Doctor Who S34E10: "In the Forest of the Night" (Spoilers)

[DaveJB]

Sooo... yeah. In case you thought "Kill the Moon" had too much in the way of actual action and suspense, and not enough bad science, heavy-handed moralizing and annoying kids, the creative team were kind enough to deliver this episode.

To quote Gordon Ramsay... fucking bravo!

[NecronLord]

TREEEEES! They protect you.

[jwl]

The style seemed a bit unorthodox for who, but I liked it.

[Parallax]

Terrible episode was terrible.
Child actors are rubbish. CGI seemed second rate. The return of 'last of my kind' nonsense. Heavy handed social moralising. Plot was full of holes. Abuse of science made me facepalm.

[Joun_Lord]

I did not enjoy this episode really at all. Really the only thing I actually enjoyed of the episode was the city forest "Life After People" style which was very cool to see.

The rest of the episode not so much. A pretty nonsensical plot, more soap opera antic, a whole flock of annoying children, and a "trust nature and do nothing" ending I find insufferable. This episode was alot like "Kill the Moon" in that regard but arguably worse.

There was a couple plot hole that stood out to me. First was the Doc saying humanity would just forget. I don't know if he was being literal, like a species wide collective amnesia, or it would be lost in history. The first seems unlikely especially with the prevalence of news broadcasts and people taking cell phone pics. They wouldn't just disappear into the void, there would be evidence even if people forgot. If the Doctor mentioned he erased all the phones and computers of the world relating to events of the Treeening that might be different but he didn't. The 2nd could just be him saying humanity will eventually forget, it will pass into folklore and legend and then forgotten completely in time. Less dumb but I doubt that was the intention all the same.

And even if people forgot and the Doctor all NSA on everyone and erased all electronic evidence of it, there will be physical evidence. There should be massive damage to atleast roads and buildings thanks to a metric butt-ton of trees shooting up overnight. Nelson taking a tumble and the animals being freed by the zoo fence being destroyed is evidence that the trees did damage in coming out of the ground.

Thats to say nothing of the ecological effect a bunch of trees growing and disappearing into magic pixie dust all over the planet might cause. It should damage crops at the very least and probably eff with soil nutrient levels. Plus it looked like the trees covered the oceans and even looked like a shot of the Thames covered in trees which sounds bad.

Capaldi is still an utter delight to watch and Clara while I know she should be insufferable honestly for some strange reason doesn't bother me so much. She's written pretty insufferably like many previous companions were but I just find her less annoying.

Looks like next week the Borg-ish Cybermen return.

[InsaneTD]

I thought the episode was excellent. Kids weren't particularly needed for the episode though. The CGI was better then most shows do, wasn't as good as a movies, but how many shows can drop the same kind of budget spending on CGI? And when did people start watching Who expecting hard sci-fi?

[DaveJB]

I don't expect "hard science" - hell, if they'd had the tree spirits (or whatever they were) just creating some psychic barrier around Earth to deflect the solar flare, and it was established that they needed all the extra trees to act as emitters for the barrier, I actually wouldn't have had a problem with that. But when they go around saying that the trees are gonna save Earth by pumping tons more oxygen into the atmosphere, and have the Doctor act like he's oh-so clever for realizing this, well... my scientific qualifications extend no further than the high-school exams I took when I was 16, and I could tell you why that's complete bullshit!

That said, I probably got a little overly pissed off at the episode to begin with because I actually saw the ending coming at around the 25-minute mark, and thought to myself "no, there's no way they could be doing something THAT stupid again!" On reflection, it's probably about on-par with Kill the Moon - some good visuals and decent suspense early on, but it's spoiled by the clumsy message delivery (seriously, that "why are we killing the trees?" stuff was literally on a par with the "save the whales" message in that Italian-made Titanic animated movie) and idiotic ending.

[Temjin]

This episode (along with Kill the Moon) has felt less like Doctor Who, and more like the Magic School bus.

I feel like the Clara and Danny subplot is just dragging this season down. Besides flatline (and possibly next week's episode) Clara has just been... there. Taking up screen time. I feel like this season would have been better with a new companion.

[2000AD]

A thought occurs, would the plots of this and Kill the Moon have resolved themselves on their own if The Doctor hadn't shown up?

On the Moon the spider germs would probably have killed the astronaughts before they got a chance to nuke anything and so space dragon thing would've been born anyway.
For this ep all they did was potentially delay some defoliating, but given that the trees were magically fireproof it wouldn't be a surprise if the were also anti-defoliant.

All The Doctor did in these two eps was throw a spanner in the works of something that seemed to be ticking over smoothly.

