In the Forest of the Night

Dear Gary—

Tyger Tyger, burning bright . . . .

Unfortunately neither immortal hand nor eye is framing this fearful symmetry; there is only Steven Moffat guiding the season to conform to whatever master scheme he has in mind for the Doctor and the show. In the Forest of the Night suffers accordingly.

I am getting sick of complaining about this, but the adventure is yet again constrained to Earth when the story would have been so much better served if set on another planet.

“The forest is mankind’s nightmare,” the Doctor says of the overgrowth that has sprung up planet-wide overnight. He concludes the episode with, “You remembered the fear and you put it into fairy stories.”  And so I have come to realize that New Who is no longer science fiction or anything resembling it. New Who is nothing but a fairy tale for stunted adults.

Mind you, In the Forest of the Night is beautifully realized as a fairy tale. The sets, the direction, the focus—it all encompasses that childlike fear and awe and acceptance of the scary and weird and magical. The problem with it, or my problem with it, is that it doesn’t want to be perceived as a fairy tale. It wants us to look upon this as sophisticated storytelling exposing the grain of reality that spawns the fairy tales.

But there isn’t a grain of truth in the episode. It is all fairy tale and therefore I cannot accept that any of it really happened to the Doctor or Clara or Poor Danny Pink. It is a dream or a story concocted in their minds and nothing else.

This is Kill the Moon all over again, only not to such enraging effect.

To start, in what world, other than Who’s fantasy, would a math teacher and an English teacher take a group of unremarkable and underachieving school kids on an overnight to a history museum; much less a math teacher and an English teacher who are rumored to be an item? But that is only the start; a manipulative and unimaginative start. They needed to strand Clara, Poor Danny Pink, and a bunch of kids somewhere and a museum seemed a cool location, never mind that none of the action is going to take place there. It is random and calculated at the same time with no thought other than to make an impression on the audience. Given the presence of some wolves and a tiger, a zoo would have been a better fit; but then no attempt is made to give any logic or coherence to the proceedings. This is a fairy tale after all.

Our group finds themselves in the middle of London yet there are no Londoners about. No panicked citizens wondering what has happened to their fair city; no tourists armed with cameras to capture this strange new world; no emergency personnel attempting to keep order (other than the isolated band of flame throwers who pop up at an opportune moment); no scientists eager to study the overnight growth; no fanatics out to celebrate the miracle; no stranded travelers wending their way home; no curiosity seekers out to explore; no drunks stumbling about in awed stupor; not one single person who isn’t relevant to the plot (another Who skimping on the extras budget no doubt). No cars to speak of either. I guess the forest grew up at some magic witching hour when not a soul or vehicle was present to witness. In the heart of London.

This alone tells me that the action as presented cannot possibly be happening for real to the Doctor et al and can only be a dream or a vision. (I reiterate that simply setting the story on another planet would alleviate this, but then the author would be hard pressed to justify the presence of Poor Danny Pink and the kiddies, and so the story suffers as a result.)

Also suffering—the kids. Clara and Poor Danny Pink prove to be terrible teachers and indifferent chaperons. Through flashback we learn Clara is too absorbed to pay attention to the bullying going on under her nose and Poor Danny Pink is unable to relate simple mathematical concepts to his students. Neither of them notice that one of their charges (Maebh) is missing, and when the fact is pointed out to them neither seems to care much beyond their initial shock nor do they make any immediate or concerted effort to retrieve her. Ruby is labeled unimaginative and unteachable by her teachers, yet she consistently demonstrates her creativity and intelligence throughout the episode. Clara lumps all of these young, impressionable minds together as “furious, fearful, tongue-tied,” stating, “They’re all superpowers if you use them properly.” So how does she handle this group of potential superpowers? She tells them they are “gifted and talented” even though she doesn’t really believe this. “I just tell them that to make them feel good,” she explains. She makes no attempt to get to know or understand these kids and certainly does them no favors with the “feel good” line she medicates them with.

But it is all well-meaning and pleasant and laid back so I can’t get too worked up about it; on the other hand, I can’t get too worked up about it. It is a mildly enjoyable fairy story, nothing more. The Doctor is spinning this yarn for Clara as they sit in the TARDIS. Perhaps they are inventing it together as they sip some tea. (Thus the competing ‘have I got something to show you’ exchange they have on the phone.) They naturally set the action on Earth and Clara naturally wants to insert Poor Danny Pink. She probably picks the museum setting as something vaguely romantic. The fabrication grows from there with each contributing to the fable.

