TV Month - Doctor Who Episodes 10-11 reviews - In the Forest of the Night/Dark Water

In the third installment of TV Month, we'll be looking at the episode before the season finale and part 1 of the season finale of Doctor Who, big revelations so big spoilers ahead

Episode 10 – In the Forest of the Night

Tyger Tyger burning bright

In the forest of the night

What immortal hand or eye

Can frame thy fearful symmetry

Yeah this episode has absolutely nothing to do with this poem, it features a tiger, and a forest grown in a night. But it’s literally the weirdest episode this show has ever offered, and that’s really saying something

So a forest grew overnight because a child has connections to some bright thingamajigs and see an oncoming solar flare, the trees created an oxygen barrier around the earth, to protect it against the sun and through the power of bullsh*t, they disappear afterwards.

What the flying f*ck?

This is not one of my favourite episodes, but that's not to say it was all bad mind you. It did keep me interested, it was good at keeping the tension and Danny Pink wasn't as annoying as he usually is, although that might be because each of his annoying characteristics were placed in one of the kids.

Clara didn't impress me in this episode either, apparently she just wants to see more, as she abandoned the children to go and see a solar flare alone with the Doctor, *sighs* I know she's leaving soon, and that can't come soon enough. This isn't to the discredit of the actor, she does a decent job, it's just I'm not sure they can come up with good material for her

Maybe they heard the complaints that she had little personality before, and it's like the producers said: "let's give her personality by having her be the star of almost every single episode in the series". It didn't work for me, she's more irritating now

Rating 5/10

Episode 11 – Dark Water

Hell yeah! This was a great episode, the sort of great I’ve wanted to see but saw so rarely this season. Seriously I reckon from the last 10 episodes, only 2 of them stood out to me as great, and one of them had a major issue.

So, we start this episode with Danny Pink dying (a cause for celebration in itself for me, but sadly he's still very much in this episode) and Clara going completely batsh*t crazy, and threatening to throw the TARDIS keys into lava, and in the process sentencing herself to suffocation, burning or otherwise living to death on a volcanic... Yeah, not one of your smarter plans, Clara (also, couldn't the Doctor just open the TARDIS with a snap of his fingers? Funny how this comes from the same writer who came up with that gimmick

But the Doctor is smart enough to realise what she was doing pretty quickly and merely allowed a vision of it to happen to see where she would go. But in an action that actually surprised me, he forgave him without questioning it for a second. And not only that, he agreed to help. It seems the Doctor may be a different person, but his affection for Clara has not withered.

So they enter somewhere called 3W, a place with far too many Cyberman designs for people not to notice, and let's be honest, we all saw the coming soon trailers anyway. But skipping ahead a bit we find out about who Danny killed, in fact a boy who was a casualty of the war.

And we see the truth about the Promised Land, a series of downloaded consciousnesses ready to be wiped of emotion and downloaded into Cyberman bodies, currently invisible in tanks and holding the skeletons of the dead

But who cares about that, we now know who Missy is, she's the Master. I’ve got to admit, I didn't see that coming. And while obviously it raises about a dozen questions, because it's a Moffatt twist, they always do. I hope the show will answer them.

To the show's credit, this is my favourite appearance of Danny Pink, and not just because he was killed (although that did help). When he encountered the child he killed was a great scene, and the other great scene between him and Clara. He knew that he loved her and she loved him, but I'm pretty sure he didn't want Clara killing herself to do it. Little does he know if he does delete his emotions, he could well be responsible for her death, that would be cruel irony at work.

Rating 9/10

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