Doctor Who 8.10: In the Forest of Night
Frank Cottrell Boyce
Sheree Folkson
One of the running themes of Series 8 has
been “science-y stuff”, in the sense that the episodes tend to rely a lot more
on tossing out vaguely scientific-sounding language to justify whatever strange
occurrence the characters must resolve or endure. It’s hardly new to the franchise, considering
how often it happened in the Classic Era, but it has been rather egregious in
Series 8, to the point of becoming an issue.
It would almost be better if The Doctor didn’t try to explain what’s
happening at all.
For all intent purposes, The Doctor and his
companions have precious little to do with the resolution of the story. They ultimately warn people not to kill the
sudden overgrowth of plant life, which comes and goes rather magically, but
there’s a sense that the timing involved is so quick that any exfoliation by
the human race would have been miniscule compared to the scale of the plant
coverage. In essence, the story is more
about the mystery and the characters.
In the middle of the jumbled mess that is the
episode is a kinda-sorta callback to Clara’s confrontation with The Doctor in “Kill
the Moon”. The Doctor embraces the
notion that Earth is “his” as well, just in time for Clara to more or less come
around to his point of view. Except,
like much of the episode, it’s not quite so clear cut as it seems, and it makes
the whole Doctor/Clara/Danny pseudo-triangle even more muddled than it was.
Considering that Clara is the viewpoint
character this season, she gets the most logical through-line. It makes sense that Series 8 is bringing her
to a point where she has to decide if the adventure is worth the cost of
becoming more and more like The Doctor, when she’s increasingly reluctant to
excuse or agree with his decisions. She’s
ready to let him go, even at threat of imminent demise, in favor of being a
caretaker to children instead of caretaker to a Time Lord.
The point has been to reconcile Clara’s role
as The Impossible Girl with her depiction as someone who takes care of others
to the point of self-sacrifice, and that’s largely been accomplished, even if
the process hasn’t been smooth. I also
like that Danny hasn’t been a Companion in the traditional sense, but rather,
more of a companion for Clara, someone to present an opposing point of view
from The Doctor’s without overriding her agency in the process. If nothing else, if Series 8 is the final
stretch for Clara, then it will feel like she had a solid character arc during
her tenure.
What’s still missing, or at least tenuous, is the sense of where this is taking The Doctor. I’m not sure he’s really all that much closer to “finding himself”. Maybe that will all crystallize in the two-part finale beginning with the next episode; if so, it’s about time. And we’ll soon discover if the very light treatment of the season arc works in the long run, or if Moffat has simply taken a different approach to a multi-series mystery. Whatever the case, the fans wanted a more character-centric Series 8 after the massive plot arcs of previous years, and that’s what we received, for better or worse.
- Clara’s character arc is coming into focus
- Danny is more pragmatic than jealous, which is nice
- The core concept is about as far from science as it gets
- The Doctor’s journey of self-discovery is still not coming together