It’s Elizabeth II’s coronation but someone is stealing faces from the residents of London. An electrical shop owned by Mr Magpie hides a terrible power. Let’s discuss Mark Gatiss’s latest script for the show:
Available to watch on BBC iplayer:
Or to buy on DVD and BluRay:
Rate and review below:
I don’t mind this episode. Not the greatest, but it moves along at a decent pace, and the ‘monster’ of the week is interesting.
A solid 3.5/5.
Rose tells a kid to go after and keep ties with his abusive father, and it’s treated as a good thing. 1/5.
I need to rewatch this one and it will be coming up in my personal marathon relatively soon as I’m about to enter the 1950s. I remember it being okay but nothing special. It’s cool to have a national treasure like Maureen Lipman in the show (You get an ‘ology’, you’re a scientist!’ is a cultural touchstone for my generation) and the faceless people are pretty spooky.
My take on series 2 so far:
Dutch angles go brrrrrr
This is another one where the episode is largely kinda meh but I really like the 10Rose dynamic. The scene on the vespa is always one of the first scenes I think of with 10Rose, and so is the big hug at the end. The ending with Tommy and his dad is one of those moments where I can see what it’s going for but if they’re going in that direction it really needed more time and nuance.
Ah, one of the episodes which I disliked on first watch but liked more and more with each rewatch.
In 3 weeks, I’ve got a vacation. I’ll try to finally catch up with TV Club then. 
The story up until that point is fun so it doesn’t drag it down for me as much as it potentially could (though a rewatch could change this) but yeah, it definitely does drag it down to a 4/10 for me
This is one that I never remember about it existing. It would never be a go-to for me for a rewatch but I also don’t hate it. It just is kind of there and I don’t feel anything about it. I think I used to be a bit scared of the faceless people as a child though
Oh, also, fun fact, the people kidnapping the faceless were Torchwood (mentioned in Torchwood Parasite, I think TW is mentioned in the ep, but not identified as the kidnappers)
This episode is fine. I really like Rose’s outfit and I think the concept has merit (and the faceless people are really well done, looks great), but it’s not super memorable (except for the “I am talking!” “And I’m not listening!” bit, which appears in almost every Doctor Who out of context video out there). I also really, really don’t like the ending. I think it has some fun bits but overall it’s just kinda meh. 3/10 from me.
Another fun fact - Rory Jennings (Tommy) plays a young Davros in the first part of Big Finish’s excellent I, Davros series.
Oy vey…
Without it’s glaring issue, this episode would maybe be a 2/5. Very mid. Very forgettable. Some cute tenrose moments, but that’s about it.
And then, there is the glaring issue of how it depicts abuse.
It’s way too early for me to get in to how shoddy it is. You can watch this video from the lovely Council of Geeks for someone else’s thoughts on it that are pretty similar to my own. That ending made me irrationally angry.
0/5. I hated this episode so much I didn’t back it up on my PC when I was doing a personal archive.
The Idiot’s Lantern’s unique for being both bad and offensive.
The majority of the story? Fine, about as Mark Gatiss as it gets. It gets more ridiculous and melodramatic as it goes on (and Ten and Rose may be at their worst here, which is saying something), but it’s a fun little monster of the week runaround with a well realised 1950s setting.
And then the ending happens. Eddie Connolly may be one of the worst allegories I’ve seen out of Doctor Who, and being the same show to produce Kill the Moon, that’s saying something. He’s a cartoon and a horrible depiction of an abusive parental figure that doesn’t accurately describe the damage they can cause.
And then Rose encourages an abused child to “go to his father”. Nothing short of dangerous for young viewers watching.
It’s a weird moment in a somewhat dull episode. Enjoyability is a big factor in how I rank episodes, which is probably why this isn’t lower (good or bad, it’s a pretty fun time) but I think it rivals Sleep No More for Gatiss’ worst script.
5/10
I remember that at the time, a feature in a newspaper - well, The Daily Mail - focused on this very episode and asked in the headline, “Where Have All the Viewers Gone?” indicating the apparently low overnight figures. Yep, as early as 2006, they were worried about the ratings!
As for the story, I liked the faceless people. It occurred to me that this frightening image might have been inspired by an episode of Sapphire and Steel, featuring a very effective ‘changeling’ with no features.
Maureen Lipman was very good, but the rest was a bit mundane and badly handled in places, I thought. Once more, our new Doctor could be both charming and unforgivably pleased with himself.
I’d say this is as middling as Doctor Who gets.
Absolutely despicable ending to this, up to that point, not really offensive bore fest.
The monster has potential, but in the end just boils down to ‘hunger, feed me’.
The ending completely drops the ball though and transforms this episode into something I don’t ever want to think about again.
The angry reaction to the ending has surprised me to the point where I want to rewatch it and try to understand why that is how it was written. Not to defend it but to try and see if it’s just a fumble rather than ill intent.
I really doubt it’s ill intend. Just Gatiss not getting it himself, since i’ve heard, that he based this on his own relationship with his father…
I would argue that from the perspective of Rose’s experience with missing and losing her father, her acting is in character. It’s probably hard for her to see what so many here in the comments see quite clearly. While it may be poor storytelling on a meta level (easy enough to just cut the scene without loosing anything, even making the episode better), her acting fits with Rose’s in-universe experiences?
This is a good point. Rose’s advice may be shonky but it is rooted in her own experience of losing, gaining and then again losing her father. Sometimes though, things like this aren’t obvious till after the fact and if they had another go at the episode, maybe they would have cut that scene.