I have to be honest, I don't see what the big deal is about this. It's good, don't get me wrong; a solid, nicely told episode with a palpable sense of mystery, with some excellent performances. What it isn't is the truly powerful horror story some viewers are making it out to be, nor the game-changing twist on the series' format lauded by others. Nor is it the infuriating misfire that a smaller portion of the audience are finding it.
It's certainly beautifully directed by Dylan Holmes Williams, with the breathtaking Welsh landscape giving way to the claustrophobic confines of the pub, before opening back into mundane yet unsettling everyday life in London. The disjoint here is just lovely; the folk horror we're led to expect is abruptly cancelled, and an entirely different story unfolds, still making the most of the uncanny atmosphere but through a different subgenre or horror.
Of course, it's Millie Gibson who makes the episode, giving an astonishing performance throughout. With Gatwa still in the midst of filming Sex Education and therefore unavailable for the bulk of filming, Gibson carries the episode on her own shoulders to the point where you barely miss the Doctor. It's a real testament to her skill that this is the first episode she filmed. Ruby is fully realised as a character from the outset and throughout her life. That this means she was only seventeen when she filmed it only makes it more impressive. While there's some good use of subtle make-up and Gibson is very skilled at portraying her character at different ages, there's no way that a wig, glasses and a big jacket can make us believe that she's a woman in her early forties. Over a year has passed since this was filmed, and Gibson looks older now than she does in any moment in this episode. Fortunately, her performance is strong enough that this can be overlooked.
Special mention also has to be made of Aneurin Barnard's charming but always uncomfortable and gently threatening performance as Roger ap Gwilliam; Michelle Greenidge's brutally cold performance as Cherry (again showing us just how callous a person she would be without Ruby in her life); and Sophie Ablett's small but powerful role as Marti, clearly subject to abuse by Gwilliam and selling it through her performance with barely any dialogue to back it up.
However, so much here is frustrating. Some of this is little annoyances, but ones that bugged me throughout. How many 18/19/20-year-olds measure in yards? Or indeed say "answerphone" instead of "Voicemail?" The latter is a single line and hardly important, but it highlights that RTD hasn't bothered to focus on how someone born in 2004 would speak beyond a peppering of slang. Following "Boom" with the Doctor once again stepping on something dangerous without looking where he's going is funny, but not deliberately, and feels sloppy. For that matter, giving us a virtually Doctor-free episode, while necessary due to the production schedule, feels like a major mistake in a major relaunch series that's only eight episodes long.
The Welsh setting of the opening is a chance for RTD to poke fun at the trappings of rural horror and, as the landlady Lowri Palin puts it, racist stereotyping of Welsh culture. This is completely hamstrung, however, by having her character, and most of the people in the pub, be pointlessly hostile and cruelly mocking to Ruby, who is, after all, a young girl who is quite clearly in trouble. The Welsh villagers are painfully stereotyped as creepy bastards who like to fuck with the English. This is only compounded by Maxine Evans play Lowri, bringing her back 18 years after she played the creepy Welsh villager in Torchwood's "Countrycide." Plus the fact that the stereotypically sinister folklore was entirely right, of course.
While it's nice to see Kate Stewart again and she gets some strong and though-provoking dialogue, particularly her understanding that something is wrong with this timeline, her inclusion hurts the story by making it too much about the current run of Doctor Who in general. The same goes for Susan Twist's latest appearance, although it is gratifying that Ruby is beginning to recognise her, and intriguing that she is just as vulnerable to supernatural events as anyone else. This story needs to stand alone to work, but isn't allowed to.
I don't mind at all that so much was left unanswered. This is, in fact, a strength of stories of this type. Much like It Follows, the 2014 horror film that clearly inspired much of this episode, leaving the phenomenon that has derailed Ruby's life unexplained is part of the effect. There does feel, though, to be too much left ambiguous, opaque, and downright incoherent. We don't need to know what "the Woman"/old Ruby said to people that left them so powerless and terrified, or how she had this power, but why would Ruby subject herself to such a brutal experience? Especially since, given the ending, it was all proven to be seemingly unnecessary?
That in itself is enormously frustrating. Once the story shifts and we see the "one year later" caption, it's painfully obvious that everything will be dutifully reset at the end. This can work as a story device but it has its risks. From there on, the story unfolds quite predictably, and while Ruby's defeat of Gwilliam is an extremely effective moment, it's prefigured by a long and predictably scene. The identity of the Woman also becomes immediately obvious as Ruby's future self, in spite of the fact that she and old Ruby are played by visibly different actresses. Are we then, to conclude, that the Woman wasn't Ruby all along? Much of the above makes more sense in this light, but it loses the neatness and dramatic punch, however predictable, of making it Ruby throughout.
For all Barnard's skill in playing the character, Gwilliam is barely sketched in as a character or a threat. He's a lazily written evil politician in the Trump-like populist mold. There's no sense of why he has so much support or how he is able to get so far. There's also the question of his ultimate identity. If he really is the reincarnation of Mad Jack, instead of it just being a nickname that tips Ruby off to what her role is in the story, then his behaviour is even more bizarre. The concepts just don't go together. However, if he's just some ambitious fascist without any link to the fairy circle, then Ruby's undoing of the timeline then leaves him at large, able to take "the world to the brink of nuclear war" (something that pointedly does not happen in the episode itself, but that does exist in the original timeline the Doctor remembers).
I'm very glad this episode exists, once again illustrating just how much the tone and genre of the series can shift from episode to episode (and again how short-sighted it was to stick the two camp OTT episodes together at the beginning). It's easily watchnable and has some bite, and Millie Gibson is genuinely brilliant in it. However, it's nowhere near as creepy as it needs to be to truly succeed, nor anything like as clever as RTD clearly thinks it is.
Setting: London and Wales, 2024 to 2080-ish (timeline negated).
Maketh the man: it's clear that the Fifteenth Doctor's favourite colour is orange, and he's really going for it in this episode, with an orange-yellow duffle coat and a deep orange beanie as part of his Welsh hiking outfit. Gatwa can genuinely wear anything and make it look great.
Foreshadowing: I suspect this will have some kind of callback in the season finale, however oblique, and Ruby's inexplicable experience here may well be somewhat explained after all. Also, Kate mentions that UNIT is in the habit of recruiting ex-companions and is also used to battling witchcraft, all of which is clearly setting up the inevitable UNIT spin-off.
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