Holistic Review: A cool enemy and a great setting, but it could really have used even just an extra ten minutes.
Oh, the agony... I actually find myself torn about The Idiot's Lantern, which, if you hadn't already guessed, was the other story of this year that I've been hugely looking forward to. Not only was my beloved Mark Gatiss returning, but the early press for this story reminded me very much of his first novel, Nightshade, which concerned an aged television star of the 1950s and a hungry alien intelligence that manifested as energy. Now, The Idiot's Lantern doesn't actually bear a whole lot of resemblance to Nightshade, which kind of makes me sad, but I can certainly respect Gatiss' desire to tell new stories, and he draws on some of the best elements of his novel here. I really love the 1953 setting; it's not beaten over our heads, but it's there in every scene. The monster of the hour combines particularly well with this setting: the household television is only just becoming a commonplace item, there's an evil entity from space that just happens to be able to travel over television broadcasts, and for the first time the entire nation is gathering in front of their sets to watch Queen Elizabeth's coronation, so the entity can feed as much as it wants. And the Wire is quite a creepy monster; I love the idea of energy beings, and one that travels through television signals is a pretty unusual idea, particularly given how ubiquitous televisons are these days. But seeing it on an old monochrome 1950s television screen gives it a level of eerieness that it wouldn't have if it were invading via television in 2006. The faceless humans that result from its attacks are also really creepy; I was immediately struck by the resemblance to my favorite Sapphire & Steel adventure.
So the plot overall is really cool; where I think it falls down a bit is in the details. This is the first episode of the season that I think has really suffered from the 45-minute curse (oddly, since Gatiss was the first one to break it last year). While the Wire is very cool, I have so many unanswered questions about it. Why is it called "the Wire" - is that a title? It surely can't be its proper name, or its species name. Does it imply some sort of function, and if so, what? If it was executed, how did it manage to escape? It says it fled "in this form" - does that imply that it isn't usually an energy creature? The Doctor indicates that it chose the place of its manifestation for a purpose; did it also choose the time (the Queen's coronation) for a purpose, and if so, does that imply that it has the ability to time travel? Why does consuming people's essences result in their faces disappearing? And why, if it's eating people, do their faces return once it's burned onto a Betamax tape? (It's more like it absorbs and stores their essences, rather than actually consuming them.) Why do its victims bang against the floor or walls (as Grandma Connolly does) and clench and unclench their hands? How does it control Magpie? What is it doing to him that causes him to feel like he's burning inside and his memories hurt? And why does Magpie's face remain intact, even though the Wire seems to be devouring it in the teaser, and Magpie later tells the Doctor that "it took my face, my soul"? Is he restored, along with everyone else's faces, when the Doctor traps the Wire?
Then there's the Connolly family, who seem to be basically peripheral to the story, aside from being a way of illustrating what's happening all along Florizel Street. Eddie serves as the secondary (or tertiary, if Magpie counts) antagonist of the story, but on first viewing, his plotline is so quickly wrapped up with a precocious monologue from Tommy that it seems rushed. On second viewing, I decided that the elements for his rise and fall (well, mostly fall) are all laid out very carefully, it's just that his story doesn't really have time to develop. We get a hint of his nastiness, he turns unpleasant with the Doctor and Rose, he turns really unpleasant with Tommy, and then he's gone. And what purpose does it all serve? I've decided that the Connollys are meant to nicely illustrate the prejudices of the 1950s, bubbling underneath the "perfect household" image. They certainly do this very well - Eddie is the happy, upstanding family man, Rita his dutiful and loving wife, and Tommy the perfect son. Only they aren't, at all. Eddie is extremely controlling, intolerant, self-centered and very hot-tempered, who wants to put on a façade of normality and happiness while at the same time holding his son back from achieving his dreams; Rita both fears and resents her domineering husband; and Tommy isn't as interested in masculine pursuits as his father wishes he were. So that's all very interesting. However... I'm not really sure how it ties into a story of an alien invasion of London via the television. It turns out that Eddie is the informant bringing the police to take away all of the Wire's victims (and one has to ask: how is his reputation affected if other people's relatives are turning into monsters? and how did he know about all of them, anyway?), which comes to light when Grandma Connolly is transformed, which brings the problem into the household... but aside from that, the family isn't really tied into the story in any meaningful way, except as a source of information for the Doctor and Rose (unless the dichotomy between their appearance and their actuality is meant to echo the contrast between the Wire's sweet-looking present form and its nature?). They're more like a framing device; only Tommy really gets involved in any meaningful way, and we'll get to that momentarily.
