I thought ‘Night Terrors’ by Mark Gatiss was another solid Doctor Who Episode. It had chills, thrills, a few twists and above all, a nice heart warming ending. It was perfect family fare, for the most part. The Episode introduces us to George, an eight-year-old who lives in a housing estate near London and is quite simply terrified of everything. He thinks the old lady a few stories down is a witch, the lift makes this weird breathing noise that creeps him out, he’s scared of the local landlord who has this big fat scary bulldog that keeps terrorising his Dad and the thought of his parents rejecting him seems almost too horrible to consider! He’s so scared in fact, that his parents are thinking of calling in a therapist. What they get though is this weird twenty-six-year-old wearing a tweed jacket and a bowtie just barging in and quite literally saying: ‘You’re right, the monsters in your cupboard ARE real! Be scared!’ I’m sure that there wasn’t one six-year-old kid out there that watched this program and refused to turn the lights off that night. What ensues is quite a suspenseful half an hour, with more than just a few twists thrown in for good measure.
*SPOILERS AHEAD*
Unfortunately for everyone in the counselling estate, George is an alien who has the ability to wish away all of his demons into his bedside cupboard and through this magical telepathic ability of his (yeah it’s kind of sketchy at best) can even make his nightmares become a startling reality. Whether George is aware of this or not isn’t properly explained but his creations, these giant zombie rag-doll puppets are pant-wettingly terrifying! The worse thing about them isn’t their sing-song voice of children’s nursery rimes or their unnatural appearance (oh my god those black eyes!), it’s the ability to horribly transform you into one of them! The scene when Amy is grabbed by a doll and then horribly mutated into one of these things is really, really unnerving not to mention scary as sh*t. And when the landlord gets it oh boy does he get it bad! I don’t think I’ve seen a transformation on Doctor Who that graphic before (with the exception of that guy turning into an Ood a few years back)! The costume and the design department gets a A+ in this Episode, the mood is suitably dark and gloomy and those dolls were horrifyingly simple but effective. Apparently this was a budget episode (it does show a little in area’s) but for what it’s worth I say congrats for doing so much with so considerably little. The special effects were okay-ish as well apart from that one scene when the landlord was sucked into the carpet, the CGI looked quite frankly cringe worthy. The actors on show are mostly good, but the companions weren’t really given much to do apart from scream and hide from the monsters. The little boy George did some brilliant I’m scared acting but that was mainly it. The plot is simple but executed brilliantly for the most part, I call bullcrap though on the explanation about the boy being an alien the entire time, it felt rushed and was explained by Matt Smith in a way that was too fast to comprehend, I had to watch it at least twice to tell what he was saying. The Doctor and George’s father (played wonderfully by Daniel Mays) made a brilliant double act, and the tension was brilliantly set-up to boot. In fact they held the tension so long that I was starting to wonder if it was a two-parter. The ending pulled a few heartstrings as well, but it did feel a tad rushed and there were several gaping plot-holes that weren’t really explained, which probably went down to lack of time. If I have one major criticism about this Series it’s that there seems to be so many cool idea’s scurrying around and little time to successfully tell them all without the viewer feeling that a great opportunity for an Episode was wasted. This Episode just about managed to do none of that, but glaring holes in the writing are still present.
So apart from a few issues with the script, ’Night Terrors’ is brilliantly executed, wonderfully spooky and just all round good telly. So what’s on next? Oh great, the X-Factor. Put a gun to my head and kill me please, or at least get a time machine so I can see next Weeks episode N-O-W!
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