Tooth and Claw

We are not amused!

Tooth and Claw was the second episode of the Second Series and the second celebrity historical with Queen Victoria. Victoria is actually played by the same actress who nearly became a companion to the Second Doctor (Samantha in The Faceless Ones) except that she turned it down when offered, presumably due to other commitments, paving the way for Victoria Waterfield in The Evil of the Daleks. I remembered being not overly impressed by this story the first time around, in contrast to most fan reaction, so we'll see if it plays better a second time.

Plot Summary

A group of monks arrive at a country estate called Torchwood House in 1879 and take the household prisoner, locking them in the basement with a creature in a cage. Nearby, the Doctor and Rose land, undershooting their intended target of a 1979 concert. They run into the caravan of Queen Victoria who was forced to abandon the train due to a tree on the tracks. She is now making for Torchwood House to spend the night. The Doctor uses the psychic paper to convince the queen that he has been appointed as Lord Protector over her person and he is invited along.

The group arrives at the house where the monks are posing as staff and the master of the house, Sir Robert, is being forced to assist in their plan. The group is invited in and Sir Robert shows the Queen, the Doctor and Rose the house. The Doctor becomes fascinated by a telescope built by Sir Robert's father who was a close friend of Prince Albert prior to his death and would come up for visits. Sir Robert begins to tell the legend of the wolf but is interrupted by Father Angelo suggesting that everyone freshen up before dinner.

Each person heads to a different room to prepare. The Queen also has a special package locked away for safekeeping. The monks pass out mugs of drugged tea and knock out all the guards, leaving the Queen, Sir Robert, the Doctor, Rose and Captain Reynolds (commander of the Queen's guard) awake. While Rose is dressing for dinner, she discovers a maid named Flora who tells her of what happened. They go to warn the Doctor but are captured by the monks and chained with everyone else in the basement.

At dinner, Sir Robert continues with the story of the wolf, which parallel's the typical werewolf legend. He also notes that his father and Prince Albert indulged in the tales a great deal during his visits and Sir Robert suspects that his father actually believed the legend to be true. He notes that while most of the slaughter was against livestock, once a generation a child would disappear, usually a boy, as well. As they talk, Father Angelo, posing as the butler, moves to the window and begins chanting.

In the basement, a young man is enclosed in the cage but with dilated eyes. Rose recognizes a sign of alien life and communicates with it. It admits to being alien, infecting new bodies as the old ones deteriorate, but does not admit it's origin. The moon begins to break through the clouds and the man begins to change into a wolf. Rose urges everyone to ignore the change and pull on the chain binding them together. In the dining room, the Doctor becomes alarmed at the monk's change and he and Sir Robert leave the room, following the sound of the howls. They open the door just as Rose and the staff pull the chain loose and the werewolf breaks free from it's cage.

Father Angelo disarms Captain Reynolds but Queen Victoria pulls a gun from her purse and shoots him. The gamekeeping staff pull weapons from the cabinet and fire at the werewolf, driving it back. It regroups and kills the gamekeepers and the butler while the rest retreat. Sir Robert's wife and the maids head for the kitchen to escape but find the doors boarded shut and guarded by armed monks. Sir Robert also discovers this in another room and he is shot at while trying to open the windows for Victoria to escape.

The group retreats further in, the Queen retrieving her valuables from the safe and meet Captain Reynolds in the hall. He holds off the werewolf while Sir Robert, the Queen, the Doctor and Rose barricade themselves in the library. The wolf kills Reynolds but does not burst in to the room, instead looking for another way in. The Doctor discovers that the walls are varnished with the oil of mistletoe, something the women notice the monk guards wearing outside. He deduces that the wolf is allergic to mistletoe and that buys them time to look through the books for answers.

The Doctor pulls one book and discovers that the ship from which the wolf landed, crashed over three hundred years ago near the abbey of the monks. He theorizes that only a small sample of the cells survived the crash and took hundred of years to grow into the form it is now. Rose tells how the man, before transforming, spoke of wanting the Queen and to create the empire of the wolf. The Queen produces her hidden treasure, a great diamond that Prince Albert always brought with him to be cut down, suggesting that the wolf might want it. The Doctor realizes Sir Robert's father and Prince Albert had actually been collaborating, planning a trap in case the wolf ever attacked the house.

The werewolf bursts into the room through the skylight and the group runs to the observatory. Sir Robert's wife emerges and throws a bucket of mistletoe tea on the werewolf which causes the creature to retreat. The women return to the kitchen while Sir Robert stands guard outside the observatory room. The Doctor and Rose begin to align the telescope with the moon, the Doctor telling Rose that it is actually a light focusing machine, using the large diamond as the final focus for the moonlight.

The wolf recovers and kills Sir Robert before bursting into the room. It scratches the Queen as the Doctor finishes aligning the machine. A beam of moonlight comes out and hits the wolf, paralyzing it. He tightens the beam through the diamond and the wolf evaporates through overexposure to the light.