Rose is a good example of my dual feelings about this story. In the first half, she's brilliant - she spots the odd number of TV aerials straightaway, she stands up to Eddie Connolly, she investigates their strange-acting television, and once she has a clue what's going on, she marches straight into Magpie's shop and demands to be let in on his deadly secret. Unfortunately, at this point - 21:40 into a 45:08 episode - Rose is summarily written out until the very end. Her function in the story is taken up by Tommy, for no apparent reason. The only thing I can figure out is that he needs to be built back up during his adventures with the Doctor, so that he knows beyond the shadow of a doubt that he's worth more than his dismissive father tries to make him think he is. (And maybe, for some reason, Billie Piper wanted a vacation, in which case I can't fault the script for it.) But it's not made super-clear, so again I can't quite figure out how the story all ties together neatly.
So those are my main criticisms out of the way, and I certainly don't want to sound like I'm beating The Idiot's Lantern down. It does have a few relatively large plot points that I find inexplicable, but I think they could (and would) all have been solved with just a little bit more time in which to develop them, and the rest of the plot I like a lot. Gatiss is a master of atmosphere, with frightening things happening in an ordinary house as the lovely woman on TV threatens to eat you up. And, as I've said, he really uses the plot well, exploiting the "new" medium of television to the full, as well as giving us glimpses of the portable TVs, color TV and videocassette recording devices to come. And his story boasts a very elegant solution, as the Doctor takes advantage of the Wire's physical properties to trap it somewhere that it can't escape from, and where it can be easily destroyed. I'm really sad that we won't be getting another Gatiss episode next year - sniff, sniff!!! So I guess I'll have to tide myself over on The Unquiet Dead and The Idiot's Lantern until he hopefully comes back for season 4. And at least, since we don't get Gatiss next year, we get Gareth! aka Mr Roberts. So that's one down off my post-Gatiss wish list! Just three more to go!
Tennant turns in a superb performance in an episode that showcases his range well. He's light and breezy with Rose, disapproving and stern with Mr Connolly, and practically quivering with rage and suppressed energy as he stalks about town trying to find out what happened to Rose. The scene in which he sees Rose's faceless body is one of his best yet; you can almost see the determination fuelled by anger building up in the Doctor as he stares at what's been done to his companion, and his subsequent lines are just brimming with intense emotion. He's also superb when he steps up to defend Rita's rights as a woman and question 1950s gender stereotypes (gotta love "Mister Connolly, what gender is the Queen?"), which leads to the wonderful moment in which he replies to Eddie's "I am talking!" with the bellowed "And I'm not listening!" He also sounds amazingly like McCoy at his best a couple of times, like on the line "But I can't help thinking, Detective Inspector, you're not exactly doing much detective inspecting, are you?" But there's also lots of funny to be had - I love the posh way he intones "a happier, brighter future!". The well-timed double-act peppy "Hi!" at the Connollys' front door is hilarious. And his 50s quiff is great! (Apparently this, people, is a pompadour, since we didn't get to see one two stories ago.) It's a great shame that they cut out his line about being afraid of radio transmitters, because he fell off one once - that would've been a hoot!
