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BBC Night Terrors |
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| Story No. | 241 | 
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| Production Code | 2.3 | |
| Dates | September 3, 2011 |
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With Matt Smith,
Karen Gillan, Arthur Darvill
Written by Mark Gatiss Directed by Richard Clark Executive Producers: Steven Moffat, Piers Wenger, Beth Willis. |
| Synopsis: A little boy has pantophobia: fear of everything. |
Underwhelming Night Terrors by Gavin Smith 6/12/11
I got a real lampooning from my friends when I said I didn't like this one. To them, the dolls were among the most terrifying of the show's monsters; to me, they were a wasted opportunity. The Doctor is off-form in this episode too. He could have gotten down to business far sooner than he did, but instead he pandered around until his quirkiness became a stale and unconvincing novelty. Don't get me wrong, I think Matt Smith is excellent, but in this episode he comes dangerously close to Tennant in series 4.
Every problem I have stems from the writing of Mark Gatiss. His storylines are simple and easy to predict; I saw which way this one was going well before it was halfway through. In this story, Gatiss spends the first three quarters of the episode building suspense and tension. Moffat does this, Gaiman also. The difference? Moffat and Gaiman had well-developed ideas for the suspense to lead into. Don't get me wrong, the suspense is wonderful, the design of the monsters is good, but the plot and script are not sophisticated enough to make use of these resources.
The Doctor kept his eccentricity up ten minutes too long while the father character was unconvincingly patient with him (actually, the father was fairly unconvincing all round).
With The Doctor's Wife and The Girl in the Fireplace, it felt like the writers had brainstormed their ideas; written the scripts; subjected the scripts to extensive scrutiny and constructive criticism; and then re-written them. It does not feel like Gatiss scrutinised this story, like The Idiot's Lantern and Victory of the Daleks, it is painfully linear. If he had written The Girl in the Fireplace, this is how it would have turned out.
To summarise, the Gatiss story, as always, is style over substance. Far too much time building the suspense, precious little time developing the plot. Watching this story, I was reminded of a band I saw live; they came on stage half an hour late, gave a brief and unconvincing performance and left the audience feeling underwhelmed. Would I go to see them again? No. Would I re-watch Night Terrors? I don't think so.