Holistic Review: The story's conundrum, while curious, isn't enough to hang a plot on.
What a great title, eh? In the Forest of the Night sounds so atmospheric, and spooky, and slightly poetic. This episode is none of those things. For goodness' sake, there isn't even one second of nighttime in it; they might as well have called it In the Forest of the Cheerful Blazing Mid-Morning Sunshine. Bravo for using a literary quotation as an episode title, but it really ought to have been a more apt one. On the bright side (ha ha), the sun-dappled woodsy setting gives the story a sort of pleasant Castrovalva-esque feel, but I'd had my heart set on an eerie moonlit forest. Ah well.
The summery atmosphere isn't the only thing this story has in common with Castrovalva. There's also the pace, which at times resembles the leisurely forest-exploration scenes of Castrovalva part two. While I really enjoyed that episode's focus on developing Nyssa and Tegan, I don't think the pace works so well here. Mainly, that's because this entire story is practically nothing but leisurely forest exploration. It starts out relatively well: we're presented with the puzzler of how and why a forest has suddenly sprouted in London overnight, which is intriguing to be sure. It's not, as I predicted last week, an even remotely terrifying puzzler, because (despite Cottrell-Boyce's attempts to persuade us otherwise) forests are not inherently scary. I quite like them myself. Still, as the Doctor points out, forests in fairytales are certainly threatening, as is the thought of what malevolent creatures or people might be lurking among the trees. So the idea has definite potential, but it's undercut by the persistent sunshine and the fact that nothing much happens. The main problem, though, is that if the Doctor had decided to visit Florana that day instead of Earth, events would have proceeded in exactly the same way. The trees appear in order to shield the Earth from the solar flare, and once it passes, they depart. They don't need the Doctor's help, and nobody needs the Doctor's protection, so his only role in the plot is to investigate what the trees are and where they came from, purely for our edification. None of the other characters have any greater agency in the plot, which is why the forest runaround exists, to make us feel like the story is going somewhere.
With the plot so very sparse, Cottrell-Boyce needed to find ways to fill the episode's runtime, so he incorporates several random elements of highly questionable importance. As a result, In the Forest of the Night is certainly in the running for one of the most padded stories since the Pertwee era.
Contributing absolutely nothing, despite appearances: Maebh and her family. Maebh's under the impression that the newly-sprouted forest and the solar flare are all her fault, plucked from her grief-fuelled fantasies and made real. ("I started it," she claims, along with "It's coming for everyone, and I can't unthink it.") This, we eventually learn, is hogwash. Regardless, In the Forest of the Night wants us to think that Maebh's sadness over the loss of her sister Annabelle is central to the episode. It isn't. As far as I can tell, the forest's appearance is nothing but coincidence: Maebh tries looking for her sister, but instead of finding Annabelle, she has a bunch of weird thoughts (?!?), one of which concerns a big forest that she thought everyone would like... and this ties in with the forest's appearance how exactly? There's no direct link. It's the solar flare that precipitated the arrival of the trees, and even though Maebh knew about the flare in advance, she certainly wasn't responsible for it. There's a hint that the trees are using Maebh as a conduit to communicate with one another, but that's never firmly established, so I think it was just a red herring. If the forest really had been a manifestation of Maebh's subconscious, and if Annabelle's return had resulted in its dispersement, then I would've felt more emotionally invested in this plotline. Without that connection, it feels completely irrelevant, as if it's been put into the episode merely to fool us into believing that the plot is weightier than it really is.
A good chunk of airtime is devoted to Maebh's mother searching for her. This plotline yields nothing of any interest, and she's not even slightly relevant to the plot. It's not even as if her mother arrives in the nick of time to help out, or rescue Maebh, or anything useful at all. She arrives, Maebh is happy, they hug. That's it. I don't know enough about Maebh's relationship with her family to be excited about her reunion with her mum (who honestly seems like a bit of a jerk), and besides, they've barely been separated.
