In the whoniverse torchwood had been ended(as seen in the torchwood series) so if they wanted to make the joke they probably would’ve had to have made torchwood a reestablished thing in doctor who
I've always thought of this as Moffat's "Fear Her" - The last episode before the 2-part finale of the first series of the showrunner's second Doctor, bad child actors, the main alien of the episode communicating through one of said bad child actors, a general sense of absolute nothingness to the pacing and structure, etc.
From the title, I always wished this episode featured the return of the Vashta Nerada, in a "actual" forest. It would have been epic....and maybe we could have lost a few kids along the way, lol
Yeah I thought the same as well and the vashta nerada are one of my favorite creatures in dr who but idk how the vashta nerada would navigate in a day time forest unless they manipulated the shade in trees or buildings or the light that has particles containing them as well.
I think it's for the best that the Vashta Nerada haven't returned, and I hope they never return. Keep them being mysterious, there's nothing else to them and trying to explain them more would ruin them
As I commented on Kill the Moon, this could have worked so much better if it had not been set on Earth. Have them arrive on a sparse planet, Doc and Clara go inside, come back out and BOOM forest everywhere. Still a mystery, but one that can be made more sense of as a strange alien world. Could even have the school kids plot still.
School kids trip into space would definitely be something different! IMO the only way for this to work on Earth was it for it to be an alien plot… sontarans changing the course of human history, with the kid (Maeve?) under their control…
Honestly the whole episode could’ve been saved if the Doctor first immediately assumed the trees were bad and actually started helping gov’t destroy them, building up some sort of grand weapon to remove all the extra trees all at once ala the Poison Sky, only to discover halfway through just like in the real episode that the trees are helpful, so he has to spend the rest of the episode running around undoing everything he’d done and trying to convince to gov’t that he was wrong and to let the trees stay. That would actually make the Doctor’s role in the story more impactful and it would hammer home the “the Doctor can be wrong” and “sometimes there is no villain” narratives
Your note regarding the kids being "things to protect" rather than actual characters is an interesting observation, because I've noticed this seems to happen a lot in the Moffat era, where in order to create artificial stakes, the writers just throw in some random kids/townspeople/civilians to be put in danger that serve no purpose other than giving the doctor a reason to be the hero. Similar cases can be seen in episodes like Time of the Doctor and The Doctor Falls; it feels like a cheap tactic with no real forethought put into it. RTD at least made his helpless civilians feel like real people most of the time.
I distinctly remember this being the first time a Doctor Who episode left me in a really bad mood; bad enough to go 'That was shit' right in front of my parents lol
This is probably widely known, but the title "In The Forest of the Night" is a reference to William Blake's The Tyger (being the entire second line of the poem), which addresses the problem of evil: what good god of humanity would create "the tiger"? This reference becomes more explicit when a tiger physically appears in the episode. ...I have no idea how this ties into the themes of the episode.
I just hated how the character trajectories of Danny and Clara and the Doctor that were being set up through the series, particularly in this episode, got thrown out in Dark Water when Danny just got killed. It was really feeling like they were building towards Danny becoming a full time companion alongside Clara, and it felt like the character of Danny was only just starting to come together and then everything was just cut short with a random basically off screen detached from the plot death.
Think you kinda missed the point, even when it was directly stated in the episode. Danny’s death wasn’t some grand spectacle or ultimate sacrifice. His death was ordinary, boring. You complain that Danny died when his arc was still in progress, but that’s how most death go. Death doesn’t wait for when you are ready, it can come anywhere, anytime, any reason. It was vastly more humanizing to have Danny die in an instant from a car crash. It would have not had the same effect if Danny had died in a heroic sacrifice saving an orphanage from an invasion of glibi-foible aliens.
I rewatched this episode recently and I realised why this episode doesn't work, it feels like a satire of Doctor Who, with the domestic conflict, hyperbolic stakes, making Sci-fi concepts out of everyday things, fairy tale feel, OP one off characters and entities, more plot holes than Swiss cheese, underdeveloped plotlines, London centric plot, news coverage, general cheesiness
I think this episode would have been of the the very few stories to benefit from "it was a dream" scenario. Not entirely, but had the forest been an illusion, there also could have been fantastical characters and monsters in the woods for the character to continuously be confronted with. The children tempted away from the group by fantasy characters like Pinocchio was with the fox, and the adults terrified by trolls, warlocks, and ghosts. That would have better served both the fantasy element as well as the suspense of the forest, and in the end it could be resolved by defeating the source of the hallucination/dream. Which i think everyone would find more satisfying then the reveal that trees just... naturally do this...
The Doctor apparently can't do anything to protect the Earth from a solar flare. I mean, he's literally materialised the TARDIS around an entire galaxy before, but somehow a planet is just too big? Not like he couldn't move a planet if he wanted to either. There is no reason for him to think himself powerless in this situation.
@@mayotango1317 It does in Big Finish. The Seventh Doctor has a galaxy in his Tardis because it was overrun with some evil aliens so he trapped them there and we even see that galaxy in "Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS". That wasn't a window, that was a dimensional compression bubble.
The wasted potential of the concept of this episode frustrates me and the mishandling of a potentially neurodivergent/mentally ill characters is really not good. All in all really not good on all counts. But fun fact the red headed girl in the episode. I think her character is called Ruby is played by an actress called Harley Bird who for many years was a parents worst nightmare because she was the voice of Peppa Pig
I actually enjoy this episode. I know it's not like high concept or whatever but I find it an enjoyable doctor who rompt, even if it's carried by Capaldi as he normally does.
And I still say the "moon" should have become one gigantic fried egg because of the solar flare. The Doctor does have MAJOR reason for being in this story. He's the only good thing about it. Capaldi is always worth watching.
The weird thing about their being such an empty london is the fact that you know full well if this were to happen bosses will still be asking employees to come into work
Most villains in the Capaldi era feel like fake out villains. There is usually little to no real threat in a lot of the episodes and the ones that there are real threats in for some reason it always gets lost in something else to make you either forget or not care about it until its right in your face and then its not very scary at all
Damn, there's so much of the capaldi era I've completely forgotten about including this one. I'm rewatching DW in prep for the upcoming specials. Almost at the end of series 6 now so won't be long til I've caught up with ya, Harbo.
I would have loved to have seen if the doctor had created a special doomsday weapon to revert Earth back destroying the New Forest, only for one of the children to point out that the trees are acting like a shield, Only for him to realize what they are really for and have to rush back to stop his invention.
Forest of the Night is a missed opportunity not to have the Animus from the First Doctor episode the Web Planet having made a comeback but wanting to make the Earth its new home.
What let this down was the ending ,it was strange and unacceptable .It wasn't a good or bad episode .I enjoyed how Clara and Danny Pink , were both caring and knew how to deal with school kids as professional teachers .While the doctor interactions with them were awkward ,virtually lacking any social skills in communicating with them .The ending was a big disappointment for me .
I didn't like this episode either but just like 11, the 12th doctor had his fair share of whimsical and or fairytale-like elements/plots during his tenure in general as well, so that point didn't really land..you even brought one instance up, being Robot of Sherwood. I mean, his first episode had a dinosaur in Victorian London, the unseen boogyman monster or whatever that was in Listen, the moon being an egg, a mummy on a space ship train, two-dimensional creatures, and those were just in his first season. However, yes it could've definitely been executed a lot better (so could most of 12's episodes..to be honest I wasn't a fan of the 12th doctor era because of the writing, and then wasn't really fond of most of season 11 either. Flux at least had potential but it was so rushed/way too condensed together)
Yeah, this was my least favorite episode of the series... Until Death in Heaven came out and rewrote how Cybermen worked, changing them from real cyborgs to just robots with a skeleton fetish.
tbh I don't hate this one. for what it is as a kid-oriented episode, I just compare it directly to 'Fear Her'. I think this is more interesting and thematic than that episode, even if its similarly messy. I don't mind the stagnant feeling that much and the character work between Clara and Danny is quite an important progression for the Series overall. the kid acting is annoying, but the kids are mostly written to be annoying in a pretty realistic way so I can look past it. also Peter Capaldi is in it. but with all this potential teased, it obviously doesn't follow through. its like a 5/10 for me whereas 'Fear Her' is one of my least favourites of the show.