How else can you explain Poor Danny Pink fending off a ferocious tiger with a flashlight?

Clara expects gingerbread cottages and cannibal witches to emerge at any second from this conjured nightmare. Instead we get Maebh running willy nilly through the forest while waving imaginary figments away from her head and leaving bread crumbs in the form of school supplies for the Doctor and Clara to follow. No real attempt is made to explain why Maebh is the key to the plot other than references to medication and loss and listening and hoping. You’d think the woods would be full of such key figures, what with the flimsy criteria. She’s not much of a key actually; more of a distraction. Why is she running? Why are the lightening bugs chasing her? Then we have the mysterious Missy spying in. Is she whispering to Maebh? Was she the one to tell Maebh to find the Doctor? Is she masterminding any of this? Or is she merely a silent witness? All of these are questions that the Doctor and Clara leave unanswered as they weave their fabric of fiction.

Somehow Maebh is able to predict the solar flare when the Doctor, the TARDIS, all of Earth’s scientists, and every piece of technical equipment on the planet has failed to do so. And it is only by happenstance that the Doctor sees her prophetic drawings (due to Clara’s negligence in leaving her pupil’s homework on the TARDIS without realizing). The pesky fireflies Maebh constantly bats away never tell her to scream her warnings from the rooftops. The random “thoughts” that come to her she draws or mentions off-handedly with no sense of urgency.

The solar flare and the forest have nothing to do with Maebh. She is merely an adorable means by which the Doctor can piece together what is happening, even though none of it makes sense.

This is where the make-believe really ramps up. The lightening bugs conjured the forest to counter the solar flare. The children send a message to Earth to leave the trees alone, which naturally everyone heeds, and the trees magically absorb the solar flare and then disappear; their work being done. And of course the entire human race will wake up the next day with no memory of what has occurred. Mind you, I’m not sure how they are going to explain away all of the newscasts that had covered the story, or the millions of pictures that were surely taken of the forest, or the toppled statues littering numerous parks across the planet, or the multitude of cracked and mangled pavement, or the many shaken foundations that surely have been left behind in the forest’s wake, or the wolves and tigers that are suddenly loose and terrorizing cities. But oh well; all’s well that ends well.

What better way to end happily ever after than to have Maebh’s long lost sister suddenly appear? I’m not sure if she has been hiding in that bush all along or if it grew up around her overnight to trap her in its branches or if she was transformed into a bush or if the bush transported her home or some other equally outlandish explanation. Who cares as long as we have our happy ending to our pleasant little fairy tale?

Set on an alien world I could have more readily accepted it. As it is, it is simply a story made up to work in the Poor Danny Pink/Clara/Doctor dynamic with shades of Missy, all leading to the inevitable finale. And so we get Poor Danny Pink catching Clara in more lies concerning her life with the Doctor (and being OK with it because after all Clara has her hand in making this up); and we get Clara choosing to die with Poor Danny Pink rather than choosing to be the last of her kind; and we get the Doctor claiming, “This is my world too. I walk your earth; I breathe your air.” It is these doses of ‘reality’ that drag the story down and ironically don’t really ring true.

Case in point: the children. Clara lures the Doctor back to the TARDIS by reasoning that he can save the children at least (as well as Clara and Poor Danny Pink) from the devastation to come. Once they arrive, however, she abruptly decides that the kids would rather die with their families than live. I don’t recall her ever asking them their opinion, and I never see any evidence that this would be true. Not a one of them ever calls their families during this extraordinary day, nor do their families call them. Not even Maebh’s mother thinks to call her daughter to ask where she is or if she is all right. She’d rather bumble along on her bike with no clue where to even begin looking for her daughter. (No wonder she can’t find Annabel in that bush right on her own doorstep.) Only belatedly, when the script spells it out for them, do the kids start pining for Mom. This segment is some clumsy attempt to reveal  some message about life or love or family or something—some message that the show wants to get across before the end of the season—but it isn’t done with much thought or heart.

The Doctor asks, “What use is clever against trees?” It turns out it is the clever workings of the Doctor and Clara that both creates and disposes of the trees in this fancy of theirs. It is amusing and entertaining and fun. In no way, however, is it an adventure that the Doctor and Clara ever actually experienced and the messages the show tries to tie in are annoying and unclear.

But oh Gary, I think I’d rather spend more time in this frothy fairyland than venture forth into the nightmare that is looming . . .