Doctor Who (4x10) - Midnight

[fajrdrako]

Love the title.

Loved the whole thing, in fact: a perfectly-crafted stand-alone episode. An episode without a companion for the Doctor. Way cool.

1. Exceptional acting on David Tennant's part. He's always good, but this episode required a lot of complex expression to get the right balance of strength and vulnerability. The best exchange was something like this:

   Someone: Why are you taking charge?
   Doctor: Because I'm clever.

   It doesn't go over very well. It was a great moment. I wanted to scream at the other passengers, "Trust him! He's the Doctor!" but of course - they never listen.
   
   
2. Lesley Sharp was also very good. I recognized her from something - maybe The Second Coming, maybe The Full Monty.
   
   
3. I've come to love it when the Doctor says something like, "I'll save you, I promise." Nobody can be sure of keeping a promise like that, and of course the Doctor often fails to do so. But it gives his listeners hope, and encourages him too, I think, and encourages them to accept his authority because of the illusion that he can promise safety.
   
   As psychology, that's good. As storytelling, it's terrific.
   
   
4. The alien's repetition of what everyone was saying was creepy. It made me think of the Judoon speech-learning apparatus from "Smith and Jones". Only... scarier.
   
   
5. The knocking on the walls was scary, too. Unknown sound. "What's that noise?" Woo.
   
   
6. When they were afraid of the light coming in through the door, Catherine said, "Last week they made us afraid of the dark. Now they're making us afraid of the light." They made immobility scary, too, and then... the odd motions of Sky's head when she was first possessed by the creature.
   
   
7. Other bits reminded me of Lost.
   
   
8. My goodness, the Doctor was cute. I loved it that he made everyone in the tour talk to each other rather than listen to the provided entertainment. I also loved the provision of the peanuts "which may contain nuts", and his pointing out (rather pointlessly) that they didn't.
   
   
9. It felt like a closer call for the Doctor than we usually get, but was it really? Compared to being, say, exterminated by Daleks or blasted out of existed by Sontaran guns, it was very personal and immediate, very... vicious. People attacking people, not even one on one, but a small mob against an individual. Something about this reaches primal fears, or maybe schoolyard terrors. There is something terrifying and inarguable about the pattern: Make someone an outcast, then attack him, then destroy him.
   
   Did the alien play on that deliberately? Was it chance, or policy? Was the alien telepathic? How much was it malignant, and how much just opportunistic?
   
   
10. I liked it too that the alien was unknown, unnamed, unknowable. We don't even know if it was native to the planet.
    
    
11. Speaking of being unnamed - isn't the Doctor's nameless state being reiterated and even emphasized in every episode this season? Chalk it up with the Medusa Cascade and the other revisited themes.
    
    
12. Speaking of being unnamed - I loved it that it was the hostess, who wasn't very likeable and wasn't given a name, who saved them all and sacrificed her life.
    
    
13. Speaking of being unnamed - it was another great, scary moment when they forced the Doctor to say his name, and he said "John Smith", and they didn't believe him. "No one is named John Smith!"
    
    
14. I liked the use of close-ups, especially on the Doctor.
    
    
15. The image of the Doctor's foot catching on the leg of the chair was very powerful.
    
    
16. Rose. Am I the only one who screams (or at least yelps) every time we see her appear? And I particularly like it that the Doctor hasn't seen her. We have. Donna has, though she doesn't know it. I guess the Doctor doesn't keep sentimental photos of the good old times around the TARDIS. Maybe he keeps them in a box in his drawer, like Captain Jack does.
    
    On the other hand, if the Doctor is the cleverest of the clever, he's beginning to look a little thick at the way he keeps missing glimpses of her, just looking away at the wrong times. Presumably this will change next week.
    
    
17. As with many episodes whose exact time and place is not specified, I wondered if this happened in the present or the future - or the past. Not that it mattered. It's its own 'now', on the planet Midnight.
    
    
18. Of the characters, I liked Jethro best. This is partly because I noticed that he had Spike-like black fingernails.
    
    
19. My impression was that series 1 and 2 emphasized the Doctor's majestic qualities - his scope (brain the size of a planet, telepathy), his power, his godlike aspects of making and breaking worlds and fixing or changing or destroying futures. And series 4 seems to be de-emphasizing that, and zoning in on his - for want of a better word - his humanity, his weaknesses, his flaws, his vulnerabilities.
    
    I'm not sure where series 3 stands on this.
    
    
20. Speaking of vulnerabilities, I loved it that when the Doctor was unable to speak, unable to move, unable to do anything at all - he showed his fear and desperation by sweating.
    
    
21. I didn't notice at first, but this was an episode totally without the TARDIS. Have I seen an episode without the TARDIS before? I don't think so.
    
    
22. I thought Russell T. Davies' writing was even better than usual this time. Quick, someone give the man an OBE.
    
    
23. One of the eeriest bits was towards the end, waiting for rescue, when the Doctor was just... silent. So uncharacteristically silent.