Doctor Who wanders into a horror movie, somehow gets out alive – A.V. Club

Rarely does Doctor Who embrace another genre as completely as the first 30 minutes of Knock Knock does. For the first two thirds of its running time, tonights episode is a horror movie, with all the customary trappings. Theres the spooky haunted house with the still spookier landlord. Theres a bunch of thinly sketched young people who are all possibly idiots. There are loud noises and eerie music and windows and doors shutting all by themselves. If anything, its all a bit old-fashioned, in the best possible way.

And to its credit, the script by Doctor Who newcomer Mike Bartlett doesnt take this as the umpteenth opportunity to deconstruct the genre. The Doctor and Bill are dropped into this scenario, and the Doctors presenceas well as the fact hes not some young doofus, at least not in this incarnationmeans the story unfolds a little differently than it might in a typical horror scenario, but even then he doesnt fundamentally alter the setup as he might in another story, at least not at first. Lets say you remove the Doctor from this story and make Bill the same basic person, except not a companion. Its not too hard to imagine that version of her working out enough of whats going on to confront the landlord over the houses prior occupants, much as the Doctor does.

Its around that particular scene, when the Doctor starts pleading with the landlord to let him help and Harry makes his ill-fated escape attempt, that the episode transitions from horror movie to a more typical Doctor Who story. The emphasis flips from surviving to solving the latest impossible mystery, and its here where the Doctors superior knowledge and experiencenot to mention his alien naturealters what kind of story were watching. For the first 30 minutes, the focus is on the young people in danger, with the Doctor as honorary member of that band. Following the story Knock Knock sets up to its inevitable conclusion would probably mean Bill and the Doctor escaping the malevolent threat by the skin of their teeth, the formers friends all sacrificed for the sake of building up the monster they just escaped. And sure, Doctor Who isnt above killing all its guest characters. The aptly named Fourth Doctor story The Horror Of The Fang Rock is perhaps the most brutal example of this.

But Knock Knock chooses a different direction, as the episode asks us to switch our focus to the landlord and his wooden mother. The Doctor and Bill then move from horror movie survivors to a TARDIS team trying to understand and help. Their own experiences become subordinate to their empathy. And thats not a bad thing! Its just a bit weird to watch the story undergo such a shift, especially on a first viewing. The first half-hour and the final 15 minutes of Knock Knock are independently very good, even excellent, but the lack of cohesion between them undercuts both.

That could be a bigger problem for an episode not anchored by three terrific performancesfour, if you include Mariah Gales affecting work under heavy prosthetics as Eliza. Ive already heaped plenty of praise on Peter Capaldi and Pearl Mackie, and Ill soon do so again, but lets first turn to David Suchet, who is magnificent as the landlord. Like Capaldi, Suchet elects to underplay his character, suggesting a man who is less evil than he is broken or even incomplete, which perfectly fits someone who never really left his tragic childhood. The temptation would be for the former Poirot star to sow hints of menace from the first moment, but its only when Harry asks once too often about the towerand, without knowing it, potentially puts Eliza in jeopardythat the landlord snaps, and even then only for a moment. The psychology of Suchets performance is impeccable: For much of the run, hes a little boy doing his best impression of a grown-up, then hes a little boy being cruel to those who must die to save his mother, and then all falls away as his mother realizes who she is and treats him like his son again for the first time in decades.

Still, tonights episode is only briefly about Suchets landlord. Most of the time, the focus remains squarely on Bill, and heres where we see a very different horror aspect come into play: Bill faces the exquisite embarrassment of the Doctor wanting to hang out with her and her friends. While other new series companions have had love interests and family members, very few have had friendslike Bill, Rose had a friend called Shireen, while Donna had her arch-enemy Nerysand these were generally unseen or only briefly glimpsed. Its very rare for Doctor Who to explore a companions personal life in this way, and Bartletts script repeatedly underlines just how out of place the Doctor is in this setting, with Mackie and Capaldi wringing every ounce of comedy out of the Doctors repeated intrusions.

That character work also neatly complements the horror genre excursion. After all, its a classic horror trope that the characters involved have to act like idiots for the plot to work, and Knock Knock is no exception. The problem is Bill has established shes no idiot, and nothing that happens tonight is any stranger than what she witnessed in the first three episodes. The story explains her occasional obliviousness as a character choice, an indicator of how much she wants to preserve some space of her life independent from the Doctor.

Even then, Knock Knock is careful to make Bill the bravest, most intelligent member of the group, with her volunteering to investigate the spooky noise and her working out a good chunk of whats going on here. Beyond that, some of the storytelling choices on the margins are clearly designed to ease the weirdness of placing Bill, a companion who we will see in episodes before and after that, in a narrative scenario that would normally involve the brutal murder of a bunch of her friends: first, only Shireen is someone she knew before the events of the story, and second all her housemates come back to life at the end, a necessary and wise concession given how much death affected her in Thin Ice.

Finally, a larger thought: An episode like Knock Knock underlines the difference between Bill and her predecessor in the TARDIS. In part because Clara began as a mystery instead of a character, she could never really progress beyond being the archetype of a Doctor Who companion. All her actions and motivations ultimately either traced back to her role as the Doctors companion or felt episode-specific, something not clearly rooted in a character that existed outside the TARDIS. She wasnt unique in that regard: Martha was in a similar position, and Amy and Rory rode the line with this, especially after season five. The point is the stories Doctor Who eventually figured out best suited Clara were those that spoke more universally to her role as a Doctor Who companionher addiction to adventure, growing similarity to the Doctor, and even her romance with Danny Pink were compelling because of what they said about the show and its storytelling conventions.

Bill, though, exists independently of the Doctor, even if Knock Knock portrays her failing to keep her life separate. In this respect, she fits into the best tradition of Rose and Donna, characters the show likewise took time to develop outside the TARDIS. Bills desire to find a place to live, her dealing with Pauls unwanted advances, her friendship with Shireen, even her showing her mothers photo where she ended upall these are aspects of a character that could exist and be compelling even if she had never fallen into the Doctors orbit. And that makes it all the richer when Bill makes the companions contribution to the resolution of the story, as she points out the impossibility of the landlord being old enough to be a middle-aged father in the mid-20th century and the improbability of such a father just randomly sharing a box of insects with his sick daughter. These are practical objections that may not be directly informed by any of the traits and motivations that I just mentionedthough notice how Bill also pauses when the landlord challenges the Doctor to say he would not do anything to save his own motheryet theres a sense of connectivity and coherence in Bills actions that you find in the best new series companions. Doctor Who has something special in Pearl Mackie and Bill, as her presence has elevated every episode shes appeared in. When shes accompanied by Peter Capaldi and David Suchet at the height of their powers, its easy to forgive Knock Knock a bit of narrative wonkiness.

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Doctor Who wanders into a horror movie, somehow gets out alive - A.V. Club