#the isolus in fear her

[chartmyfixations]

cris watches dr. who: s02e11 - "Fear Her"

"Everything's coming up Doctor!"

It being the 2012 Olympics is such a mindfuck: for me, it feels like the same past as 2006 (late high school/early student life), but here it's the semi-nearby future. I keep reminding myself they're not dealing with a Current Events Episode, but Semi-Future One

Hey! It's the PM's assistant from Love Actually

Hee. He put the TARDIS the wrong way around

Hey! The road worker is also from Love Actually

Angry barbed wire -- thank god these special effects are styllistically bad and not accidentally bad

Maybe they're still accidentally kind of bad

“Are you deducting?” Hee

Live Long and Dr!

The Dr doesn't like cats, Rose does. This will never work out

Hee. That stash of pencils must be the most innocent hidden stash in any kid's bedroom ever

Aw, a girl and her pickaxe. Go Rose go

You know, Isolus/possessed girl, if you'd drawn a smaller earth, your plan would have worked

Oh god, I just realized that this episode is the one where a little girl menacingly draws a picture of the earth

MOM! You're very useless, I must say

This is like a counterpart to the episode where Rose gets stuck in the telly. They're both pretty low budget, deal with family life and a pivotal, televised UK-event. Here, the Doctor gets sidelined, in the other one, Rose does. Also, they're both not particularly great episodes

Ominous foreshadowing! Is Rose leaving soon? But I've already fallen in love with her

Btw, what is with this string of bad, uninspired episode titles? This and the last one are super generic

5 out of 8 TARDES. It gets a pass, but just barely

[doctorwhogirlie]

Doctor Who - Isolus

[thingsasbarcodes]

Doctor Who 2x11 - 'Fear Her'

[nerdie-faerie]

Idk I've seen people comment a couple of times that Rose was always a damsel in distress that she had no character development in series 2 and it just confuses me every time I rewatch. Because Rose Tyler? A damsel in distress? What like in Tooth and Claw where she freed the prisoners after learning of the werewolf's plan? Or in Satan's Pit where she took charge against the ood after the Doctor was left stuck in the pit? Or in Fear Her when she had to figure out how to get the isolus home and everyone back after the Doctor got taken and his gadget got destroyed? And then how to save Chloe and her mum from the drawing of her abusive dad? Okay

[doctorhomo]

there’s such a massive surge in hatred towards fear her recently and i really want people to stop coming up with bullshit reasons, because it’s pretty clear to me what the actual reason is.

all the criticism im seeing boils down to “annoying child actor”. is she annoying? or is her skin a shade too dark for you? there have been plenty of bad/annoying child actors in doctor who, but why is it that the episode that centres around a black family is so widely hated?

“the acting is bad” is it??? first of all, it’s got nina sosanya in it, shush, but second of all, ive literally never thought the child actor was bad. even as an adult, i think she actually does a pretty good job of being a child possessed by an alien, and we can see a definite difference in how she is after the isolus leaves her. there are very deliberate choices made, like how chloe never smiles while the isolus is still with her, and it does help show how happy she is to return to her own body and be with her mum again. why do so many people think she’s doing a bad job?

“the vfx is awful” it’s actually fine? it’s not any worse than vfx from the rest of series 2 (the abzorbaloff melting into the pavement comes to mind), and it has very little bearing on the story anyway since most of the stuff we see happens through drawings (which is actually a fucking cool storytelling method, but i never see anyone praising that)

long story short, there have been plenty of bad episodes in dw and plenty of annoying children, but none get as much hate (at least from what ive seen) as fear her. it’s worse recently bc of the huw edwards sitch, but it’s been going on longer than that. i think people should have the balls to admit the real reason they dislike fear her, because coming up with all these stupid reasons is just getting ridiculous

[nindeoronra]

So here me out: I'm rewatching "Fear Her" and I'm at the part where the Doctor is talking to the Isolus and there's the way he looks at Rose as he says, "While they are happy, they can feed off each other's love."

He pauses and gives Rose the most intense look as he says, "Without it, they are lost.'

