guess, sometimes. So I’m leaning towards the same sort of feel these day.
Anywho, hope to see you around. 🙂
LikeLike
Thanks! I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about the layout/theme (way too much in fact). In the end, it’s about promoting the content in the clearest way possible. And I like white. I think it emphasizes the difference between internet commentary and printed commentary, where white space is so verboten.
LikeLike
When I used to self-host my old WordPress blog, I was always fiddling with the themes, changing them, tweaking, etc. It got to the point where it was taking time away from content. Now I’m just doing bare-minimum tweaking; let the true designers handle the themes, I’ll fill up the blog.
Did you create your theme, though? More power to you if you did.
LikeLike