Doctor Who: In the Forest of the Night (8x10)

I can't believe it! I learned things about Clara this week! I actually, honest to God, learned something about Clara that had nothing to do with the Doctor or with Danny Pink. I mean, granted, it was a pretty basic thing, not all that interesting, but still! Something!

Let's start with the plot, though.

In the middle of London, a young girl named Maebh stumbles across the TARDIS. The Doctor tries to figure out where she's come from, and he realizes that a forest has grown over the entirety of London. Clara and Danny, in London on a school trip, realize the same thing. They also realize that Maebh is missing from their group. Clara immediately calls the Doctor to tell him the exciting news about the forest, only to discover that he already knows. They all meet up and start to speculate about why the forest is there.

While inside the TARDIS, Danny notices some school papers, which prove that Clara has still been traveling with the Doctor. Then, the Doctor realizes that Maebh is missing. He and Clara go to find her. They talk about how the forest continues to grow, and the Doctor senses something sinister afoot - the forest is a generalized human fear. They find Maebh, but she appears to be having a panic attack of some sort. Apparently, her sister went missing, and she's been really unstable ever since. She's been taking medication. As the Doctor and Clara find Maebh, they also find some wolves and a tiger that have escaped from the zoo. The wolves run away from the tiger. The Doctor, Clara, and Maebh appear to be trapped!
 

Danny and the kids decide they can't just leave Maebh and the others in danger, so they leave the TARDIS and go searching. Good thing, too - they show up just in time to use  light to scare the tiger away! The Doctor uses the sonic screwdriver to see what Maebh has been seeing - tiny lights appear around Maebh, and they use her to communicate. Apparently, there's a giant solar flare coming to destroy the earth. The Doctor despairs - he can fight aliens and monsters, but he can't fight the laws of physics.

Everyone heads back to the TARDIS, at Clara's suggestion, so that they can at least save these kids. However, when they get there, Clara says that the Doctor has to go alone. Clara knows that the kids will never be alright again without their families, and that Danny won't leave the kids. Clara won't leave Danny, and besides - she doesn't want to be the last of her kind. The Doctor sadly gets into the TARDIS and leaves, but then he realizes - the trees are flame resistant! They are not there to hurt humanity, but to save it from the solar flare! He rushes back to Earth to tell the others.

Everyone works together to send a message out to the world: don't hurt the trees, they're here to help! Maebh is the one to read out the message. Danny asks Clara for the truth about her and the Doctor, and she admits that she's still been traveling with him. He forgives her, but he is upset at her for lying to him. The Doctor and Clara watch from space as the solar flare approaches Earth and the trees protect the planet. Maebh is reunited with her mother, who has been searching for her throughout the episode, and at the very end, they find Maebh's sister. The family is happy to be reunited.

In the last scene, we see Missy watching these events unfold. She is surprised by the outcome, but she then says that she "likes surprises."

Complaints. Let's start there.

Well... I haven't enjoyed this Missy thing at all. I know we'll be getting some answers about it in the finale coming up in the next two weeks, and unless things come together in a really interesting and innovative way, I'm going to say I wish it wasn't here. You know, not everything has to be a big giant mystery with a huge twist at the end. Missy seems, potentially, like a forced way to add larger importance to these stories, instead of just letting them be smaller individual instances.

I'm also getting pretty sick of the Doctor being the only one with the answers. Just once, I'd love it if Clara could come up with a big piece of the puzzle. In this case, it was Maebh that had a connection to the truth, true, but it was still the Doctor who put everything together and figured out the truth. That makes sense, in a certain way, since of course the Doctor has a lot more intelligence and experience than Clara. But I think the companion's job is to fill the gaps of what the Doctor can't figure out for himself. I haven't seen Clara doing that much, at all.

However, let's move on to the good stuff.

As I said at the beginning of the episode, I actually learned something about Clara in this episode. She's curious. It's actually a flaw with her, because she places higher value on solving the mystery than on getting these kids home safe. It's a quality that she shares with the Doctor, and for the first time I started to see how it could be a real flaw in her behavior. She's also duplicitous. She lies to Danny. These sorts of details really rounded out her character for me. I still don't think she's nearly as well developed as the Davies-era companions, but at this point I'm so starved for original characterization, I'll take what I can get.

So, the little glowing lights and Maebh's weird connection and all that... it was a tad confusing. However, I loved the Doctor's explanation for the forest, and why it is that humanity would forget about the whole thing. He says that "forgetting" is the "human superpower." And then there's this powerful line: "If you remembered how things felt, you'd have stopped having wars. And stopped having babies." That's such an amazing idea. I also love the idea that the forest has crept into human subconsciousness and manifested itself as nightmares - lots of scary stories take place in a forest. That's a great observation about the human psyche, with its own pseudo-sci-fi twist on the reasons behind it all.

I loved the kids in this episode. Maebh was obviously the child we spent the most time with, but several of the other children had their own personalities and roles to play as well. It's difficult to construct an episode with so many kids running around, and I was impressed with the acting, script writing, etc. that allowed this to come together.

At first, I was annoyed at Danny for being mad at Clara, and also mad at Clara for not coming clean. I mean... Danny never asked Clara to stop traveling with the Doctor, right? Clara was lying to him for no discernible reason! I'm still a bit bothered by this, but I did like the fact that they talked it through, and that Danny, while angry that Clara had lied to him, didn't try to force her not to see the Doctor any more.

Most of all, I loved this idea of humanity saving the Doctor for once. No matter what happens, Clara wants the Doctor to continue on and be there to save the next world. It's such a sweet idea, and I was particularly heartbroken when Clara said she didn't want to be the last of her kind. Ouch. A nice little inversion of what I expected, here, and I loved how Clara lied to the Doctor to get him to safety. It reminds me of what the Doctor has done to his companions on more than one occasion.

Okay, I've got to end things with a brief discussion of that promo. The idea of Clara not existing is... well. I'm sure it's more complicated than what we saw in that brief promo, but let me just say this: If Clara is nothing more than an echo or a shadow or someone else in disguise, I'll probably be very, very pissed. However, there's also the slight chance that I'll be extremely - grudgingly - impressed. So... we'll just have to wait and see how it plays out. That's all I'm going to say for now. I don't want to pre-judge.

There you have it! Next week we get part one of our finale! Let's go!

8.5/10