Recently, I’ve discovered somewhat off an odd trope circulating around Doctor Who , and that is fake-out stories: narratives that begin as one genre or plotline, but then completely change tone halfway through.
This is particularly noticeable with horror stories and I’ve spotted it a couple times recently.
Whispers of Terror is a very creepy horror story with a creature made of sound as its villain, before suddenly turning into a bizarre political thriller halfway through.
Embrace the Darkness, whilst it doesn’t switch up quite as much as
Whispers of Terror, suddenly loses its horror aspect and becomes a very hard sci-fi tangle of concepts
I think the only story that has actively pulled this off is
House of Blue Fire, which has a very drastic switch-up halfway through that I enjoyed purely because I wasn’t that engaged with the story beforehand.
My main question is is this an actual trope, or am I imagining things? Are there any other stories that significantly change genre and narrative at some point, or have I just been listening to some weird outliers recently?
Also, beware of spoilers, they’ll probably come up.
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Agree on House of Blue Fire, that was an interesting release. Trying to think of others and falling flat, though I’m sure there must be plenty
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I feel Jonathan Morris does this a lot. Many of his Main Range stories begin in one location and switch up their setting and tone partway through:
Protect and Survive introduces the Doctor’s crazy sci-fi shenanigans into what had been a When the Wind Blows-esque drama; Static changes up its low-key horror setting and becomes a war thriller in part 3; the Waters of Amsterdam becomes an alternate-world story. It’s a quirk I’ve noticed return often in his writing.
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The Stones of Blood is a good example of this - starts off as a horror story with blood sucking stones, rituals and an immortal woman and then becomes a sci-fi court room comedy.
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The now missing story An Unearthly Child is technically the very first story to do this. Episode 1 is this very simple character-driven sci-fi mystery and the rest centre around cavemen politics.
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I love that type of “fake out” story.
I am very aware that it isn’t Doctor Who in the slightest, but I will never not be surprised by the insane shift in “tone” in the movie “From Dusk till Dawn”. Really one of those movies you should come to without knowing anything, there is no way anyone can see where that story is heading!
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Doctor Who and The Pirates is kind of this! Listening to it now and just got to where it goes from fun silly pirate tale to discovering why they’re telling the story and it gets darker and more adult as we learn about Sally’s guilt and her depression caused by it. And this tone change is foreshadowed but definitely not what you’d expect from the start.
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Full Fathom Five
We see this alternate universe, we see this new Doctor, we get that plot that something happened at an underwater research facility, but that’s it. The synopsis of the story doesn’t even reveal the “What if…?” of this story… until you are about halfway through…
I am sorry I have no idea how to spoiler tag stuff so it’s better that I leave the reveal out
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On the reply box toolbar hit the cog on the far right and you’ll find the ‘blur spoiler’ option.
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