I really liked this one. It... served as a reminder of the "childlike grandpa" aspect of the Doctor. Which was rather needed, I think, after the whole "hard decisions" themes of the prior two episodes.
Unpopular Opinion (I guess): I like this episode, just as much as I liked both of the S2 episodes (that alot of people dislike) Fear Hear and Love & Monsters and I personally dislike Kill the Moon, lastly i would place this episode in high C or low B ~
I feel like danny finding out in this episode cheapens the opening to dark water. Like imagine if this episode never happened, (nice huh) and then clara’s about to be honest and bam! Now ya cant. Plus then danny would have to find out about her lying in the nethersphere which would add to the drama
I enjoyed watching this episode, yes for the visuals. But I never thought of it as bad or awkward as Fear Her or Kill The Moon, still leagues better. Child-acting is neither here nor there (hit and miss), but the very things criticized in this video are what made it stand out to me. The Doctor assuming wrong and basically being useless made for a good change of pace, while he was still important to the story with his interactions, as well as there not being a big bad to physically fight against. The science is bogus, but that's nothing new either, but with the sister coming back it can be all excused as "magic". However, it's been a while since I last watched it... On the case of Clara... yes, she did act like an addict. But Danny was *not* okay with her traveling with the Doctor. He made it very clear that "for as long as it's safe for you / you can stop anytime" has long passed in his mind (and yeah, Clara clearly couldn't stop and even enjoyed the thrill) and he made several points about him not appreciating the dangers of it. He *did* give Clara an ultimatum. And not in a good way. The shown communication between the couple always seemed strained to me, him quickly getting passive aggressive (since their very first date). So, instead of properly talking about it like adults he gave her the ultimatum, his own mind already made up. Whether he was right or not, that left Clara without seeing any way of finding a compromise, and since (being addict) she could not simply stop traveling with the Doctor, she resorted to lying and hiding her addiction. ...I guess, I am saying, while Danny was technically not wrong, he went about it in the wrong way, a way that sat very uncomfortably with me (and others). I think in part that was intended, as both his and the Doctor's first impressions of another respectively mirrored another; they had a first impression and stuck with it come hell or high water, neither really trying to see beyond or deeper. It was their dynamic and part of Danny's character... But while the Doctor's stubbornness was slowly (and in parts, beforehand) explored, it just made Danny's stance seem shallow and petty - and therefore easier to overlook the truth in his points and easier to side with the lying addict. Both (or all three) were wrong and going about it badly. It is a season including the theme of the risks, gains, struggles, comfort, dangers and safety in "human" connection (or lack of it), so it is still in tone, but yeah... I never saw Clara and Danny as a "happy" couple, when most every shown interaction between them was depicted with stress, problems and unresolved / ignored issues, lack of communication and trust. That's actually also how I see him sending the boy back instead of himself as a closure of sorts, as he in a way finally trusted Clara with his biggest regret, one that in life he was incapable of sharing with / opening up about to her (and also him acknowledging that some things are more important [than [his] love [for her])). (((Also also, ironically, Danny's last scenes were him mocking the Doctor to be a "blood-soaked old general" whose "beautiful speeches just disappear in the face of tactical advantage" and next making a poetic speech about heroism and ordering all Cybermen - who had the (slim) chance to be as human as he was, as proven by the Brigadier - into mass-suicide. He still made the distinction of him not being a general but a soldier there, despite his role in that moment (literally being in charge / the commander of the CM army with the bracelet), so I am not sure he ever really understood that him and the Doctor were not so dissimilar .-. )))
That season started decent and then every episode was better than the last. Except for two notable exceptions. The only thing worse than in the forest of the fucking night was kill the fucking moon, AND VICE VERSA. To be fair ITFOTN was *mostly* simply dull as I recall, except for having its moral be "Hey kids, do you hear voices? Ignore your doctors and don't take your medicine!" Much like how the moon dragon is the least bad bit of Kill the Moon, the forest concept itself wasn't really that terrible.
I started watching Doctor Who around 2007; I vividly remember the first episode I watched live was The Shakespeare Code on Syfy (back when it was called Sci Fi); I don't remember hating In the Forest of the Night when I originally watched it, but for some reason, I stopped watching the show here, with the exception of The Woman Who Fell to Earth. At some point, I will catch up with 12 and 13.
