Doctor Who Series 11 First Impressions: Episode 9 (It Takes You Away)

And now I'm mirroring you. Fuck.

NOW we're talking here. THIS is the kind of Doctor Who I go gonzo for. I mean, I love me a good emotional through-line (and the episode even has that to boot so HOLY FUCK IT'S FIRING ON ALL CYLINDERS) but I really dig Doctor Who when it's going full Bidmeadean science-magic and just getting a little goddamned weird while it's at it. I MEAN DID YOU ALL SEE THAT TALKING FROG? THEY WENT THERE! HOLY FUCK! I could end the first impressions here by just gushing about how the denouement of this episode was a sentient pocket mirror universe taking the form of a talking frog with an elderly black woman's voice holy fuck you guys they went there, but I think I'd like to get a little more in-depth. I used Bidmeadean back there, and that might not mean a lot to you. Christopher H. Bidmead was script editor for Doctor Who in 1980, and he was at the creative helm during Tom Baker's final season, Season 18. (Coming soon to Blu-Ray, fuck yes!) Season 18 had its highs and lows, as most of classic Who did, but its particular relationship to magic-as-science, the filmic and surreal, and general theories of things like evolution, probability, and entropy make it, at the least, really ambitious and just... weird. Doctor Who, if nothing else, loves the weird. Remember that time the moon turned out to be an egg? Yeah. Weird. Except general consensus is that this episode ruled, as opposed to Kill The Moon. My own opinions on moon eggs aside (I lied, here they are, it's gonzo genius), we're gonna look at It Takes You Away and see how it weaves the weird, the Bidmeadean, and the emotional into something that really stands out.



Right away, we're playing in a narrative substitution of sorts. Yeah, we all got a vibe from the few previews of this. Verdant forests, a cabin in the woods, something that looked like a monster's POV staring at Jodie Whittaker. Okay, it's Doctor Who doing a horror story. And we're in Norway. Okay, Doctor Who does The Ritual. Great connection! The Ritual had Patrick Troughton's grandson in it, so we've got a fun link to play with! That is not what the episode is doing at all. No, some kind of monster in the woods that titularly takes you away would make a lot of sense. We get a nice setup, and the character of Hanne. Doctor Who with another point of representation by including a blind girl. Okay, there's a blind girl alone in a boarded up cabin and there's monster noises outside. You think you've got a handle on this... but then the mirror happens. Oh boy. OH BOY. Longtime readers (or pals of mine) will know that I have a certain... fascination with mirror imagery/subtext/theming in Doctor Who. Shit reached its peak with the 12th Doctor and Clara, but it's been a little quiet since. This is, bar none, the most overt Doctor Who has gotten with the shit. There is a literal magic-as-science mirror that is a wormhole between dimensions, but it's actually split up so that the space between is a spooky, dimly lit cave. This is where we get what feels the most like Chibnall saying "but it's gotta have a MONSTER, Ed, put a monster in there somewheres!" because the negative space between our world and the other side of the mirror has both a spooky alien goblin guy, and... flesh-eating moths. Okay. At this point on first viewing, you still don't know where shit is going, but it works. One imagines on a rewatch that this will drag a bit, in a "GET TO THE GOOD SHIT" sense. Still, I have to commend the set design and lighting. The spooky goblin guy's lantern floats like a balloon and glows a bright red, making things feel real ambient and scary. Flesh-eating moths are also a good idea. Then we get to the other side of the mirror, and... well, it's a reflection!


Oh yeah. OH YEAH. So earlier in the episode, Ryan discovers that the monster noises are faked and it's just noises playing on a speaker to keep Hanne inside and out of trouble... while her dad goes into the mirror dimension because his wife is alive in the mirror dimension. Yeah. And then, emotional fun! Grace is in the mirror dimension, too! This leads to a lot of emotion for Graham, but my god. Why wasn't Ryan allowed to come in here? As much as I love Yaz, I would have adored to see Ryan's reaction to all of this. More to the point, I have to commend the restraint here. It would have been easy to have the Doctor see an old companion again. Give Jenna Coleman or Pearl Mackie a quick cameo on a day off or something. They didn't do that. It's remarkable. We are full-on into some Season 18 Bidmeadean shit here, with mirrors that take you between worlds and the whole concept of a parallel space and whatnot. It's all because of a sentient universe that, though it wants to, can't interact with our universe and is just really lonely... so it gives itself the form of people who the visitors have loved and lost, so it will stay with them and accept them. The explanation is a bit of an exposition dump that comes out of nowhere, sure, but it's such a neat and nifty concept that I can't be mad. All the mirroring, the portals, the weird and wild shit? It's because a sentient universe wanted friends. Things don't work out because the universes aren't compatible, but we do get the Doctor nobly "sacrificing" herself to save her friends and staying in the other world. Then she talks to the universe, who has taken the form of a talking frog with Grace's voice. This is the real deal shit. Like I said. It's so weird and wild that it's brilliant.


In case you couldn't tell, I loved this on first viewing. It's the only story this season, aside from Demons Of The Punjab, that I have no reservations with. I could gripe about how it's about manpain, how the dad needs a swift kick in the balls for abandoning his daughter and tricking her like that, but I won't. Grace should have lived, but this feels in a way like the point where Graham gets to move on from his manpain and accept that. We even get Ryan calling him Granddad, which is real sweet. Beyond that, I've said all the cool words. It's a Season 18-like, and that's something Doctor Who hasn't really gone for yet, barring something like The Tsuranga Conundrum. That's the only other time it's batted for gonzo, but this is superior. It may be the best of the year. Its only competition for me is Demons Of The Punjab, but it's really close. Embrace the gonzo, the Bidmeadean, the magic science. Just have some goddamn fun with mirrors, y'know?