‘Doctor Who’ review: A second opinion on ‘In the Forest of the Night’

Well, you might complain about the result, but you can’t criticise Doctor Who for attempting something new. Branching out, even.

You’ve got to keep things fresh and green somehow. And while potentially dangerous plant-life is nothing new to Who, (the Krynoids, Meglos, and the genit-alien Vervoids have created a veritable garden centre of horror) the show has never attempted anything like ‘In the Forest of the Night’ before, both in terms of flora or story.

But ‘new’ isn’t a guarantee of success. If the divided reaction among CultBox writers this week is any bellwether, you’ll have fallen into one of two categories: like or dislike. Neither opinion is wrong. It just all depends on what you expect from Doctor Who.

If you subscribe to the idea that the show’s science-fiction has moved closer to science-fantasy in recent years, then author and 2012 Olympic Opening Ceremony scribe Frank Cottrel-Boyce’s script is another step along that breadcrumbed path. In a show that has always treated the forest as a magical and dangerous place filled with angels, River riddles, and festive wooden royalty, his tale of trees and wishes is not out of place.

However if you prefer sciencey-wience to storybook, then it’s easy to view ‘Forest…’ as a trough rather than a peak in the varied topography of Season 8. It looks beautiful, but everything is so slight and inconsequential. There are the seeds of environmentalist and mental health messages here, but it’s an unexplored forest of story potential.

It’s amazing The Doctor doesn’t lay a trail of jelly babies as he negotiates the forest. At every turn Cottrel-Boyce over-emphasises that this is science-fairytale, not science-fiction. It’s a bedtime pop-up book of an episode. Trees suddenly pop up overnight, then a Little Red Riding Hood lost in the woods pops up at the TARDIS, then some wolves spring into view, followed by a tyger-tiger (either planning on coming to tea or there to be a William Blake allusion), and then a handy plot resolution unfolds itself at the turn of a page and the dial of a number.

So, all very fairytale, and there’d be nothing wrong with that if the plot wasn’t so paper-thin. For a story so dependent on one character, Maebh’s story and the extent of her ‘powers’ is far too enigmatic and under-written. Despite it being the emotional roots of the episode, it’s impossible to connect with the little girl’s plight or her sister’s return on any meaningful level.

The other children suffer a similar fate. As a children’s author you’d expect Cottrel-Boyce’s dialogue to be natural when spoken by young folk, but it all comes out as exposition. ‘You’re supposed to be madly in love with her!’ one shouts to Danny, and swiftly follows it up with ‘I haven’t got an imagination’. In a tale of such fantasy, only what people are saying feels completely unreal.

Not as unreal as the big ‘The End’, as we’re expected to believe Humankind, with our videophones and rolling news and insurance policies, will let a devastating tree invasion pass into lore and bedtime stories. Apparently we keep on surviving and keep on forgetting, right until the end of time.

Although if you’re one of the people who didn’t like it, then forgetting is probably good advice. Let those who liked it like it, and those didn’t just unremember. At the end of this fairytale it’s the only way all us fans will live happily ever after.