Likewise, Annabelle's reappearance at the end smacks of a needless attempt to tie up loose ends, and raises more questions than it answers, along with being cringe-inducingly hokey. Cottrell-Boyce appears to be under the impression that we're all going to well up tearfully when the family is reunited, but for me at least, there wasn't anywhere near enough emotional foundation laid. We don't know this girl at all, or much about her relationship with Maebh, so why should we be pleased beyond a general "oh, how nice"? I had assumed, from lines like "Her sister went missing last year", that Annabelle was either dead or kidnapped, but that appears not to be the case. Was Annabelle just a runaway? If so, why is she so neat and clean? And how far could she have possibly run if she's able to get back home within a few short minutes? And why did she hide in a hydrangea? Is it possible that she's actually a forest-sprite simulacrum?
Aside from all the fluff about Maebh and her family, the story devotes a few moments to the kids taking selfies, and the Doctor's urgent red herring about time-travel forests and communicating with trees, none of which actually furthers the plot at all.
Included because it helps to support the narrative, but discarded the moment that they've fulfilled their function: the government workers. We know that the government are attempting to burn paths through the forest, but the only reason we actually see this process is to make sure we know that the trees are fire-retardant (despite being made of wood, or possibly alien wood nymphs). Once we have that nugget of information, we never see or hear of the hazmat team again. A good script ought to be able to make its foreshadowing and explanations feel like they arise seamlessly out of the plot; exposition like this has all the subtlety of a sledgehammer.
Sadly, that isn't the only example of the script's terrible tendency toward sledgehammer exposition. One of my particular annoyances is the re-use, yet again, of the Aliens of London style of exposition-by-news-broadcast. Why bother letting our characters figure anything out, when a few international reporters could get rid of all that pesky intrigue within moments? Yes, we need to know that this is a worldwide issue, but this solution is an unengaging narrative shortcut. See also lines like Ruby's "This ring, though! All the other rings are thin, but this one's fat and red. See?" (Who'd have guessed that tree rings would wind up being relevant to the plot?), or the repeated mentions of Bradley's nut allergy ("Nuts," says Samson unsubtly. "That's unfortunate for you, isn't it, Bradley? You have an allergy, don't you." and Bradley's later line "Can't eat nuts! Got an allergy!"), which, like so much else in the script, never even becomes relevant to the story. In this case, that was a nice surprise in a way, because it did actually confound my expectations (I was just waiting for a nut to imperil the boy) but why hammer home a point that has nothing to do with your story? Are nut allergies being introduced merely because they're topical? (We'll come back to that later, re: satnav. Grrr.) It gives the unfortunate impression that Cottrell-Boyce had no focus, and was throwing everything against the wall to see what stuck.
With such a flimsy plot, the last thing this story needed was plot holes, yet there they are. There aren't a whole lot of them, and they mostly have to do with the irrelevant parts of the plot anyway — well, after all, there's hardly enough core plotline for inconsistencies to be possible — but they don't do In the Forest of the Night any favors.
In an interview with Den of Geek on 22 October 2014, Jamie Mathieson had this to say about his second (of three) pitch meetings for Doctor Who: "My one vivid memory of that meeting is pitching an idea and having Steven ask 'What's the monster?' I'd [unsuccessfully] pitched a lovely conceptual idea with no monster to fight." Apparently nobody gave Cottrell-Boyce the same memo, because In the Forest of the Night has essentially the same problem. There's literally no adversary, apart from one scene featuring a handful of escaped zoo animals.
And you know how I mentioned last week that we've had a recent glut of "monsters that aren't evil really"? Hello, trees. The Doctor's even explicit about how not-evil they are: "I was wrong! The trees are not your enemy. They're your shield." Early on, the script makes a few half-hearted attempts to persuade us that they're scary, but I certainly wasn't convinced. Aside from the fact that it isn't dark and foggy enough to make a convincingly creepy fairytale forest, the predominant emotions demonstrated by our explorers are wonder and curiosity. I think there certainly could be a place in Doctor Who for hard sci-fi stories that explore the wonders of the universe rather than the horrors, especially as it's not a style that the show has really done before, but this story doesn't quite fit, because the tone is just too muddled.
