Fear Her by: Matthew Graham and directed by: Euros Lyn

 

“Fear Her” stars David Tennant as the Doctor and Billie Piper as Rose Tyler with Nina Sosanya as Trish Webber, Abisola Agbaje as Chloe Webber, and Abdul Salis as Kel.  It was written by: Matthew Graham and directed by: Euros Lyn with Simon Winstone as Script Editor, Phil Collinson as Producer, and Russell T. Davies and Julie Gardner as Executive Producers.  It was originally broadcast on Saturday 24 June 2006 on BBC One.

 

Earlier in this series of reviews, mention was made of Russell T. Davies commissioning an extra script for the second series of the revived Doctor Who as an emergency if one fell through.  The original plan for the penultimate story of the second series was an episode set in the 1920s to be penned by Stephen Fry, however, due to a premise that would require a larger budget, that episode would be postponed to the third series before being cancelled altogether.  The emergency script, pitched as a budget saver, came from Matthew Graham in a proposal of an alien planet having its beauty drained, Davies asking for rewrites to accommodate an Earth setting and a less abstract narrative.  Graham proposed setting the episode in the near future, set on a street preparing for the 2012 London Olympics with the title “Chloe Webber Destroys the Earth” followed in a second draft “You’re A Bad Girl, Chloe Webber”.  Davies disliked both of these titles and the episode entered production under the title “Fear Her”, going into production earlier than expected with the other episode set on a London street “The Idiot’s Lantern” as “The Impossible Planet” and “The Satan Pit” had to be delayed to a later production block.  Much of the episode was filmed on location due to the domestic setting which gives “Fear Her” a distinct look.  Despite being a budget saving episode, it mostly avoids having a cheap look, though the limitations of the budget hurt the episode in other ways as this isn’t an episode with a central Doctor Who style monster, the conflict attempting to be a story about the lingering trauma of familial abuse.

 

The premise of “Fear Her” is one that should work, the Doctor and Rose arrive on a London street where recently children have been disappearing and tensions are high as neighbors begin to mistrust each other and the council officials doing construction work in preparation for the passing of the Olympic Torch.  Trish Webber and her daughter Chloe, played by Nina Sosanya and Abisola Agbaje respectively, are revealed to be at the center of the disappearances, Trish being afraid of her young daughter and Chloe having gained powers to transport people and objects into her drawings.  The Doctor and Rose investigate to uncover this, the alien possessing Chloe is an Isolus which only can live and thrive in an environment of love and community, and the world uniting around the Olympics is enough energy to send it home.  While not a premise that would make one of the best episodes of Doctor Who in existence, it’s a perfectly fine idea for an episode that could at least be well remembered yet “Fear Her” is this second series’ ultimate low point, partially due to weaknesses in the scripts, partially due to weaknesses in the performances, and partially due to production issues in general making it just an unenjoyable watch.  The script itself feels in places as if it hasn’t undergone the rigorous script editing process the rest of the series would generally undergo.  It’s an episode that breaks basic rules of cause and effect, often creating effects without a cause.  The largest instance of this is that the Doctor and Rose pinpoint Chloe Webber as the cause of the disappearances because Trish is afraid of her daughter, except they don’t actually know that Chloe Webber exists.  The dialogue with the residents of the street and Trish don’t ever actually mention Chloe existing or having isolated herself.  There’s almost an attempt from director Euros Lyn to imply the Doctor and Rose may see her in her bedroom window, but it’s not shot clearly enough for this to work.  The script doesn’t actually give any indication as to where on the source of the disappearing children could be coming from, the Doctor and Rose just wander around the street for the first third of the episode, detect energy and are attacked by a scribble monster.

 

The scribble monster and the apparition of Chloe’s abusive father, because yes Chloe’s father was physically abusive, are the two instances of drawings coming to life by the power of the Isolus and they honestly feel like they are there for padding to get the episode up to time.  This is especially problematic in the case of the later, as Chloe’s motivation should be based on being a victim of physical parental abuse, and in some ways it is.  She is mentioned to be having nightmares and drawing an image of her father in the closet so it can come alive, shout at her, and lock the doors of the house once the primary thrust of the episode is over.  Instead of exploring any themes based around trauma related to physical abuse, the trauma is just window dressing for the episode to create the threat.  The Isolus picked Chloe because she is alone which feels contradictory for its motivation being a need to belong, surely it would attach itself to someone who had a happy family life that could give it what it needs.  “Fear Her” also just suffers from some of the weakest performances in the revived series thus far.  Abisola Agbaje as Chloe Webber is the weakest, however, this helps indicate that the poor performances are perhaps down to director Euros Lyn not knowing how to work with child actors and just general issues with the script.  Agbaje seems to have been directed to either whisper her lines or just give no emotion whatsoever, even when she is free of the Isolus and supposed to be happy.  The odd emotional performances continue with the turns from Nina Sosanya and Abdul Salis, the former seemingly unable to communicate the fear instead coming across as awkward and the later becoming a meme about the council.  Sosanya and Salis have both given far more nuanced performances in Good Omens and The Wheel of Time respectively, but here they just fall flat.  Even David Tennant as the Doctor, while attempting nuance, is working with material that just doesn’t feel like the Doctor, for whatever reason Graham has decided the Doctor doesn’t understand how to talk to people and Rose has to give him these gentle nudges for social cues.  This isn’t really what the Tenth Doctor has been established as and just feels like Graham thinks this is what he is like.

 

Overall, “Fear Her” is a low point and mishandles really anything that it attempts to do.  Only Billie Piper comes out of it unscathed, and even then she’s struggling with a script that is just too poor for words.  It’s an episode that doesn’t actually have anything to say, putting the entire world in danger and disappearing thousands of people without any actual emotional impact.  The performances are incredibly stilted and the direction, while good for being a budget saver, decides to do the bare minimum required.  Even Murray Gold’s score seems scarcely used to any sort of effect leading to the weakest episode of this second series.  1/10.