***WARNING CONTAINS SPOILERS***
In modern day London there lives a frightened little boy. Every night he lays in his bed terrified by noises and things he sees. His parents don’t know what more they can do to help him. That’s when the Doctor receives the boy’s desperate pleas for help on his psychic paper and sets off with Rory and Amy on a house call. This initial hook of the Doctor coming to save a child from the scary things in his cupboard is a wonderfully simple and enthralling one. In a way it’s almost a reassurance to any youngesters watching the show who might get frightened: “Don’t worry kids, if it’s really bad then the Doctor will come to protect you.” There’s something wonderfully sweet and paternal about that sentiment and Matt Smith’s Doctor has always played extremely well off of children so it all fits perfectly.
Overall the episode very much plays to the older style of “Doctor Who” episodes from the days the show’s initial run from 1963-1989. The limited number of locations, the creepy creatures which are something of this world turned wrong (dolls in this case,) and the haunted house sensability of the whole thing all feel very old school. The Eleventh Doctor hasn’t had a modern day Earth story in a while so that’s another aspect that lends itself to the episode having an older feel to it.
While the basic premise has a wonderful purity to it some aspects of the execution are a little bit lacking. The creepy dolls that the Doctor and the companions are frequently fleeing feel very generic. They’re effective and creepy enough but it feels a bit like they were pulled from the standard horror movie grab bag. Though “Doctor Who” has rarely done creepy dolls the show has done numerous things in the same vein, in fact they feel very similar to the clockwork droids from the Series 2 episode “The Girl in the Fireplace.” There are also a number of elements in the episode which don’t really pay off, such as the elderly neighbor. She’s fine in terms of setting the scene early on but by the end too much focus has been put on her with no real purpose for doing so.
The ending also throws things off slightly. Since this is “Doctor Who” there was never doubt that the cause behind all the creepiness was going to be something alien. However having the frightened child himself turn out to be the alien forced a rather clumsy shift in the central message of the episode. It went from being about how the Doctor came to protect and ordinary boy to the unconditional love of a father for his son. Both are valid central themes but once it becomes about how the father must love this child no matter what it completely undercuts what had been the theme of the episode up to that point.
It’s kind of a shame that the transition from one theme to the next is so clumsy because in isolation both are handled well. The father is very well realized, both sympathetic and loving. Ultimately the episode plays well but there’s just an odd disconnect between the first half and the second owing the shift in theme. Performances as usual are strong across the board and the extent of the haunted house vibe is something the newer episodes haven’t done so it was quite fun to see.