JFC, how many times have I watched this episode and not pick up on that foreshadowing until just now?!?

[meta-squash]

I have a hypothetical/thought experiment about Torchwood potential episode reordering. I think it would have made so much more sense and been so interesting to place Fragments in between Meat and Adam.

Meat is a fairly innocuous monster-of-the-week episode with no throughline consequences/story arc for the most part. Except at the end of the episode Rhys is allowed to leave Torchwood, memories intact. This serves to establish a "new" precedent for Torchwood and emphasizes Gwen's sort of special treatment.

Now, we place Fragments next.

The intro/outro conflict would have to change of course (the building exploding/John Hart's message), because that has to come at the end of the series. So maybe instead the team (minus Gwen) get trapped in some other way. Maybe something like the Isolus in the DW episode Fear Her, something causes them all to "disappear" and get stuck somewhere. Or maybe there's some alien item/creature that traps them half inside walls and furniture, as if they phased through a wall and got stuck. You know, something that traps all the characters in one place so that the important plots playing out are their backstories, which we watch as each person gets free (like in the actual episode).

Maybe whatever traps them either sends them into the Void or into something void adjacent/void contaminated. They don't know this when they get free, and they destroy whatever it was that causes them to get trapped, or deactivate it and take it back to the hub.

Gwen does not arrive at the end of the episode like in the original. Instead, the new version of Fragments takes place a long enough time after Meat that Rhys is healed, which means she's on vacation with him in Paris (which is what seems to be implied in Adam). This allows the memory-based alien from the void the time to infiltrate the team, so that when Gwen returns from vacation the next day, the episode plays out the same.

The rest of the series also plays out the same, either replacing Adrift with something that reintroduces John Hart and ups the ante some other way, or having a little scene at the very end of Adrift maybe of Jack watching Gwen take down all her missing posters, and then he gets a threatening message from Hart. Or the reintroduction of Hart just gets shifted into the start of Exit Wounds.

But now that Fragments has come first, the rest of the series playing out the way it does normally allows for a whole lot of interesting character development.

In Adam, we get to see the drastic difference between everyone's backstories and who they became as we know them, and whatever Adam has done to manipulate them. It also means that we can see, for example, the difference between terrified and uncertain pre-Torchwood Tosh and the Tosh we know, and this confident fake-Tosh. We can see the difference between Owen before Katie's death, and Owen the loveable shithead, and this fake-Owen who's so awkward and nervous and sad in a completely different way. (And, as Tosh and Owen's personalities are essentially flipped in this ep, we have a better perspective on both.) We get to see the start of Jack and Ianto's relationship, how it's literally built on lies and manipulation from the start, and therefore how compelling it is that Jack is 100% certain that Ianto has been manipulated by some creature.

Seeing Owen's backstory makes his 3-episode death/resurrection arc more compelling, because we can see how much Katie's death broke him, we understand his self-destructive tendencies and their source better (especially with the little addition of his childhood lore at the end of Adam), and we can see why both death and undeath are upsetting for him. We get to see his interactions with Martha as two people who respect each other but also the way in which his flirting is less serious and more almost territorial. Then we'd also get to see his reaction to Maggie, whose tragedy is so similar to his, meaning that his support and encouragement toward her is really for both of them. In the original script for ADITD, when Owen is cleaning out his flat he also throws away photos; one photo could have been of him and Katie. It makes it more compelling: suddenly the audience (and Owen) has a moment of realizing that there's no afterlife and he'll never see her again.

Again in Something Borrowed everyone's backstories just make their actions in the episode a bit more compelling. Owen going to a wedding while dead means the audience keeps in mind that he was going to marry Katie but she died, and even if he could now he'd be dead, which emphasizes both the uniqueness of Gwen's wedding and the threat of it too (this could all be destroyed etc etc). Toshiko's loneliness is emphasized more, and again the audience is reminded that Tosh hasn't seen her mother in 4 years at least. And yet again, like Owen, we're reminded of Ianto's relationship with Lisa, but also his relationship with Jack.

From Out Of The Rain and Adrift don't have many moments that would be too affected by knowing everyone's backstories, except that I think seeing the effort Ianto went through to get into Torchwood to help Lisa makes the effort he goes through to save everyone and the way losing so many souls affects him seem to be a sort of linear line, in that From Out Of The Rain is an episode that mostly focuses on Ianto's feelings and vague backstory re: the Electro. Adrift happens, which everyone else is barely in, but we now understand the cruelty of past Torchwood and perhaps can be a little more sympathetic to Jack about it. Which makes it maybe a little bit clearer why Ianto did what he did pointing Gwen to Flat Holm.

We get from Adrift to Exit Wounds through whatever way (replacing Adrift, just a little scene at the end of Adrift, idk) and then Exit Wounds occurs the way Exit Wounds plays out in the actual series.

This arrangement just allows a lot more interesting character development and way more play (either for the actual writers or just viewer brains) with character motivations. Watching for the first time, I'd have felt Owen and Maggie's conversation was a lot more compelling if I already knew Owen's backstory. I'd have found Tosh's new confidence in Adam simultaneously unnerving and uplifting if I'd just seen her shaking and traumatized in Fragments. Jack's behavior throughout a lot of the series (both his ruthlessness and his mercy) would make more sense seeing the things he'd gone through in all his years at Torchwood, and the way in which he became leader. It also puts emphasis on how Jack never wanted to be a the leader of Torchwood, and despite his knowledge he's kind of bumbling and thrashing his way through it, which then explains his treatment of Owen in ADITD, or his decisions re: Flat Holm in Adrift.

So that's my theory on a hypothetical rearranging of episodes. Of course, at this point it doesn't matter at all because we've all watched the series a million times so we're aware of the backstories no matter what. But I just think it would have been more compelling storytelling for first-time viewing.

[rearranging-deck-chairs]

i was listening to the silt verses and listening to val (the saint who speaks things into reality) talk and it reminded me of some things damien the bright sessions (the mind manipulator) has said about his power, that once during a teenage tantrum he told his family to leave and they left and never came back

and it made me think about the isolus from fear her, the thousand year old children who play make believe so they dont go mad with boredom, not a subtle parallel for the doctor (and the master)

so im thinking about this pantheon and the doctor's domain of stories, and how his only weapon is his words. your make believe turns into reality, what you say is true, becomes true, the universe shapes around you

imagine the accidents. "the wrong word in the wrong moment". imagine trying to raise/steer/use a child like that

but also it seems the doctor isnt in control of this story anymore, its point of gravity has shifted. he can disappear, he can be written out. his love interest is a dnd player. it's real AND it's a game. "two things at once"

idk mostly im just rotating this concept of a deeply traumatised, unfathomably angry person with the power to change reality/minds (also to an extent reality in how much what we keep of reality is stored in memories, change memories -> change reality) but not necessarily complete control over this power, or even awareness of when theyre using it

the doctor who had him and the master swap memories and destinies and perhaps identities by telling death "take him". the master who takes things on tv to be real (why wouldnt he? he is on tv too). hypnosis. orders.

im also thinking about what happens when you yank the reins out of the hands of a control freak

[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

[doctorwho-rewatch]

S2E11 - Fear Her

★★★☆☆

First, I do not remember this episode at all. Just, nothing was recognisable about it, so it really was like I was watching this for the first time.

The concept that a child, having experienced a dysfunctional and borderline abusive childhood, resorting to drawings to give herself an escape and an imaginary world of friends is promising. Chloe is not really discerning - random children, a ginger cat - are unsuspecting victims, up until the Isolus' power over Chloe strengthens and the Doctor and the TARDIS end up getting trapped.

And we have Chloe's embattled mother, now a single mother but having to deal with the fallout from her abusive husband dying, Chloe's mental trauma from her father and being at a complete loss as to what to do, that it's easier to pretend everything's normal and Chloe is okay. And she's not. So that moment when Chloe's fear is giving life to her demonic scribble drawing of her dad, and her mother is trying in vain to calm her, there's a sense of relief that finally mother is listening to her daughter. And now things are going to change for the better between the two.

