Pop Vultures

Doctor Who, S04 E10: Midnight

This week: the Doctor is under threat in one of the most chilling episodes yet.

This episode was good. Really, really good. In fact, it was one of the best episodes of the revived Who ever. And pretty much all of it took place in one small space, with hardly any special effects. Well done, Russell T Davies. Your self-penned episodes have hitherto not been among the very best of the series, but this was bloody brilliant.

The Doctor and Donna are on a planet called Midnight, which was apparently uninhabitable by any living creature until a travel company set up a resort there, using special technology to block out the nearby sun’s deadly rays. Donna is relaxing in the spa, but the Doctor decides to go on an excursion to a local beauty spot, the Sapphire Waterfall. He boards a sort of space bus shuttle thing with a small group of passengers: a suburban couple, the Canes (the female half of which is played by the actress who, to me, will always be Carol Jackson out of EastEnders) and their bored emo son Jethro; pompous Professor Hobbes (played by David Troughton, whose father is Second Doctor Patrick Troughton!) and his research assistant Dee Dee; and a woman called Sky Silvestry (played by Lesley Sharp, who is freaking amazing throughout). The Doctor tries to banter with the steward, known as the Hostess, saying, “allons y!” She just looks irritated.

The shutters go down over the windows, which can’t withstand the sun’s rays for more than six seconds. The Hostess turns on the entertainment system, which simultaneously broadcasts video art, retro earth pop videos and ancient cartoons to incredibly irritating effect. The Doctor secretly uses his screwdriver to turn it all off and suggests that the passengers actually, well, talk to each other instead.

Cut to “98 kliks later,” and everyone is chatting away, having a great time, except for Sky, who’s a bit quiet as she reveals she’s gone on holiday to get over a recent breakup (with an ex-girlfriend, and kudos to Russell T for regularly proving his commitment to gay visibility in an ultra-mainstream show). But the Doctor makes her laugh and the whole group seem to be enjoying their adventure, until the shuttle suddenly stops. And, as we’re told, “Crusader shuttles never stop.”

The Doctor takes charge - “I’m the Doctor. I’m very clever,” he says calmly, and let’s remember here that pride comes before a fall - and heads to the drivers’ cabin, flashing the ever-useful psychic paper to prove his credentials. The driver and the mechanic can’t figure out what’s going on and have radioed for assistance. The Doctor urges them to raise the shutter, just for a moment, and the mechanic, Claude, sees a figure “running….running towards us.” Oh dear. But time is up and the shutter has to come down. The Doctor heads back to the main cabin, and that’s when things start to get seriously scary. There’s something outside – and it’s knocking on the walls of the shuttle.

If you’ve ever seen the awesome Shirley Jackson adaptation The Haunting (the original, not the terrible ’90s remake), you’ll know how scary unexplained knocking can be. Everyone freaks out, understandably enough. This scene is mostly shot slightly from above, which adds to the claustrophobic atmosphere. The Doctor decides to challenge the mysterious knocker. “Knock, knock,” he says, tapping the wall twice. “Who’s there?” Sadly, no one answers with the joke that all small children find so hilarious (”Doctor.” “Doctor who?” “How did you know my name?” Ah, knock knock jokes, only really appreciated by the under-sevens). Instead, whatever’s outside knocks twice too. Eeek. Seriously, they could have devoted to entire episode to scary knocking sounds and it would have been brilliantly terrifying. “It answered him!” cries Sky, getting hysterical, as well she might. Then she totally freaks out, cries “It’s coming for me!” and screams - just before we hear a large explosion. As the Doctor tries to calm people down, we see Rose calling him in the TV screen behind him! Then the lights go out and the cabin is rocked to and fro.

When the light is restored, we see that all the seats in the part of the cabin where Sky was standing have been torn up and she is crouched in the middle of the wreckage, her back to the others, her face in her hands. Man, this is so scary. I know I’m easily freaked out, but I hate it in horror films and TV programmes when you are deliberately not shown someone’s face and just know that when they turn around something will have gone horribly wrong with it. The same thought seems to have struck the increasingly hysterical passengers, especially when they discover that the driver’s cabin (and the driver and mechanic) have been ripped away from the shuttle. Everyone demands that Sky turn around, and when she does, I was on the verge of hiding behind the sofa. She hasn’t turned into some sort of scary monster but her manner is, as I wrote in my notes while watching the episode, “all lizardy,” as she whips her head to and fro, staring at the Doctor and the other passengers. Lesley Sharp is absolutely amazing here, by the way. She manages to really convey that Sky is not, well, Sky any more. The Doctor tries to talk to her but she just repeats everything he says. The other passengers are still freaked, especially when she starts repeating everything they say, too. As anyone who has faced a small child doing this knows, it’s incredibly irritating even when you don’t think it’s being done by a scary alien demon. Sky is repeating anything she hears. “She’s learning…absorbing…” says the Doctor, just before Sky stops repeating and starts speaking his own words exactly when he says them. He tests her by saying lots of random things (including “Rose Tyler, Martha Jones, Donna Noble”) but she doesn’t miss a beat. I didn’t even think of this at the time, because the whole thing was so gripping, but that scene must have been incredibly tricky for both actors to pull off. Both Lesley Sharp and David Tennant must have perfect timing.

