#In The Forest of the Night

[6-and-7]

The Sun Makers Far in the distant future, Earth has become uninhabitable, forcing mankind to colonise first Mars and then Pluto. No longer the coldest planet in the solar system, Pluto is now warmed by artificial suns. The Doctor, Leela and K9 arrive to discover the exploitation of the Megropolis people by the ruling elite, led by the Collector.

Deep in the Undercity, a small group of revolutionaries plot to overthrow the company and the Doctor is forced to fight the oppression of the people using fire against fire…

In the Forest of the Night One morning, in every city and town in the world, the human race wakes up to face the most surprising invasion yet.

Everywhere, in every land, a forest has grown overnight and taken back the Earth. It doesn't take the Doctor long to discover that the final days of humanity have arrived…

[glitterypin]

[doctor-who-binge]

"Shes on medication!!!!"

Oh the horror..... I need to go reblog my objects to this stupid fucking episode

maybe ill just skip towards the end

ableist piece of shit episodes

[pagerunner-j]

Me, belatedly watching In the Forest of the Night:

*sits here with a stop watch waiting to see how long it's going to take everybody to remember what Arden means, for God's sake*

[lord-save-me]

Closest I got to finding a 50 year old cute is when Peter Capaldi went up close to the camera and said "trees! ☺️"

[thingsasbarcodes]

Doctor Who 8x10 - In the Forest of the Night

[cheese-rat29]

if in the forest of the night happened in the us, employers would send out emails that said the we still had to show up for work

[lighttrls]

still caught up on that episode of doctor who where the moral is to stop taking your meds and listen to the voices. like. yknow. maybe not the greatest advice. as someone who hears voices. maybe dont

[dandelionjack]

i have a high tolerance for mediocre episodes because if they include even a smidgen of toxic doctor-companion relationship development i will lap that shit up, ignoring the fact that the episodic plot itself makes less than zero sense and involves an incredibly annoying kid or several. see: in the forest of the night when clara asks the doctor to leave her to die because she doesn’t want to end up like him; fear her where the isolus and chloe’s parasitic union is a foil for the tragic codependency tenrose have

your science sucks and your plotholes are many but a story is driven by the protagonists and boy are they getting along like a house on fire

[mrsometimes11]

Re-watching Doctor Who ahead of the 60th (only 2005-present, I'm not a masochist), and am at S8 E10, and I'm sorry to say that Clara is beginning to bug me.

This is the episode with the forest over London, for those wondering, and Clara asks how the Earth can be in danger from the trees in her time when she's been to the future. Valid question, except, wait a minute, this is the second time she's asked that question this series (previously asked when the Moon turned out to be an egg), and she's been with the Doctor for a while now, how is she not getting the whole time-can-be-rewritten thing?

It's kind of a staple of the series as a whole, and usually asked by companions very early on, but somehow Clara, despite literally re-writing the Doctor's timeline last series, just doesn't get it.

I was never one of the Clara haters, although I do prefer Amy and Bill as companions for 11 and 12 respectively, and to be honest I don't think I've noticed this on previous watches, but I've noticed now, and I'm very annoyed by it. I just hate it when otherwise smart characters don't seem to get very basic concepts of the world in which they live.

[rapha-reads]

In The Forest Of The Night is fascinating. Clara thinking she's saving the Doctor and all the interpersonal relationships between Clara and the Doctor, Clara and Danny, the Doctor and Maebh, but mostly, the relationship between Earth and its inhabitants. Trees. Trees are important, always have been, always will be. Trees and children's minds.

The forest that was humanity's scariest nightmare, the place of all the horrors, but even then the source of oxygen and food and warmth. The forest becoming throughout the centuries, as it receded in front of humanity's urbanisation, a refuge, a place of relief from the noise and the frenzy... Forests are friends. Don't hurt the forests.

"You hear voices, you want to shut them up. The trees want to save your life, you want to chomp them down."

Humanity in a nutshell.

Also the music in this episode is really good. Somber and slow at first, and once the Doctor and the children start getting that the trees are friends, it gets joyful and cheery. And Missy's theme. Missy's theme is amazing, I had forgotten.

And Danny Pink. Danny Pink deserved better.

[reachingforthevoid]

Doctor Who: In the Forest of the Night

I rewatched this story on 9 September 2023.

We begin with leaves rustling and a school kid running through the forest. She finds the TARDIS and the Doctor invites her inside. We quickly learn that London is rammed full of vegetation.

