Violet recaps Season 8 Episode 10 of Doctor Who, titled In the Forest of the Night, where a forest has grown overnight, not only in London, but all over the world! Following the recap, both Violet and Josh share their thoughts on the episode.
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Episode Recap of Doctor Who, Season 8 Episode 10: In the Forest of the Night
A little girl runs through the woods to the TARDIS and knocks on the door. The Doctor lets her in. It seems she heard Clara’s voice in her head, telling her to find the Doctor. The Doctor does not believe they are in the middle of London, being that there is a forest outside, but it turns out that a forest has grown overnight, covering the whole of London.
Meanwhile, we see that Clara and Danny have been in charge of a Coal Hill School sleepover at the Natural History Museum. They have a little trouble opening the doors and soon find out why – a forest has grown outside. We then see that the forest has grown all over the world.
Clara calls the Doctor to break the news about the forest, but she soon learns that the little girl, Mave, is with the Doctor, and that he already knows about the global forest. Danny catches her getting off the phone, and figures out it was the Doctor on the phone. She lies and says it was the Doctor who called her, and gets all defensive. She tells him about Mave, who it turns out is on medication due to a trauma, and they begin to argue in front of the kids.
Danny leads the kids out of the museum. While Clara is concerned with how this happened, Danny is more concerned about getting the kids home.
The government has decided it will burn paths for essential emergency personnel, and instructs everyone to stay inside their homes.
Clara and the group reach the TARDIS, and the Doctor pops out from behind a tree. He compares the event to the Ice Age. Clara is confident that the Doctor will come up with a solution about what to do. Clara, Danny, and the kids follow the Doctor into the TARDIS, as the Doctor tries to talk through what’s going on. Danny finds a pile of the kids’ homework books on the TARDIS. The Doctor sees something interesting in Mave’s book, and they realize that Mave is missing again. Clara explains that Mave’s sister went missing last year, and that she takes medication because she hears voices. The Doctor disapproves. He believes that Mave is tuned to a different channel, and that she can lead them to the source. He uses his sonic screwdriver to track the GPS on Mave’s phone. Danny comments about the fact that Clara is not supposed to have seen the Doctor in months, but she skirts the issue, then heads out to help the Doctor look for Mave, while Danny and the kids stay behind in the TARDIS.
The kids are worried about the fact that Danny let Clara run off with some random man, so they go out and look for her. Meanwhile, Mave’s mother rides her bike through the forest looking for her.
The Doctor and Clara find Mave’s phone, but no sign of Mave. They realize that the path behind them has already become overgrown. We see Mave running through the forest, leaves clues as to which way she went. She comes across men in hazmat suits and runs the other way. The Doctor and Clara find Mave’s clues, then run into the hazmat suit guys, who are trying to burn the trees, but the trees aren’t catching fire. The Doctor shows Clara Mave’s homework book, which has a picture of a solar flare, and the Doctor points out that it has today’s date. He wonders how she knew. Just then, they hear wolves howling, who must have escaped from the zoo once the forest grew and warped their enclosures, allowing them to get free.
We see that wolves are hunting Mave, who screams and runs. The Doctor and Clara run to her. Mave comes to a fence, finds a gate, and goes safely to the other side. But then the wolves jump the fence, though they are frightened and continue to run. We see that they were afraid of a tiger. Danny shows up with the kids and shines a flashlight into the tiger’s eyes, and it walks away. While the Doctor and Danny argue about whether or not to give Mave her medicine, she runs off. Everyone follows her. The Doctor asks Mave to tell him who did this, and she says she thought it. They realize that the reason Mave keeps waving her hands around is that she sees something they can’t see, though she has trouble seeing them as well, because they move too fast. The Doctor uses his sonic screwdriver to help with that, and we see sparks of light flying around her, like fireflies. The beings speak through Mave, saying they were here before and will be here after, and that they were called to help. However, they say they don’t know the Doctor. He lets them go.
The Doctor asks Mave how she knew to come to him, but she says it was just a thought. Clara questions how they could have been to the Earth’s futures that they have been to if the solar flare is going to kill everyone. The Doctor says that all of those futures are about to be erased. However, Clara says that not everyone has to die, and that they can save some people in the TARDIS.
The group gets back to the TARDIS, but Clara tells him to get in the TARDIS and go away. The Doctor insists on taking the kids, but she says the kids just want their moms and dads, and will never stop, and that Danny will never leave those kids. As for her, she doesn’t want to be the last of her kind. However, the Doctor is reluctant to leave, saying this is his world too – he walks the Earth and breathes its air. He calls Mave over and apologizes that he couldn’t help her, though she’s confident that he did help. The Doctor gets in the TARDIS and leaves, muttering to himself about the flame-proof forest – then has an epiphany. He goes back and calls the group back to the TARDIS.
In the TARDIS, he explains that solar flares have happened before – but that massive forests pump up the oxygen, and when the impact hits, it merely burns off the excess oxygen. The trees are not the enemy, they’re Earth’s shield. They decide to call everyone on Earth to tell them to leave the trees alone, since the government is using defoliating agents on the trees to make them easier to burn. The kids come up with what to say, and Mave delivers the message, adding at the end to ask her sister to come home. Mave sees her mom on the TARDIS’s camera screen, and runs outside to her. The kids decide that they want their moms instead of taking a trip to space in the TARDIS. Danny isn’t interested in going, he’s more interested in what’s in front of him – Clara. They kiss, and the kids are justified in their theory that Clara and Danny are in love.