Personally I thought Forest Of The Night was one of the better ones from Season 8. Few fans must not have understood it I guess, but I did. In fact, Season 8 of 12th was one of the better seasons of the modern show. I like almost all the episodes in it, especially FOTN and Flatline. You guys needs to focus more on the layers involved in the story, then you would have thought different about it. It's all about the art people, not the storyline or the plot. FOCUS on the ART of them.
I thought this episode was a dud, despite the amazing visuals of the forest covering Earth. The only thing that saves it being the worst episode in the series is the existence of Kill The Moon. That said, this could have been much better had the forest been part of a sinister alien plot- the sontarans using plants to alter the atmosphere, or alternative an invasive species of plants from an alien world (perhaps from a previous alien invasion)taking over everything.
In regards to the child actors and their writing, I personally find it to be good. They're kids, they're more likely than not be annoying and rude. Especially with how Clara described her term for the class.
one of the biggest grievances I have with this episode is how old are the students meant to be anyway? from what I know of the british education system, the youngest they are is about eleven, and even that I had trouble with believing that for all but the oldest students when I was thirteen and watching this when it premiered. I don't know if it's the writing or the acting or what, but it really threw me off and made it hard to get into this episode because it did feel like the kids were meant to be around my own age. idk lol
@@Jackadiah I'm not british, I know that they start secondary at a different age. but considering that susan said she was fifteen when at coal hill, I presume it is a secondary school, so the students being primary school aged makes even LESS sense even though I think you're right and they do seem to be that age. idk though
I don't hate it like some do. It's fine. It's largely forgettable, but I like that it tried to do something a bit different. Maybe another pass or two at the script would have ironed it out.
This was the episode that made me stop watching foctor who until a couple years later where I binged the rest of the capaldi series. Kill the moon had already pushed me to the limit but this was the straw that broke the camels back for me
I will admit it was such a disaster of a story. I am not a fan of this story and I found it very boring. There were things in this story that did not make sense. I will admit there are beautiful visual effects in this story and some interesting ideas, but it was so boring to watch.
This is bad, but imo, nothing is worse than Orphan 55. Forest has a major plus in that Peter Capaldi is in it. His presence alone raises this up a notch.
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The Forest of the Night is a good story and I hate how much the child acting is criticised
I still don't understand why they didn't take advanvtage of an easy joke and have 'Torchwood' being the ones trying to burn the trees
Top 10 missed opportunities.
Technically the Doctor saves the day by having the kids give a speech about not burning the trees.
In the whoniverse torchwood had been ended(as seen in the torchwood series) so if they wanted to make the joke they probably would’ve had to have made torchwood a reestablished thing in doctor who
@@jeckjeck3119 Torchwood no exist.
@@AiRsTrIkExXzZ i doubt the fandom would have been against that
I've always thought of this as Moffat's "Fear Her" - The last episode before the 2-part finale of the first series of the showrunner's second Doctor, bad child actors, the main alien of the episode communicating through one of said bad child actors, a general sense of absolute nothingness to the pacing and structure, etc.
I never thought of it like that. It's a mindblowing coincidence.
I thought the child actors were pretty good here.
From the title, I always wished this episode featured the return of the Vashta Nerada, in a "actual" forest. It would have been epic....and maybe we could have lost a few kids along the way, lol
Yeah I thought the same as well and the vashta nerada are one of my favorite creatures in dr who but idk how the vashta nerada would navigate in a day time forest unless they manipulated the shade in trees or buildings or the light that has particles containing them as well.
Losing that annoying kid from kill the moon would have been good, or the two clara babysat
I’m planing on making a fanmade story just like that, although it’ll be Doctor-lite because I want to make it kinda like a blink scenario.
I think it's for the best that the Vashta Nerada haven't returned, and I hope they never return. Keep them being mysterious, there's nothing else to them and trying to explain them more would ruin them
Might make a good story but I just do not see them greenlighting that
Nothing makes me laugh in this episode more than where you can see an advert for Doctor Who Series 8 on the side of a bus in this story.
