Episode 9 of Doctor Who takes us to Norway, where a young girl cowers in her home alone, and the Doctor goes in search of her missing father through a portal to another dimension.
The penultimate episode of season 11 sees the TARDIS landing in a forest in Norway in 2018, where the gang stumbles upon a seemingly abandoned cabin in the woods. Not everything is as it first appears, and a portal posing serious threats to our reality is tempting humans into its folds through fake versions of lost loved ones.
Making an Entrance
As the gang enters the cabin uninvited, Graham (Bradley Walsh), ever the comedian of the group, remarks there is either a child living there, or “some maniac who collects children’s shoes”. Exploring the space, they find a teenage girl named Hanne (Ellie Wallwork), and it transpires that she is blind and that her dad has gone missing. Hanne is terrified of the outside world, with a fear of some kind of monster lurking in the nearby forest, and the Doctor (Jodie Whittaker) becomes determined to reunite father and daughter.
During the following search for clues, the Doctor discovers a mirror with unexpected otherworldly qualities, and warns Ryan, through a written message on the wooden wall, to keep Hanne safe and that her father is most likely dead.
Through the Looking Glass
Stepping through the mirror, the Doctor, Graham, and Yaz (Mandip Gill) find themselves in another realm, far from anything Norwegian, cave-like in appearance and full of dangerous beings, attempting to get into our world. Meanwhile Ryan (Tosin Cole), left to look after Hanne, discovers that the so-called “monster” outside is just speakers and scare tactics, aiming to keep Hanne trapped inside the house.
Dangerous moths attack the trio in the mirror realm, while the Doctor tries to make sense of where they could be. Stumbling through another mirror at the end of a tunnel, they find themselves back in Norway, but things are not as normal as they first appear. Inside the mirror, Hanne’s father Erik (Christian Rubeck) is discovered safe and well, cooking a meal for his deceased wife, who enters from outside.
Prioritising his dead wife over his living child, the gang are appalled by Erik’s choice to leave Hanne alone and petrified in her own home in the middle of nowhere, but this alternative universe has pulled the wool over his eyes. Truly believing that he is with his wife, the same happens to Graham when Grace (Sharon Clarke) appears literally behind a veil and convinces him that she is the real deal, causing him to question the reality of his grief.
Should I Stay Or Should I Go Now
Upon hearing that Ryan is in danger in the cave realm, running from killer moths, Graham wants to go and save his grandson. “Grace” tries to prevent him from leaving the realm, and Graham becomes enraged that she could be opposed to helping her beloved Ryan. Declaring this Grace to be a fake, he is thrown through the mirror back into the caves, and has to readjust to life without his wife once again, repeating the grieving process from scratch.
Torn between staying with his wife and following his daughter home to reality, Erik insists that this version of his wife is real. The Doctor, realising he will not leave of his own accord, entices the realm to choose her quantity of life experience over his human existence as its companion. The episode shows how powerful grief can become, through the delusions of dead people coming back to life and acts as a reminder of the sensitivity required in helping people cope with loss.
The fact that the realm then takes on the appearance of a frog – supposedly in tribute to Grace’s love for the animal – is an unexpected cringe-worthy turn of events, and is in-keeping with the season’s questionable alien apparitions. The frog, along with the possessed corpses from “The Witchfinders”, the mini Pting alien from Episode 5, and even the giant spiders in “Arachnids in the UK” all make for an underwhelming level of fear-inducing action in a new era of the family-oriented show.
Befriending the frog and an entire universe in one fell swoop, the Doctor lands back in 2018 with the newly reunited father and daughter duo, and the rest of the TARDIS crew. As Graham is visibly struggling to readjust to life without Grace for the second time, Ryan comforts him, calling him “Granddad” for the first time, much to Graham’s (and our) delight.
“It Takes You Away”: Conclusion
Erik’s questionable parenting priorities contrast with Graham’s strong grandfathering instinct, while they both battle with the bereavement of their partners, and ultimately return to the painful reality of the deaths, coupled with happy reunions with the younger generations of their families. The episode takes us to another foreign land, where the story is at times weak, but the script is always punchy and progressive, with the show’s writers providing unexpected twists, moths, and frogs throughout.
The series Finale of season 11, “The Battle of Ranskoor Av Kolos”, aired on Sunday 9 December 2018.
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