In the Forest of the Night

I was looking forward to In the Forest of the Night. The general premise as announced before the episode sounded pretty good. A forest springing up in a single night to cover an entire planet seemed a suitably intriguing idea for the show, and one that would provide an opportunity to give us lots of impressive visuals. We got the visuals and they were as impressive as you could have reasonably asked for. But unfortunately that’s about all that can be said in favour of this episode. Even Capaldi didn’t seem especially great here.

The plot which writer Frank Cottrell Boyce went with was both flawed and uninspiring. It revealed trees to be sentient creatures that live on the planet, at least in part, to protect humanity from solar flares and other potential disasters. Not only that but trees can make themselves inflammable whenever they like and can even, somehow, possess humans. As long as said humans are taking the right combination of medications and suffering from some form of grief or mental impairment, natch.

I understand that watching Doctor Who requires a certain suspension of disbelief, but that can only take you so far. When the writing team offer up things as patently stupid as this it becomes impossible to look passed them and a waste of time trying to rationalise them within the programme’s increasingly loopy internal logic. It’s the same problem that harmed Kill the Moon: not enough attention was paid to how things worked within the episode and so it crumbled into a stream of stuff that just happened.

This would have been a good episode to highlight the problem deforestation presents to humanity. The eight year olds watching are part of a generation that’s going to be really messed up by it if changes aren’t made. An episode of a programme as popular as Doctor Who that made it clear deforestation is something that needs attention could have affected one or two kids enough to spur them into wanting to pursue a career in the field. X Factor makes some kids want to grow up to be celebrities. Shouldn’t Doctor Who at least attempt something similar occasionally?

The episode also failed with the child actors. To put it politely they varied in capability. Abigail Eames as Maebh was a particularly tough watch, although in fairness she had the unenviable job of conveying possession by tree.

The number of actors in the episode was distracting. The entire class of kids seemed to be about eight strong, a very low number for a class anywhere in the general vicinity of London. Even worse was that the episode was set in central London and nobody was about besides half a dozen scientists and a mum on her bike. Even if this area were overrun by a forest that couldn’t be burned there would be more people around than this. A throwaway line was added about people being told to stay indoors and fill baths with water (the reason for that escapes me but I remember thinking it was daft) but it didn’t seem convincing enough. The centre of a city wouldn’t remain completely devoid of people just because of a government warning and a fantastical forest. A more convincing throwaway line could have sorted the problem, and that could have been added if Steven ‘Two Drafts’ Moffat had given this script the attention it needed. You know, like he’s paid to.

I’m sure the attention Moff did give this script went into Clara and Danny. If you overlook the fact that the rest of the episode suffered as a consequence this is fine. Clearly the Clara and Danny relationship is intended to be an important part of this series so seeding stuff into it is a necessity if there’s to be a payoff to it. Going on the first ten episodes of this series (and emphatically not going on the trailer that aired at the end of ITFOTN) their relationship and the tease of how it will affect Clara’s friendship with the Doctor doesn’t seem especially interesting. But finale stories are there in part to surprise us, and perhaps one of the surprises will be Clara and Danny’s relationship having been given more substance than it currently seems. Though I doubt it.

ITFOTN had a “star” writer, a strong spot in the running order (coming just before the finale should have ensured it got some extra attention), and a premise that could have been excellent. It could have come together to give us something amazing and memorable. Instead it ended up a mediocre filler episode that existed primarily to contribute to a relationship storyline. What a waste.