Sarah -
We’ve reached our first Doctor-lite episode, which feels like a bit of a milestone. Created to make it possible to get the season filmed on time and on budget, Doctor-lite episodes can still be a divisive issue in fandom. The quality of Doctor-lite episodes will fluctuate over the years, but "Love and Monsters" has the distinction of being the first.
Harry -
Aye, who knew when this singular oddity appeared that it was just the thin edge of the wedge, and we'd see entire calendar years fall victim to the Doctor-lite phenomenon.
Sarah -
My memories of "Love and Monsters" were fuzzy before this rewatch: the Abzorbaloff, Moaning Myrtle in a paving block, lots of ELO, and adorable Marc Warren. In the end, it’s certainly not a great episode, but it’s not as bad as I feared it might be. There’s a backhanded compliment for you!
Harry -
My memories were similar and I ended up almost relieved that it wasn't as bad as I remembered. Apologies to RTD for our double backhand.
Sarah -
In defense of RTD, he’s as much of a fan as we are, so Love and Monsters is a significantly more generous treatment of fandom than Whizz Kid in "The Greatest Show in the Galaxy".
Harry -
It's a twist on fandom that shows us characters who are fans of the actual Doctor, not the show. The story opens with a classic Doctor Who moment: someone running. In this case, it's Marc Warren -- who for a time in the mid-00s was everywhere, appearing in State of Play and Life on Mars, and he gave a memorably grotesque performance as the titular character in a BBC adaptation of Dracula. Here, his Elton follows some shouting voices into an abandoned building. He sees the Doctor and Rose chasing something and comes face-to-face with a roaring alien. Some comedy running ensues. It's all quite mad, and then we cut to Elton's video journal.
Sarah -
I just discovered that "Love and Monsters" wasn’t Warren’s first brush with Doctor Who. He was an uncredited extra in "Battlefield" in one of his earliest TV appearances.
Harry -
There's a piece of trivia worthy of Toby Hadoke.
Sarah -
I imagine Toby can name six different ways Marc Warren is connected to Doctor Who!
Harry -
Elton introduces himself as someone who first encountered the Doctor inside his childhood home at the age of three or four. Since then, he has been haunted by that night and he wants to find that mysterious man. Having been a witness to the Auton rampage, the spaceship crash that wrecked Big Ben's tower, and the Sycorax invasion, his interest in the Doctor is stoked and his investigation becomes more intensified. He's not alone. He and a group of like-minded investigators have formed a group called L.I.N.D.A.: the London Investigation 'N' Detective Agency.
Sarah -
Elton is the anti-Donna Noble; the person who was paying attention!
I’m kind of sad that Clive from "Rose" didn’t have the opportunity to meet up with L.I.N.D.A. Also, I love that Elton was waiting years for the opportunity to use the L.I.N.D.A. acronym. That’s a proper nerd for you.
Harry -
Despite being brought together by a common interest in the Doctor, the quirky group of L.I.N.D.A. members find themselves enjoying other activities like music, food and art. Clive might have kept their focus from drifting, but that task is taken up by Victor Kennedy, a well dressed man of no known background. L.I.N.D.A. quickly falls under his sway as Kennedy whips the team into an investigative force, dispatching them on missions to research, observe, and infiltrate -- whatever it takes to get close to the Doctor. Before long, he begins picking off individual members and inventing reasons to explain their sudden disappearances.
I liked that RTD brought together such a disparate group of people to form L.I.N.D.A.. They were more believeable as a group of very-regular-seeming people, rather than had they all been as fanatical as Kennedy.
Sarah -
I love their little L.I.N.D.A. surrogate family and Elton’s developing relationship with Ursula. The jam session is one of my favorite moments in the story. It’s heartbreaking when Kennedy shows up with his Torchwood files and starts picking them off one by one. He’s just awful, with a particularly awful performance from Peter Kay. Everyone else hits just the right note, but he’s so over the top it became unbearable.
Harry -
One of the weak points of the story was that Kennedy provided no backstory whatsoever, and there he is bossing everyone around, and how would he have a) gotten, and b) brazenly announced that he had Torchwood files in hand. Would the rest of the group even have known what Torchwood was, top secret organization and all? Anyway, probably overthinking it.
Sarah -
A fan theory that I had never come across before now is that Kennedy is based on Ian Levine. True or not, this is my new favorite fan theory of all time!
Harry -
Now that's a backstory I can get behind!
Still in Kennedy's thrall, the rest of the team continue with their assigned tasks. Elton believes he's struck paydirt when a couple of lucky breaks lead him into Rose's sphere, i.e. a chance encounter with her mum Jackie.
