Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Cast: Jodie Whittaker, Bradley Walsh, Tosin Cole, Mandip Gill, Ian Gelder, Clare-Hope Ashley, Aruhan Galieva, Nasreen Hussain, Buom Tihngang, Bhavnisha Parmar.
Every story needs a good villain, every tale requires and demands that one person, that extraordinarily unpleasant creature in the room who will push the fear that you feel every day to the point where it becomes overwhelming, succinct, with form, with trepidation surging through the veins; it is what keeps us alive, it is what asks us plainly to take strength from and defeat the one true foe, fear.
We may think that there is nothing in the world that makes us afraid, nothing that can cause anxiety, and yet deep down, in the layers of subconscious that surrounds us when we sleep, that fear is there, the nightmare written in blood, the vision in the darkness closing in around you. Nothing scares you in the land of living; but we don’t always spend our time in the light.
Fear goes hand in hand with the way we live, have always lived, however, thankfully in a more reasoned world we are encouraged to talk about those fears, those moments when we think the world is against us, but there is always that element of doubt, that in our plea to ask Can You Hear Me?, what we be met with is silence, rejection, and the pain of the ordeal made real.
The seventh episode of the twelfth series since its renewal of Doctor Who returns once more to a subject picked up in the superb episode, Vincent and the Doctor, and whilst it arguably does not have the same style or panache that greeted the much acclaimed episode starring Matt Smith, Karen Gillan and Tony Curran, it nevertheless manages to capture some of the subtlety to which mental health today is focused upon, that we must talk if we are to eradicate the problems, the sheer darkness that affects all of us at some time or another during our short time on Earth.
Whilst Ian Calder’s unsettling performance as the alien Zellin certainly caught the eye and the idea of nightmares forming to remind us of the obstacles in our way and the need to overpower them if we want to carry in being sensational as a species as we can be; it is to the pain of our inner torment that the episode rests upon, the doubt, the look in stranger’s eyes when we are reaching out for that one person who might understand us, the fear is and can be, contagious.
A story to which continues the message delivered during Matt Smith’s time at the helm of the Tardis, not to give in, to face down the darkness as much as possible, and remember that the dawn can make nightmares fade. An episode which reintroduces the idea of higher beings to the canon, of the image of the Celestial Toymaker, and the darkness to which our hearts beat faster can only be described as fulfilling.
Ian D. Hall