Doctor Who: Knock Knock (10x04)

Okay, yeah. Another good one. I'm really liking Bill, and her dynamic with the Doctor. It's something we haven't quite seen yet from the Doctor Who reboot, and it's working out wonderfully.

Cons:

My most consistent plot-based complaint about Doctor Who seems to be that the resolutions can feel a bit abrupt. Here, we find out that the evil creepiness going on is all a son trying to protect and preserve his supernaturally living mother. When the mother realizes that her son has been killing people to keep her alive, she immediately puts a stop to it, the recent evils are undone, and everything just sort of resolves itself. I like a happy ending, and I'm glad Bill hasn't lost any more schoolmates. But sometimes I feel like the climaxes of Doctor Who episodes could benefit from like three more minutes of breathing room. It's just a little bit of a pacing issue.

Bill moves in with some roommates in this episode. There are six of them total. I hope these characters are actually recurring and we get to know them a bit more. As it is, there were too many to get to know in the space of a single episode, and I found myself wondering: why six? Would four not be plenty to get along with? I connected with Shireen and Paul, but I don't really remember any of the other characters' names. They basically functioned as plot fodder, and that's too bad, honestly.

Pros:

This episode did something very smart, in that it invokes a horror-genre feel, and actually sticks with it and doesn't try to deconstruct and throw in a bunch of genre-bending twists. There's a creepy old mansion, an unsettling landlord, creaking noises, a forbidden tower, a bunch of young twenty-somethings with raging hormones... and that's really what this episode is. There's not some random switch-up at the end.

The Doctor and Bill have such a fantastic dynamic. The Doctor helps Bill move in to her new place by using the TARDIS as a transport for all of her luggage, which is just adorable. I love the little hints of the Doctor living a more simple life. Not everything he does is about popping off into new worlds. In this one, he didn't travel elsewhere and show up at a mystery. A mystery came to him, and he investigated it. That's a nice way to switch things up. Of course, the Doctor, upon realizing that something might be fishy with the house, keeps refusing to leave Bill alone with her friends. She tells them all that the Doctor is her granddad, which he takes offense to, and the Doctor spends the early parts of the episode basically embarrassing Bill in front of her friends. What a fun dynamic between the Doctor and his companion. No sneaky sexual undertones, no longing love. It's an eccentric grandfather and his embarrassed yet affectionate snarky grandchild. I can so get behind that.

One of the roommates, Paul, has a thing for Bill, and the resolution of this little subplot is quite fun. Basically, Bill notices that he's making clumsy attempts to flirt with her, and lets him know nicely that he's not her type, because she goes for girls. Paul is... relieved, basically, because this means that he never had a chance in the first place, so he's not being rejected because he's not good enough. That was a pretty fun moment, and also felt realistic. If you're queer, you never quite get finished coming out. Every time you meet somebody new, you have to make that decision as to when and how you tell somebody, if you tell them at all, and you have to wonder how they're going to react. Paul was cool about it, but he just as easily could have been weirded out or had some other unfavorable reaction.

I like Shireen, Bill's friend who connects her to the rest of these new roommates. There seems to be a chance for some deeper development of this friendship, as Shireen is the one who bridges the gap between Bill and the other four roommates. I've been Shireen before, bringing a separate friend into an existing group, and I've also been Bill, being pulled in to an existing group by one person. I'd be interested in seeing more of that dynamic play out. Hopefully Shireen can make additional appearances!

Cool effects on Eliza the creepy wood lady. When she first appeared, it was honestly unsettling. I knew she'd look weird, but I wasn't necessarily expecting that version of weird. Kudos also on the twist of the creepy landlord being Eliza's son instead of her father. Eliza doesn't have all of her memories of her human life, which is how the landlord has been able to keep control over her and keep her alive. It's also nice that the Doctor's inhuman nature tripped him up on solving a mystery - it didn't occur to him that the landlord was far too young to be Eliza's father, since Eliza had been a wood creature for seventy years. And when Bill figured that out, I was expecting there to be another supernatural element to explain the landlord's elongated life. But instead, it was merely that he was younger than Eliza, instead of older. Great surprises!

Finally, we continue in the last scene to develop the mystery of who's in the vault. The more we get, the more intrigued I am, but also the more anxious I get that the surprise is not going to match the build-up. We see Nardole leave the Doctor alone with the vault, and the Doctor talks to the person inside, who is playing piano. The Doctor then opens the vault and goes inside to hang out with whoever's inside. My worry is that it's the Master in there, which would be kind of an anticlimax. We already did the secret with the Master a few seasons ago. But who else could it be? Another version of the Doctor? That could be cool!

In conclusion, good episode. Solid dynamic between Bill and the Doctor. I'm pretty pleased with this season thus far!

9/10