So the fact that the backdrop to all of this is the 2012 London Olympics just seems confusing, and cheap. I think 3 stars is generous for the episode as a whole, given how obviously it was a filler episode, but the mother/daughter relationship really did give this story some heart.

QUOTE: "It only seems like yesterday a few naked Greek blokes were tossing a diskus about, wrestling with each other in the sand and the crowds stood about— No wait a minute. That was Club Med."

[ask-the-almighty-google]

You forget the part where she asked the Doctor to help Cassandra not once but TWICE after the woman a) tried to kill her specifically and b) possessed her body, nearly killing her in the process.

The part where she decided to help Elton even after he had STALKED HER MOTHER.

Or the part where she helped Harriet in 10 Downing Street because the woman was in distress.

When she decided to stand up and be the Doctor on Christmas despite knowing it would get her killed because someone had to.

When she had so much compassion for Donna in Turn Left even if she knew how it was all going to end.

How she stopped a shop from being robbed IN THE MIDDLE OF A DALEK INVASION because the storekeeper didn’t need to deal with looters on top of extermination.

How she gave Jack a second chance after he conned them, and then a third chance after he died in Bad Wolf even if she accidentally brought him back forever in the process.

The fact that she stood up for Mrs. Connolly when she was being verbally abused by her husband in The Idiot’s Lantern and tried to help Mr. Magpie even though she knew he’d done something wrong.

How she decided to save the multi-verse on top of getting back to the Doctor in Journey’s End.

The way she had sympathy for Chloe’s mother in Fear Her, and even if she was short-tempered with the Isolus she still helped it get back to it’s family.

Being willing to put herself on the line for complete strangers over and over again just because it was the right thing to do even when she could have been safe.

Trying to comfort her alternate reality mother and father despite them not knowing her just because they were in pain.

Telling Jackie to go with Pete to his universe even if it meant she would never see her again, and letting Mickey go to do the same, because it would make them happy even if she didn’t intend to stay with them.

Shall we go on?

Everyone has flaws. Rose can be selfish at times, yes. But she ALWAYS ultimately puts others before herself every single time when it counts.

☕ "rose tyler is selfish" discourse

I see how it is! Let's just go there, hey?

Selfish enough that she let her dad go again if it meant time could be saved

So selfish that she forgave a Dalek and helped it find its peace even when she was too afraid to

Or that time she absorbed the time vortex to save the Doctor (and all of humanity and the universe and time and space, I think?)

When she put aside her differences and jealousy of Sarah Jane and instead decided to make a friend of a woman so strong and important to the love of her life, because anybody important to the Doctor is important to her, too

OR when people completely overlook the fact that she was so compassionate and caring to Reinette when she — the woman the Doctor fell in love with and left her for — showed fear

When she showed nothing but empathy for a man the rest of the crew were afraid of

When she hid her own fears and worries about the Doctor going down into that pit because she knew how much the TARDIS meant to him

OR OR OR when she gave him a hand to hold

Discuss ☕️

[doctorwhogirlie]

Doctor Who: Fear Her

Series Two ✨ 2006 ✨

Doctor: 10th

Companions: Rose

Main Setting: London, 27 July 2012

Main Enemy: Chloe Webber's Father

Creatures: Isolus

My Personal Rating: 6/10

I don't mind this episode, I like that it's not really the alien thats the villain. It sounds basic, but I like this episode is really all I have to say, it's an alright episode, nothing too special about it, but I don't skip it either, if that makes sense. I do like the scene with the cat a lot however.

(Please don't take these too seriously, I am not a real life reviewer, just someone who likes the show)

[besidesitstoowarm]

"Fear Her" thoughts

orange boy supremacy.

