We Must Not Look at Goblin Men…
I love Doctor Who, I love nightmare fuel, and I love this episode.
Steven Moffat, of course, is generally recognized to be the show’s reigning champion Nightmare Fuel Station Attendant, and it’s his fantastic, Hugo award-winning Blink that usually gets the credit for “scariest episode of the new series”. I love Blink, and I absolutely think it’s one of the best episodes of the show to date…but when it comes to “scariest episode”, Midnight is the one that does it for me.
The claustrophobic setting. The perfect Hitchcockian execution. The acting this woman does with hardly anything more than her eyes:
The “Midnight Entity” is one of the most terrifying monsters in the show’s 45-year history, partly because we are given next to no information about it. We never see it (does it even have any kind of physical form out on the planet’s surface?). We don’t know if there are more of them. We don’t know what it truly wants. All we’re given glimpses of is an ice-cold, chillingly alien intelligence as it learns from the people on the ship in one of the creepiest manners possible.
The tension that builds as the entity slowly finds its footing within its host, first repeating the Doctor’s words, then speaking simultaneously with him, while in the background the other passengers grow more and more paranoid and hostile…
And then. And then…
It mind-rapes the Doctor.
Our hero, a 9XX year-old Time Lord who is (among other things) an incredibly powerful telepath, can do nothing as this thing snaps the trap shut on his mind and then forces him to egg the mob on into tossing him out an airlock. (David Tennant does plenty of academy-award level acting with his eyes in this scene, too. The look on his face while he’s being dragged toward the airlock while being forced to repeat the words “Do it, do it now, faster…” oh my god.)
Bottom line, ladies, gentlemen, and variations thereupon: this is a brilliant little episode, easily one of my Top Ten favorites, and it doesn’t get nearly the love it deserves. Watch it.
Oh, and by the way?
Astronomers discover planet made of diamond
(Reuters) - Astronomers have spotted an exotic planet that seems to be made of diamond racing around a tiny star in our galactic backyard.
The new planet is far denser than any other known so far and consists largely of carbon. Because it is so dense, scientists calculate the carbon must be crystalline, so a large part of this strange world will effectively be diamond.
You’re welcome.