As they walk with the kids, Danny tells Clara that he noticed her homework books, and knows that she was on the TARDIS last Friday. He just wants the truth, no matter what it is. But he wants her to think about it first, and tell him later.
The Doctor and Clara watch the solar flare from the TARDIS up in space, and just as the Doctor suspected, the trees protect the Earth. Meanwhile, Missy is watching what has happened and comments that it was surprising, and that she loves surprises.
Back on Earth, the Doctor and Clara watch from Clara’s balcony as the trees disappear. The Doctor says they’ll have forgotten this by tomorrow, though Clara is confident they’ll never forget.
Mave and her mother return home to find Mave’s missing sister hiding in the bushes, which disappear. Mave says she knew she’d be there, because the thought came to her.
Violet’s Thoughts on Season 8 Episode 10 of Doctor Who: In the Forest of the Night
Just another okay episode to me. I thought the kids were going to bother me, but they actually weren’t too bad. I’m still a little confused about what age these kids are supposed to be, especially considering that little Mave looked so much younger than the other kids. But anyway, I kind of felt like this episode was supposed to be educational for the children who make up the Doctor Who viewing audience. A lot of times I forget that kids watch this show. But anyway, it felt like this episode was trying to go back to the show’s roots of being an educational show for children, as it was originally intended to be. At times, it felt like I was practically sitting in a classroom, learning things. It seemed like this was an episode aimed at educating children about conservation. Kids, don’t cut down the trees, they help us!
It was weird how this group of people are the only people wandering around in the entirety of London, other than the emergency personnel, and Mave’s mom. I’m pretty sure it would be absolute chaos outside. I mean, I know the government said for everyone to stay inside, but how often does everyone actually listen to such instructions? Um, never. But whatevs, I’ll accept it for the sake of the show, assuming that they just didn’t have it in the budget to hire a bunch of extras to wreak havoc, or they just didn’t want anyone wandering about and getting in the way of the storyline. Then again, why is Mave’s mom the only one trying to go after her? What about the other parents? Wouldn’t they try to come get their kids too? Wouldn’t they have Clara and Danny’s contact number and try to call them? Or call their own kids, since all the kids have cell phones? Or wouldn’t the kids have called their parents?? It was like this episode was from an era before cell phones existed. It’s not like the cell towers were down, because we know they weren’t, since at the end they saved the day by calling everyone on their cell phones.
I also found it a little hard to accept that shining a flashlight into a tiger’s eyes would make it just go away altogether. Sure, it might distract it and hold it off for a bit, but who’s to say that the tiger wouldn’t have just turned right around and attacked Danny and the kids?? They were just so smug and so sure that their flashlight method was foolproof, it was a little annoying. I also think that the storyline could have left out the part about Mave’s sister being missing, and then randomly coming back at the end. It just felt really cheesy, and we didn’t really get much backstory about that, so it was more of an extraneous, unneeded side story, that probably most of the audience didn’t even care about.
However, last week I said I wanted more insight into Clara and Danny’s relationship, and well, we got it. I actually am liking Danny now, whereas I didn’t really care much for him before. He seems like a pretty great guy who is crazy about Clara — who keeps lying to him. And it doesn’t even seem like he is upset with her about the mere fact of traveling with the Doctor, more so about the fact that she’s been lying to him about it. She really should just come clean about everything. I suppose, though, that Danny’s attitude about himself just wanting to concentrate on one person, and see amazing things in this world, will be what leads Clara to eventually leave the Doctor and just make a life with Danny. I’ve heard that Jenna Coleman is supposed to be leaving the show after the Christmas special, so that would make sense. Maybe she has just now realized how serious things are with Danny, which has given her the boost to be ready to cut things off with the Doctor and lead a normal life. She wasn’t ready to do that before, but maybe she will be within the next couple episodes.
That’s right, only two episodes left this season. Looks like we’ll finally find out what all this Missy business is about, because the small glimpse we got of her during this episode sure didn’t help shed any light on that!
Josh’s Thoughts: Doctor Who, Season 8 Episode 10: In the Forest of the Night
I guess have to readjust to the whole silly Doctor stories to really enjoy Doctor Who again. Maybe I have been watching too many “serious” shows that are taking me out of the stories of the Doctor. Lately, I have been having a hard time getting into them. It seems silly that trees would suddenly grow out of nowhere. I highly doubt that could ever be a possibility of happening, and I am a very science-minded person, so I prefer stories seemingly more realistic than what this offers.
I guess the interesting bits for this episode was the fact that Clara has been a liar to her boyfriend and the Doctor. She seems to have thought that the best course of action, even though Dan said that he would be okay with her trips. I am curious to know why she felt she had to lie. I guess she felt that Dan might have been just saying that he is fine with her trips, but didn’t really believe what he was saying.
I am curious to know why there have been now two episodes in which the Doctor doesn’t “know” will happen to the Earth (the other episode being the moon one). He basically did admit to know the moon one, but did he know this one as well? He didn’t seem to know what would happen here. I also am kind of wondering if there is some sort of symbolism going on here with both the moon and the sun being the main pieces of the story for both of those episodes.
We do keep getting more and more snippets of Missy though, and she seems to be setting her target for Clara. I wonder if next episode has Clara meeting her?
Scenes from Doctor Who, Season 8 Episode 11: Dark Water
Here are scenes from the next episode of Doctor Who, titled Dark Water:
