Frank Cottrell Boyce gives Doctor Who the fairytale treatment with his first script for the series.

I wasn’t sure what to think when sitting down to watch In the Forest of the Night. The premise was intriguing, and judging from the next time trailer at the end of Flatline, it had a distinct fairytale vibe. However, as I watched, I couldn’t help being very strongly reminded of Kill the Moon – so much so that at times I forgot what episode I was watching. To be reminded vividly of another episode is rarely a good thing, but if said episode is Kill the Moon, then it most certainly is not.

In the Forest of the Night sees Clara and Danny and their class of students from Coal Hill School awaken from an overnight stay London’s National Museum to find that the whole planet has been covered by trees. Along with the Doctor, they will have to find the cause of the rapid expanse of vegetation while keeping the students under control.

One of the reasons I say that this episode reminded me of Kill the Moon was because it all felt extremely inconsequential. The protagonists show up, investigate what’s happening, something happens, and everyone goes home. The presence of the Doctor changes absolutely nothing. There are no stakes, and no consequences – a fact further reinforced by the extremely convenient disappearance of all the trees at the end. It’s the ‘new moon/egg’ all over again, a deus ex machina ending that only exists because the whole planet can’t be covered in trees for the rest of Doctor Who’s history. I think that it would have been better for the story as a whole if it had been set on some other planet that humans had colonised. That way, the trees could remain at the end, and no one would really care. But that didn’t happen, and as a result, I would say that In the Forest of the Night is simply too ambitious for its own good. Its very nature means that it can’t have any lasting consequences – something that the Doctor points out (in a way) at the end. Humanity will forget the trees, if only because narrative convenience demands it. The damage caused by the trees will be repaired, footage recorded of the event will be inexplicably ignored, and we’ll never hear about it again. That’s why I don’t particularly like large scale invasions on modern day Earth – they can only really have consequences that affect the main cast directly, but never the planet as a whole.

But the large scale impact of the trees (or rather, lack of) isn’t the only problem I have with them. Their mere presence raises a lot of questions that I’m sure weren’t intended. For instance, if the trees exist to protect the planet from a solar discharge of some sort (it’s not a solar flare, despite what the planet says), then why didn’t they do this exact same thing in the late 30th century, in which solar events were so fierce that humanity had to completely abandon Earth for thousands of years, leading to episodes like The Beast Below and The Ark In Space? I know that continuity and Doctor Who don’t go well together at all, but some narrative consistency, especially on this scale, would be really nice. Also, as an aside, it seems a bit stupid that after burning down the trees fails, governments resort to using chemicals to kill them. Why not get a good old fashioned axe or chainsaw and chop them down manually? Of course, there’s no guarantee that this would work either, but I think it strange that no one seemingly thought of this.

Unfortunately, the problems I have with In the Forest of the Night don’t end there – there are three specific scenes that were more irrelevant than most of the episode, scenes that didn’t impact on the story or plot at all. The first of these is the wolf and tiger attacks, which were obviously added purely for an ‘action scene’ and a shot for the next time trailer at the end of Flatline. Also, shining a light in a tiger’s eyes is not going to make it go away – and you definitely don’t do so from a couple of metres away. Secondly, the broadcast plea from the children not to hurt the trees just felt out of place, and I’ve no idea how it remained in the final version of the script, seeing as it was completely forgotten about the moment it was over. Not that it mattered anyway, since no major organisation is going to heed the words of a child asking them nicely not to hurt the trees. At best, they’d think it’s a ploy by some more extreme environmentalist groups to guilt trip them into making a decision. And finally, the appearance of the main girl’s sister at the end was Maid Marion from Robot of Sherwood all over again – completely unneeded and honestly, quite baffling. Why did we need her at the end; just to have a happy ending?

But while the central focus and other aspects of the episode fall flat, the characters shine. For the first time in a while, the child actors are actually pretty good – something that came as a huge relief, since they are, in many ways, the driving force of the episode. Their interactions with Peter Capaldi’s Doctor are fabulous, and are probably the most entertaining part of the episode. That being said though, I do wish that the children’s reaction to the TARDIS had been a bit more exciting. A soft ‘wow’ of amazement would have been much better than the apathetic shrugging of shoulders that we got.

The relationship between Clara and Danny was slightly improved this episode as well, though that probably has something to do with the fact that Clara wasn’t lying every two seconds. I particularly like how much travelling with the Doctor has affected Clara – she continually focuses on the bigger picture, at the cost of ignoring the smaller, arguably more important things. Danny is a counter to this, and the dynamic really worked, especially towards the end when he expresses no desire to travel with the Doctor, saying that he appreciates things on Earth just fine. It’s not something that Doctor Who has really explicitly explored before, so I’m glad it got mentioned, even if only for a minute.

In conclusion, In the Forest of the Night is, much like Kill the Moon, a disappointment, squandering basically everything it has going for it. There’s not much to enjoy here at all, with all but the characters and their interactions falling flat.

4.5/10