Night Terrors

Please save me from the monsters!

I think it would be fair to say that Mark Gatiss has a rather mixed reception when it comes to his Doctor Who writing credits. The Unquiet Dead and An Adventure in Space and Time sit solidly as very strong contributions. But next to them he has The Idiot's Lantern and Victory of the Daleks so it's easy to see how this ends up as a mixed bag. Night Terrors was his Series Six contribution and it has a decidedly mixed reputation among fans.

Plot Summary

The Doctor receives a message on his psychic paper of a child asking for help from the monsters. The message is from George, an eight-year old boy living in a council estate with his parents and suffering from a profound case of fears. His parents have tried to help by setting up a series of rituals such as flicking the lights five times and putting scary things in the closet. At the time of his message, George is lying in bed while his mom has left for work, leaving his dad who has contacted social services to look into George's fears.

The Doctor, Amy and Rory land outside the council estate and begin knocking on doors, looking for George. George overhears Rory joking about letting the monsters get the boy and reacts when he and Amy get into the elevator (the sound of which also frightens him). As the elevator doors close, there is a flash and a gust of wind which knock Rory and Amy back. They awake to find themselves in a darkened manor house and set off to find out about their new surroundings.

At nearly the same time, a neighbor, Mrs. Rossiter takes her garbage out to pile outside. She moves slow due to bad knees but manages to get the bag on to the pile. As she leaves, she hears a rustling and goes to investigate. As she peers in, she is sucked into the pile of trash bags and also finds herself in the darkened manor house.

The Doctor spies George peaking out his window and knocks on his door. His dad, Alex opens the door and assumes he is from social services. The Doctor goes and talks to George, calming the boy a bit. The Doctor also learns about George's quirks, including putting the scary things in the closet.

Alex is distracted by a knock at the front door and goes to investigate. It is the building manager Purcell and his dog, getting after Alex about the rent. The Doctor takes advantage of the distraction by entertaining George with his sonic screwdriver which he uses to activate his motorized toys. He also uses it to scan the closet and gets an off the scale reading of the level of energy from it. When Alex returns, the Doctor forbids him from opening the closet.

In the manor house, Rory finds lights which offer some illumination but also finds most of the decorations are wood painted to look like things or just painted on decorations. The front door of the house has no knob leaving them trapped. Attracted by a mysterious giggling, they open a closet door to find a peg doll. They walk away, assuming their imaginations are getting the better of them, unaware that the doll has gotten up and is preparing to follow them.

The Doctor takes Alex into the kitchen to look for other evidence of energy and also clues in Alex of his alien monster-fighting nature. Alex initially tries to get him to leave but is convinced to let him stay and help George. Meanwhile, Purcell, having gone back to his own apartment, is pulled into the carpet by a mysterious force.

Purcell arrives in the manor house but runs into the dolls immediately. He runs away and stumbles into Rory and Amy. The dolls catch up to him and upon touching him, they transform him into a peg doll. Rory and Amy run away and barricade themselves in a room, though only temporarily as the door has no locks. Amy decides that they need to burst out and catch the dolls by surprise. They do so, but Amy is grabbed and transformed while Rory gets away.

Knowing he must confront things, the Doctor opens the door to the closet to find only clothes and old toys. But he also hears the sound of the elevator and something clicks for the Doctor. He grabs the photo album that Alex had shown him earlier and points out that only a month before George was born, Claire was not pregnant. Alex bursts out that they weren't able to have children and he reacts with immediate confusion as to how he could have forgotten that. The Doctor realizes that George is not human but has adopted Alex and Claire as his parents, but is still manifesting powers. Frightened by this exchange, both the Doctor and Alex are sucked into the closet and find themselves in the doll house.

In the house, the Doctor tells Alex that he believes George is a Tenza, an alien that bonds with species outside it's own to raise it. Upon overhearing George and Claire talking about getting George help for some of his fears, George's Tenza side began manifesting as a fear of rejection, creating fears on top his basic ones. They are set upon by the peg dolls and run into Rory also fighting back the peg dolls advancing on him.

The Doctor calls out to George that he is the only one who could can help and the only one who can drive the monsters away. Hearing the Doctor, George walks into the closet and finds himself in the doll house. The dolls stop initially, but as George's fears manifest again, the dolls spring to life. Encouraged by the Doctor to reassure his son, Alex runs forward and grabs George, promising to love and protect him. As he says this, everyone is immediately transported back outside the doll house. Rory and Amy find themselves in the elevator, Purcell in his apartment and Mrs. Rossiter outside with the garbage bags.

Claire returns to the apartment in the morning to find Alex and George playing with the Doctor. He assures Claire that George will be better now and takes his leave. Alex asks the Doctor about any other effects but the Doctor assures him that George will be fine, although he does promise to drop by during puberty just to be safe. He meets Rory and Amy who are waiting outside and they take off in the TARDIS.