[SpottedKitty]

For a little while, I honestly thought the plot was going to veer in the direction of Maebh (she of the mysteriously vanished sister) being an actual fae of some sort. Then the sparklies appeared, and I remembered the sentient forest from the Christmas Special a few years back, "The Doctor, The Widow, And The Wardrobe". I wonder, do all healthy Whoniverse biospheres have this handy little safety feature? Was the Bank of Karabraxos destroyed because someone had got rid of the planet's sparklies?

The mega-flare at least is an established SF plot point, look up Larry Niven's "Inconstant Moon" for a classic example. I think monster flares have actually been spotted on other stars, fortunately ones much less stable than ours, so this is probably an actual "can really happen".

As for Maebh's mysteriously vanished sister just as mysteriously un-vanishing in a cloud of departing sparklies... what was going on with that? Was she one of the sparklies, or was she deliberately or accidentally taken away by them? I had a pretty good idea it was going to happen, but the way it was done... sheesh.

And next week... Heaven. Plus, apparently, cybermen.

[2000AD]

F
As for Maebh's mysteriously vanished sister just as mysteriously un-vanishing in a cloud of departing sparklies... what was going on with that? Was she one of the sparklies, or was she deliberately or accidentally taken away by them? I had a pretty good idea it was going to happen, but the way it was done... sheesh.

She was hiding in a bush that the sparkles dissappeared like the rest of the new trees. Presumably she heard the message that was broadcast around the world that ended with asking her to come home.

[Eternal_Freedom]

That was....dubious. The plot was silly, the ending absurd, the kids downright annoying. However, Capaldi's acting and the CGI were enough to pull it up to a 3.

Seriously though...the trees create a giant airbag....of oxygen, which even one of the bloody kids pointed out is a bad idea...but where does that oxygen come from? Presumably photosynthesis, but there simpler isn't enough CO2 in the atmosphere to drastically increase the oxygen level. And for that matter, with all that extra oxygen, why didn't everything burn like crazy? All that chaos should have produced at least one spark or fire, and with super-duper-bonus-oxygen we should all be toast.

[Batman]

I actually liked the first half of the episode. Yes, a forest springing up overnight is a physical impossibility, but so's half the stuff that happens in Who anyway, and the Doctor's mentioning of time manipulation would've sufficed as a working in-universe explanation. I'd have expected to find a lot more London in London-you know, cars, buildings, streets, people, but I'm not all that familiar with London, maybe they landed in a park or something.
The girl 'being tuned to another channel' idea was basic Who too, and Clara's 'invasion' idea made (from the information she had available at the time) some sense.
Then they turned the 'stupid' dial to 11.
'Trees control the oxygen on this planet. They withhold the oxygen, they smother the fire.' Which is why the flamethrowers didn't work at all, the tree totally didn't burn, and all the humans died from oxygen deprivation. Oh wait. None of that happened. The flamethrowers didthrow flame , the tree did burn, it just didn't take any visible damage, and nobody suffocated (at least not onscreen).
'Everything is subject to gravity. If I create a local increase...' Because we all know what happens when gravity increases-formerly invisible entities become visible, they totally don't just fall to the ground (or have to spend more energy to stay aloft, which actually might have worked as an explanation as to why they started to glow...if anybody had ever mentioned anything in this direction).
'That's the metabolism of the universe.' 'No wonder they're calling down fire from the heavens'. Yup. That solar flare is totally not killing all the trees along with the rest of the biosphere.
And all of that is before we delve into the stupidity of the megaforest saving Earth from destruction-somehow-by dumping tons of oxygen in the atmosphere (that they get from Valen alone knows where), while at the same time not completely ruining our entire infrastructure by growing essentially everywhere, though they may have put some thought into that-by the time of the 'blah blah Cobra team' announcement the water distribution system was apparently assumed to be intact, and neither the electrical grid nor the cellphone network seemed to be affected throughout the episode.

Did I mention too much oxygen is actuallytoxic? I really hope the trees managed to time that massive oxygen increase (that's curiously absent throughout most of the episode) really well, otherwise they'd have saved Earth from burning for 7 billion corpses.

As for sister-why the hell would she be hiding in that bush?

[SpottedKitty]

And for that matter, with all that extra oxygen, why didn't everything burn like crazy? All that chaos should have produced at least one spark or fire, and with super-duper-bonus-oxygen we should all be toast.

A good point — the atmosphere has changed quite a lot over time, in particular oxygen levels rose from just a few % about a billion years ago to possibly over 30% a couple of hundred million years ago. (This was one of the things that allowed insects like dragonflies and millipedes to become approximately ohmygoditshuge.) A few more percentage points and the forests would have spontaneously combusted at the first lightning strike.

[Temjin]

As for sister-why the hell would she be hiding in that bush?

Honestly, that whole subplot could have been edited out and nothing would change. It's like they were only a few minutes short of time, so that's the only thing they could think of to shoe-horn in.

