The Beast Below

[C0der]

Through the mist we walk...

That was a bit of a mixed bag for me...

For a story that boasted such scintillating ingredients - the creepy guys in the 'fortune-teller' booths, a horrible be-tentacled monster, a moral dilemma, political allegory and a glimpse into the darker side of humanity - you'd think that we'd have seen something good.
But we weren't. I'll try and explain why I think that.

I think the episode fell down in two key places:

First of all, as others have mentioned, the running time simply did not do justice to the ambition of the script and the ideas contained therein. As such, what we got, felt under-developed and only partially formed. In fact, the whole thing just raced by, without a moment for pause or for reflection.

The smilers? Great - a truly iconic look, just perfect for Doctor Who - but they were sidelined so quickly, and ultimately seemed utterly extraneous to the proceedings. A great shame...

Then there was the moral dilemma - interesting stuff, but the script didn't really dwell on it for more than a couple of minutes. It had been solved before you could even get your head around the implications.

The second issue I thought was with the characterisation. Once more, Moffat serves up yet another dislikeable and unsympathetic female character who we're supposed to take to, and, indeed, the impact of vast portions of the script seemed to hinge on us doing precisely that.

I speak here of Liz 10, played by the habitually endearing Sophie Okonedo. And, my God, she was awful...absolutely *awful*! Even if, even *if*, you were charmed by this gun-slinging 'chav queen' who talked only in cliches, here we were presented with a woman who has:

1) Sanctioned the torture of an innocent creature to suit her own ends;
2) Sanctioned the murder of her own citizens to hide her crime - including, yes, children who don't do too well at their tests in school!

I'm sorry, but doesn't that make her a mass-murdering monster?! Towards the climax of the episode, I was expecting her to be thrown into the mouth of the Space Whale (just like her victims) in true Lady Adrasta style!

But, no! The Doctor lets her off and she continues her reign! Though this time, she's promised to be more open with her subjects. Well, isn't that nice of her?! I'm sure the relatives of those whose deaths she ordered will forgive her without a second thought!

Still weirder was the reaction of the Doctor. When confronted with a mass murderer and the humble subjects of a mass murderer, he unleashes his fury at Amy of all people! And her only crime was an entirely well-meaning and innocuous decision to withhold information, which he only found out 10-15 minutes later anyway!

It didn't seem right to me at all.

And the supporting characters, rather than coming across as real people, were expositional at best. Maybe the pacing of the story forced that to be the case, but I didn't feel we were being presented with characters at all - they talked in cliches and everything they said was a plot info-dump, not really the sorts of the conversations that actual people would ever had. The exchange between Mandy and Amy was just bizarre...as if people talk like that!

The more I think about it, the more I think I should really be scoring this episode 'very poor', but I've actually given it 'average'. Despite the above, I did really like some of Moffat's ideas, I thought the acting was OK (not as good as last week from young Amy Pond.), and I thought the Smilers were fantastic.

I guess the episode did have *something* - but it should have been so much more.

And in the mist we all get lost.