This isn’t the first time the new Doctor Who has encountered a literary legend. We’ve had storylines involving William Shakespeare and Charles Dickens, the latter who got a little nod from Donna Noble tonight - “I mean, that’s like having Charles Dickens, surrounded by ghosts…at Christmas” “Could happen, you know…” retorted The Doctor.
So, understandably, I spent most of tonight’s episode wondering what literary mastermind might be tackled in the next series - Jane Austen? Emily Bronte? Geoffrey Chaucer?
Tonight’s episode cleverly touched on the real-life mystery of Agatha Christie’s 10 day disappearance, by basically re-writing the events leading up to it. So Christie gets caught up in a situation not unlike her own stories, The Doctor and Donna discover their crime-fighting skills.
Even the Doctor gets poisoned, preempting a funny set-piece where he tries to mime the things he needs to antidote the poison.
Back to the storyline - there’s a huge wasp in the house, which attacks Donna and leaves a nasty sting jammed in a door. It becomes apparent to the Doctor that the wasp is one of the people in the house, morphing between human and insect to carry out some grizzly murders.
The Doctor, Donna and Agatha set out to find the culprit, and eventually they unravel a convoluted plot where the wasp person is the illegitimate son of a human/alien relationship who was abandoned to an orphanage at birth..blah blah blah…
I have to admit, I’m not a fan of murder mysteries, so this episode was already off to a bad start. As I mentioned in our forum discussion about the episode, continuity with the other episodes was poor - the Doctor didn’t seem to be still mourning the loss of Jenny, nor were there any obvious hints toward the story arc for this series. The cast exonerated themselves wonderfully, but the story was a bit of a let-down.
You have to think - a wonderful real-life mystery to tie in with, and they (the scriptwriters) decide that a big giant alien killer wasp is the best possible adversary they could come up with. Oh well, might as well be thankful they didn’t drag the Daleks in (again).
As I write this, I notice Scott Matthewman of The Stage has posted an exact opposite review that describes The Unicorn and the Wasp as “the best edition of the show since its 1963 beginnings” Obviously more of an Agatha Christie fan than I am, Scott seemed to get more enjoyment out of the episode. Me, not so much.
Hopefully one of the weaker episodes this season.
2 Comments »
I will admit not one of the stronger stories, yet I found it much better than I thought it would be. As a writer myself, I love the stories where he meets literary heroes. I would like an episode with Geoffrey Chaucer next season. I loved the character of him in A Knights Tale. But I digress. One of the things I loved about this episode is the fact that it was a historical one. Now granted, I’d like to see a purely historical one where aliens are not involved, but I’ll still take it.
I like the Chaucer idea myself - but I think there was a show on UK TV a while back that did a Canterbury Tales storyline - the Doctor Who producers might not want to look like they’re copying.
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