[InsaneTD]

I'll agree with the oxygen, with that much oxygen in the air, even the dirt would catch fire and burn. The trees being emitters for the spirit's psychic powers would of made more sense, or even the trees being super tall and acting like ablative armour.

[DaveJB]

The sad thing is, Futurama of all shows depicted the scenario more realistically in one of their "What If? machine" episodes, when the main characters accidentally cause mutant trees to grow all over the planet, which makes the atmosphere super-rich in oxygen, and in turn results in Bender accidentally destroying the world by lighting a cigar.

[darth_timon]

It was a 'meh' episode to me, not exactly overflowing with interesting plot details or character moments. Next week's episode looks to promise at least a bit more action.

[jwl]

A thought occurs, would the plots of this and Kill the Moon have resolved themselves on their own if The Doctor hadn't shown up?

On the Moon the spider germs would probably have killed the astronaughts before they got a chance to nuke anything and so space dragon thing would've been born anyway.
For this ep all they did was potentially delay some defoliating, but given that the trees were magically fireproof it wouldn't be a surprise if the were also anti-defoliant.

All The Doctor did in these two eps was throw a spanner in the works of something that seemed to be ticking over smoothly.

If all the astronauts all died the world may well have just panicked and destroyed the moon with ICBMs. In this scenario they thought that the situation was under control throughout.

[Eternal_Freedom]

And another thing, based ont he title being "In the Forest of the Night" that the episode would be set, you know, at night. Because that would have made the whole thing a lot creepier.

I'll second what Batman said. Where the fuck were all the people? London isn't a city where everyone goes to sleep at the same time, surely someone would have noticed these trees sprouting and growing really quick? The bus, train and taxi drivers, the late-night bar staff, the shift workers, the police, the staff in hospitals, the sodding stockbrokers who work silly hours to be in sync with Hong Kong. But we see only two people wandering around, the girl's mum and her neighbor, who just stands there and does fuck all. Where are all the other 7 million odd people?

[DaveJB]

They say that London's a 24-hour city, but from personal experience the central areas are surprisingly quiet until around 7:30-8AM, and it was implied that the kids and teachers had gotten up early to get back to Coal Hill School in time for the normal school day. I could also imagine that people would stay indoors to keep from getting lost in the newly-grown forest. But yeah, it could have been established a little better in the episode itself.

[2000AD]

A thought occurs, would the plots of this and Kill the Moon have resolved themselves on their own if The Doctor hadn't shown up?

On the Moon the spider germs would probably have killed the astronaughts before they got a chance to nuke anything and so space dragon thing would've been born anyway.
For this ep all they did was potentially delay some defoliating, but given that the trees were magically fireproof it wouldn't be a surprise if the were also anti-defoliant.

All The Doctor did in these two eps was throw a spanner in the works of something that seemed to be ticking over smoothly.

If all the astronauts all died the world may well have just panicked and destroyed the moon with ICBMs. In this scenario they thought that the situation was under control throughout.

Pretty sure in the episode they said they'd brought all the remaining nukes with them. Plus if they had to salvage a shuttle from a museum for the mission I doubt it's likely they've got a crap tonne of ICBMs that can reach the moon just sitting around. (How long would it take an ICBM to reach the moon anyway, would they even have enough time if they found some more nukes?)

[PREDATOR490]

0 - This whole episode and the folks behind it can go get fucked for the massive train wreck of stupid I just watched.

Magically appearing sister - They said she had been missing for a YEAR... in a fucking bush outside the house ?
Last of your species - Gallifrey is safe and waiting for the Doctor to bring them back so fuck you very much for not only ignoring that epic plot point continuity but putting two rounds in it's head for no reason so we can play more of that old song melodrama garbage.
This is my planet too ? - Wow.... just wow. This is the same season that had the Doctor bail in 'Kill the Moon'.

Science, Logic, Sanity - Yeah, this entire episode murdered them all to an extent that Kill The Moon did not manage. Well done.

Clara - Kill her already for fuck sake. The character was a pain in the ass to begin with but now that she is a 'teacher' the show is being filled with after school special stupid shit.
"Put the screwdriver away, its not a magic wand" - I'm not sure if I should be amused or depressed at this line since the fucker who wrote this is trying to be funny punching themselves in the face.


Next Week: Cybermen... and Clara.
Wishful thinking: Delete Clara
Reality: That trailer is trying really hard to imply Clara is going 'bad' which ultimately means - ANOTHER Clara focused pile of shit to watch.

[Enigma]

I'm beginning to wonder if the Promised Land Lady is actually an older version of Clara that went insane.

[Batman]

I'd accept the 'last of my species' thing as him meaning 'last of my species currently available for consultation', especially as this incarnation of the Doctor still seems to be a bit confused (well even more confused than nuWho doctors were before). The guy not only needs driving lessons for the TARDIS, he needs to be reminded that humans usually have names.