NuWho Review: Series 2 Episode 7 “The Idiot’s Lantern”

By: Mark Gatiss

**Spoilers**

If you have not yet watched this episode, please go and do so before proceeding

Oh, help me! 

            The episode begins well enough. It’s nothing spectacular (just a man doing his accounting whenever his television starts talking directly to him) but it did lure me into a false sense of security whenever I first watched it. I thought that this would be one of the mediocre episodes, along the line of The End of the World or Boom Town. How wrong I was! Within the first three minutes of the episode we are introduced to our two main baddies of the episode…creations so subtly evil that they never quite manage to strike fear into my heart. While the idea of The Wire is rather unsettling, Eddie Connolly is less than stellar, coming across as an oafish lout who has the mistaken belief that he is a world-famous author. (“I. Am. TOLKIEN!”) But these two are not the main problem of this episode - oh no - the biggest annoyance is the delightful duo of Rose and The Doctor.


Favorite Moments & Random Thoughts:

- Apparently completely recovered from the traumatic events of the parallel earth (and the loss of Mickey), the two lovebirds giggle and smirk their way through this adventure with a brand of smugness that makes their New Earth personas seem practically angelic. 

- The Doctor is taking Rose on a date, it would seem, and their destination is to see Elvis Presley perform on the Ed Sullivan Show. A noble goal, I will concede, and one that they should have stuck to reaching rather than plaguing us with their presence in this episode.

- The main problem with this story (despite being a rehash of tired ideas and nothing new or innovative) is the fact that it comes across as very preachy and tries all too hard to ram what I think is supposed to be The Point down your throat. It takes a very special episode to hammer away at a stance or idea and yet still leave the audience with no idea what they just watched…but somehow The Idiot’s Lantern manages to do just that with its dubious MIB-channeling farce of a police force to the overall idea that Eddie Connolly is becoming the very thing he went to war against. 

- I mean, c’mon, the television antennas are shaped like Nazi Swastikas, for Pete’s sake, and the faceless people are taken away and kept in cages! Just how hard does this episode have to try before we all become sick of ‘The Point’?

- Anyway, Rose and The Doctor discover that they are not in New York but in London just in time for Queen Elizabeth’s coronation. They observe a group of policemen carting away a figure while a woman screams and get a bit of exposition from Tommy Connolly who is the only semi-likable character in this entire episode. What follows is a car chase that is the definition of not exciting. Gosh. We’re seven minutes into the episode and already I don’t care whether or not The Doctor solves the mystery or not. It’s that boring!

- You know it’s not a good sign when I find myself cheering as The Doctor gets socked on the jaw. True Eddie Connolly has gone from a bit of an oaf, but a basically loving dad/husband, to a blustering idiot whose only purpose seems to be grating on everyone’s nerves, but I still find The Doctor’s bellowing, juvenile approach to be just as offensive. 

- Okay, so I’ll admit that the faceless people are rather unsettling upon the first watch but they utterly fail to hold up upon further viewing or even thinking. If the faces were gone then how did the people breath? Inhaling oxygen and exhaling carbon dioxide were still vital to life, last I checked. Are we seriously supposed to believe that all of these people have survived this long without air? And then there’s the almost total neural shutdown. If their brains were almost completely dead then why are they still standing and walking and (in the case of the grandmother) tapping the floor? Shouldn’t they be lying in a heap while their body tries to use the last few shreds of brain activity to keep their hearts beating? And that’s assuming that the breathing issue wasn’t a problem for them. The whole thing is just ludicrous and actually quite laughable.

- Even whenever Rose’s face is sucked away I felt no suspense or fear. Granted, I’m not a big Rose fan at the best of times and even less in this episode, but it still should have raised the stakes and tension for The Doctor…but it didn’t. Maybe it was his over-the-top reaction, making him sound like a blustering boyfriend, or maybe it was the incessant cries of “FEED MEEEEE!” that got to me, but whatever it was, this episode has no tension, no stakes, and really no characters to care about.

           

- There is one tiny ray of light in this depressingly bad episode, however, and that is the Tommy-Doctor interactions. While it is fun to watch The Doctor mess around with the police officer’s minds (with his admittedly funny comment about holding elbows) that mood is quickly broken by his discovery of Rose and the resulting temper tantrum. Watching Tommy work with the Time Lord in the station tower is a sheer pleasure to watch. Granted there is little to no tension or fear because we all know by this point that The Doctor will save the day (he even said so: “Because now, Detective Inspector Bishop, there is no power on this Earth that can stop me.”) but the way these two characters interact here is genuinely heart-warming. 

- Too bad it is interspersed with progressively more grating cries of “HUNGRY, SOOO HUNGRY! FEEEEEED MEEEEEEE!”...a catchphrase that became tiresome and old as soon as it was first repeated.

- But even poor Tommy doesn’t escape this episode unscathed. For all of his likability and sympathy mongering for the first three quarters of the episode, it is all destroyed whenever he ‘finds his heart’ and spouts off the truly charming line to his jerk of a father: “You don't get it, do you? You fought against fascism, remember? People telling you how to live, who you could be friends with, who you could fall in love with, who could live and who had to die. Don't you get it? You were fighting so that little twerps like me could do what we want, say what we want. Now you've become just like them. You've been informing on everyone, haven't you? Even Gran. All to protect your precious reputation.”

- And with that one sentence, Tommy just lost all respect in my eyes. This could have been a wonderful, meaningful speech.

- Even Rita finally kicking her boor of a husband out carries little to no weight because we all know that as soon as The Doctor and their relatives leave (i.e. everyone Eddie wants to appear respectable in front of) there will be little stopping him from forcing his way back in again. This family is dysfunctional even as the episode tries to make them unite against a common evil...but it's not because of the blustering oaf that Tommy calls 'Dad'. We should have been able to connect with Tommy and the downtrodden Rita (admittedly well portrayed by Debra Gillett) but because of these dialogue and logical problems it is fighting an uphill battle to even attempt at liking their characters. 

             This episode is a massive disappointment to re-watch and be forced to remember just what made it so bad.  I almost wish I could take the time to spell out every awful moment and why it just didn't work...but then I would end up summarizing almost every second of every scene and no one wants to have to read that. I had come to expect so much more from Mark Gatiss and so perhaps I went in initially with higher hopes than usual, but even from a mere storytelling aspect The Idiot’s Lantern is a failure with a dull, unoriginal story and boring or downright despicable characters. Unlike New Earth, which was a boring attempt at satire but still had a few hilarious moments scattered throughout, this episode neither entertained me nor hit me in the feels. But it’s not worth the brainpower to spend time and energy hating on it either. 1/5

What did you think? Do you agree with my rating? If not - what would you say differently?