What do you get if you cross Psycho with The Dionaea House?
Well, an episode of The Young Ones, normally, but this time it's the fourth episode of the new Doctor Who. So this week it's an emotionally-unbalanced landlord with undead mummy issues manipulating students into a living eldritch house that consumes its inhabitants like a giant Venus flytrap.
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| ...well, actually that does rather sound like The Young Ones as well, really... |
After having an enemy that isn't evil, an enemy that doesn't realize it's doing harm, and an enemy that's absolutely subhuman filth, we now get a moderate - whereupon although the Landlord's killing sprees started out as bare necessity to save his beloved mother, an act that neither the Doctor nor Bill can truly condemn (as, we know, they both lost their mothers and have the potential to undo that via the TARDIS), the fact is he's now spent seventy years doing it and kind of gets a kinky thrill out of mass-murder. Similarly, his mother goes from creepy evil monster to tragic soul to redemptive hero in about the same time it took to type this sentence.
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| "Nice cup of tea. I put some coffee in it for some flavor." |
Not that I'm complaining, but if this was a classic serial, people would be wondering if the last episode was written by the same bloke that did the others. A contemporary social satire slasher suddenly turns into a magical alien bug Secret Garden no-Eliza-I-am-not-your-father one-act-play, with all the speaking part students all killed off to allow maximum narratorial focus on the main players.
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| Pictured: those not appearing in the climax with the Doctor, Bill, the Landlord and Eliza |
Now, having Bill's best friend and also four other folk she kind of likes brutally murdered in her fourth episode would, methinks, have been a bit of a downer. She would have been traumatized, devastated even and probably lose all wonder and excitement at the universe after having her life ruined by a glorified Norman Bates impersonator. Yet there are numerous journalistic reviewers and of course Adam Psycho Richards in Whovians who bemoan the fact this is not the case.
This, frankly, I can't quite wrap my head around. Of course, Moff himself invented the "everybody lives" trope as a direct contrast to RTD's comparatively-vicious kill em all season finales. When RTD consciously tried to avert this, in New Earth, it was a disaster. Not, I hasten, for the idea the Doctor cures all the plague zombies, but the fact he does it all by mixing some random chemicals into an ultimate cure because he's damn clever and stuff like that. The Doctor can cure death now?! But would the story be better if it ended with the brand new Doctor standing atop a heap of corpses looking miserable?
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| People watch sci-fi fantasy escape for gritty realism where the dead stay dead. |
But apparently, this episode would be much better if Bill's scooby gang were dead forever. Even though you can't scream "ooh, dramatic copout" when they're revived because "getting absorbed by a wave of chameleonic space weevils with deely-bopper eyes to provide life energy for a wooden 19th Century matriarch" is on shaky ground to begin with. Having them all shot dead by crack-crazed pensioners and then revived by passing space beetles would be a cheat. Having space beetles briefly digest them and spit them back out is, when all is said and done, quite reasonable given that all the Landlord's previous victims stay dead and he and Mummy dear and also sacrificed.
This just brings me back to my increased loathing for "gritty, hardcore" fandom who seem to suffer existential erectile dysfunction unless they're watching a show where people die horribly and stay dead. And they seem to hate children, as well. For example, people consider Journey's End a cop out resolution for not killing off Donna, but they're quite happy for that bit where we see Daleks incinerate a whole family including children on screen. They applauded the sacrifice of younglings in Children of Earth. They booed Moffat for having the War Doctor stay his hand when children were threatened. They even lied and claimed there were dead babies in Flatline when there weren't.
What is WRONG with you SICK FUCKS?!
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| "WHAT HAS HAPPENED TO THE MAGIC OF DOCTOR WHO?!?!" |
It bleeds into Whovians which has hit a level of rock-bottom exactly at the same time they get their high profile David Suchet interview. Despite Rove's best efforts, and Tegan's wry affectionate mockery, we still have to put up with Bargo wanking on about how rubbish the episode in while Adam Richards insults absolutely everything - acting, design, concept, people being allowed to live, fellow fans. He's just a bile-spewing machine that does it with a girly giggle. The fact the ABC have declined to advertise the show since suggests that audiences are sick of having to watch the episodes with that Sontaran-shaped jerk sitting there complaining about literally everything. Including the studio audience, who still have to listen to his increasingly-cretinous attempts at fan theories that, if right, he would also bitch about for being crap.
And Giggle and Hoot auditioning for "Dr. Hoot" was less funny than cholera.
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| L to R: David Tennant, Matt Smith, Peter Capaldi, Christopher Eccleston, John Hurt |
In short, a pleasantly-mediocre companion-tries-to-return-to-normal-life story (which in turn is slagged off for Bill not choosing to live in the TARDIS full time, despite the Doctor spending 80% of time out of it lecturing at a university and thus impractical) ruined by the increasing sociopathic hypocrisy of those reacting in the media. Especially those sods who whined it wasn't complicated or dark enough after bitching it was too dark and complicated. No one's FORCING you to watch, you bastards! SHUT THE FUCK UP!
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| "Okay, jeez, I give up. Take a chill pill!" |
It says so much fandom seems to identify with the deranged serial killer refusing to get a life rather than his innocent and unwilling victims.
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| Seriously, would any of the posters this year make you tune in? |
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