Night Terrors has now aired in the UK, US and Canada (with Australia to follow next weekend), but what did YOU think of the Series 6, Episode 9? Let your feelings be known in the comments section below. Blogtor’s spoiler~free review is HERE.RELATED POSTS
Night Terrors audio commentary
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REVIEW: Night Terrors [spoiler~free]
Just heard from my sister – that's one nephew rigid with terror…
Love the doll theme. Mark Gatiss does it again. Will look at wsrdrobes with new respect
I really enjoyed it. I love the big mind blowing story arc eps but a good old fashioned one off with some genuine thrills and scares can't be beaten.
Thought Jamie Oram was fab, but the star of the show was definitely Bernard the Bulldog 😉
Not terrible but not good either. Dialogue written and acted extremely well however I felt other aspects of the story fell flat.
I didn't find the dolls particularly creepy, in fact I found them a bit silly (especially the transformation from human to doll) Amy and Rory felt lime spare parts at times too.
I enjoyed The Doctor's side of the story a lot but absolutely couldn't get away with everything else
One of my least favourite stories for years however not terrible. Besides I think I'm probably in the minority
The story tried to be too clever but didn't quite work. Nowhere near as scary as "are you my Mummy".
Not quite sure where the whole thing was heading.
After last week's high, this is a low.
Like The Doctor's Wife felt like a Series Five episode, this episode's main problems reside in where it was effectively dumped. Amy and Rory's disregard of a little boy after the events of Let's Kill Hitler killed this for me.
However. I do love the Dolls, despite how little sense they made, and George was appropriately creepy.
its so scary they dolls freak me out
One of the years best eps for me; it looked fantastic, told a simple story well, lots of great lines, creepy monsters (Those transformations were horrid! In a good way!)and didn't rush, instead building atmosphere.
Big thumbs up from me!
(cross-posted from CultBox comments–in your review there, you say that it's nice to forget about River, the Silence, and the Doctor's death-day)
(Ten) "Weeeeeell, BUT" (/Ten)
Hard to forget the Doctor's death-day when they gratuitously add the screenshot of the Doctor's death-day on his monitor in the last few minutes…
And I guess I'm too nu-Whovian…it's proving hard for me to deal with the change in tone to the show overall, whereas UK viewers (and hardcore Whovians) are used to having a creative team change. Although it was okay, I can only give it a 3, if I'm honest.
I thought it was pretty good, but as others have said – Rory's seeming disregard for the little boy after LKH brought it down a bit, and the fact that we have no emotional follow-through from that episode. I really hope we see the emotional consequences of Amy and Rory losing their baby, you can't just ignore something like that.
As a stand alone though, it was good. Proper Doctor Who with the equal amounts of scary and ridiculous [fighting dolls off with safety scissors!! loved it]
Horrendously nonsensical, completely disposable, but a phenomenal ride, more laden with genuine tension than any episode of Doctor Who I've seen in a long time.
A fun ride purely for the sake of a fun ride. Was expecting more focus on the peg dolls (but was genuinely shocked by the transformations!), but it was impeccably acted and impeccably directed. The plotting didn't make a huge amount of sense, but the horror images made up for it.
A mixed-quality script executed perfectly.
i think Mark Gatiss redeemed himself after "Victory of The Daleks".
i could see similarities to " fear her" but it was a good story in it's own right. Thoroughly enjoyable episode.
I really liked this episode. It was pretty creepy, but when you add in dolls anything gets creepy. The thing with the kid being an alien seemed kinda random, but I can overlook it. That "Tick Tock" song, though…gah, that gives me shivers of dread. As much as I'm liking the creepiness so far in Doctor Who, I want an episode soon that's just a good, fun romp with the Doctor and company. Maybe I'll go watch "Partners in Crime" soon…
I thought that the episode had some potential, but overall, it was pretty 'meh'. Creepy, sure, but not in a way that I found particularly enjoyable. It seemed as if there was relatively little actual content, as if it was stretched to meet the 42-46 minute range, instead of the excitement of the past few episodes that felt as if there was so much more they'd do if only there were time.
I have to say that I was very glad to see Amy the one with the bad luck, instead of Rory, because that was getting pretty old.
Just watched Night Terrors on Aus TV (just 1 week behind the UK, as opposed to 14 MONTHS when I started watching… in 1965) at my sister's place. My 7 year old niece grabbed hold of her dad just after the old lady went into the bin bags and didn't let go until the credits.
10 minutes after it finished she wanted to watch again. The whole concept of live TV and DVDs is a little beyond her.
Her favourite bit was when "The dad was hugging George. And when they were playing"
Another life long Who fan, unless I'm sadly mistaken. 🙂
This particular brand of horror is definitely my particular bag of Jelly Babies. Gatiss has always been a bit iffy for me whether it be plotting or dialogue. (His stories always seem to be lacking one or the other.) But this time things seemed to work just fine on both. I found myself to be sufficiently hooked on the story and found myself to be highly entertained by the dialogue. Richard Clark's direction was spot-on as he resurrects those simplistic terrors we imagine as kids. Add on to all that we have Matt Smith's Doctor being his wonderful whimsical self. Which for the recent array of dark episodes seems to be a saving grace.
Doctor Who writers really need to take a break from writing episodes around simple things that scare you as a child, it's been way overdone.