New Who 12.8 The Haunting of Villa Diodati

[strange_complex]

What a pity Doctor Who wasn't broadcast in the autumn this year, as this episode would really have suited a slot around Halloween. Still, the evenings are dark and the weather dismal all the same, and it delivered an excellent dose of Gothic horror, as well as one of the more historically accurate portrayals of the Diodati weekend I have come across. Common canards like having the Shelleys a) married and b) staying in the villa with Byron and Polidori were both not merely avoided but actively deconstructed. And I liked the clever device of delivering orientational exposition in the form of gossip during a dance. Very impressive!

I mainly just want to squee over this episode really, so here is a squee list:

• The shout-out to Ada Lovelace from earlier in the series.
• Polidori challenging Ryan to a duel.
• The nightmarish circular geography of the house, and even better this all turning out to emanate from Shelley's fevered mind.
• Byron hiding behind Claire from Polidori in his scary possessed state (and Claire later calling him out for this - though sadly for her the spell never really was broken).
• Fletcher the valet's eye-rolling.
• One of the fireplaces in the villa having a copy of the Apollo Belvedere over it. (Only really because I, too, have a copy of the Apollo Belvedere over my own fireplace - but it was nicely appropriate set dressing for a house full of Romantic poets.)
• Mary managing to cut through to the remaining humanity of the half-Cyberman just for a while, but not permanently. (It would have been very hokey if that had been a permanent solution - we had enough of threats being overcome by love in the Moffat era.)
• The ghostly maid and child remaining entirely unexplained.

Dramatic tellings of this weekend are all bound to look and feel much like one another, but Gothic (1986: LJ / DW) is a particularly obvious comparator, because it likewise sets out to tell the story as a Gothic horror, rather than merely about the production of Gothic horror. I wouldn't say this story was deeply rooted in Gothic, not least because Gothic has a lot of very sexual, violent and disturbed content which wouldn't be suitable for a family show like Doctor Who. But the prominence in this episode of Byron's bone collection and the way it all culminated in a basement do seem more likely than not to have come from there. There's also the matter of 'Mary's Story' from the Eighth Doctor Big Finish collection The Company of Friends, which I listened to some years ago. I can't say I remember it in much detail now, but judging from that plot summary it's a pretty different story from this one, concerned mainly with different aspects of the Doctor himself rather than any Cyberman.

Meanwhile, this story isn't merely a standalone, but the set-up for the epic two-part struggle with the Cybermen which has been trailed as the season's finale from its beginning. I can't say I have particularly high hopes about that, having seen one too many of New Who's epic final battles over the years. But I did appreciate the Doctor's impossible moral dilemma of being asked to choose between saving not only Shelley but the future contingent upon him and saving all the people involved in that battle - and especially the companions' discomfort when she pointed out the consequences for them. I hope the final two episodes can sustain those shades of grey.

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