The Idiot's Lantern by: Mark Gatiss and directed by: Euros Lyn

 

“The Idiot’s Lantern” stars David Tennant as the Doctor and Billie Piper as Rose Tyler with Ron Cook as Mr. Magpie and Maureen Lipman as The Wire.  It was written by: Mark Gatiss 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 27 May 2006 on BBC One.

 

The following review will contain discussions of domestic violence and the historic persecution of LGBT people.  Reader discretion is advised.

 

Russell T. Davies was impressed with Mark Gatiss’ work on “The Unquiet Dead” and immediately asked him to return for the second series with a pseudo-historical episode set in the 1950s.  Gatiss took inspiration from the emergence of rock and roll and proposed “Mr. Sandman” where the titular song would be an alien contagion, it becoming “Sonic Doom” and taking on a rather dark tone.  This became a concern as the plan was to have it immediately preceded by the very dark “The Impossible Planet” and “The Satan Pit”, so Gatiss went to the drawing board and came back with “The Idiot’s Lantern”, setting an episode around the coronation of Elizabeth II and the emergence of the television with a creature stealing people’s faces.  As a premise, this is great and plays to Gatiss’ strengths as a writer: the alien Wire, played by Maureen Lipman doing an impression of early children’s television presenter Annette Mills, is a being of energy that is stealing people’s faces through their brand new television sets, attempting to use the coronation, the first piece of event television, to feed on thousands across the United Kingdom and regain corporeal form.  It uses Mr. Magpie, a television salesman in debt played by Ron Cook, to get televisions in far more homes than would be expected for 1953 while inspectors from Scotland Yard can do nothing but take the victims and hide them away so it's up to the Doctor and Rose to investigate.  When “The Idiot’s Lantern” is playing the episode like a pulpy mystery episode, it’s at its absolute best, but that’s not what the majority of the episode is.

 

Mark Gatiss clearly has written this episode in an attempt to deconstruct the society that was 1950s Conservative Britain which is on the surface an admirable attempt, but one that falls apart with several key aspects making “The Idiot’s Lantern” an episode that fails.  First, and this is a minor point, the coronation itself is characterized as nothing but positive despite clear attempts to deconstruct a British Empire in the middle of no longer being an empire.  This is perhaps because Britain in 2006 (and 2023) still haven’t cast off the remnants of colonialism and imperialism, but also because of the general vibes towards the monarchy under Elizabeth II being positive, the Queen being thought of in general as a stalwart leader that guided the country for 70 years.  The post-war Britain of 1953 was deep in the throws of Conservatism, despite the establishment of the NHS and other social services that would be far more progressive than the United States of America during the post-war period.  The British are a people of putting on a number of fronts, directly from the resolution to World War II setting in stone the idea of the stiff upper lip and soldiering on through the great hardships of the war, but when there is no war to fight.  Society has a strict code of conduct and procedures where men are expected to be “real” men and women are expected to listen to their husbands and tend to their home.  Heterosexuality was enforced by law, homosexuality remaining a criminal offence, with a range of punishments historically including chemical castration.  “The Idiot’s Lantern” is set on a street with several seemingly normal families hiding the fact that their family members have lost their face and identities, putting on the face of normalcy as not to arise suspicion.  There is one man on the street acting as an informant to the police, selling out his mother-in-law early on in the episode.

 

The Connolly family has several skeletons in their closet and Mark Gatiss does not treat these skeletons with care.  Mr. Connolly, played by Jamie Foreman as almost darkly comic relief through the episode, verbally and physically abuses his wife (physical abuse happening off-screen) Rita, played by Debra Gillett.  Their son Tommy, played by Rory Jennings, is a gay teenager in the closet, Gatiss writing the character with nearly every explicit trope of coding that would be expected in the 1950s.  Tommy is not physically strong, has a larger attachment to the female members of his family, and is the archetypal sissy child who cannot stand up to his father.  The family unit is clearly in parallel with the larger plot of the episode of detectives taking the mysterious problems and just putting them out of sight rather than engage with something they don’t understand and fear.  The climax of the episode sees the Doctor and Tommy saving Rose (who outside of one brilliant early scene performed by Billie Piper is damseled for the majority of the episode) and it is directly paralleled with Rita Connolly kicking out her abusive husband and putting her family on the path for a brighter future, much as Britain essentially would begin throughout the 1950s (the decriminalization of homosexuality still a decade off but the necessary support would gain traction in the late 1950s).

 

On the surface, this should be genuinely brilliant drama, however, perhaps due to Davies’ demands for the episode to end on a lighter note, the Doctor and Rose direct Tommy to forgive his abusive father, effectively undoing all of the interesting elements of the last 45-minutes and leaving with a message that one should forgive their abusive family members because they are family.  Now, perhaps Gatiss was attempting to draw on his own experiences as a gay teenager as earlier drafts would indicate and there is an argument to be made about the complexities of family members and burning relationships, but the text lays it out as a victim of abuse being asked to connect with his abuser.  This is also an episode where Euros Lyn, one of the best directors of the era, sets up a majority of shots to be at Dutch angles which amplifies the tone to camp a la the 1960s Batman series, a tone that is almost too over the top and too bright for what Gatiss almost wants to go for.  Plus this is an episode where David Tennant’s performance becomes far too rage filled by shouting instead of the quiet rage he plays much better.

 

Overall, “The Idiot’s Lantern” is an episode that on the surface seems inoffensive: if you watch it as a child you’ll probably enjoy the interesting villain and some of the action sequences, but once you look at it with a critical eye you see an attempt to deconstruct British society, culture, and bigotry that at the last moment undoes any good will.  Coupling that with a script that doesn’t treat Rose well outside of one scene, instead playing her as the Doctor’s date and then a damsel, plus some odd directorial choices, you have one of the major missteps of Doctor Who.  2/10.