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OK, I have to admit, yesterday when I posted my initial reaction to Love & Monsters I was still in shock. I stand by my assessment, I really feel it was a complete clinker, worse than Doctor Who’s darkest hours – The Happiness Patrol, Delta & the Bannermen – even Paradise Towers. (Hmmm, there’s a pattern forming there, isn’t there?)

Actually, Love & Monsters would have been infinitely superior if it had been made for Sylvester McCoy – any episode that got him out of the show for 98% of the time would have been an improvement.

In any case, failure or not, that’s not a reason to just dismiss the effort without commentary.

It was a (some would say) bold attempt to break the mold and try something different. The episode follows a group of people who are first discussing and studying the Doctor and then, later, duped into hunting him down by an alien menace. Needless to say, the Doctor and Rose remain largely uninvolved, only showing up momentarily, here and there to keep the chase going.

This type of ancillary story has been done before, I can think of at least one example in Babylon 5 and I seem to recall another on Star Trek: The Next Generation. It’s not groundbreaking, but it isn’t common either.

So what makes it so bad?

First, it cannot make up its mind: Was it a romp, with the Doctor, Rose and an alien running back and forth through doors like a bad episode of Scooby Doo, Where are You? Is it a black comedy, with jokes about paving stones giving blow jobs? Is it a showcase for a 10-year old boy’s contest-winning monster design? Is it cheap filler so they could pay off the last two-parter’s budgetary excess? Was it a week off for David Tennant and Billie Piper? Was it an excuse to play some good ELO music and have a berk jump around on his sofa? Was it an incoherent mess? Was it supposed to be a video blog that relied heavily on inter-cutting clips of things that couldn’t possibly have been videotaped?

Or was it Z) All of the above?

Answer: Z

The “plot” is told non-linearly, so I’m going to “fix” it back to chronological order.

A mysterious shadow comes to earth roughly 20 years ago, it kills a woman, The Doctor (Tennant version) arrives, wipes out the shadow, and gives a brief curious look at a 3 year old boy who happens to come down the stairs upon hearing the TARDIS arrive.

The boy remembers the Doctor for the rest of his life, but forgets (A) The sound of the TARDIS and (B) the fact that was the night his mother died and the Doctor was practically standing over her body.

The boy grows up and gets shot at by Autons, flown over by the Slitheen and his windows blown out by the Sigorax (Beats me what the spelling on that one is).

He meets an annoying, yet oh so accurately portrayed Science Fiction fannish type chick and is introduced to the inner circle, a group of people studying the mysterious Doctor.

They meet weekly, and it turns out they like to eat, talk, do art projects and ultimately form a band (In any show where they form a band, it’s bad – at least in this one, when they performed, it really sounded like a bunch of tone deaf amateurs.)

Enter the alien, disguised as someone right out of Little Britain. Using data retrieved from the Torchwood Project (Go on, Russ, force feed me another bloody, bash it about my head serving of Torchwood – We GOT IT ALREADY! YOU’VE GOT A NEW SHOW. WE KNOW, WE KNOW!) Oh, and let’s throw in a Bad Wolf just to really pummel the last remnants of our brains out. (Did I ever mention that, looking back at last season, “Bad Wolf” REALLY made no sense. Go back and think about it for a while – I’ll blog it in a few days.)

Damn, lost my train of thoughts… oh yes, the alien puts these people to work hunting down the Doctor, while slowly absorbing them one by one. Their first real “sighting” leads to Elton (our hero) seeing the Doctor in the aforementioned Scooby Doo moment.

Failing that, Elton attempts to ingratiate himself on Rose’s mum, Jackie. It’s not too hard, ’cause Jackie’s “on the prowl” for a bit of boy toy her daughter’s age, and Elton just happens to fit the bill.

That all blows up when Jackie discovers that Elton’s just after her for the Doctor.

Eventually, the alien is uncovered, but not before everyone except Elton is absorbed. Just as Elton is about to die, the Doctor and Rose show up so Rose can put the boot in about him hurting her mom, never mind the menacing alien. (Who, in ANOTHER moment of Mr. Davies never being able to let go of an idea, happens to be from the twin planet of the Slitheen – one of the worst Doctor Who creatures ever devised.)

The Doctor, in a hopeless Eccleston impersonation, does nothing at all except convince the absorbed people to fight back.

The villain thus vanquished, the Doctor exits, stage left, but not before managing to revive the living face of the last absorbed victim – who just happens to be Elton’s girlfriend. The face is part of a paving stone, which Elton takes home and is apparently having a satisfying relationship with.

The episode doesn’t end before they lay on the foreshadowing with a shovel for a bad ending for Rose.

So, was there anything positive: Yes.

The performances were pretty good. The character of Jackie got a nice, beefy part and turned in a credible performance. I’m sure it was quite economical. And, in a weird way, if this had been an episode of, say, Torchwood, or as a one-shot spin-off, like K9 and Company, it would be much better but as a mainstream episode of the series, it fails. I’m not a believer in breaking something just to see what the two pieces look like and can you call them “art?”

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Love & Monsters, by Russell T. Davies

Davis Tennant and Billie Piper must have needed a couple weeks off from filming. The result, the worst Doctor Who episode ever made, including all of the Sylvester McCoy years.

At least it had ELO music in it.

[6/18/2006 – Follow-up. Now that my stomach has emptied, I’ve posted further on this episode.]

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