Analysis

For about 3/4 of this story, an argument could be made that this is just a bit of blood shy of an outright horror movie. The scenes in the doll house and even outside it up until the Doctor and Alex get sucked in would easily fit in just about any horror movie. My own children are not much for scary movies and I would be strongly hesitant to show them this episode at the start. However, the last quarter takes the horror element out and I think because of how saturated the story is in that vein, that is where the fault of the story comes from.

Because the story centers around a child, I think there is a knee-jerk instinct to compare this to Fear Her. I would disagree strongly as the primary mistake of Fear Her was to put so much onus on the child actor. Here, the actor playing George is asked to do almost nothing except act like a scared little boy and he does that well. So whatever fault there is, it is not in the same vein as Fear Her.

The Eleventh Doctor is almost always at his best when dealing with children. He has a playful side and you can see his disarming ways with kids. His interactions with George are quite good, although I think his interactions with Alex are even better. Their interactions are similar to those of the Doctor and Craig in The Lodger and Closing Time but significantly less broad in the humor department. Alex is still clearly the bewildered one and playing catch up most of the time. This more subdued humor still works well in making the Doctor fun to be with.

However, the Doctor is somewhat shortchanged by Rory and Amy. It is difficult for a Doctor Who story to upstage the Doctor unless it is a Doctor-lite story (and even then sometimes not) but as entertaining as the Doctor is, Rory and Amy's story consistently draws the viewer back. Theirs is more vintage horror. Rory does the whistling in the dark bit while Amy plays it more straight. Yet there is the additional level of them not realizing the horror potential of their situation so much of Rory's comments are done in a purer comedic fashion. Additional props go for Rory making a joke about being dead again and then topping that by having Amy be the one to get transformed into a doll rather than the cliché of having Rory fall again. There is almost no point in their story that I do not enjoy and I miss them when not on screen.

There is not much of a supporting cast and even they don't get much to do. With the exception of Alex, everyone else is window dressing or cannon fodder and they do their jobs well enough. Alex is good although I think he wears his concern on his sleeve a little much. I'm not sure that changing anything about him would help or hinder his performance but there were moments where I was just starting to get tired of him. I also don't quite get why he was sucked into the closet. If his fear of rejection is driving his powers, how is putting his dad in the closet going to alleviate that? Doesn't that amplify the idea of being sent away because now the child is rejecting the parent as well?

Before getting in to the points where the story started to fall apart, I do want to point out that the doll scenes were very effective. The dolls were very creepy in a zombie way. Amplifying the creepiness was the nursery rhyme that was constantly going in the background. The child's choir singing in that sinister way just amplified the tension and gave a level of creepiness that was quite unexpected from the idea of being shrunk to doll size and being chased by it's wooden inhabitants.

Now, why is story not considered a new classic? I can't speak for others but I think it falls down a bit when resolving the story. As the world of horror is of George's own creation, it makes sense that he is the only one who can fix it. But it also feels like a Deus Ex Machina cheat just to have George's dad come in, give him a hug and tell him he loves him. It works better than it does in Closing Time because, again, George is the master of the rules of the world, but it also is a much sharper contrast in tone. True horror is upended by a boy being resolved of his daddy issues. While not trying to, it subconsciously seems to spit on the tension of before by dismissing it in such a cavalier fashion.

In my mind, it would have played better if only the Doctor had been sucked into the doll house. Alex runs from the room in fear, now scared of the power of his own son. He creeps back in when he hears the Doctor yelling, comforts George (thus prompting the reassurance) and then urging George that he is the one that must save others from the monsters. It's not much different, but it puts the power more in George's hands and lets the fatherly love and reassurance be the catalyst for change rather than the reason for change. It still would have caught some flak, but not quite as much.

The simple truth is that there was not proper horror movie outlet for this story. In a standard horror movie, the protagonists either kill the monster after a series of trials or they get away. Here, the dolls are the villain but they are driven by George's fears and you can't destroy George nor can you have the Doctor, Rory and Amy simply run away. George is not malevolent, only scared. So you must come back with George putting things right and that will never be as satisfying as when the Doctor or his companions deal with the danger.

Tacking back up the positive path, the direction in this story is excellent. There is a wonderful use of light and shadow and even the non-scary scenes are set in a slightly sickly light that is mildly discomforting. There are a couple of points where CGI could have been used but instead a more practical effect is used and it keeps the tension going where it could have easily fallen away.

Overall, I think this story is better than it's reputation. It falls somewhat flat at the end but that is almost inevitable given the scale of tension that had been ratcheted up. I think the ending could have been done better but at the same time we still would have probably found fault with it. But there is so much to enjoy before that that I think it should be given a fair shake. The only real caveat I would put with this story is to not show it to anyone who might be sensitive to scary things. This goes beyond the normal level of scares and dips into the proper horror genre, even though everyone survives at the end. So if they don't like that, skip this one. But if you do, give this one a second pass. It might be better than you remember.

Overall personal score: 3.5 out of 5