It's not clear whether the forest sprites are ancient Earth spirits ("We are here, here always since the beginning, and until the end."), or benevolent visitors from the stars ("We hear the call and come, as we came before."). If the former, then In the Forest of the Night features yet another alienesque creature that's been inhabiting the Earth for millennia without us realizing it, and after Kill the Moon, I'm not terribly keen on that concept. I prefer the latter explanation; besides, then the shot of the tree sprites flying away from the Earth after the crisis has been averted makes a great deal more sense.
With both the trees and the fireflies being benevolent, the wolves and tiger are the only threats that arise naturally from the plot. Otherwise, all the tension in the story is manufactured. First, we have a couple of earthquakes that strike for no apparent reason, ultimately felling Nelson's Column. I might not have blinked at random earthquakes if this story were set in Los Angeles, but London? The hazmat team are apparently meant to appear threatening, given Maebh's reaction upon spotting them, but they turn out to be completely uninterested in our heroes. And then of course we have the solar flare, which is built into the plot, but there was never really any doubt that the Earth would endure it unscathed.
Maybe I'm being a little too hard on the script, because I know Cottrell-Boyce typically writes for children, and I get the impression that this script wasn't really trying to be scary. I suspect the writer was aiming for a quiet character piece, with a respectful exploration of awe-inspiring sci-fi concepts and a breezy, witty script. Oh, how a breezy, witty script would have helped. Unfortunately, almost all of the jokes fall flat. I'll quote a few down below that I really liked, but most of them felt terribly labored, such that they might only amuse young children. A handful were so desperately trying to be funny, yet so mediocre, that they were followed by sad trumpet "wah-wah" noises in my head. In my humble opinion, the least funny jokes in the script were these:
TARDIS: "You have reached your destination."
Bradley: "I thought you said they were in love. Why are they shouting at each other?"
Ruby: "That's what people do when they're in love. Don't you know anything?"
Bradley: "What's an avigator?"
Ruby: "Why are you asking me all the questions? Give someone else a go!"
Ruby: "There wasn't a forest, then there was a forest. Nothing surprises us any more."
Samson: "We will, if you stop calling us a team."
Doctor: "What do these things have in common?"
Ruby: "They're really really scaring us?"
I do like that In the Forest of the Night attempts to draw the threads of the season closer together, by referencing Listen (Clara's line "Furious, fearful, tongue-tied. They're all superpowers if you use them properly."), Time Heist (the Doctor's line "Like the one that destroyed the Bank of Karabraxos.") and Kill the Moon (the Doctor's line "This is my world too. I walk your earth, and I breathe your air."). Might it be that this season is even more tightly linked than we've realized? Is it possible that future revelations will make me like this episode more?
I understand, from offhand remarks made by a couple of my Facebook friends, that a number of people are also frustrated by the episode's bad science. Unlike in Kill the Moon, this wasn't a problem that jumped right out at me, and I still don't find it insurmountable. I don't really know what the effect of a solar flare would be on a planet's atmosphere, or whether the Earth's atmosphere has a maximum capacity for oxygen, so if there are mistakes there, they flew right past me. Still, after several viewings, some big flaws did become apparent.
Unfortunately, the effects this week fall rather short. Long-shots of the forest blanketing London look great, but the scenes set in and around Trafalgar Square are barely convincing, because there's too much wide open space. Where are all the buildings? Where are all the cars? Street lights? Sidewalks? Asphalt? We see a couple of these things, but not as many as you'd expect. It doesn't exactly look like a forest has sprung up in the middle of London. It looks more like exactly what it is: a few London signs randomly scattered around an actual forest, with a couple of landmarks CGIed into the background. It's not that the effects are badly done, overall, it's just that it isn't quite believable. Whereas the CGI fire attempting to burn a tree actually does look pretty dreadful. We also get cheated out of the sight of the TARDIS dematerializing from underneath a carpet of vines, which would have been really cool, and annoyingly, when the Doctor views the solar storm on the TARDIS scanner, it appears not to have advanced any further than when we first saw it 3 minutes earlier. (Then again, the TARDIS seems to be inclined to show this display on a loop, so perhaps that explains it. But why the TARDIS doesn't want to broadcast the flare in real-time, I have no idea.) There are a few good ones though: the globe swathed in green, the fireflies whirling around the circle of trees, the solar flare flowing toward and around the Earth, and the plants dissolving into a swarm of fireflies.
