Well.. erm… err… don’t quite know what to say.. erm…
I knew from the off that In The Forest of The Night would be a filler episode, the one that is fairly light hearted, the calm before the storm if you will. What I didn’t anticipate was how lacklustre it would be, you get filler episodes every now and then, and up until now they’ve all been great mainly compensating plot for banter instead. Here, we had the thinnest plot in recent history and not much else. The Unicorn and the Wasp circa Series 4 was a masterpiece, the plot itself was pretty average but it was outweighed by the humour between Donna and 10. ITFOTN just didn’t deliver at all for me, easily the weakest episode of the series.
Visually, I can’t fault it, it looked stunning and I loved the mythical and fairytale like theme to it, that was great. The children from Coal Hill were all particularly good aswell, Ruby did grate after a while but hats off to the girl who played Maebh Arden who was wonderful. The establishing scene at the start of the episode where we get the panoramic shot of London overgrown was a beautiful thing. Also when Maebh gets shown the fairy style lights that’s been hovering within her, the silhouettes of the sun/forest/Maebh and 12 was stunning.
There was some major issues though for me. For instance, if the whole of Central London has suddenly got a forest, where is everyone? London is one of the busiest capitals in the world, there is no WAY it would be that empty, especially if an event like that happened. Nelson’s Column was poorly reconstructed/CGI’d for me. When it fell down I can’t believe it wouldn’t make that much more of an impact on the ground? The forest itself was beautiful. but it did really feel like they just shoved a load of London trademarks in the middle, the odd traffic light/telephone box etc. I don’t know but it didn’t really feel like they were in the middle of London. Oh and this isn’t major, just me being picky, but the scene at the start where Maebh and the Doctor are walking on the upstairs bit of the TARDIS? worst..camera..holding…ever. I’ve seen shaky cameras before but christ, that was poor.
Anyway, the ‘plot’ to this episode was that a forest which transpires to be flameproof, appears overnight much to the surprise of the world. Mr Pink and Miss Oswald have taken the ‘Coal Hill Gifted and Talented’ group off on an overnight trip to the Zoological Museum, but somehow do not pick up on the fact one of their kids is missing, some major fundamental teaching flaws on their part there. After some wasted opportunities with some animals, and an almost attack by a tiger, Clara and 12 find Maebh. Much adventure and frivolity ensues and turns out that the forest is actually there to protect Earth from an imminent solar flare. That is pretty much it.
Of course, there are some bits in-between, one bit of interest is towards the end where Clara, thinking the world was about end, tells the Doctor to go away, telling him he should fly away and save himself. Clara refuses to go because she would rather die on Earth, with Danny. That was probably the only interesting scene in the episode. Clara’s attitude has been shifting a lot recently, not really taking into consideration the children’s safety, lying to Danny and comments she has made throughout the series which have made not only the Doctor question her slow change to the darker side, but us too. Considering the finale trailer shows us that Clara may well be turning very dark soon, it does make me wonder what lies ahead for her.
ITFOTN visually is up there with one of the best, plot wise, one of the weakest. I enjoyed it for the most part but it’s not going to be one I’ll watch again in a hurry.
NEXT WEEK WE ARE ONTO THE FINALE AND OH BOY THEY BETTER LIVE UP TO THIS HYPE.
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