S8E10: In the Forest of the Night (SPOILERS)

This episode is apparently the Doctor, Clara, Danny and a full cast of child actors. This could either be genius or terrible...

What on earth even just happened? I didn't understand a bit of it... The kids were annoying and the attempts at making jokes fell terribly flat. I think the concept of trees growing over night all over the world is awesome but they really butchered what could have been a great story. I don't know if it's just me being slow but it really made no sense to me. I did enjoy the Doctor's "TREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEES!" moment though! Other than that... I really couldn't get into this story. Voted 'bad'. Just... urgh...

I liked it, thought it was OK.  It was an interesting idea, that trees help protect the Earth from celestial events.  I couldn't quite understand some of the things said, so I'll have to watch again and pause/rewind throughout.  But I think that stems from not being from GB and not being "used" to all your accents over there.  When those fairy creature things were talking, that was especially hard to understand.  Not a British accent thing though, that voice was just hard to hear clearly.

I should mention that Capaldi is a lot of fun to watch, great delivery and presence.  It makes up for an OK or bad story, like in the older series when you like the actor well enough that you don't mind the story.  There are also some interesting camera angles in this episode, like 12 pointing to the girl and asking her name  

Who else thinks that Missy might be Clara?  Based on some of the things Missy has said, and the teaser for next week.

"I'm a Time Lord, not a Child Minder!"

Absolute Rubbish,as is most of the season.
I'm very disappointed with Moffat.Very poor writing with
little to no character development for Capaldi at all.
Out of 10 episodes,maybe 3 were good.

I pray something great happens in the next few eps that could save the
season but I really doubt anything short of Galifrey returning could do it now.

Clara has worn out he welcome as well.The Doctor should have dropped her
off in a quarry after the moon ep and said Seeya Sis!

Very sad whovian.

Meh. The streak of awesome was broken tonight. Boring. Awful kid actors. Story that made no sense. The writer doesn't seem to understand the Doctor as a character nor the show. Very odd.

6/10 "Ok"

Bit of a filler episode, nothing really stood out to me.... next

This is how you get a show cancelled !!!! Moffat Wake Up !!!!!!!

If an american TV series had so many bad episodes they pull the plug on it instantly.

If you want to see the Dr Who Actors an Actresses in better shows
ABC Selfies Tuesday 8pm Starring Karen Gillan as Eliza Dooley , support role David Hardwood - from End of time
The CW Arrow Wednesday 8pm John Barrowman  recurring Role - Malcolm Merlin The Dark Archer.

Soon it will be

All Networks Peter Capaldi - Selling the Shark Vacuum at this rate lol
Jenna Coleman - Selling Proactive Makeup lol
Dalek - Spokesman for Fox News Channel - Joking

To be serious I watched the entire Episode and give it a 5/10 , Flatline will be impossible to beat

I really enjoyed this episode, actually. This was a Fairy Tale, in every way. I thought idea of trees protecting the Earth, led by these little fairy creatures for far longer than the Doctor has been here was a way to tell him, he isn't the only one protecting the Earth. The idea that humans forget events like this has been around since the 7th Doctor era at least. The name of the girl, Maebh, is similar to that of Mab, a fairy queen in Shakespeare. The girl in a red coat running through the forest, chased by wolves, well, that is obvious. And the kids getting smarter in the forest, all that oxygen the trees were pumping out!
I thought the kids were great, and loved the way they just adapted to the whole situation better than most adults do when they enter the TARDIS.

I watched it knowing it was a Doctor Who fairy tale, and I really enjoyed it!

Pretty decent ep. Didn't rock my socks off like Flatline, but still pretty cool. Also, I love the line where the doc says his life is too short for les miserables.

I've really enjoyed this season overall a lot, but this is probably one of the worst episodes of Who in a long time.

The idea was neat, but the execution was haphazard. Some pretty dodgy effects work (something I'll usually give the show a pass for) and some overly showy and distracting directing at the start combined with some bad child acting and plotting made it one of the least enjoyable episodes since Who started. Still, I guess they can't all be winners. I really wish they'd have gotten rid of the subplot of the missing sister which was BARELY developed at all, and led to an incredibly silly and clunky ending.

The Whovian version of The Happening was slightly better than the original!

jonwes wrote:

I really wish they'd have gotten rid of the subplot of the missing sister which was BARELY developed at all, and led to an incredibly silly and clunky ending.

Yeah, that ending was the trippiest thing I've ever seen in a Who episode...

