It Takes you Away

[purplecat]

It Takes you Away starts well, looking as good as series 11 often does, and with a set-up that's both novel and atmospheric. Then it all sort of falls apart a bit.

I don't object to the sudden turn to the left, while it would have been fun to have a monster story set in the Norwegian forest, the idea that actually its not that at all, and the reveal that the monster is entirely made up by Erik is both clever and, in an entirely different way, equally horrific.

I didn't particularly mind the frog on the chair, that's a gloriously bonkers Doctor Who kind of concept. I did think the frog on the chair was rather poorly done though. It looked like a fake frog on a chair which may, just, have been deliberate but I suspect was lack of budget. However this was one of those moments when I think the dialogue let the show down. I could not tell whether the Doctor was genuine about wanting to stay with the frog (the performance suggested she was, but she didn't really seem to have been there long enough for that to be earned) or whether the Doctor was bluffing the whole time and looking for a way out (which doesn't really seem in character for the thirteenth Doctor). In the end I just couldn't quite believe in that scene and undermined the whole frog on a chair concept.

I did think the antizone was kind of pointless. The flesh-eating moths seemed, in the end, to be a lot less dangerous than their publicity suggested. Certainly Ryan and Hanne didn't seem to have much trouble with them, and all the stuff about the Doctor needing a thread to find her way conveniently went away at the end. It was obviously there to inject some actual peril into the episode but it felt like the modern series equivalent of running down corridors.

All the stuff with Graham was great (arguably one of the problems with series 11 is that all the stuff with Graham is great) from his sandwich (the sandwich was the best bit, to be honest), to his interactions with "Grace", to Ryan finally calling him grandad (we all knew it was coming, but it was nice that the show got there). However almost everything else I could have quite happily lived without.

I know a lot of people liked the story, but frankly I thought it the weakest of series 11.

Comments

[nostalgia]

I liked how low-key the grandad moment was. I had been expecting tearful deathbed confessions or something, but this was really nice.

[purplecat]

That's true, they've avoided being too over-melodramatic about it all.

[sir_guinglain]

I loved the frog and I enjoyed this episode, but there were gaps and signs of severe problems - an entire monster being edited out, for example - and I suspect this suffered from being made second and then sitting on the shelf for so long while other episodes made later and perhaps benefiting from more development went out first.

[purplecat]

I didn't know a monster had been edited out. Was it in the antizone? or the Norwegian forest? The antizone would have made more sense. As someone pointed out somewhere (probably the Ood Cast) it also felt like Hanne's blindness was probably intended to turn out to be useful in the darkness of the antizone but somehow that never happened.

[bunn]

It was such a weird episode! It felt like there had been a plot but somehow it had got put through the washing machine in someone's pocket and then reassembled.

[purplecat]

Yes! There were three distinct bits which all had promise but didn't seem to make much sense together.

[daniel-saunders.livejournal.com]

I liked this, actually. It might have been second only to Rosa for me, but I'm a bit worried that it won't stand up well to repeated viewing.

[purplecat]

It just felt really disjointed to me - though, now I've paused for thought, I think I maybe did like it better than The Ghost Monument