i think this was a great filler ep, fairly unmemorable but with a deep and wonderful heart. this was great for such a "don't i know them from" person like me, bc i knew the mom from casanova (highly recommend, btw) and sherlock and love actually. also the garbage man was in love actually. also highly recommend that movie

there was an orange boy, i must say this. he was a friend, and fat, and we liked to see him. that's all

it's so weird to see a "future" episode set more than a decade ago, it makes me feel unbelievably ancient. i don't care about the olympics so the "this represents love" is kind of stupid to me, but i'm sure it worked for other people, so whatever

the overall plot worked though. the terror of a recently-deceased abuser, the loneliness that becomes manifest. doctor who is fantastic when it leans into "legitimizing children's fears" as a story ("empty child" comes to mind, "a christmas carol" too. not "night terrors" oddly). chloe is a deeply sympathetic character, and the isolus are engaging enough as an idea. i'm struggling to identify details to discuss, i honestly think the overall picture is so beautiful that it's hard to pick into

anyway i liked, which is nice bc i previously didn't remember much (other than there was an orange boy). next up the finale!

[timeagainreviews]

That time Doctor Who did Tales from the Hood and the Olympics

Content warning: I will speak briefly about domestic abuse at a couple of points in this review. Feel free to skip this one if that’s too much for you. 

They say horror and comedy share similar beats. That the rhythms of their narrative structure are comparable. This is probably why I have always struggled with getting into the horror genre. Much like a comedy, if the premise is weak, you pray it’s brief. This is probably why one of my favourite subgenres of horror is the anthology movie. Tales from the Crypt, Creepshow, Trick-’R-Treat, The Vault of Horror are just a few. But one of my favourites of the lot is a charming film referred to as “Tales from the Hood.” Its cheeky title, an obvious riff off of the then popular “Tales from the Crypt,” franchise, told you everything you needed to know. This was a horror anthology movie made from a black perspective. It stars the electric Clarence Williams III as “Mr Simms,” the movie’s analogue Cryptkeeper. And it’s a lot of fun.

Of the film’s four different stories, my favourite as a kid was always “Boys Do Get Bruised.” In it, a young boy named Walter discovers he has the ability to affect things in the real world after drawing them. He learns this after crumpling a drawing of his bully coincides with his bully meeting a terrible and maiming accident. Throughout the story, both Walter and his mother Sissy are subject to the violent outbursts of Sissy’s boyfriend Carl (played brilliantly by an against type David Allen Grier). Walter refers to Carl as “The Monster,” and draws him as such. Toward the climax of the story, Walter protects himself and Sissy by folding, twisting, and eventually burning the image of the Monster. You can imagine my surprise then, when Doctor Who told basically the same story eleven years later with “Fear Her.”

In Fear Her, we’re introduced to the residents of the appropriately named Dame Kelly Holmes Close, a residential street scheduled to be part of the Olympic torch runner route for the then-upcoming 2012 London Olympics. The local council has taken a keen interest in beautifying their roads to allow Britain to put its best foot forward on the international stage. Only something far more troubling than potholes is afoot, and everyone knows it. No amount of beautification or proud waving of the Union Jack can hide the fact that there are children going missing. Unbeknownst to most of the residents, it all relates back to young Chloe Webber and her bizarre ability to capture people, animals, and objects within her childish drawings.

The TARDIS arrives in what may be one of the funniest materialisation scenes in Doctor Who history with the Doctor needing to readjust the parking. The Doctor and Rose exit, seemingly in high spirits. From my research, I learned that this script had been written pretty early on into Tennant’s tenure as the Tenth Doctor. Because of this, much of the dialogue was written for any Doctor to deliver. I found this funny as I feel some of Tennant’s funniest one-liners come from this episode. Such as when he muses that back in 1948 “everyone had a tea party to go to,” and then goes on to wax philosophic about those little edible ball-bearings on cakes. If that is boilerplate Doctor dialogue, I love it. That said, the Doctor and Rose’s flirting feels out of character and tacked on at times. While the Doctor is busy distracting himself with his own haircare routine, Rose gets the first whiff of danger after witnessing a cat go missing.

After doing a bit of very obvious snooping, the Doctor and Rose have brought themselves to the attention of half the neighbourhood. It’s the concerned elderly woman, Maeve who thinks something is taking the children. Council worker, Kel, is more concerned with smoothing out the pavement of the roads to have noticed much. So the Doctor and Rose go knocking on doors. Meanwhile, Chloe Webber spies their activities from the birdseye view of her first-floor bedroom window. Whatever force has taken over Chole fears what changes these newcomers will bring and it begins to formulate a plan. But through frustration Chloe scribbles across the page, causing a tangled ball of graphite to manifest and attack Rose.