This was a weird one. Over reliance on kid actors, shoe-string plot whose mystery should have been solved at least halfway through by The Doctor. Capaldi is brilliant as ever, though, some great line deliveries in this one. His interactions with Mave were great. The missing sister arc seemed needless, still not overly clear on why the fairies picked Mave, either. (Yes, The Doctor says she's more perceptive to things like that because she's looking for her sister, but... it's odd.) Also, Clara's a pretty terrible teacher if she missed those drawings day after day.

We started to get development on that bully kid and then he disappeared. The kid in the Yankees hat was pretty cool, but didn't get anything meaningful to do. Ruby was awful! Danny should have been given more to do. He is at once overprotective (compulsively so) and lasseiz faire.

This is certainly filler, through and through, but it's nowhere near abysmal. (Certainly not a "Fear Her.") Also, the plot of the concept hews really close to "Kill the Moon" just with entirely different subtext and the comparison it begs doesn't help at "In the Forest of the Night" at all.

Also... "In the Forest of the Night" and it was never once nighttime in the woods!

I think I liked it more than "Robot of Sherwood" but that's not saying much. Still, it does tarnish the streak Season 8 has been on. Next week looks really great. A redo of the iconic scene from "The Invasion!?"

^ I think the title refers to the forest appearing during the night (at least in GB, who knows when it popped up elsewhere in the world when it was daylight).

Yeah, that's what I assumed but the title doesn't quite read that way. Night Forest vs. Forest of the Night, etc. etc.

TinDogRory wrote:

Yeah, that's what I assumed but the title doesn't quite read that way. Night Forest vs. Forest of the Night, etc. etc.

Considering the thoughtless trippiness of this script, I doubt they put much thought into the title.

Rogue wrote:

^ I think the title refers to the forest appearing during the night (at least in GB, who knows when it popped up elsewhere in the world when it was daylight).

I think it's a bit more lofty than literal.

The forest of the night (e.g. from Willaim Blake's "The Tyger") is symbolic of our primal, dark fears. Not a literal forest at nighttime. And like the poem contemplates with the tiger, the narrative illustrates the dualistic nature of things. In this case, of the forest as both a frightening wilderness of hidden things that can kill you, and a place of enchanting discovery that is literally the breath of life.

Ohhh... it's a Blake reference. I knew I knew it from somewhere. Blake poems and Yeats, what would Sci-Fi writers name their episodes and tie-in novels without them?

I watched this again during my lunch hour hoping it would make a bit more sense.

It didn't. But I enjoyed it more, surprisingly.

I was lost on this one too. I liked the concept of trees protecting the earth, but....eh. So far for me, only four good episodes -

1. Flatline 2. Mummy On The Orient Express 3. Robot of Sherwood 4. Deep Breath.

A little too fantasy for my liking, but I'll agree that it is nowhere as painful as "Fear Her". It may be wonderful, but I'm a miserably practical person who just cannot get over how all of earth is going to forget those trees. Trees that dissolved in twinkle-dots right before your eyes. Would this story have worked better on an alien world where we'd all be more accepting of trees popping up?

After all the anti-soldier talk it is now surprising that they're going to bring in UNIT next week. How can the Doctor be all chummy again after everything he's said this series? Certainly looks better although the Cybermen may be mere pawns again.

I was sat there for the hour thinking... ok whens it going to get good... it never did, my 7 year old son was restless throughout it as well.

Seems like an 11th Doctor fairy tale brought over to the 12th Doc. Just didn't work too well. Interesting concept, but the ending undid all the good of the plot. If the fairy things brought the sister back, does that mean that she was dead? Or that they kidnapped her in the first place? Nothing was explained at all. I understand that the audience needs to figure some stuff out on their own, but come on here.

One of the reasons I was looking forward to the 12th Doc is that it seemed Matt Smith's stories tended to be more fairy tale like, with the Doc swooping in to save the day with pixie dust and unicorn farts. Stories like this ep are a big step backwards.

I thought it was interesting.

One of the unfortunate things about Modern Who is that the show knows no restraint. So the entire blinkin' Earth becomes a forest overnight. Was this extreme really necessary? Couldn't it have been just England? Or London? So that when the trees all magically disappear, the Doctor might be halfway believable when he says humankind will forget about it? I really wish the Moff would read these scripts before he greenlights them.

If we hadn't just come off two good back-to-back episodes, this episode might have been easier to swallow. But the show is clearly capable of better than this.

I can't believe we've gotten to the point that an episode where the moon is an egg that hatches isn't the worst of the season. But yeah, this was worse.

It's still better than "Deep Breath", though.