Fear Her
by Matthew Graham
I had wondered how they ever managed to afford the obviously hyper-expensive Impossible Planet/Satan Pit episodes (especially after spending all the money on the horse in The Girl in the Fireplace) and this episode helps answer that question: This and the previous Love & Monsters were two cheapo episodes.
That’s not necessarily a bad thing, at least not in the case of Fear Her.
The Doctor and Rose arrive in the near future to see the opening of the London Olympic games, but they arrive just one week after an alien arrives and possesses a young girl living on an ordinary street.
The alien gives her the power to capture people into some form of limbo by drawing them. As a negative side effect, it also allows her to create living things from drawings – the monsters in her dreams.
Ultimately the Doctor and the TARDIS are drawn into the other world and Rose is left to save the day. Fitting, I suppose that she gets one last chance to shine as a companion before “the end” of her time aboard the TARDIS.
It was a lightweight episode, but the pacing and acting were good. My main complaints dealt with the fact that although the Doctor got to talk and reason with the alien, he never bothered to offer to help it back to its family and the terribly corny ending where the Doctor must carry the Olympic Torch to the stadium and light the flame. (Was the torch made of wood? Did that constitute this episode’s Torchwood reference?)
My favorite moment in the episode was where the Doctor finally gives a bit of legitimacy to his relationship with his very first companion, Susan, who always called him “grandfather.” In an offhand comment to Rose (that really throws her for a loop) he states, “I was a father, once.” Once again, Rose realizes how little she really knows or understands about the Doctor.
The very end of the episode is also a little heavy-handed, with the Doctor “sensing” that a storm is coming, foreshadowing the Cybermen/Dalek war in the next episode.
I’m always amused by how writers have to try to work around things. In this episode, set at the beginning of the summer Olympic Games, the air outside on location is clearly very cold and everyone’s breath is obvious. When they arrives, the Doctor points out something is making it cold, and it later revealed to be the alien’s pod absorbing the heat; however, after the alien has gone home, everybody still appears to be freezing on that summer night.
The trailer for the next episode was significant enough to give it an entry of its own.
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