Doctor Who Recap: Night Terrors

I really liked this episode the first time I watched it, but when I tried to get through it a second time to do this recap I fell asleep halfway through. Maybe it was just my circumstances, but I think that it also had to do with the slow pacing of the episode. Last week started off this half of the series with a bang and never really let up so it was a little difficult heading to suburbia this week. Anyway, on to the recap…

The episode begins in a block of tower flats with its normal everyday goings on of hoodies and old ladies and we are shortly introduced to young George and his family. George’s mom is trying to put him to bed, but George is scared of the sound the elevator makes. So his mom says “What do we do with things that scare us?” Apparently the put them in the closet, but I don’t really know how you put a sound in a closet. She also turns his bedroom light off and on 5 times. Hello OCD! little George sits up on his bed and starts repeating, “Please save me from the monsters”

Outside his room, George’s mom and dad discuss how he needs help. And as if on cue, Mom says he needs a doctor and George’s plea to save him travels through endless cosmos and hits the Doctor’s psychic paper with what looked like a bit of a burning sensation. With that the Doctor says he is going to do something he hasn’t done in a while…”Make a housecall”

Credits and before I continue I feel it necessary to point out what most people already know. That this episode was originally supposed to air as episode 4 of this series, but was switched around with “The Curse of the Black Spot.” Thus it doesn’t really fit here continuity wise. Most especially when you realize that Amy and Rory aren’t annoyed that the Doctor has come to Earth to help some little boy when he should be looking for their little girl. I digress.

The TARDIS lands at the tower black and Rory is quick to point out that they probably could have gotten a bus there, which is kind of what we’re all feeling just a little bit, and the team sets out to find the little boy who sent the message. 

To be honest though, this tower block is scary. George’s room has a huge window that is street side so he is exposed to everything that is out there. The place is run down. There is trash everywhere. The old lady walking by is breathing like Darth Vader’s grandma and the elevator sounds like it’s going to eat its inhabitants. 

Team TARDIS starts knocking on doors. The Doctor runs into the old lady, Amy discovers a pair of twins little girls who are way creepier than anything encountered later on in the episode and Rory finds the landlord and his pet bulldog. I love bulldogs.

Before regrouping the Doctor spots George peeking through the curtains out his window and does something the Doctor excels at. He ditches his companions. Classic Doctor move. And as soon as the Doctor is gone Amy and Rory are in an elevator that is hurdling towards certain doom. 

I’m the Doctor

I know it wasn’t just me, but I wonder if it was intentional how obvious it was that Amy and Rory had ended up in the dollhouse. I don’t think we had even seen the dollhouse in the closet yet, but the dollies in the trailer twigged it for me. The wooden pan painted to look brass sold it of course.

And I can’t believe I haven’t mentioned Daniel Mays yet! I’m halfway through this thing, well a quarter at least and I haven’t mentioned that Daniel Mays is playing George’s day, Alex. “Ashes to Ashes” may have been inconsistent, but its last series was pretty fantastic and partly because of the brilliance of Daniel Mays as Jim Keats. I didn’t watch “Outcasts” but Alex couldn’t be more different from Keats and Mays sells it quite adeptly. 

In the George and Alex apartment, I honestly have no idea what their last name is, The Doctor has passed himself off as being from Social Services and is finally attempting to get to the bottom of what is going on with little George. Just as they are about to open the closet though, there is a bang on the door and the landlord has inconveniently shown up to collect the rent. Inconvenient for them but convenient for us because we once again get to see how wonderful Matt Smith is with kids. He pulls out the sonic screwdriver and before long he has all of George’s toys going at once drowning out the arguing join on in the other room. 

I’ve got to throw in a quick kudos to Gatiss for the line about “Snow White and The Seven Keys to Doomsday.” One hundred percent fan service and one hundred percent appreciated. It was a stage play for pete’s sake and not even a book or tv episode. Seriously geeky. 

“Rubbish. Must be broken. I hate those things.”

Once the Landlord is gone attention turns back to the closet. The Doctor decides to give it a quick scan first and the readings are off the charts. What charts you ask? I do not know, but they are off them. That’s when the Doctor gets scared. And that’s also when the Doctor recites his wonderful monologue about having old eyes and monsters being real. Then he opens the closet…and nothing happens. 

“Monsters are real.”

The next thing that happens is a bit of a leap. The Doctor remembers looking at a photo album from earlier and somehow pieces together that George is not actually Alex’s son. I’ve watched this bit a couple of times and it still doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me, but there it is. The Doctor gets through the perception filter that has been placed on Alex when Alex blurts out that his wife Clare can’t have kids. And before you know it both the Doctor and Alex are sucked into the dollhouse.

Elsewhere in the dollhouse. Rory and Amy are exploring and run into the first of the dollies who on second thought I don’t find all that creepy. What kind of dolls are these anyway? None that I’ve ever seen. Anyway the doll seems harmless enough, but before they know it the landlord appears in front of them. It seems that anyone that scares George is literally being put in the closet. The dolls grab the landlord and turn him into one of them while they sing a creepy song. And run! and Amy gets turned into a doll.

The Doctor twigs right away that they’re in the dollhouse and that everything that scares George from sounds to people ends up right where they are. Just then a dollie finds him and Alex and the Doctor admits that he has got to invent a wood setting for the sonic, so grabs a pair of giant scissors instead.

“Poised for action”

Alex is fighting off the dollies with giant scissors on one side of the stairs, Rory is fighting them off with a stick on the other and the Doctor starts yelling to George (who is apparently an alien called a Tenza) that he has to believe that only he can stop what is happening. George is subconsciously controlling it all and so George appears inside the dollhouse, but he is still scared. The dollies begging to surround him and it’s up to Alex to admit that he still loves George even if he is an alien and that he’s not going to let him go. Boom! Snap! Flickering light and everything is back to normal.

After a nice little scene where Clare comes home to the Doctor, Alex and a not at all scared George cooking up kippers, the Doctor heads outside to meet up with Amy and Rory in the courtyard to head back to the seriously tacked on TARDIS scene that still makes no sense because there is no mention of Melody, but there is a shot of the TARDIS monitor showing the time and date of the Doctor’s death. 

“What kind of dollies are these??”

This episode has been getting compared quite a bit to “Fear Her” which is honestly my least favorite episode of “Doctor Who” since it came back. While I really wish more had happened in this episode and I really wish it had been scarier and creepier, I’ve got to say that I enjoyed it for the most part and Gatiss did a fine job of once again showing off his own fandom.

Amy:”Was I just?” Rory:”Yeah.”

Next week Amy Pond becomes “The Girl Who Waited”