Fear Her

We love Chloe Webber

I you were to poll Doctor Who fans on what the worst episode is of the new series, Fear Her would probably score on several of those lists. Having just reviewed this episode again, I'm not going to say it's the worst, but oh boy it sure ain't good.

Plot Summary

The Doctor and Rose land in London just before the 2012 Olympics are about to begin. They are alerted that neighborhood children are disappearing. After a quick bit of investigating, they learn that an alien space child has been separated from it's swarm and possessed a girl named Chloe Webber. Chloe loves drawing and the alien uses its power to trap people and animals within her drawings trying to recreate the feeling of togetherness it felt when it was with its family. Becoming scared that the Doctor might take away the only friend it has, Chloe traps the Doctor in a drawing. Rose, using information the Doctor left, finds the alien spacecraft buried in fresh hot patch. Learning from the Doctor that the craft needs both heat and joyful feelings, Rose pitches the ship into the passing Olympic torch. Feeling the heat and love, the alien leaves Chloe and departs in it's ship.

The children reemerge from Chloe's drawings but Chloe's drawing of her abusive deceased father also comes alive. It is sent back into non-existence when Chloe finally receives comfort from her mother and the two of them sing together for comfort. Rose looks for the Doctor and finally finds him when the Olympic torchbearer collapses and the Doctor picks up the torch and runs to light the cauldron. The Doctor and Rose then depart with the Doctor offering an ominous warning that a storm is coming.

Analysis

There are a lot of problems with this episode but probably the one that actually irks me the most is that it starts off well. The Doctor and Rose have nice chemistry and there is an interesting little mystery to be solved. Even the concept isn't bad with a scared child causing havoc in simply trying to find friends. But once Chloe is introduced, the episode starts to slide and it just doesn't stop.

The first major mistake they made was with the volume of the task they asked the actress playing Chloe to do. She did alright in short scenes as herself or with her mom. But when she had to do the altered voice and state of the alien child, it was just too much. There should have been some voice over work that could have been done by another actor. That would have allowed the actress to focus only on the visuals which would have probably improved things. It was just too much for a young actress and the overall performance suffered as a result.

I also didn't like the inclusion of the abusive father drawing. The alien is searching for love and friendship. Creating a vision of terror and pain seems very out of character with what the creature wants. It smacked far more of the writer deciding their needed to be a proper villain to offer some sort of threat since we couldn't really be angry at the alien. I didn't mind the cheap way they pulled it off in the form of a scary voice-over and a red light. That actually made it scarier than actually having an actor there, but the role as a whole just felt very shoehorned in.

There was another production point that fell flat as well. Despite that this episode is supposed to be taking place in August, it is obviously shot in the winter as everyone's breath is visible. They draw further attention to this by having the Doctor note how cold it feels and this being an additional sign of what the alien is doing. That is fine and actually rather clever. However, after the alien leaves, things should return to normal. Instead the cold breath becomes even more obvious with a night shoot outside. The location could have been so easily changed so that filming in this atmosphere was not required. It effectively undid their set up at the beginning and reminded everyone that this was just an artifact of filming in winter.

Despite all of these, the episode could have probably escaped with just a "meh" rating from most fans if it hadn't been for the last few minutes. It was already getting schmaltzy with needing the love of the games to power the ship and Chloe and her mother singing away the terror of Chloe's father, but as soon as the Doctor reemerged carrying the torch, there was just this overwhelming saccharine feeling that drove away whatever positive feelings I had for this episode. This was compounded by the fact that the Doctor running up and lighting the torch was so obviously done on a blackened out stage. It was like the producers openly admitting they had run out of budget at this point.

There are probably a few folks out there that would give this one a zero. I'm not that harsh as I did enjoy especially the first ten minutes or so. But there is a lot wrong with this one and now that I have revisited it to refresh myself, I can't see any urge to go back and watch it again. A middling idea that fell apart in execution and soppiness.

Overall personal score: 1 out of 5