I'd just first like to note how interesting the ratings depend on the timeslot for Doctor Who. Two weeks ago, shown at 6.20 pm, the overnight ratings were only 5.9 million. This week, 7.00 pm and lo, the ratings are 7.7 million. When Russell T Davies decried the early timeslot, claiming that up to 1 million people will tune out, it looks like he was dead on the money. People like to give Davies a lot of crap for his production, but the fact is he clearly knows television very, very well. On to this week's episode.
Last year Gareth Roberts wrote an episode about his favourite author, playwright William Shakespeare and this year he writes about the accurately-described most successful novelist Agatha Christie. But Roberts goes one step further and not only writes about Agatha Christie, but attempts to write an Agatha Christie episode, with just a smidgen of Cluedo thrown in as well - the pretitle sequence sees Professor Peach murdered in the library with the lead piping.
The episode then kicks off with a the guests being questioned about their whereabouts and director Graeme Harper is clearly in on the same gag that Roberts is writing, using a screen swirl to indicate flashbacks (even going so far as to have one character flashback in his flashback before the Doctor has his own flashback). The great thing about this episode is that it's not just director and writer who are enjoying the gag; it's the audience. The characters themselves take it completely serious and as far as they are concerned everything is just fine, but the audience can see exactly what Roberts and Harper are trying to achieve and that adds immensely to the story.
Avid Christie fans (and I am a fan, though I have to admit not actually avid) can find additional entertainment in this episode with a game of "pick the Christie" titles. Some are extremely obvious - "She had an appointment with death", and some are slightly strained but funnier because of it - "they should have asked...heavens!!!". The other running gag in the show is Donna's revealing things that Christie is going to write in the future and pretending to copyright them.
I must confess I didn't pick who the killer was (I thought it was the butler :)) but it was nice to see that, as always, there was a neat Doctor Who spin on the whole idea, tying in nicely to the giant wasp. The Unicorn, on the other hand, seemed curiously pointless, especially when the person it turned out to be really had absolutely nothing to do in the entire episode except say hello, say what she was doing and then confess. I also liked the idea of tying the story into the true to life events of Christie's genuine disappearance. But, this is clearly the work of a writer who has done a fair bit of research into a topic that he likes a great deal.
Gareth Roberts is a good choice for writing Doctor Who - his novels proved that, but his episodes have shown that he can take that one step further and translate a good idea, not only into a brilliant novel, but also into an excellent screenplay. Add director Graeme Harper to that mix and the episode almost seems to be unable to fail. Plus, Agatha Christie got to put the occasionally-smug tenth Doctor in his place by reminding him that death is not something to joke about. A good lesson to learn...
"A+"
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