You'll have noticed by now that I never have a problem with children (or teenagers) in Doctor Who, at least in principle. Susan, Adric, Nyssa, Artie, Angie, Courtney... bring 'em on! I think it's great for the kids to have a viewer identification figure in the series, and the characters are often fun in their own right. Likewise, although I've heard people are annoyed by the number of kids in In the Forest of the Night, I thought it was a great idea to bring a Coal Hill School field trip along on the adventure. (Courtney would probably disagree with me; so much for her special status as the only Coal Hill schoolkid to be aware of the TARDIS' existence!) The problem, yet again, comes back to the plot. Because there's nothing for anyone to do, the majority of the kids feel like nothing but background color, so while the flashbacks are a nice way to deepen their characters, it's a bit strange to see the episode spending so much time trying to develop characters that aren't important and whom we'll probably never see again. Why not at least use characters we already know, like Courtney and Fleming?
I was, at first, quite confused by the fact that Clara was calling this group of kids "Coal Hill Year 8 Gifted and Talented Group" when they spouted lines like "I find everything confusing, nearly, so I don't say anything." (Maebh), "It's not lost! It's there at the top, look!" (Ruby), or resorted to beating up other kids (Bradley). So it was a considerable relief when Clara admitted "Okay... you know they're not really gifted and talented, don't you, I just tell them that to make them feel good." But surely they know it's not true, too, so don't they feel patronized?
Maebh Arden (Abigail Eames) is the only student who has anything to do with the plot, so her character is the most successful because at least she feels important to the story, even though at this point, it's entirely unclear what, if anything, she actually had to do with it. The main unanswered question is, who beamed ideas about the Doctor and the TARDIS into Maebh's head? Evidently it's either Clara (by means as-yet-unknown, and probably subconscious) or Missy (for reasons as-yet-unknown), so the answer might yet make Maebh's storyline more relevant. But I doubt it. It's a relatively empowering story for Maebh, although since the story's solution for helping her move past her grief and loss is to return her sister to her, I'm not sure how much character growth she undergoes. As she's the main guest star, it's nice that Maebh gets to be the person who tells the whole planet to spare the trees. It's kinda glurgey, and not likely to be very effective in the real world, but it's done reasonably well. And I really do like that Maebh's wearing a red hooded jacket, a clever fairytale reference that I didn't catch until DWM pointed it out. I liked Arden's delivery of "Please. Something's chasing me.", "I think it's lovely.", and her sweet reading of the prepared "save the trees" script. But then she has a couple of lines that are completely lacking in any emotional engagement, like "You helped me loads. I thought it was all my fault. I feel much better now. Are you gonna get rid of the forest?", and the peculiar line "The thought of you came to me!" The idea to have Maebh batting invisible insects away from her face is intriguing, but why does she almost exclusively do this while she's running, not while she's standing still? It's a bit distracting. So, between the plotline, her dialogue, and the direction, I think her character could have been much better served.
I'm curious to know how practitioners and sufferers of mental illness view Maebh's plotline, because it seems to me that what's claimed as Maebh's illness is actually nothing more than intense grieving. Has she been to see a counselor or therapist? Was it really necessary to medicate her because she was daydreaming about a forest in order to cope? And does this perhaps not downplay the seriousness of real-life mental illnesses, and the struggle that sufferers face? I honestly don't know, but I'll be curious to hear others' reactions. At least it's neither praised as an asset, nor demonized; it's simply another facet of Maebh's personality.
Ruby (Harley Bird) is a study in contrasts. On one hand, she's improbably clueless about math, and although she's amusingly prone to overreacting, she claims to have no imagination. On the other, she's attentive to detail (noticing that the trees have both blossoms and nuts, and that the new-growth trees lack rings), and she's not unintelligent (she knows about tree rings, and that trees clean the air). Despite the number of duff and hammy lines she's given, Bird is one of the story's best guest actors. I enjoyed her delivery of "This tree has got blossom and nuts", "I'm not just gonna stand here and let her die!", "What if the trees collapse on her, and kill her? [...] Yeah, but what if the wild animals come out and eat her?", "You won't find your sister out there!", and "I told you! I said so, didn't I!"