The Doctor uses a bit of sonic screwdriver magic to neutralise the threat, rendering the graphite knot conveniently travel-sized. He then takes the ball back to the TARDIS, where analysis reveals its compounds are pencil lead. I imagine much of the ire for this story comes from Chloe’s being able to draw things in and out of existence, which is fair. Personally speaking, I’ve always loved that concept, ever since I was a kid. It wasn’t just Tales from the Hood either. Eerie, Indiana did a similar story as well. I loved Kyle Rayner as the Green Lantern because he was an artist able to “draw,” things into existence using his lantern ring. I get that it may be a little too far-fetched for some, but I hold that Doctor Who is not hard sci-fi. I would argue that it’s not even sci-fi.  But really, I think the weakest element of this story has got to be the inclusion of the Olympics. 

For starters, this episode came out in 2006. Matthew Graham has gone on record saying that this episode was written for children. So why then, is it so far from the actual Olympics? It’s not as though this is some sort of corporate mandate from the higher-ups at the BBC to generate synergy or whatever. Maybe if the Olympics were in two years, it would have made more sense. With that in mind, it appears to be more of a conscious decision, and what a weird one. If this story was written for six-year-olds, its subject matter wouldn’t come into fruition until they were twice their age. This isn’t really a negative, I simply find it odd.

Even stranger is the fact that this story wasn’t originally supposed to take place on Earth, so the inclusion of the Olympics had to come much later. In trying to understand the usage of the Olympics, I reverse-engineered the story in many different ways to see if it could tell the same story without all of the saccharine nationalism and honestly, I kept coming back to it being somewhat essential to the story. The most likely explanation is that the Olympics are fun and that the story being set in the near future added a bit of realism. Sure, fine, but is that the only function they play?

As I mentioned earlier, Councilman Kel has been proudly minding the pavement with precision as if the Queen herself were running the torch. There’s a sort of gooey sentimentality toward Britain and its inclusion in the proud tradition of the Olympic games. But within this cloying nationalism is a hint of mockery. You can clean up the pavement and shoo away the homeless, but you can’t cover up what happens behind Britain's closed doors. Chloe Webber and her mother, Trish were both victims of horrible domestic abuse at the hands of Chloe’s now deceased father. Even after his death, trauma plagued both mother and daughter. Alienating them from one another, their friends, and even following into their dreams.

After narrowing down the Webber homestead as the source of the disappearances, the Doctor and Rose ingratiate themselves with Trish by presenting themselves as the only people open-minded enough to listen to her. The Doctor uses his famous “Dad skills,” to put Chloe under hypnosis, allowing him to talk to the entity inside. We learn that the entity is a creature called an Isolus, known for travelling in large groups like schools of fish puttering across the murky depths of space. Only this unfortunate Isolus was separated from its family. While seeking out warmth and love, it was drawn to the heat of new pavement and Chloe’s loneliness. Both Chloe and the Isolus are but lonely children seeking company, hence all of the stolen children.

After removing her drawing implements, the Doctor and Rose leave Chloe in Trish’s incapable hands. Seriously, this is the biggest sticking point in the entire episode for me. If your child has the inhuman ability to draw people out of existence, why the hell would you leave them alone? Fearing the Doctor is about to force it back into loneliness, the Isolus grabs Chloe’s coloured pencil stash out of a headless doll and gets to drawing the crowd at the Olympics. That many people gathered in the name of goodwill may be just the ticket. The disappearance of the crowd draws the Doctor and Rose back to the Webbers, but by the time they return, Chloe has also drawn the Doctor into her collection.

