To Doctor Who fans there are very few words that precisely strike fear in the hearts of all of them at once. “Paul Chuckle is The Master,” “Chris Chibnall is your new showrunner,” and “Fear Her,” it terrifies the Christ out of every last one of them, myself included. Getting through this “Review” (mild rant) will be a challenge without swearing vigorously. “Fear Her” is the drizzling diarrhea-based excrement that should put people off of Doctor Who, if not the entire idea of wanting to live on this planet. It is god awful in every respect, and I’m not just saying this in retrospective. I’ve hated it for years.

I love Mathew Graham, Tony Jordan, and Ashley Pharoah’s Life on Mars. It is one of the most beautiful examples of British TV, ruined by Americans and their optimism. I also love Mathew Graham’s limited work on Tony Jordan’s Hustle. I even made reference to Marc Warren’s character Danny Blue last week. However, I really don’t like Graham’s work on Doctor Who. Though limited to three episodes, there is never anything exciting or fun in it. “Fear Her” alone lacks any imagination both of the writing and that of the viewer.

For the most part, it is a collection of Great British patriotism peddled under the idea that you care about the Olympics bestowing national pride. Keep in mind, this is national pride in a country of countries that have been warring with each other since the Anglos and Saxons moved onto the piece of rock already civilized by the Celts. They all joined together in a disagreeing faction, and enslaved or killed half the planet through an empire run by a monarchy that is still somehow standing. After following in the words of an intersex, transforming, time-traveling alien that spreads hippy love, why do you think that slightly irks me? It is not about peace or love, it is about saying “We’re better than you!”

The monster of the week isn’t really part of the story for long enough, only creeping into the story at the end of the 2nd act and partly through the 3rd. Most of the episode is handled through trying to figure out why children are going missing on this single street and “YAY the Olympics are coming!” It is Doctor Who, not Match of the Day 2. The monster itself is… Well, just a mess on massive proportions. An alien that crashed into the planet and controls a child into drawing (and thus kidnapping) children to feed off of them in some way.

I say “in some way” because after The Doctor takes part in the nationalistic pride parade, suddenly everyone that was kidnapped just reappears. No harm is done to them, there are no consequences, there is nothing. The alien is told to swan off, then the children (and Olympic crowd) live a normal life as if nothing happened to them. Every bit of threat and danger possible is pushed aside once the jolly old empire is restored, even though it has been crumbling since the 18th century and continues to.

The only threat in the entire episode is an angry drawing of Chloe’s abusive dad, which is a far more interesting concept let down by camp nationalism. Yes, the troubled youth decided to draw a life-sized version of the one thing she wouldn’t want to draw if she knew it would come to life. That would make the alien a bit more of a threat and provide a strong talking point for the episode to take. Instead, thousands are just kidnapped for no real reason. This is the problem with the episode, it is meek. It lacks anything of substance to talk about of its own without suggesting something better.

To take this back to series 1, during the final few minutes of “The Doctor Dances” The Doctor says: “Everybody lives, Rose. Just this once, everybody lives!” You’d think, just because it brings some stakes to the story, not everyone would live. In the last episode, the only one that lived was Ursula. Half the crew died in the double-bill before that, in “Rise of the Cybermen” the alt-universe Rickey dies, and so on. Already this series we’ve had “Everybody lives” with “The Idiot’s Lantern.” Why do we need it a second time? Next week in the double-bill finale, half of Torchwood is killed. Sadly no one told Chris Chibnall so he wrote soft-core pornography for beige people.

I don’t care what the budget was, defund Country File. Whatever Stephen Fry supposedly wrote before this slop would have been worth it. Yes, we’d have probably gotten some white men dressed in white bed linen talking about the Parthenon being a Silurian sex dungeon, but I’d rather have a lizard lesbian, her lover, and Mr. Potatohead than absolute dreck. Then again, I’d prefer that than most of series 4, and everything with Clara while we’re at it.

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Doctor Who "Fear Her"

0.5

Score

0.5/10

Pros

• At least it ends.
• Nina Sosanya and Casanova work well together.

Cons

• There is a complete lack of imagination.
• Stout nationalism over sports.
• "Just this once, everybody lives!" or several other times.