Danger
This has been bouncing around in the back of my head for a while and came back again today, funny enough, while I was watching some Doctor Who with my family today. I confess, I did a little griping about the last season paired with some hopes for the upcoming twelfth Doctor. I've heard that viewing numbers fell during this last round of episodes and this comes as no surprise. The writing fell abysmally flat. One could even go so far as to say they weren't Doctor Who episodes, they were guest star spotlights.
The finger could be pointed at a number of factors, but what it boils down to is that there was no real sense of danger. None.
On the surface it might seem that there was plenty at stake in any given episode (usually life, the universe and everything). I'll use a particular episode as an example.
*Here is your token spoiler alert.*
The Rings of Akhaten. It starts off promising with an impressive, Doctor Who sounding title and it features as many varied aliens as a Whovian could want, complete with some nods to older episodes. When the Doctor and Clara land on an alien asteroid, the population is in the midst of a festival preparing for a particular event. The Queen of Years is tasked with singing to a monster to keep him asleep. Of course it goes wrong and the monster wakes up, then we find that the monster we thought was the big dangerous monster isn't the real big dangerous monster. The real big dangerous monster is the huge glowing planet, which suddenly has a snarly face.
Except it isn't. Dangerous, that is. We're told it's dangerous. We're told it's threatening. It could even destroy the universe. So we're told.
Really, when it boils down to it, all that this "big dangerous monster" does is growl and snarl. After a very, very long monologue that is supposed to be a rousing battle speech, the big snarly monster is defeated by a leaf. Because this leaf had too much psychic/potential energy to digest. Seriously. We've seen better. We've seen much better.
We've even seen captive monsters scarier than this.
*Here's your real spoiler alert. If you haven't seen these episodes yet (why not?) then they're worth seeing first.*
In the two part story arc of "The Impossible Planet" and "The Satan Pit" there's also a monster that wants to destroy the universe, trapped at the heart of an asteroid. But this time we believe it. We get a taste of what it can do, even in chains.
The Doctor and companion (Rose this time) land on an asteroid orbiting a black hole, but the TARDIS is swallowed by an earthquake, cutting off the easy escape route. They are as trapped as the other people at the asteroid base. The tone is further set by mysterious writings all over the base and other hints that all is not what it seems. Over the course of the episodes, the Beast in the pit takes over one of the crewmen and the Ood (alien servants) in the base, sending one woman into vacuum, killing others through the Ood, and the asteroid is sent careening toward the Black Hole. The remaining crew make an escape using the emergency transport, but what they don't know is that the Beast is using one of their men as an escape pod of his own. How will anyone survive?
Don't you want to find out?
That's what danger does. It creates suspense. It creates that indefinable urge to find out what's next. It is the principle behind our favorite dragons, vampires, and bogey-men.
When you know everyone's going to make it out the other side in one piece, there's nothing at stake. No tension. There's nothing to worry about.
(Related, but requiring a post of its own is gratuitous deaths. Another day....)
Both episodes star giant monsters as the antagonists, both episodes threaten the fate of the universe and ultimately the lives of Doctor and companions, but one is full of tension and suspense while the other is full of wind. It isn't enough to be told that something is dangerous. We need to see it for ourselves.
The finger could be pointed at a number of factors, but what it boils down to is that there was no real sense of danger. None.
On the surface it might seem that there was plenty at stake in any given episode (usually life, the universe and everything). I'll use a particular episode as an example.
*Here is your token spoiler alert.*
The Rings of Akhaten. It starts off promising with an impressive, Doctor Who sounding title and it features as many varied aliens as a Whovian could want, complete with some nods to older episodes. When the Doctor and Clara land on an alien asteroid, the population is in the midst of a festival preparing for a particular event. The Queen of Years is tasked with singing to a monster to keep him asleep. Of course it goes wrong and the monster wakes up, then we find that the monster we thought was the big dangerous monster isn't the real big dangerous monster. The real big dangerous monster is the huge glowing planet, which suddenly has a snarly face.
Except it isn't. Dangerous, that is. We're told it's dangerous. We're told it's threatening. It could even destroy the universe. So we're told.
Really, when it boils down to it, all that this "big dangerous monster" does is growl and snarl. After a very, very long monologue that is supposed to be a rousing battle speech, the big snarly monster is defeated by a leaf. Because this leaf had too much psychic/potential energy to digest. Seriously. We've seen better. We've seen much better.
We've even seen captive monsters scarier than this.
*Here's your real spoiler alert. If you haven't seen these episodes yet (why not?) then they're worth seeing first.*
In the two part story arc of "The Impossible Planet" and "The Satan Pit" there's also a monster that wants to destroy the universe, trapped at the heart of an asteroid. But this time we believe it. We get a taste of what it can do, even in chains.
The Doctor and companion (Rose this time) land on an asteroid orbiting a black hole, but the TARDIS is swallowed by an earthquake, cutting off the easy escape route. They are as trapped as the other people at the asteroid base. The tone is further set by mysterious writings all over the base and other hints that all is not what it seems. Over the course of the episodes, the Beast in the pit takes over one of the crewmen and the Ood (alien servants) in the base, sending one woman into vacuum, killing others through the Ood, and the asteroid is sent careening toward the Black Hole. The remaining crew make an escape using the emergency transport, but what they don't know is that the Beast is using one of their men as an escape pod of his own. How will anyone survive?
Don't you want to find out?
That's what danger does. It creates suspense. It creates that indefinable urge to find out what's next. It is the principle behind our favorite dragons, vampires, and bogey-men.
When you know everyone's going to make it out the other side in one piece, there's nothing at stake. No tension. There's nothing to worry about.
(Related, but requiring a post of its own is gratuitous deaths. Another day....)
Both episodes star giant monsters as the antagonists, both episodes threaten the fate of the universe and ultimately the lives of Doctor and companions, but one is full of tension and suspense while the other is full of wind. It isn't enough to be told that something is dangerous. We need to see it for ourselves.
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