Where
@@Goldenwhitewings3:16
As I commented on Kill the Moon, this could have worked so much better if it had not been set on Earth. Have them arrive on a sparse planet, Doc and Clara go inside, come back out and BOOM forest everywhere. Still a mystery, but one that can be made more sense of as a strange alien world.
Could even have the school kids plot still.
Woah never thought about this. That would make this story so much better
oh damn you're right! and the tiger could have been a strange alien beast!
School kids trip into space would definitely be something different! IMO the only way for this to work on Earth was it for it to be an alien plot… sontarans changing the course of human history, with the kid (Maeve?) under their control…
Honestly the whole episode could’ve been saved if the Doctor first immediately assumed the trees were bad and actually started helping gov’t destroy them, building up some sort of grand weapon to remove all the extra trees all at once ala the Poison Sky, only to discover halfway through just like in the real episode that the trees are helpful, so he has to spend the rest of the episode running around undoing everything he’d done and trying to convince to gov’t that he was wrong and to let the trees stay. That would actually make the Doctor’s role in the story more impactful and it would hammer home the “the Doctor can be wrong” and “sometimes there is no villain” narratives
I will never accept such a charming whimsical episode being considered "bad", when things like Orphan 55 exist.
Your note regarding the kids being "things to protect" rather than actual characters is an interesting observation, because I've noticed this seems to happen a lot in the Moffat era, where in order to create artificial stakes, the writers just throw in some random kids/townspeople/civilians to be put in danger that serve no purpose other than giving the doctor a reason to be the hero. Similar cases can be seen in episodes like Time of the Doctor and The Doctor Falls; it feels like a cheap tactic with no real forethought put into it. RTD at least made his helpless civilians feel like real people most of the time.
I distinctly remember this being the first time a Doctor Who episode left me in a really bad mood; bad enough to go 'That was shit' right in front of my parents lol
This is probably widely known, but the title "In The Forest of the Night" is a reference to William Blake's The Tyger (being the entire second line of the poem), which addresses the problem of evil: what good god of humanity would create "the tiger"? This reference becomes more explicit when a tiger physically appears in the episode.
...I have no idea how this ties into the themes of the episode.
I'd argue that the villain of the episode is the forest growing over London. That's what the Doctor, Clara, Danny and the kids have to stop.
I just hated how the character trajectories of Danny and Clara and the Doctor that were being set up through the series, particularly in this episode, got thrown out in Dark Water when Danny just got killed. It was really feeling like they were building towards Danny becoming a full time companion alongside Clara, and it felt like the character of Danny was only just starting to come together and then everything was just cut short with a random basically off screen detached from the plot death.
Agree, there was so much potential to do more, and better, with these characters. Moffat dropped the ball. Especially Danny's awful pointless death.
Think you kinda missed the point, even when it was directly stated in the episode. Danny’s death wasn’t some grand spectacle or ultimate sacrifice. His death was ordinary, boring. You complain that Danny died when his arc was still in progress, but that’s how most death go. Death doesn’t wait for when you are ready, it can come anywhere, anytime, any reason.
It was vastly more humanizing to have Danny die in an instant from a car crash. It would have not had the same effect if Danny had died in a heroic sacrifice saving an orphanage from an invasion of glibi-foible aliens.
I rewatched this episode recently and I realised why this episode doesn't work, it feels like a satire of Doctor Who, with the domestic conflict, hyperbolic stakes, making Sci-fi concepts out of everyday things, fairy tale feel, OP one off characters and entities, more plot holes than Swiss cheese, underdeveloped plotlines, London centric plot, news coverage, general cheesiness
Ah yes, in the forest of the night. One of the episodes of all time
I think this episode would have been of the the very few stories to benefit from "it was a dream" scenario. Not entirely, but had the forest been an illusion, there also could have been fantastical characters and monsters in the woods for the character to continuously be confronted with. The children tempted away from the group by fantasy characters like Pinocchio was with the fox, and the adults terrified by trolls, warlocks, and ghosts. That would have better served both the fantasy element as well as the suspense of the forest, and in the end it could be resolved by defeating the source of the hallucination/dream. Which i think everyone would find more satisfying then the reveal that trees just... naturally do this...