The rising hysteria among the passengers is palpable. The Doctor urges everyone to be quiet: “The more we talk, the more it learns. I’m all for education, but in this case I’ll make an exception.” They all huddle at the far end of the cabin as the creature formerly known as Sky stares scarily at them. Dee Dee quotes Christina Rossetti’s brilliantly creepy poem ‘Goblin Market’:
“We must not look at goblin men,
We must not buy their fruits:
Who knows upon what soil they fed
Their hungry thirsty roots?”

The Hostess suggests throwing Sky out of the cabin. The Doctor insists that this will not happen. And then, for perhaps the first time, we see the Doctor’s authority being seriously challenged, and he doesn’t really handle it that well. “Oh, like you’re so special,” says one passenger. “Actually, I am,” says the Doctor, in a frustrated voice, and tries to continue his speech. He says that this a new life form and they have a lot to learn about it - but most of all, it’s a living being. “Could you actually murder her? Or are you better than that?” The passengers consider this for a minute, and then basically say yeah, they could murder her - hand her over! It’s the opposite result of his big speech in ‘The Doctor’s Daughter’ and, sadly, probably a more realistic one. They start viewing the Doctor with suspicion, reminding each other than he was seen talking to Sky before everything started going pear-shaped, and questioning his self-assumed authority: “You’re a Doctor of what, exactly?” “I’m a traveller,” says the Doctor, starting to look seriously rattled. “Like an immigrant?” says Carol Jackson off EastEnders, in proper Daily Mail-reader style.

Everyone’s voices overlap as the passengers turn on the Doctor - even emo kid Jethro, who didn’t seem particularly enthusiastic about the mob. “You’ve been loving it,” he says, and he’s right, of course - the Doctor loves this excitement and drama, but it’s absolutely terrifying to ordinary people. “You do seem to have a certain glee,” the Professor agrees. Other passengers accuse the Doctor of “looking down” on them, and it’s true, he kind of does treat humans like children. Despite all his “human beings are great!” cheerleading, he does always know better than them, and that’s more or less what he says here: “I’m clever.” Is it an arrogant boast, or is it someone merely being rightly unashamed of their own intelligence? The fact that the answer isn’t obvious is part of this episode’s power. The passengers/mob demand to know the Doctor’s real name. Looking increasingly unnerved, the Doctor says it’s John Smith, to which the passengers merely scoff “no one’s really called John Smith!” They continue to demand that the Doctor reveals his real name, and this has been a recurring theme recently, with River Song earning the Doctor’s trust by revealing that she knows this secret. I bet his real name is something totally pedestrian. Probably Barry. Or Gavin.

And then something even more worrying happens. Sky stops mimicking everyone – apart from the Doctor. “You need my voice,” says the Doctor. She starts saying his words a fraction of a second before he does. Now Sky, or whatever is inside her, is in control of the situation. Soon it’s she who is speaking independently and the Doctor can only parrot her words, powerless and unable to move. “Help me Professor!” says Sky - and the amount of menace Lesley Sharp manages to get into those words is very impressive. “It was so cold…” She falls into his arms, but not before angrily demanding that the Doctor be thrown out of the airlock. “Cast him out into the sun and the night!” It’s like an episode of Battlestar Galactica! They love throwing people out of airlocks over there (speaking of which, how great were the last two episodes? Roll on January 2009).

The passengers express sympathy with Sky before turning on the Doctor and dragging him towards the airlock door. It’s really, genuinely horrible. The switches in mood are really well handled throughout this episode. The passengers all insists they “saw” the creature enter him, although of course they didn’t. It’s mass hysteria in action! The Doctor’s Converse-clad foot gets caught on a seat, impeding the mob’s murder attempt. The Hostess begins to seem suspicious of Sky, and when the latter smilingly says, “Allons y!’ the Hostess realises that she’s stealing the Doctor’s voice. So, she opens the cabin door and sacrifices herself to get rid of the evil alien. The Doctor regains control over himself and lies panting on the ground. “I said it was her,” says Carol Jackson off EastEnders, unconvincingly. Bitch.

Twenty minutes later, the rescue team have arrived. The Doctor asks the name of the Hostess, who saved all their lives, but nobody knows.

Back at the resort, the Doctor tells Donna about what happened. “Can’t imagine you without a voice,” she jokes, but her face shows her concern. They share a Moment, and the Doctor says sadly, “Molto bene.” “Molto bene!” says Donna, smiling, but the Doctor looks at her seriously and says “Don’t do that. Don’t. Really, don’t.” And that’s it.

Not every writer could pull off the entire-episode-in-one-room thing, and its a testament to how good Davies and the cast are that this works so well. The feeling of mass hysteria and mob rule is brilliantly conveyed, and the switches in mood and tone are so smoothly done it never jars while also never failing to chill. I loved the fact that, after the “You’re in a library - look me up” bravado of last week, this episode really showed the Doctor in a vulnerable situation, where he can’t just coast on his reputation (which, let’s face it, is what he did last week). They showed the other side of his appealing confidence and his love of high drama – sometimes, those things just look like arrogance and slight sociopathy. There are unanswered questions – what was the creature? How did it get in? Why did Sky think it was after her? WAS it after her? But it doesn’t matter, somehow - they don’t feel like plotholes. Everything that happened was a welcome change from the usual “Go humans, yay!” message, because it showed humans at their self-interested, difference-hating, murderous worst. Which is part of what made this episode so good.

Next week: Rose is back! Can. Not. WAIT.