The Unicorn and the Wasp by: Gareth Roberts and directed by: Graeme Harper

 

“The Unicorn and the Wasp” stars David Tennant as the Doctor and Catherine Tate as Donna Noble with Fenella Woolgar as Agatha Christie, Felicity Kendal as Lady Eddison, Tom Goodman-Hill as Reverend Golightly, Christopher Benjamin as Colonel Hugh, Felicity Jones as Robina Redmond, and Adam Rayner as Roger Curbishley.  It was written by: Gareth Roberts and directed by: Graeme Harper with Lindsey Alford as Script Editor, Susie Liggat as Producer, and Russell T. Davies, Julie Gardner, and Phil Collinson as Executive Producers.  It was originally broadcast on Saturday 17 May 2008 on BBC One.

 

Gareth Roberts is an unapologetic transphobe and especially in times like these it is a mark on consuming any media written by Roberts.  His transphobic tweets, generally under a thin veneer of protecting women, are not up for debate.  Trans rights are human rights.

 

Three series included a celebrity historical making it now a tradition for Doctor Who’s revived series and after “The Shakespeare Code” proved a success, Phil Collinson suggested as far back as 2006 to do one featuring Agatha Christie.  Like “The Unquiet Dead” featuring Charles Dickens meeting ghosts at Christmas, Russell T. Davies assigned Gareth Roberts a story featuring Agatha Christie in the 1960s having to solve a murder that would eventually lead to an alien culprit responsible.  As the episode developed, Davies and Roberts agreed that the 1960s setting was not working, initially scaling it back to a filmed framing sequence with an older Christie at the beginning and end of the episode reminiscing about her vague memories of the episode.  The 1920s setting was chosen due to the real life Christie disappearing for eleven days, generally believed to be a plan to leave her husband who had been having an affair.  Further developments cut this framing sequence, the final scene being rewritten for the Doctor and Donna in the TARDIS to ruminate on Christie’s long lasting legacy as an author.  Davies also asked Roberts for the episode, despite being placed early in the series production order in the second production block with Graeme Harper as director and Susie Liggat as producer (Collinson would be an executive producer while focusing on securing location work for “The Fires of Pompeii”), to be written for a mid-series slot as a potential ratings boost.  Agatha Christie as an author is one of the best selling authors of all time, her books still being in circulation to this day and at least one or two are included in school reading curriculums.  As a result this would be the first episode filmed with Catherine Tate and her return, “Partners in Crime” being in the fourth block.

 

This fact shows just how well Catherine Tate is as an actress and her chemistry with David Tennant.  She slips right back into the role of Donna Noble, a role that has already undergone quite a lot of character development through the first half of the series which would have only been in script form at best when this episode was recorded.  There is a slight hiccup at the denouement for Donna, she constantly interjects and is played as dumb when it comes to who the murderer is, but outside of that Tate’s heart and sould as Donna shines through.  The supporting cast is also excellent, Fenella Woolgar is wonderful as Agatha Christie with this sharp mind but vulnerability due to the historic point of the episode being just before the disappearance.  Christopher Benjamin is a treat to see in a supporting role, a full year before Big Finish Productions would bring him back as Henry Gordon Jago, Felicity Jones as the titular Unicorn is also a wonderful little lower class part, and Felicity Kendal as the upper class Lady Eddison brings the right amount of British class to the proceedings.  “The Unicorn and the Wasp”, which is a great title, is propped up by great performances when the actual plot is sadly the weakest element.  Now, it’s not a bad idea to do a murder mystery with Agatha Christie and homage or even spoof her work, but it seems that Gareth Roberts doesn’t actually understand the work of Agatha Christie.  Much of Christie’s work is concerned with some aspect of the British class system, the killers are almost always upper class, and the tone is generally quite serious.

 

Rarely will you find a Christie story where the suspects are generally blame free for the actual murder, the reveal of the alien plot in the episode tries to add these dark secrets to people but they are generally on the periphery outside of the reveal of the Unicorn and the eventual reveal of the Wasp.  Roberts includes several references to Christie stories in the form of titles (or portmanteaus of titles) in dialogue, but you never get the sense that he’s read any of them.  There is a moment where Lady Edison reading The Murder of Roger Ackroyd is integral to why the alien Vespiform has a connection to Christie, it absorbs the plot of that book so it acts out a Christie murder mystery in this episode.  Except it’s actually acting out either deaths from books that the episode calls out have not been written yet, or murders that have more in common with the board game Clue.  The tone is far too similar too Clue than to any Christie.  It doesn’t make the episode a bad episode, just one with wasted potential.

 

Overall, “The Unicorn and the Wasp” is an episode that generally feels underdeveloped for the premise it is trying to execute properly.  The cast delivering some genuinely punchy and fun dialogue, as well as some great character moments if you ignore the thing the episode is meant to be homaging.  The episode is a romp which is often very fun, but also not an episode with much substance.  Sadly this means the episode becomes largely filler, the Vespiform and past of the creature being the most interesting part that’s sadly done in a single flashback.  6/10.