Frienemies Bradley (Ashley Foster) and Samson (Jayden Harris-Wallace) are totally extraneous to the plot, but at least they have reasonably well-sketched characters. Bradley is obviously a bully who appears to have had therapy sessions himself, and his sense of entitlement gives me the impression that he's from a wealthy family. Samson, meanwhile, is a pessimistic grump with a penchant for sarcasm and teasing people. Foster and Harris-Wallace do a decent job of portraying them as kids that I certainly wouldn't have hung out with!
Maebh's mum (Siwan Morris), as I've already mentioned, is even less important to the plot, and most of the time that she's onscreen, between her personality and her thought processes, she comes across poorly. Didn't Maebh's mother notice that the windows on her second storey were also shaded by dense plant life? How did she not realize there was a forest right outside? (Her hydrangea-planting neighbor isn't much better, though: "I think we should've been consulted." Are they not paying attention to the news?!) Morris does a good job of bringing a faintly-dislikeable character to life, so it's a shame that none of these three had a more vital plot role.
I'm gradually coming to the conclusion that Peter Capaldi's Doctor is best during his quieter, subtler moments, like the way he nods for Maebh to enter the TARDIS, and slaps her hand away from the controls. He's not quite as convincing on lines that require him to be manic or overdramatic, as on "Look big! Look big like a big three-headed six-legged scary thing!" Another thing I'm noticing is that Capaldi has an entertaining rapport with children, as if the Doctor is a grumpy curmudgeon just begging to be won over by a pair of sad doe eyes or an irrepressibly optimistic spirit. In scenes with Maebh, the Doctor treats her like an equal, neither condescending nor lenient. I loved his delivery of "You. Have you got a name at all?" And he gets to wear his cool shirt again this episode, yay!
The tension that's been bubbling under Clara and Danny's relationship for the last couple of weeks comes to a head here... or, rather, doesn't. After essentially threatening Clara with a breakup if she continued lying to him, here Danny discovers that Clara has been lying to him rather egregiously, so he... very kindly says that he just wants to know the truth? So all that bluster was for nothing? Why all the buildup then? Well, anyway, it's not like I wanted them to break up, so I'm glad everything's worked out fine, and I expect we'll see at least one heartfelt scene between Clara and Danny in the finale that will give us some clue as to whether Clara will be continuing in the TARDIS for much longer. (It seems that the rumors I heard of Danny becoming a companion were indeed false, so I'm likewise not going to be placing any bets on Jenna Coleman departing the show just yet.)
I have warmed to Clara so much more this season than I did last year. I still don't find her character intrinsically interesting, but the scriptwriters and Jenna Coleman have done so much to make her deeper and more well-rounded than she used to be. I'm really glad that Clara's been given so much development this season, and in interesting ways. Somehow, thanks to Clara, we're getting an especially good look at the fun side of life in the TARDIS, and I like that a lot. This story is actually a really good example; because there aren't any killer aliens around, Clara can almost thoroughly enjoy investigating the forest with the Doctor. In the Forest of the Night shows just how much TARDIS travel is in her blood; she just can't resist gleefully investigating a mysterious occurrence, or running off to see a coronal ejection, even when everybody around her just wants the comforts of home. Her excitement about taking the kids to watch the impact of the solar flare is both sweet and relatable. Who wouldn't want to share such a stunningly cool experience with their students? This story also demonstrates Clara's selfless side, as she insists on rescuing the Doctor's life when it appears that the entire Earth is doomed. It's rather sweet that Clara wants to spare the Doctor the pain of hearing that she doesn't want to be the last of her kind, like he is. I also liked Coleman's delivery of "I don't know, she takes tablets and they stop.", "Well, you know what, Doctor... this time, the human race is saving you.", "Yes, you did. And yes, you do.", and Clara's dismay when she realizes that the Doctor has already seen the brand-new forest.
