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The Idiot's Lantern Format Reviewed: TV Review The Idiot's Lantern is set in 1953, at the time of the coronation of Queen Elisabeth. The regular TARDIS crew of the Doctor and Rose, minus Mickey of course as he had been written out at the end of the previous episode, were expecting to materialise in New York and had dressed accordingly for the start of Amreican rock-n-roll. This gives the BBC the chance to do what is does best once more in teh context of Doctor Who, period drama. The story starts with a strange bolt of lightning late night in a TV sales and repair shop. This lightning has carried a malevolent force, Thw Wire, into a TV set on display in Mr Magpie's shop. The Wire then starts to feed on locals to whom Magpie has sold TV sets to (at massively discounted prices under The Wire's influence) by stealing their essence and face by sucking it into the TV. With the coronation upcoming, the Police are trying to sweep the issue under the carpet, but some of the locals are starting to get restless about it. The Doctor then arrives and sees what happens when the Police take someone who has had their essence stolen away. Eventually, The Wire's plan unfolds and a final showdown between her and the Doctor occurs on the TV transmitter at Alexandra Palace. The Doctor manages to foil the plan, and returns to join in with the coronation celebrations. Mark Gatiss, who wrote one of the better stories from the previous series, pens this single episode story. One of Gatiss' real qualities as a screenwriter I think is the way he develops and uses characters. Combine this with good direction, casting and acting from all concerned and you'll have a very good piece of television. Also, with Gatiss being a self-confessed Who fan from a very young age, what we will also see is more of a story from the older fans perspective I think. The cast yet again does not disappoint here, with David Tennant giving yet another superb performance as the Doctor. This series, and particularly here I feel, Billie Piper also seems to grow in stature on-screen and gives a highly polished portrayal as Rose. The guest cast are generally excellent, but Jamie Foreman and Debra Gillett don't seem to live up to their colleagues high standards giving relatively weak performances. Ron Cook does well as Magpie, and his performance is somewhat reminiscent of a hen-pecked husband, which is nice. The stand out performer throughout though is Maureen Lipman as The Wire. Last series we had the haunting cry of, "are you my mummy?", and this series we have, "feed me", utttered by Maureen Lipman as The Wire. I can't stress just how good Lipman is here, sensational. The rest of the story is very good generally, but one criticism I have is the seeming over reliance on having to bring deep emotion into every story. Here we have the break up of a family, and whilst it is frighteningly commonplace nowadays, in the 1950's it was a very big deal. We see here a wife who finally gets fed up and kicks out her husband. Whilst this is done very well, I feel it is largely irrelevant to the story, and included mainly to get the high emotion into the closing scenes. This is one aspect I feel we could comfortably do without including in every episode. Overall, The Idiot's Lantern will stand up as one of the best episodes in the series I am sure. We have a new truly haunting catch-phrase in, "feed me", uttered by Maureen Lipman, and another good and different type of story. The acting is generally very good as we have come to expect, but there is a worrying trend of adding too much forced emotion into the stories, they are in danger of becoming soap operas. Rating:  |