Now it’s up to Rose, with a little hint from the drawing of the Doctor- use the symbolic love of the Olympic torch to reignite the Isolus’ pod. Rose deduces that the pod must have been attracted to the high heat of the tar from Kel’s roadworks. She then goes over to his council van, produces a council axe, and tears up the council’s street, revealing the Isolus pod under the bump Kel couldn’t seem to smooth out. Meanwhile, Chloe, still unaware of Rose’s endeavours, furiously draws the earth on her wall in an attempt to further expand her family. Rose tosses the Isolus pod toward the Olympic torch runner just in time, as it attaches to the now roiling flame. The sudden influx of love and warmth draws the Isolus out of Chloe, who restores the missing children and the stadium crowd.

At this point, the episode can’t decide quite where it wants to end. The torch runner gets a leg cramp or something, causing him to drop the torch. It’s beginning to look like nobody will pick up the torch and carry it the rest of the way. That is until the Doctor comes along and scoops it up revealing that not only he, but the Olympics will be alright. Only the human equivalent of a golden retriever, David Tennant, could pull off such a dopey sequence. Seriously, could you picture Eccleston doing that? But the story doesn’t end there. You see, as I said earlier, Chloe’s father was still plaguing her dreams. In order to remove him from her dreams, Chloe trapped her horrific father in a drawing on her closet wall. With the sudden influx of power to the Isolus, the drawing has come to life.

The Doctor and Rose rush back toward the house but are unable to help Trish or Chloe who are racked with terror at the bottom of the stairs. The difference here is that instead of Chloe drawing her abuser into a drawing she can then crush and burn, she is now basically powerless against her father. Except she isn’t, and neither is Trish. The two young women embrace one another and sing “Kookabura,” together as it was always the song Trish used to soothe Chloe after a particularly bad dream. I really loved how at this point in the story, it’s up to two victims of abuse to reclaim their lives and save themselves. By sticking together, they find the strength to overcome their pain. As a former victim of domestic abuse, this scene actually means a lot to me on a personal level. I’m glad they didn’t cheapen the moment by having the Doctor reverse the polarity of the neutron flow.

Now, do I actually think Matthew Graham stole his story idea from a small American indie horror from 1995? No. Stole is a harsh word. But I would be lying if I said I didn’t try to find his Twitter so I could ask if maybe he saw the movie and forgot about it. It would also be a lie to claim I didn’t google his name and Tales from the Hood. All that came up were mentions of an adaptation of “Childhood’s End,” (not that one) and an episode of Philip K Dick’s Electric Dreams titled “The Hood Maker.” Really, comparing a childrens’ episode of Doctor Who to a horror movie from the gangsta rap era is a bit lopsided. It’s like when Kidz Bop covers a particularly salacious rap song. There’s gonna be some differences.

The episode ends with what might be one of the weirdest payoffs in Doctor Who history. The Doctor finally gets his edible ball-bearings on a cupcake. With the children of the village returned, the Isolus back with its family, and the world safe for another day, the Doctor and Rose are right to feel chuffed. Everyone lives and no one has to die. A cupcake break isn’t just warranted, it’s well earned. This is why the Doctor’s sudden chilly proclamation that a storm is approaching feels like a bit of an atonal ending to what was really a bit of a daft episode.

As history has shown, the real 2012 Olympic torch was not, in fact, lit by David Tennant, much to my and many other Whovian’s chagrins. Shayne Ward was focused less on music and more on his acting career by then. The Olympics themselves turned out to be less about love and more about keeping the status quo after the 2011 riots. In a way, Fear Her has become a bit of a retro-active historical, while also acting as a time capsule of preemptive revisionism. The reality of the 2012 London Olympics is closer to what goes on behind closed doors. The monster lurking underneath the image of prosperity.

[wibblypod]

Listen to our episode discussing Fear Her here!

Day in Fandom History: June 24…

The Doctor and Rose travel to 2012 London where they are set to host the Summer Olympics, only to investigate strange disappearances from left to right with all signs pointing at a little girl and her drawings. “Fear Her” premiered on this day, 16 Years Ago.

[wibblypod]

It's time to discuss FEAR HER and Talia and Lucia are once more talking about racism and portrayals of abuse in Doctor Who. The Isolus is a baby with way too much power and Tenrose is impossible not to ship (despite our best efforts). Listen to our mixed feelings on this episode now! https://buff.ly/3yFX6qz