Although Billie doesn't get as much to do in this story as usual, cf. Rose's disappearing act midway through, she's great in what scenes she does have. Rose is wonderful when she, too, subtly gives Eddie a piece of her mind... you can tell she really loves deflating his enormous ego. Love her quick smile before dashing out the door of the Connollys' home, and the brave face she's clearly putting on once Magpie locks her inside the shop and she realizes she may be out of her depth. She does a great job with Rose's agonized moans as the Wire absorbs her essence and face. I love her costume, particularly the poofy pink skirt and headband - but I wish we could see the top of her dress, as the bits you can glimpse look really pretty.
And, oh, Maureen Lipman. I'm so sorry, Tony Head, but the Wire is definitely my favorite Who villain thus far in the season. Lipman is just perfect, so poised and glamorous and innocent-looking, and then she comes out with lines like "I'm the Wire, and I will gobble you up, pretty boy. Every last morsel." She gives a superb delivery to every line, most especially the creepy "Now, are you sitting comfortably? Good. Then we'll begin", her sultry "Cometh the hour, cometh the man. Or lady." and the disguised menace of "Yes. I'm talking to you, little one." I kind of wanted to see her corporeal, just to see how powerful she would get!
As always, more great guest actors, primarily (as is natural) the Connolly family. Jamie Foreman is infuriatingly good as Eddie, the kind of man who you really want to see get an abrupt wake-up call, possibly in the form of a great big smack. It was always very satisfying watching as each character in turn got their chance to give him a verbal dressing-down akin to the sort he so much liked to dole out. What a horrible man, and yet how nice that he did have some spark of decency in him. Debra Gillett was very likeable as the frightened but fed-up Rita, and Rory Jennings as Tommy made a nice foil for the Doctor, even if he wasn't a patch on Rose. I also got a real kick out of Jean Challis as Aunt Betty... she was instantly likeable, at least until her line "Oh, you know what they say about them. Eddie, you want to beat that out of him."
Euros Lyn's back in the director's chair, and it's a very welcome return as always. His many great shots include the reverse-angle shots of the Wire from inside the television, Rose's skirts blowing in the wind as the Doctor's bike takes off, Grandma Connolly silhouetted against the nighttime window as she shuffles toward the camera, the amazingly freaky shot of one female victim's hand unclenching, and the cool shot from above as Rita puts down a suitcase for Eddie. There are a couple of shots that are too quick, though - at the beginning, he pans away a bit too quickly and makes it look as though Eddie is heading straight into Magpie Electricals right after telling Tommy he probably couldn't have a television, and then again at the end, it's not immediately clear that a vacuum tube on the Doctor's device has blown up and caused it to fail. And why does he repeat the shot of Tommy plugging in the device? I think that's becoming one of my least favorite directorial devices.
Murray Gold turns in another fairly average score, although it does have its moments this time: I like the 50s vibe as the Doctor and Rose step out of the TARDIS, there's some cool 50s B-movie music as the Wire turns to color, and I like the reworking of "Song for Ten" as the Doctor sees Rose again at the end. There's also a rather Fenric feel to the score as Tommy ascends the stairs to visit his gran.
Not a whole lot of effects to speak of this time, but the pink electricity - what a cool concept, and fitting nicely with Rose's outfit - looks fantastic, and all the shots of the Wire in her antique television screen are great. However they filmed the tense scenes on the Alexandra Palace tower, I'm really impressed. The shots from above look totally real. Love the blank-face makeup (or CGI?) used on the Wire's victims, particularly in that you can see the vague impression of features, which somehow makes it look more realistic. And there's some superb sound editing transitioning from the Wire's dying scream as it flicks out to the hum of the powering-down television... it sounds really cool.
Minor points:
Doctor: "That's what I like about you. The domestic approach."
Rose: "Thank you. ... Hold on - was that an insult?"
Rose: (sotto voce) "Mum went out with a sailor."
Doctor: (sotto voce, through clenched teeth) "Ooh, hoo hoo, I bet she did."
A really cool villain and a well-used setting, but I wish we'd had a little more time to expand on the villain's background and better integrate the Connollys. Overall, though, it's a fun story with some memorable images, and I'm going to be biting my knuckle waiting for the next exciting installment by the excellent Mark Gatiss.