Doctor Who - Forest of the Night
Well, my Doctor Who was a bit pixelated on my current two-bar-one-bar-two-bar wireless connection, but it didn't stutter, and it did play, which is so much better still than the Cambs. connection!
Forest of the Night was... a bit of an odd one? A frustrating one? One that was supposed to make us think (remind us!) that Clara is just completely unbelievable as a teacher? All that out-loud guff about kids being frightened and traumatised and oh-no-you-can't-do-that just doesn't ring true, I'm afraid - and actually Danny doesn't as a teacher either, for similar reasons. If you say that sort of thing, then you don't walk a line of kids somewhere dangerous with both teachers at the front so that they can all vanish behind you! It may not be a clue to Clara's un-reality really, but if not then it's like the National Curriculum, they really should have asked some teachers (well, and then paid attention to what they said... *g*)! I've got to say, the kids did not look like Year 8 students either - they barely looked like Year 7! I mean I know policeman look younger the old you get, and the same's probably true of high school students (although at one point there's a timey-wimey switch and they look older than they should... *g*) but they just really didn't look right. And no matter how "gifted" and different they were supposed to be, there would have been alot more screaming and swearing and not-doing-as-they-were-told...
I liked the idea that the trees saved the world, and had done so before, mind you - I thought that was kind of neat. I like the idea that there's something magic here on Earth too, just as there is up in space. We don't know everything about our own planet, and I like tying fairy tales and myths into that kind of thing. Although the spirit-of-the-trees looked so much like the tree-spirits from The Widow and the Wardrobe Christmas special (iirc), or even like nanogenes, that I do wish they'd tied in some connection to one of those things, but hey-ho! I could even buy the Earth completely forgetting about the whole incident afterwards, especially with the Doctor's nod towards that, cos it's pretty much a staple of DW, and it's really really not supposed to be real... *g* But...
...for the same reasons as everyone else I wasn't much convinced by the forest in London - where was everyone?! Which was a shame, because it could have been quite cool for them to be continually coming across panicking Londoners, tearing through the woods trying to find out whether the underground was still running... *g* But - again - that's something else that makes me wonder about the reality of the whole thing in general. Clara was never real in the first place - until she sort of was, and then she was pretty unreal in many ways. And we know Missy is watching everything, and up to something... so... maybe it wasn't actually real? Okay, that might just be me hoping that there's something to explain the clunkiness of things like the entire missing population of London, and the way that I'm not especially keen on Clara, but... we saw a flash of Osgood (Kate Stewart's daughter in Day of the Doctor) in next week's trailer, who grumbled about her "perfect sister" back then - I wonder if that might tie in. Some sort of split personality? And we know there's something odd about Danny's ex-soldierness. So maybe it's all going to pull together so that we can go oh of course! and look forward to this year's Christmas special. *g* Well, I can be hopeful if I want to be... *g*
Because it's mostly the unbelievability of characters that I have a problem with in this series - Clara and Danny as teachers, the various kids from Coal Hill, the lad from the bank heist ep, and so on. They either don't react to things as you'd expect from a real person (even granted an element of being-more-brave-cos-that's-why-they're-involved-to-start-with), or else we're missing just enough of their background that things which might ring true and be evidence of something just aren't explained (even briefly) clearly enough. So maybe we're going to wake up and it'll all be the Doctor's dream - because he's the only character who has seemed like a real - if somewhat confused, although that fits with what he's been through recently - person!