While Clara's focusing on the broader questions, in keeping with her recent Doctor-training, Danny yet again tends to think practically. He's more concerned with the immediate problem of how to handle the kids than he is with the mysteriously-appearing forest. But even without his lack of big-picture focus, Danny's status as a potential companion is definitely no longer in question. Anyone who can utter lines like "I don't wanna see more things, I wanna see the things that are in front of me more clearly." is probably not cut out for TARDIS travel. Personally, I can't relate to that feeling at all, but then I haven't lived the life that Danny's lived. The icing on the cake is his very trite line "There are wonders here, Clara Oswald." Yeah, well, that doesn't mean she should limit herself to them. I'm reminded of one of my aunts, who married a well-travelled former military pilot. His great desire was to show her the sights on a trip around the world, but she always refused, on the grounds that she wanted to see the whole United States first; and eventually she passed away, never having done either. I've always been sad that she never had the opportunity, so I hope Danny doesn't try to stand in Clara's way. I enjoyed Anderson's delivery of "No no no no no, it moved, it moved! It's, it's just jammed, it's not locked."
Again, a lot of Murray Gold's music is recycled from previous episodes, but there were a couple of moments that gave me pleasant vibes of even earlier eras. As the kids sleep in the museum, the music almost sounds Hartnellesque, and there's some McCoy-esque music as Maebh stumbles upon the hazmat-suited workers. Also, I would swear that there are some birds chirping in the jungle that sound just like a classic-series alien jungle bird... I want to say Planet of the Daleks, but I'm not entirely certain. Besides, it might also be a perfectly ordinary Earth bird-call. I think I also heard more classic-series noises as the Doctor checks the state of the mobile networks in the TARDIS, although again I can't pinpoint where I know them from. But if I'm right, the sound folks are really dipping into the back catalogue this season, eh? I also like the fluttering noise used for the wood nymphs.
I'm so pleased that we finally have another female director in Doctor Who; Sheree Folkson is only the fourth woman to direct for the series, no? It has felt very male-dominated of late, so I'm happy that we're inching toward equal representation. Folkson clearly has an eye for angles; she not only uses high and low angles to represent adults and children talking to one another, but also for creative shots involving various museum exhibits and London landmarks. My favorites were the pan from the stuffed wolves down to the sleeping kids; the angle of the Doctor pointing at Maebh; the nice shot of Maebh hiding behind a tree just after the first earthquake; the shot of Clara, Danny and the kids on the TARDIS steps; the Doctor leaning into (and back out of) frame on "Trees!"; and the framing of the shot of the solar flare hitting the Earth. I thought the scene of Danny and Clara's kiss was nicely filmed; like them, we've forgotten they're still standing in front of a bunch of their students!
Minor points:
Doctor: "When you drink a glass of Coke, it's only this big. But it's actually got this much sugar in it. Works a bit like that."
Clara: "What child?"
Doctor: "Young female human, standard defenseless little girl. Your friend Mr Pink was supposed to be looking after her."
Clara: "She probably has a name."
Clara: "I'm actually frightened. I never get frightened. Why am I frightened?"
Doctor: (to Clara) "You find yourself with a strangely compelling masculine... figure... MAEBH!"
Doctor: "You've been chopping them down for furniture for centuries! If that's love, no wonder they're calling down fire from the heavens."
Doctor: "I am Doctor Idiot!"
Doctor: "It's brewing up a solar wind big enough to blow this whole planet away!" (off their gobsmacked reactions) "I assumed your teachers have mentioned this?"
Clara: "I thought it would spoil an otherwise enjoyable walk."
Doctor: "I hope I'm right. Slightly awkward if the world was destroyed at this point."
Clara: "What?!"
Clara: "We are not gonna forget an overnight forest."
Doctor: "You forgot the last time."
I'm starting to think that series 8 is a lot like series 3: overall remarkably high quality, marred by a couple of jarring low notes. Going back to Mathieson's (and Moffat's) comment, I would've thought that a monster-free conceptual idea would be doable, but clearly it depends a lot on how engaging that conceptual idea is. You can't just have the idea, you have to be able to generate a compelling plot with tension, and In the Forest of the Night doesn't manage that. I wouldn't put it in my very lowest tier of Doctor Who stories — it didn't insult me as a viewer, and it wasn't full of infuriatingly unexplained plot conveniences — but it is quite uneventful, and it squanders its opportunity for character development.