Love & Monsters by: Russell T. Davies and directed by: Dan Zeff - A Re-Review

 

“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.