The Doctor apparently can't do anything to protect the Earth from a solar flare. I mean, he's literally materialised the TARDIS around an entire galaxy before, but somehow a planet is just too big? Not like he couldn't move a planet if he wanted to either. There is no reason for him to think himself powerless in this situation.
That never happen.
@@mayotango1317 It does in Big Finish. The Seventh Doctor has a galaxy in his Tardis because it was overrun with some evil aliens so he trapped them there and we even see that galaxy in "Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS". That wasn't a window, that was a dimensional compression bubble.
"Do you have an appointment? You need an appointment to see The Doctor."
I wasn't sure if I should hit the floor laughing or cringe.
The wasted potential of the concept of this episode frustrates me and the mishandling of a potentially neurodivergent/mentally ill characters is really not good. All in all really not good on all counts. But fun fact the red headed girl in the episode. I think her character is called Ruby is played by an actress called Harley Bird who for many years was a parents worst nightmare because she was the voice of Peppa Pig
I can live with the stupid plot and fairytale stuff but I can't forgive the "mental illness and trauma is magic actually!" shit.
I actually enjoy this episode. I know it's not like high concept or whatever but I find it an enjoyable doctor who rompt, even if it's carried by Capaldi as he normally does.
Same here I just enjoyed it and liked the whole concept
And I still say the "moon" should have become one gigantic fried egg because of the solar flare. The Doctor does have MAJOR reason for being in this story. He's the only good thing about it. Capaldi is always worth watching.
Capaldi is such a good actor, never seen him without his A game
I actually like this story, I hate how everyone hates this story.
The weird thing about their being such an empty london is the fact that you know full well if this were to happen bosses will still be asking employees to come into work
Most villains in the Capaldi era feel like fake out villains. There is usually little to no real threat in a lot of the episodes and the ones that there are real threats in for some reason it always gets lost in something else to make you either forget or not care about it until its right in your face and then its not very scary at all
Like which episodes
Damn, there's so much of the capaldi era I've completely forgotten about including this one. I'm rewatching DW in prep for the upcoming specials. Almost at the end of series 6 now so won't be long til I've caught up with ya, Harbo.
I would have loved to have seen if the doctor had created a special doomsday weapon to revert Earth back destroying the New Forest, only for one of the children to point out that the trees are acting like a shield, Only for him to realize what they are really for and have to rush back to stop his invention.
Forest of the Night is a missed opportunity not to have the Animus from the First Doctor episode the Web Planet having made a comeback but wanting to make the Earth its new home.
Animus dry planets into deserts.
Man, people really hate Kill The Moon as much as this one?
This episode.
I forgot it even existed.
What let this down was the ending ,it was strange and unacceptable .It wasn't a good or bad episode .I enjoyed how Clara and Danny Pink , were both caring and knew how to deal with school kids as professional teachers .While the doctor interactions with them were awkward ,virtually lacking any social skills in communicating with them .The ending was a big disappointment for me .
I didn't like this episode either but just like 11, the 12th doctor had his fair share of whimsical and or fairytale-like elements/plots during his tenure in general as well, so that point didn't really land..you even brought one instance up, being Robot of Sherwood. I mean, his first episode had a dinosaur in Victorian London, the unseen boogyman monster or whatever that was in Listen, the moon being an egg, a mummy on a space ship train, two-dimensional creatures, and those were just in his first season. However, yes it could've definitely been executed a lot better (so could most of 12's episodes..to be honest I wasn't a fan of the 12th doctor era because of the writing, and then wasn't really fond of most of season 11 either. Flux at least had potential but it was so rushed/way too condensed together)
Yeah, this was my least favorite episode of the series... Until Death in Heaven came out and rewrote how Cybermen worked, changing them from real cyborgs to just robots with a skeleton fetish.
tbh I don't hate this one. for what it is as a kid-oriented episode, I just compare it directly to 'Fear Her'. I think this is more interesting and thematic than that episode, even if its similarly messy. I don't mind the stagnant feeling that much and the character work between Clara and Danny is quite an important progression for the Series overall. the kid acting is annoying, but the kids are mostly written to be annoying in a pretty realistic way so I can look past it. also Peter Capaldi is in it. but with all this potential teased, it obviously doesn't follow through. its like a 5/10 for me whereas 'Fear Her' is one of my least favourites of the show.
