Tooth and Claw: Ranking - 240

  Tooth and Claw

(Series 2, Dr 10 with Rose, 22/4/2006, showrunner: Russell T Davies, writer: Russell T Davies, director: Euros Lyn) 

Rank: 240

'Here we are at the Queen's coronation. All the most dignified heads of state are here, some of them very much in a state it would seem...Oh no, the Queen's turned hairy and grown fangs and has started ripping their heads off! I say this isn't on. I mean, she did warn against having her coronation on the night of a full moon, but you know how British protocol is - we were loathe to move it. Well, the crown still seems to fit over those furry ears so err I hope you'll join me in my chant: Long Live The Werewolf!'

Or 'Crouching Monarch, Hidden Werewolf'. This is another of those DW stories that's a perfectly watchable 45 minutes of telly but one that leaves you going 'well that was all a bit silly wasn't it?' as soon as its over. There's an unwritten rule of scifi that you can't push your audience too far by giving them too large a pile of unlikely things so that they can't relate to what you're writing, but that you can get away with one or two if you ground everything else in reality. It's a rule I've found useful writing my own books. Normally rules written or unwritten are ripe for breaking, especially an institution that's been running as long as DW, but whenever I break this rule is when my books fall apart and I have to start again. Maybe someone should have done that here. You see, this plot follows Queen Victoria In Balmoral in 1879 (OK so far), on the run from werewolves (Starting to get a bit dodgy) and being protected by a gang of spiritual kung-fu kicking monks (going downhill rapidly) who know that the werewolf is really an alien whose infected multiple members of the Royal Family with 'the curse' (I mean, I kind of buy that given the state of our present day Royals but...come again? Haven't alien werewolves got better things to do? This episode might, incidentally, be the reason so few DW personnel ever seem to be remembered in the New Years Honours lists. That and the fact a lot of them are precisely the sort of people to turn such an award down). This means that not only is Queen Victoria and all her many (many!) offspring really alien werewolves but she also knows enough about alien invasions to found Torchwood in an attempt to keep them at bay (including the Doctor, much to his chagrin). They didn't teach us that in history lessons did they? Odd, then, that Britain at least isn't, well, more prepared for the zillions of alien invasions that follow. Despite my reservations there are some really fun moments in here. It's great to hear David Tennant using his genuine Scottish accent, there's a fan-warming reference to 2nd Doctor companion Jamie McCrimmon when the Doctor needs a suitable pseudonym in a hurry and a clever plot resolution involving the Koh I Noor diamond (which has a genuine mystery attached to its origins - the idea that its connected to a space werewolf is actually one of the more sensible versions offered up by historians over the years). However this episode is having so much fun it over-eggs everything and becomes that little bit too ridiculous. There's no reason why the monks have to move in the slow motion style for the then-fashionable 'Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon' films for instance, or much back story as to why they're there at all. I'm not too keen on Pauline Collins' much-praised portrayal of Queen Vic either , whose a bit too stiff and stern compared to the real person, even in this elongated period of mourning for Prince Albert (we had a near miss when her character Samantha nearly became a companion in 'The Faceless Ones' in 1967 - where, ironically, she was replaced by a Victorian called, umm, Victoria - but not a Royal one; look to none other than Jenna 'Clara' Coleman for how the monarch should be played in the excellent 'Victoria and Albert'). In other words this is an episode that's big and wild and hairy, but just as you think you've got something to sink your teeth into plot-wise it goes back to being a playful puppy again and you just can't take it seriously.

Positives+(spoilers) The resolution is easily the best part of the episode and very DW. The werewolf isn't defeated by guns or weapons or gun-toting space armies. It's defeated by a library full of books and learning, built with mistletoe in the walls to keep werewolves out. I wish more 'super-heroes' would use their brain in plots like these except relying on brawn - its been said before but one best things about the Doctor is a character is that rather than being an almighty warrior he's a geek whose used his spare time to read most every book in the universe.

Negatives- As werewolf effects in general and The Mill's work on the DW revival in general both go the special effects in this story really aren't very special at all and a little obviously computer-generated. admittedly it had a few extra years to get the effects right, but the ones in 'Being Human' are so much more convincing than the ones here. This isn't the worst effect in DW by any means (there's a very long list from the 1970s) but when you have a script that's already stretching credulity to the limit and a Queen Victoria who only looks like Queen Victoria if you squint really hard and throw in a load of monks dancing about in slow-motion for no reason then the combined effect is that its hard to get lost in this story as a plausible piece of storytelling. Instead you're too aware that its just a bit of telly innit? There are surprisingly few moments like that in he long history of DW which makes stories like this one stand out all the more.