Danny and Clara are with a bunch of school kids overnighting at the Museum of Natural History. Maebh Arden is one of the kids, and she’s the one who’s found the Doctor. 

It’s a sweet tale about creatures on Earth that protect the planet from cosmic disasters, and about the human capacity to forget catastrophic events. 

I hadn’t realised until now that it was written by Frank Cottrell-Boyce who wrote the script for the 2012 Olympic Games opening ceremony.

[goldyapper]

Yeh, No the Doctor would not argue against kids taking meds. This is out of character and awful.

[doctorwhobracket]

[doctor-who-binge]

(Posting here because I left a YT comment and I want to go be able to delete it if necessary)

I know people will yell special snowflake at me, but this episode's ableism is unforgivable. "Please give her her meds" The Doctor in essence: "no we aren't medicating her humans are stupid and just want to shut kids up"

I do not care that in universe she is hearing actual voices— its bad message in the real world because the idea that antidepressants or antipsychotics change who you are in a bad way and remove your creativity is a VERY rampant belief. Just look at new agers.

Its an anti-medication episode and I can't imagine how hard it must have been for kids who need medication (especially mental health medication) to hear the Doctor say giving medication to kids is stupid. How maybe their parents "just want to shut them up". We HAVE to remember this show has a large child audience, they aren't going to think about the complexities that were used to defend that segment. They'll take what their hero says, The Doctor, at face value.

I don't care that its a metaphor or allegory, anti-medication should not be used as an allegory or metaphor in the first place, at least not an allegory for human ignorance.

Other than that, bad child acting can be forgiven imo and I didn't think it was that bad. There is a threat not a villain, a threat the Doctor cannot fight and I like that. I didn't think this episode showed a toxic relationship between the Doctor and Clara I think it showed a toxic relationship between Danny and Clara. Showing how much she puts him to the side and an example of how she was never a good GF in my opinion. I don't know of this episode would have been better with 11. I think it would have better if you nix the anti medication bit, but then the entire crux of the episode is gone— if your episode relies heavily on "omg don't medicate her we need her super special powers that medicine destroys" then its a bad fucking episode.

[daisylikesmedia]

Series 8 Episode 10: In the Forest of the Night

Heyy everyone, today we’re going to be reviewing In the Forest of the Night, an episode where the villains are trees and a couple of animals from London Zoo. God I love Doctor Who, let’s get into it.

Yeah you did read that correctly the threat in this story is that the entirety of the world has become covered in trees. That’s what we’re dealing with here. Sometimes, Doctor Who tries to subvert the formula and falls flat on its face trying, but I think this is what happened in this story. The trees aren’t scary or particularly useful as a plot device. I don’t think they’re used creatively, or add much in the way of stakes, and most importantly of all it’s just not all that fun to see the monster of the week be a few trees. It just feels underwhelming.

There are also characters in this episode, but surprisingly for Series 8, I don’t find the character writing in this episode to be all that compelling. This episode really feels like filler before the finale, and so despite some conflict between our main cast, it feels like they’re at a standstill. Alongside this, I don’t like the child characters in this episode either. They don’t do anything special, and I find a lot of them to be a lil too “obnoxious schoolkid” for me to care about them enough.

And yeesh, there is a big elephant in the room with this episode. SO, there’s a young girl in this story called Maebh, and she has a mental disorder that started when her sister went missing. When she’s not on her medication, she suffers from nervous tics and she hears voices in her head. This story takes a character like this, and uses it to tell the children watching to NOT take their medication, and that the voices inside her head are RIGHT?? This is some Kill the Moon levels of missing the mark on your message in the episode. What an irresponsible thing to be telling children watching the program. If a child has been prescribed medication, they need that medication, simple as. It’s such a shame too because this could’ve been a great arc used to empower neurodivergent kids if it just didn’t make the “don’t take your meds kids” angle the one it focused on.

TL:DR/Overview: This episode just sucks I’m sorry. The threat is bland, the characters aren’t particularly interesting, and the message of the episode tells neurodivergent kids that they shouldn’t be taking their meds. It’s a horrible, nasty, and dangerous to say on a children’s TV programme. Kill the Moon managed to bail itself out of D tier despite some terrible messaging thanks to some amazing acting and writing at the climax of the episode. In the Forest of the Night doesn’t have that kind of scene to bail it out, and so it is my first D tier of Series 8.