I really liked this one. It... served as a reminder of the "childlike grandpa" aspect of the Doctor. Which was rather needed, I think, after the whole "hard decisions" themes of the prior two episodes.
Unpopular Opinion (I guess):
I like this episode, just as much as I liked both of the S2 episodes (that alot of people dislike) Fear Hear and Love & Monsters and I personally dislike Kill the Moon, lastly i would place this episode in high C or low B ~
I feel like danny finding out in this episode cheapens the opening to dark water. Like imagine if this episode never happened, (nice huh) and then clara’s about to be honest and bam! Now ya cant. Plus then danny would have to find out about her lying in the nethersphere which would add to the drama
I like Danny, I think he really did deserve a lot better.
I enjoyed watching this episode, yes for the visuals. But I never thought of it as bad or awkward as Fear Her or Kill The Moon, still leagues better. Child-acting is neither here nor there (hit and miss), but the very things criticized in this video are what made it stand out to me. The Doctor assuming wrong and basically being useless made for a good change of pace, while he was still important to the story with his interactions, as well as there not being a big bad to physically fight against. The science is bogus, but that's nothing new either, but with the sister coming back it can be all excused as "magic". However, it's been a while since I last watched it...
On the case of Clara... yes, she did act like an addict. But Danny was *not* okay with her traveling with the Doctor. He made it very clear that "for as long as it's safe for you / you can stop anytime" has long passed in his mind (and yeah, Clara clearly couldn't stop and even enjoyed the thrill) and he made several points about him not appreciating the dangers of it. He *did* give Clara an ultimatum. And not in a good way. The shown communication between the couple always seemed strained to me, him quickly getting passive aggressive (since their very first date). So, instead of properly talking about it like adults he gave her the ultimatum, his own mind already made up. Whether he was right or not, that left Clara without seeing any way of finding a compromise, and since (being addict) she could not simply stop traveling with the Doctor, she resorted to lying and hiding her addiction.
...I guess, I am saying, while Danny was technically not wrong, he went about it in the wrong way, a way that sat very uncomfortably with me (and others). I think in part that was intended, as both his and the Doctor's first impressions of another respectively mirrored another; they had a first impression and stuck with it come hell or high water, neither really trying to see beyond or deeper. It was their dynamic and part of Danny's character... But while the Doctor's stubbornness was slowly (and in parts, beforehand) explored, it just made Danny's stance seem shallow and petty - and therefore easier to overlook the truth in his points and easier to side with the lying addict. Both (or all three) were wrong and going about it badly.
It is a season including the theme of the risks, gains, struggles, comfort, dangers and safety in "human" connection (or lack of it), so it is still in tone, but yeah... I never saw Clara and Danny as a "happy" couple, when most every shown interaction between them was depicted with stress, problems and unresolved / ignored issues, lack of communication and trust.
That's actually also how I see him sending the boy back instead of himself as a closure of sorts, as he in a way finally trusted Clara with his biggest regret, one that in life he was incapable of sharing with / opening up about to her (and also him acknowledging that some things are more important [than [his] love [for her])).
(((Also also, ironically, Danny's last scenes were him mocking the Doctor to be a "blood-soaked old general" whose "beautiful speeches just disappear in the face of tactical advantage" and next making a poetic speech about heroism and ordering all Cybermen - who had the (slim) chance to be as human as he was, as proven by the Brigadier - into mass-suicide. He still made the distinction of him not being a general but a soldier there, despite his role in that moment (literally being in charge / the commander of the CM army with the bracelet), so I am not sure he ever really understood that him and the Doctor were not so dissimilar .-. )))
That season started decent and then every episode was better than the last. Except for two notable exceptions. The only thing worse than in the forest of the fucking night was kill the fucking moon, AND VICE VERSA.
To be fair ITFOTN was *mostly* simply dull as I recall, except for having its moral be "Hey kids, do you hear voices? Ignore your doctors and don't take your medicine!"
Much like how the moon dragon is the least bad bit of Kill the Moon, the forest concept itself wasn't really that terrible.
Yeah, I'm not a fan of the "oh the kids will be sad so maybe we should just let them be dead" logic either.
