After the big Tom MacRae “Rise Of The Cybermen”-”The Age Of Steel” two-parter, Mark Gatiss’ “The Idiot’s Lantern” seemed more underwhelming than overwhelming. While too many plots were happening in the former, there didn’t really seem to be a plot with the latter – or at least one that was tied to everything well enough.
This time around, The Doctor (David Tennant) and Rose (Billie Piper) land in 50’s London just in time for the coronation of Queen Elizabeth. Meanwhile, a man named Mr. Magpie (Ron Cook) was asked by an entity known as The Wire (Maureen Lipman) to spread televisions all over London -- its purpose: to feed off the energy of human brains via the television so that it would take a corporal form. The entity plot should have a familiar ring to it as Gatiss was behind Series 1’s “The Unquiet Dead.” Unfortunately, this one adds on more than its plot should need.
For instance, Charles Dickens (Simon Callow) was a wonderful supporting character in TUD. It also gives some insight into the Doctor’s interests (he’s said to be a fan of Dickens), which don’t always involve saving the world. For TIL, we get Mr. Magpie, the owner of a television store who wasn’t making a lot of money off of it. That’s about the sum of what we get to know about the character until he’s zapped and possessed by The Wire’s magic. If that’s not enough, we get a dysfunctional family as one of the many victims of the Wire’s plan.
Eddie (Jamie Foreman, who closely resembles Oliver Hardy), his son Tommy (Rory Jennings), and his wife Rita (Debra Gillett) end up hiding their grandmother (Margaret John) in a room upstairs because she’s been affected by their new television set. Apparently, it sucked all of her face clean off except the skin. If I were the Doctor, I would have never given their family a hand unless they got rid of Eddie. In just about every scene, he went from blubbering to emotionally abusive within seconds. I know this isn’t the Pertwee era, but if I were writing that episode, I would have slugged him (it would have also been a nice nod to the classic series without guest appearances or old villains).
After it was discovered that Eddie was placing people who were without a face in police custody (including his own Grandma), Tommy and Rita both disown him (with shouting and more shouting, some crying included). What happens next was a tad nonsensical. The Doctor and Rose both tell Tommy to go to his father to console him as he leaves their house. Why? The man was a jerk and forgiveness is hard to come by when you’ve been treated that way for a while. I guess I would have appreciated the family sub-plot if it’d had a bit more to do with the main plot.
There’s a nice little nod to “Logopolis” with the final chase/fight scene on the tower. Wouldn’t it have been interesting to have that as a cliffhanger rather than the RTD Cybermen two-parter a few episodes away? The Doctor could simply fall off after being exhausted from fighting The Wire and cut to credits, as it appeared he was seemingly out of breath. On second thought, it probably would have been terrible given the spoilers that he would come back in the next few episodes of the next season.
After being tight on the accents with the past few episodes, we return to more grumbling. This time the fault lies with Jamie Foreman’s Eddie, whose language is so thick I couldn’t figure out if that was a character trait or the lack of ability to convey his words. Tennant did that a few times himself, which is even more irritating since the show is about The Doctor. Understand, this is not a demand for British actors to speak clear English -- I just want to be able to hear the words coming out of their mouths.
The London Police bits seemed a bit tagged on. Rather than use them to store all the faceless, Gatiss could have easily stuck them in one of the houses that had a large basement or something that wouldn’t have involved having to tag on more characters. The less of them you have, the more centered you can be on the plot at hand, something Doctor Who often loses when it adds on the baggage.
I almost couldn’t review this episode because it seemed so blah. That might even be the case for next week’s two-parter “The Impossible Planet”-”The Satan Pit.” But like everything in television, sometimes the trailer doesn’t tell the whole story.
Somewhere in your article about The Idiot's Lantern you say: if you were writing the episode... Well I'm so please you were NOT writing it.
TIL was a nice "breather" and a bit of rest after all the excitement of the Cybermen. Not every episode has to be full cliffhangers, monsters, and tortured story lines. And the English loved Lipman = we grew up with her.