Doctor Who:
The Idiot’s
Lantern
By Mark
Gatiss
“I’m The Wire
and I am Hungry.”
It is 1953
and the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II is almost here. But there are some strange going ons in
Mushwell Hill, London. It appears that
people have been having their faces removed.
One moment sitting in front of the TV and the next their face gets
sucked into it. It appears that whatever
is causing it is centered on Magpies Electrical shop. It all seems to have all started after a red
bolt hit his shop.
The Doctor
and Rose arrive hoping to have landed in New York to catch The Ed Sullivan show
but with the TARDIS well it didn’t happen.
They are soon embroiled with the investigation with why people are
losing their face. Rose goes on ahead
and does some snooping around and goes to Magpies and ends up losing her face. The Doctor soon finds out that it is the TV’s
that Magpie is selling that is the cause of the problem and goes there to
confront him. The Doctor discovers that
an alien is living inside the TV’s and wants to feed on all the humans when the
tune in for the Coronation. The Doctor
must stop The Wire from doing this and save Rose in the process.
After last
series “The Unquiet Dead” I was looking forward to Mark Gatiss’s next story
“The Idiot’s Lantern” which is slang for a television set by the way. Unfortunately I was disappointed. It started off pretty well with the mystery
surrounding the faceless people and the creature inside the TV, The Wire, but
it soon turned into a lecture about housewives standing up to their
husbands. The story would have been
better and more entertaining without this side story. I was hoping for a traditional Doctor against
the monster story but what we got was a Hallmark Movie. Not ridiculing the nature of the serious
subject that happens all too much but to feature it in Doctor Who I don’t know.
Not that there isn’t anything wrong with
putting it in the story but for a family science fiction show maybe not. But high marks for them tackling a sensitive
subject.
I did like
the concept of The Wire who is an alien creature that is living inside of
television sets striking out at unsuspecting viewers. It was pretty clever to use the biggest
television eevnt of early days of television the coronation of Queen Elizabeth
II. Just imagine an alien creature that
needs to feed and will have the main course during this event. Dinner time indeed. It was a pretty cool idea to incorporate
these two events together and works out really well and I just found it to be a
really clever idea.
For once Rose
gets into trouble and really needs The Doctor to save her. She gets sucked into the TV and becomes one
of the faceless ones. It was good to see
The Doctor interact with Tommy and it gave the story a different aspect as he
worked at a fever pace to save England and Rose. What is good about David Tennants Doctor as
he works well with who ever he is paired with this time really gelling with
Tommy which works really well just as well as he did with Mrs. Moore the story
before.
The Idiot’s
Lantern is a pretty entertaining story with a strong side message that should
or shouldn’t be in it. There were some
good moments with the men in the black cars stealing people and the whole
mystery around that and Magpies TV shop.
It ties in with a historical moment and works for the most part. A story that was not bad and fun to watch and
The Wire was a pretty decent villain for The Doctor to butt heads with.
Grade B-
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