The Queen knights the Doctor and Rose for their services and then banishes them from the realm due to their cavalier and un-Godly attitude towards things of the planets and stars. She also takes the Torchwood House from Sir Robert's widow who doesn't want it anymore to establish the Torchwood Institute to defend against alien menaces, including the Doctor. The Doctor and Rose return to the TARDIS, speculating that the Queen has become infected with the werewolf DNA and that it is reaffirming itself in the Royal family.

Analysis

This story is a bit of a mixed bag for me. On one hand, it is a fast paced adventure story with an interesting and more energetic take on Queen Victoria. On the other hand, it breaks it's own tension in the wrong places, is rather poorly directed and retains too much flab on the end that could have been better served elsewhere.

The Doctor is pretty good in this one, although he is rather light-hearted through the whole adventure. It's an odd shift with the next story being School Reunion and the darker Doctor persona comes through. I also wish there had been a little more time and volume devoted to the Doctor explaining the werewolf. He passes it off very quickly, mostly mumbling and I couldn't even begin to tell you what he said other than light transference. But still, he was enjoyable especially in the direct adventure parts. I did also like the nod to Jamie, allowing David Tennant to use his natural Scottish accent for a time.

I did not like Rose in this one. In fact, this story may be one of the strongest examples of my dislike for Rose. She is cavalier in this story to the point of being just a brat. One of the best scenes is Queen Victoria telling off Rose for cracking a joke when their lives are at risk and a man has just died to save them. It shows a real detachment from Rose. She is confident that the Doctor will save her and the situation in general so minor deaths and the overall tension of the situation are flippancies to her.

She also instigates a moment I didn't like in the Doctor where he also breaks the mood by having a moment with Rose about how cool it is to be encountering a werewolf. Even Doctor's who had flippant attitudes, such as the Fourth Doctor, would have respect over people who were killed, especially in his defense. It's an unfortunate attitude to be seen in the Tenth Doctor and Rose only feeds into that.

I liked Queen Victoria, especially when she acted against type. She is often depicted in history as a stogy sourpuss and it was nice to see her portrayed as a robust and relatively independent woman, though still tenderhearted, especially where Prince Albert is concerned. I enjoyed that she went so far as to kill Father Angelo, although had hesitation and remorse about it. It's only at the end of the story where she reverts back into type that she gets boring. I especially disliked the heavy-handed bit of exposition regarding the establishment of Torchwood. I thought that section poorly written and not very well acted either.

Most of the rest of the cast was decent, although not memorable. That's not unusual, but I thought it a bit of a waste with Father Angelo. After showing such fortitude in the first half of the story, to simply stand there while Victoria shoots him seemed highly anti-climatic. It also would have solved the problem of adding a little color to the villain. The werewolf worked fine as the monster, and I thought the CGI pretty good for the time, but the werewolf also has no personality, meaning no depth from a villain standpoint. I think Doctor Who works better when the villain has more color and thought, which Father Angelo could have provided. Having a unkillable beastie makes for a one-note villain that gets a bit tired after a while. To be fair, this is a somewhat common complaint anytime a werewolf is used as a villain in any medium.

I did not like the camera work in this story. In the beginning, the monks enter and go very kung-fu on the people of the house, but the cutting is so disjointed that it is just a horrible mishmash of faces and people falling over. There is a similar overuse of close ups throughout the story and when a longshot is actually used, you feel almost a sense of relief, even if that longshot shows the wolf advancing up a hallway. Outside of these, there wasn't much else to note, as most of the shots were fairly static and didn't provide much else to draw you in, relying on the overall story to do that instead.

The story itself was fine with the fast pace of a running from a monster providing the bulk of the it. It indulged in the most common clichés of monster stories including having a strongman believing that he has killed the monster be instead killed by it and having it be vulnerable to a common thing, allowing the heroes the time they need to figure out how to defeat it. If you are in the mood for a simple run around, that works fine. If you want more depth (a la Midnight), this will disappoint you.

The ending also disappointed me. Victoria's reversion of personality I think was supposed to be funny, but it didn't really work for me, especially after having been through the adventure. I also didn't care for the casual dismissal of the Royal family being werewolves. Not that I care about them, but they just spent the whole story defeating an evil monster who reveled in death and destruction. To pass off that the entity survived and reestablish itself a hundred years later in a joke fashion undercut the whole theme of the story.

I also thought it rather silly about turning hemophilia into a joke about werewolves, both in its attitude and logic. Seven of Victoria's nine children were married by the time this would have happened so to suggest that a blood disease would have passed to them at the time when she already had a number of grandchildren makes no sense whatsoever. Given the tragic deaths of several of her descendants due to hemophilia and the implications of the disease, it's also in somewhat poor taste to pass it off as a lycanthropic affliction. It's a lame joke at the current royal's expense that does offer a genuine detraction to the overall story.

In the end, I'd have to say my reservation in going back to this was somewhat justified. It wasn't terrible and I generally enjoyed the chase part, but the rest of the story just didn't do it for me. That one of the main characters made herself somewhat painful to watch in the story didn't help in it's passing. This is a quick adventure story to put on the background if you're in a certain mood. Not horrible, but I'd say the bad outweighs the good in this case.

Overall personal score: 1.5 out of 5