Tag: Frank Cottrell Boyce

Doctor Who: Season 10, Episode 2 – Smile

“They want to help you. Killing you is just a side effect.”

(SPOILER ALERT!)

A couple of years ago, acclaimed writer Frank Cottrell Boyce penned his first script for Doctor Who, In the Forest of the Night.

I didn’t like it.

Not because it wasn’t interesting, or imaginative; it was both. But what it wasn’t was a Doctor Who story. As a deconstruction of classic fairy tales, it would have stood a far better chance as a story unencumbered by the rules of the Doctor Who universe (such as they are), and the stranglehold of the Doctor/Clara/Danny angst fest that dominated that season. Continue reading “Doctor Who: Season 10, Episode 2 – Smile”

Doctor Who: Series 8, Episode 10 – In the Forest of the Night

“The forest was in all the stories that kept you awake at night. The forest is mankind’s nightmare.”

Forest_Poster

(SPOILER WARNING!)

“A long time ago, when we all lived in the forest and no-one lived anywhere else…”
Much has been made of Doctor Who’s tendency, under the aegis of Steven Moffat, to veer explicitly into fairytale territory. Stories like The Doctor, the Widow and the Wardrobe (also largely set in a forest), overtly recall the sometimes darkly magical tales we’re all told as children. However, In the Forest of the Night is an interesting attempt to not only evoke a traditional fairytale forest, but to analyse and explain the archetype and its place in folklore.

Continue reading “Doctor Who: Series 8, Episode 10 – In the Forest of the Night”