“Love & Monsters” stars David Tennant as the
Doctor and Billie Piper as Rose Tyler with Camille Coduri as Jackie Tyler, Marc
Warren as Elton Pope, Shirley Henderson as Ursula Blake, and Peter Kay as the
Abzorbaloff. It was written by: Russell
T. Davies and directed by: Dan Zeff 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 17 June 2006 on BBC One.
I’ve already reviewed this episode. Way back in 2016 I wrote a review in an
attempt to review the top and bottom stories in the latest Doctor Who
Magazine poll and that was a review fueled pretty much by rage. At the time Rose was my least favorite
companion and David Tennant’s Tenth Doctor was my least favorite Doctor, but
seven years have passed and I’ve matured as a person and Doctor Who fan
(my fan ire actually being more towards Matt Smith’s later Eleventh Doctor
appearances and Clara Oswald in terms of characters that I actively dislike in Doctor
Who), so coming back to “Love & Monsters” is an interesting experience.
It was devised by Russell T. Davies primarily to fill
in the issue of needing a fourteenth episode in the series due to the addition
of the yearly Christmas special on the same production schedule and
budget. “I Love the Doctor” was devised
with the premise that it would be filmed quickly and cheaply without a strain
on David Tennant and Billie Piper who would essentially be shooting other
episodes at the time. From a production
standpoint that’s actually a great way to save money and help worldbuild the revived
Doctor Who since it relied less on the serial format of the original
show. Davies’ premise of focusing on
fans of the Doctor of some sort also had an interesting potential, with the additional
brief of including a fan made villain from the Blue Peter Design a Monster
Competition. The winner of that
competition was Will Grantham, a nine year old who now runs his own YouTube
channel and somehow hasn’t been negatively affected by the negative reception
of his creation and the episode in general.
It was around this time where the episode was renamed “Love & Monsters”
and set to be shot as the sixth production block of the second series.
“Love & Monsters” isn’t actually the worst episode
of the show nor is it the worst episode of the second series, but it’s far from
a good episode and much of that is perhaps not entirely down to Russell T.
Davies’ script or Grantham’s Abzorbaloff, but it’s Dan Zeff’s direction. The direction of the episode throughout
parallels the direction of “Rose”, “Aliens of London”, and “World War Three” by
Keith Boak, tonally inconsistent to the fault of the episodes themselves in places. Russell T. Davies’ script is intentionally
leading into the camp and social commentary of fandom, specifically the fandom
of Doctor Who, with how certain people engrain themselves into
communities to tear them apart in the guise of making them focus on their original
purpose, creating stagnation. The script
is also textbook camp where none of the characters are written to be
particularly real, each member of LINDA (the fan group searching for the
Doctor) essentially has one characteristic: Bliss is a bit dumb, Mr. Skinner is
old, Bridget cooks, and Ursula is the female love interest. Elton Pope, played by Marc Warren, gets at least
two dimensions due to having a backstory explored on screen with the death of
his mother which is how he first encountered the Doctor as a child. These performances should be heightened and
exaggerated but they are not, Zeff shoots everything normally. This is exemplified with the scenes with
Jackie Tyler, Camille Coduri generally playing the character as a little over
the top, but even her performance feels subdued. This creates an emotional disconnect when the
exploration of her emotions around being left alone by the Doctor, Rose, and
Mickey should be a core of the episode.
Peter Kay as the Abzorbaloff is the only actor going full
camp with the story, even through the episode’s final twelve minutes where he
is under mountains of prosthetics. It’s
an admirable turn and clearly Kay understands what the script is going for, but
because the rest of the actors are playing it straight the viewer just cannot
buy that he is charming them and getting them to really search for the
Doctor. “Love & Monsters” has it’s
strengths in the first act where time is spent with Elton and the rest of LINDA
as they form a group and evolve to enjoy each other’s company, putting their
search for the Doctor on the back burner.
It is framed, as is the entire episode, with a vlog from Elton that doesn’t
quite work, partially because of Zeff’s direction is far too much like a
polished episode of television and partially because Davies’ script of these
sections attempts to make tangents and breaks but they’re also too much like a
polished episode of television. Once
Victor Kennedy (the human guise of the Abzorbaloff) arrives the episode just begins
to stutter, again everyone playing it straight not only makes you question why
they’d listen to this man outside of being reminded of the Doctor but also why none
of them notice their friends going missing until it is too late.
These moments are also poorly edited together, the
screams of terror being played over footage of the rest of the characters
leaving, implying they should be hearing the screams but just aren’t reacting
to it. Further exacerbating this are moments
such as when Ursula, the love interest played by Shirley Henderson, is going to
retaliate towards Kennedy for threatening Elton and is met with an obviously
evil line from an obviously evil person.
While the script wants you to believe it is awkwardness stopping the
characters from questioning Kennedy, it comes across as more stupidity. The climax and alien reveal of the episode is
where it gets closest to becoming camp but that is honestly too late. This is where Billie Piper as Rose appears
and sadly she is the least served from the episode, her admonishing of Elton,
while justified, is delivered incredibly poorly and that has to be down to Zeff’s
direction. The scripted lines are fine, but
Piper just delivers them almost awkwardly.
The prosthetics on the Abzorbaloff are actually quite well realized, but
the design itself is a bit poor in general, mainly due to being designed by a
child, though a child with a great idea for a monster. Plus the ending of the episode just doesn’t
tie everything together despite Davies’ attempts to use “Mr. Blue Sky” as a
guiding theme, though sadly not quite realized.
In an attempt to rescue some sort of happy ending as Elton is left with
all of his friends dead, Ursula is resurrected as a concrete slab and heavily
implied to be immortal, though still in love and actively in a relationship
with Elton. It’s honestly a cruel fate
for the sake of a joke that would only work if the episode was playing up the
camp.
Is ”Love & Monsters” an underrated masterpiece and
brilliant piece of metatextual fiction on Doctor Who fans and fandom in
general? Not really. Is it the worst episode of the series? Also
no. It’s an episode that’s polarizing
for a reason, and on this watch in particular I noticed why people would
perhaps enjoy watching it, but the disconnect and tonal issues start a cavalcade
of little problems that add up. It’s
definitely an episode with potential and does set the precedent that Doctor
lite episodes can at least be made, but it’s very half baked with its ideas and
some of the weaker direction for the revival causes the snowball effect into an
episode of Doctor Who that just isn’t very good. 3/10.
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