Sarah -
Poor Jackie. It’s so cringy when she starts flirting with Elton, but we see how lonely she is. It’s not easy being the person left behind.
Harry -
Credit to RTD for creating something unique in the new series. "Rose" gave us the Rose story, "Rise of the Cybermen/Age of Steel" gave us the Mickey story, and now we get the Jackie story. Instead of Doctor-lite, many of these stories could be seen as Companion-plus.
Sarah -
The moment when she confronts Elton about finding Rose’s photo in his pocket is heartbreaking, but she’s still our tough Jackie, “Let me tell you something about those who get left behind. Because it's hard. And that's what you become, hard. But if there's one thing I've learnt, it's that I will never let her down. And I'll protect them both until the end of my life. So whatever you want, I'm warning you, back off.” I love Jackie so much in this story.
Harry -
It was sad that the story that put Jackie front and centre highlighted her loneliness, but it also showed her steely side. Elton was lucky not to take one in the chops. He realized immediately what a terrible mistake he'd made.
Sarah -
Don’t mess with Jackie Tyler!
Harry -
Determined to confront and leave Kennedy once and for all, Elton and Ursula finally discover his true nature. I remember on first viewing that this was where the story went off the rails. It's hard to take anything seriously when the villain is so over-the-top panto. And silly. And gross. The Abzorbaloff devours its victims by, well, absorbing them into its body, but not completely. The faces of recent victims press out against its flesh, their minds and senses still their own.
Sarah -
Off the rails, through the village, and over the cliff! If I decide to watch this story again, I think I’ll just turn it off when Ursula goes back to get her phone and skip the whole Abzorbaloff reveal. There’s really no point in watching the rest of the episode. It’s just embarrassing. I’ll defend wobbly sets with my last breath, but never bad writing.
Harry -
The Abzorbaloff was in this story because it was the winner of a "design a Doctor Who monster" contest on Blue Peter, so we can literally say it's like some kid designed it.
Sarah -
I'd forgotten about that. It's a terrible idea that I hope will never happen again. "Dear Mr. Chibnall..."
Harry -
The story began with a comic monster chase and it fittingly ends with one as the Abzorbaloff nimbly waddles after Elton, right into the path of the Doctor and Rose.
Sarah -
Rose gives Elton a piece of her mind for messing with Jackie and the Doctor discovers the Abzorbaloff is from Clom, twin planet of Raxacoricofallapatorius. Of course he is.
Harry -
The "Clom" line was the only time I laughed while watching. And Elton, once again lucky not to take one in the chops from an angry Tyler.
Sarah -
Having been absorbed, Ursula is able to direct Elton to snap the Abzorbaloff’s cane, which causes him to melt into the paving stones, along with his L.I.N.D.A. victims. But wait, the Doctor can save one person with a convenient wave of his sonic screwdriver and that one person is Ursula. Sorry everyone else, you’re screwed.
Harry -
I hate to say this was a lazy ending because the whole story was experimental in nature.
Sarah -
Then I'll say it -- L.A.Z.Y.
Turns out Elton did meet the Doctor as a child. He explains to Elton that he was hunting a living shadow which had escaped its home dimension. He caught it, but not before it had killed Elton's mother, so that’s sorted. Elton muses on his situation, deciding it’s not all that bad. And the fates of Rose and Jackie and how much longer it will be before they pay the price. Bit of foreshadowing there, eh?
Harry -
Second story in a row with the foreshadowing.
Sarah -
So, apparently, Elton and Ursula the paving block live happily ever after and our story ends with a not-so-subtle oral sex joke. There’s a full point off my rating for that. Ugh.
Harry -
So lame. A prime example of RTD getting self-indulgent with no one to check him, but again, the whole story feels that way most of the time.
Sarah -
Best Line: "Oh, you don't meet many Eltons, do you? Apart from the obvious."
Favorite Moment: Jackie telling Elton off.
Lasting Image: Unfortunately, it will probably be the Abzorbaloff running after Elton
4/10
Harry -
DOCTOR: Not from Raxacoricofallapatorius, are you?
VICTOR: No, I'm not. They're swine. I spit on them. I was born on their twin planet.
DOCTOR: Really? What's the twin planet of Raxacoricofallapatorius?
VICTOR: Clom.
DOCTOR: Clom.
VICTOR: Clom.
Favourite Moment: the ELO jam session.
Lasting Image: so many images I'd prefer to banish, especially the Abzorbaloff!
5/10
Our marathon continues with Story #176: Fear Her...
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