Doctor Who Series 10 First Impressions: Episode 4 (Knock Knock)

(Doctor Who review. New episode. Spoilers. You get it.)

Ehh.

"And THIS is a selfie with me, David Bowie, and a Krarg."

Oh, alright, you get more than that. This is, simply put, "the spooky one". As of now, that is; Series 10 could pull another "the spooky one" out of its hat in the next 8 weeks. Any savvy viewer of Doctor Who knows how the spooky one works by now. There's a spooky house and spooky things happen in it and people get killed by the spooky thing while the Doctor tries to sort it out. There are a lot of good spooky moments and good character moments that we'll get to as I write more words, but beyond that this episode is wildly mediocre. It isn't terrible, just passable. That's unfortunate considering how the previous three episodes all had some really interesting and cool shit happening in them. The Pilot had Bill intro stuff and the rules of Puddle!Heather, Smile spends the majority of its time as a two-hander and has some stuff about robots, and Thin Ice has class issues and a racist getting the shit kicked out of him, getting denied something for the first time in his privileged life, and dying a commoner's death. (I really liked Thin Ice, can you tell?) What does Knock Knock have? A stock premise with some creepy imagery and a very Doctor Who ending. That's about it, but the foundation of this haunted house isn't all that rock solid. Hell, you can hear it creaking. Let's dig into it.



Part of this episode can indeed be classified as a "Doctor Who Does X" type of story. That reading gets twisted into something quite different from its source material, but in this case the vibe I get is "Doctor Who Does Cabin In The Woods". If you have not seen Cabin In The Woods, go do that because it's a genius horror movie. If you have. then here's a refresher for Cabin In The Woods I wrote up in October. Things are a bit different, but the basic premise holds up. You have your group of college age kids going to a spooky house to do college age kids stuff. There's no booze or weed or sex 'cause this is an all-ages show but you don't really need it to pull this shit off. The house is engineered to kill college age kids in a horrible fashion, all as a required sacrifice to keep some status quo intact. This is about where that reading falls apart, as Knock Knock doesn't have anything else that Cabin In The Woods had. Namely, Cabin In The Woods has something to say about the ritualistic killing of college age kids. Knock Knock does not. It ends up just being something an old man does to keep his wooden mommy alive 'cause he can't deal with loss. God, but how close it comes at times! There's that bit where the Doctor and Harry find all the stuff from the previous college age kids in the basement, and it's all dated back every 20 years. It comes THIS CLOSE to being an invocation of something like Stephen King's It, with a creature built on a law of cycles and preying on a specific age group for some reason, but it goes nowhere with it! I'm all for ambiguity but here I just have to shake my head. It can work without it, but I think it would have worked so much better if there was a reason. My Doctor Who review pal Kat theorized that it gives the landlord enough time where the families of the college age kids aren't looking for them any more. That could work, but I still dunno. The landlord just seems like this Moffat-era supernatural creature of rules but then he just turns out to be... a guy. A desperate child at heart killing to keep mommy alive.


At least Bill and the Doctor are on point in this one. We get some nice "Bill as Doctor Who student" stuff with learning about Time Lords! What a silly name those folks in 1969 came up with, am I right? What's a regeneration? Ahh, nevermind, we're still ages away from that coming up. Also Bill unambiguously says she's into girls. Just in case you missed that subtext/text from The Pilot. Good on her. Other than that, not too much else to her beyond a good moment here or there. Talking to her mom's photograph. Finding the secret bookcase that leads to the tower (you can tell the landlord's still a child at heart because that's the most cliche secret entrance ever and only a child would actually EMPLOY IT). Her best moment is during the Doctor's monologue of figuring out the connection between the wooden mom and the landlord, when she points out the logical flaws in the Doctor's assumptions. Not really being Doctorish, more like a clever pal to him. A companion! She's learning and that's good. The Doctor gets to be a fun granddad and all the college age kids know him. From the college, I guess. His obvious hanging around at the spooky house trying to figure out the mystery gets on Bill's nerves a bit, but once shit hits the fan we get the standard Doctor Who stuff of the Doctor and companion split up while each discovers different facets of the rules of the place. It's a wonder that didn't happen in Smile until about the halfway point. The Doctor also names the spooky monster of the episode, the Dryads! Or space woodlice, or whatever. It IS really creepy to see then engulf and absorb a person as they scream... and, playing with that Cabin In The Woods theme again, after they eat up Harry the landlord mentions that the Doctor wouldn't give them enough energy because he's old. College age kids, it seems, are juuust right for Dryad absorption/keeping wooden moms alive. Oh yes, and then there's the ending with the vault. Really? Really, Moffat? It has to be Missy in there. Please GOD let me be wrong so I'm properly surprised... but who else would the Doctor be cordial with? Who else would perk up at the thought of college age kids eaten by space bugs? At least the Hybrid arc was a red herring of sorts, but we're back to this shit again? We'll have to see how interesting it gets, but right now it's just... ehh.


That, sadly, sums up my thoughts on Knock Knock. It is a perfectly passable episode of Doctor Who. That's not really enough to impress me any more, though. It's a fun and spooky 45 minutes with lots of scary imagery. Pavel half-stuck in the wall is the highlight of said spooky imagery and brings to mind fucking Love And Monsters, of all things. The first three all had some interesting new shit to bring to Doctor Who. This was just a horror runaround. While it did, to me, attempt to mash up Doctor Who with something else it could have gone way farther with it. The little niggling things it didn't explain, while not dealbreaking logic plot holes or anything like that, only would have made the experience better had they been included. Their absence is actually missed. This is the "worst" Series 10 episode so far, but thankfully "worst" in this case is more of a "least good" than an "actually terrible". Consider that last series we had fucking Before The Flood as our 4th episode. Christ. Not one of the show's stronger moments for sure, but if this is the low point of the series then thank goodness for it because it's still entertaining in some ways. Just... wow do I wish this was better.


Next time: Take a deep breath deep breath deep breath deep breath.