Paused at 6:27, Courtney was NEVER fun. Most annoying child actor ever. I'd watch the forest episode 10 times before I call her character "fun"
I started watching Doctor Who around 2007; I vividly remember the first episode I watched live was The Shakespeare Code on Syfy (back when it was called Sci Fi); I don't remember hating In the Forest of the Night when I originally watched it, but for some reason, I stopped watching the show here, with the exception of The Woman Who Fell to Earth. At some point, I will catch up with 12 and 13.
Series 10 is so great.
Personally I thought Forest Of The Night was one of the better ones from Season 8. Few fans must not have understood it I guess, but I did. In fact, Season 8 of 12th was one of the better seasons of the modern show. I like almost all the episodes in it, especially FOTN and Flatline. You guys needs to focus more on the layers involved in the story, then you would have thought different about it. It's all about the art people, not the storyline or the plot. FOCUS on the ART of them.
The problem with Forest of the Night is the same as the problem with Sleep No More. They wrote UP to the audience other than down.
I thought this episode was a dud, despite the amazing visuals of the forest covering Earth. The only thing that saves it being the worst episode in the series is the existence of Kill The Moon. That said, this could have been much better had the forest been part of a sinister alien plot- the sontarans using plants to alter the atmosphere, or alternative an invasive species of plants from an alien world (perhaps from a previous alien invasion)taking over everything.
They were really barking up the wrong tree with the writing for this episode
They just couldn't leave it alone.
This is the ONLY modern episode that I have NO MEMORY of, even when shown clips of the episode. It's that shit.
I don't mind this episode. It's all right. At least I found it a less frustrating episode than the Doctor's odd alibism in Kill the Moon.
In regards to the child actors and their writing, I personally find it to be good. They're kids, they're more likely than not be annoying and rude. Especially with how Clara described her term for the class.
one of the biggest grievances I have with this episode is how old are the students meant to be anyway? from what I know of the british education system, the youngest they are is about eleven, and even that I had trouble with believing that for all but the oldest students when I was thirteen and watching this when it premiered. I don't know if it's the writing or the acting or what, but it really threw me off and made it hard to get into this episode because it did feel like the kids were meant to be around my own age. idk lol
Kids don’t start school at 11 you know?…
The kids in this episode are clearly primary school aged
@@Jackadiah I'm not british, I know that they start secondary at a different age. but considering that susan said she was fifteen when at coal hill, I presume it is a secondary school, so the students being primary school aged makes even LESS sense even though I think you're right and they do seem to be that age. idk though
@@Jackadiahclara said they're in yr8 so 12-13
Kill the moon is a masterpiece
The "don't take your meds" episode coming almost right after the pro life episode... Talk about a 2 punch combo.....
7m people appear to disappear overnight, was Chloe one of the kids?
Fun fact: one of the children was a voice actress for Peppa Pig.
P.S. There's a pig among us.
I don't hate it like some do. It's fine. It's largely forgettable, but I like that it tried to do something a bit different.
Maybe another pass or two at the script would have ironed it out.
why no more news of rtd2?
This was the episode that made me stop watching foctor who until a couple years later where I binged the rest of the capaldi series.
Kill the moon had already pushed me to the limit but this was the straw that broke the camels back for me
This episode has a stupid premise and a boring execution - a deadly combination.
I will admit it was such a disaster of a story. I am not a fan of this story and I found it very boring. There were things in this story that did not make sense. I will admit there are beautiful visual effects in this story and some interesting ideas, but it was so boring to watch.
Loved this episode
It didn't.
I always liked this episode.
This episode stinks because it doesn’t take place at night. 0/10 worse than Orphan 55
This is bad, but imo, nothing is worse than Orphan 55. Forest has a major plus in that Peter Capaldi is in it. His presence alone raises this up a notch.
I love series 8. An earlier episode had a pro-life message, and this one has an anti-psychiatric medication message. Based and redpilled!
Funny how the redpilled eps are the worst of an otherwise great series.
this story is as bad as the space pirates XD
Totally the worst episode in series 8
Kill the moon is worse imo. On rewatch, although really bad, wasn't as bad as I remember.
Anchor was nearly the right word to describe Danny Pink.
Without a doubt the worst episode of new who S1-10
Very strong
People did found that episode bad??