I really don’t get why this episode is so hated, to me it’s perfectly standard. It’s got a good premise, and the story does speak to me emotionally. I don’t think the child acting is as bad as many make it sound either, Chloe comes off as a lonely, socially awkward child to me. The ending with the Olympics is a bit too dramatic for my taste though, and there are some moments in there that just feel sort of off for the story. In total, while not a bad episode, it’s not particularly good either.
Also I think the bit with the doctor parking the TARDIS wrong may in fact have been the very first clip of doctor who I ever watched, at least I remember seeing it on tumblr and having no idea who the guy was or why he had a disappearing blue box, but finding it very funny.
Not great. The setting is pretty uninteresting. The story didn’t really grab me. All the waffle about how great and unifying the olympics are really doesn’t ring true.
The ‘foreshadowing’ at the end comes out of nowhere and is one degree less blatant than the Doctor looking at the camera and going “it’s the finale next week”
this is one of my favorite episodes of all time, for many reasons. most of the criticisms i either disagree with or just don’t understand–like, the kid’s acting is fine, way better than lots of other child actors. the story itself is a pretty strong story about loneliness and life after abuse. the doctor and rose are silly in all the right ways, and we get to see rose having to figure out what to do when the doctor isn’t there, which is a major point in her character development leading into doomsday. some of it is cheesy, which is great! i love when doctor who is cheesy! 0 complaints about this episode, it’s a total highlight to me, and my go-to episode to rewatch when i don’t want anything plot-heavy.
This is an odd one for me. Fear Her is unquestionably my least favourite of all the TV stories, both classic and modern, but it’s not even because of what’s in the episode itself. A lot of my impression of the episode has been painted by reading writer Matthew Graham talk about his intentions behind it. To quote an interview he did with Den Of Geek: “I had loads of kids write to me and say how much they enjoyed it. And it was only later I realised that the older fans had reacted badly to it. So, I went, “Well, it’s a shame that they have, but it wasn’t meant for them.””
There’s just… something about that attitude that really bothers me. Pinning it down with a variant of “There’s nothing wrong with it, it’s you who has the problem”, which I just think is bad form for anyone in a creative field. I tend to get really tetchy whenever I see “it’s meant for kids” used as an excuse for quality standards as it stands, but Doctor Who hadn’t been a strictly-for-kids show for decades by that point. Hell, the implication of child abuse in the episode proper just makes the ‘we didn’t make this for adults’ idea come across even worse.
I mean, yeah, the episode itself doesn’t work for me (characterisation, drama, jokes, alien that should pose a way bigger threat to the cosmos than is shown; all bad news), but that inherently limiting intent and defence, for an entry in a show designed to go anywhere and do anything, has taken on something emblematically awful for me. I’ve rewatched it since making that initial discovery but… I just can’t get past it for the life of me.
