Fear Her (TV story)

Fear Her was the eleventh episode in the second series of Doctor Who.

Synopsis
London 2012, and the Tenth Doctor and Rose Tyler set off to see the Olympics, only to find terror in the most ordinary place.

Plot
The TARDIS materialises on Dame Kelly Holmes Close on the day of the opening ceremony of the 2012 Olympic Games in between two skips, with the door facing the side of one, which prompts the Doctor to close the TARDIS and turn it around. On the street, concern is divided between preparation for the Games, as the torchbearer on the final leg, and the continued disappearance of children from their gardens. Rose also meets a ginger cat who walks into a cardboard box and disappears. Cars break down on the street, something which a council worker, Kel, states has been happening all week.

The source of the problems is a small girl, Chloe, who is able to cause people to disappear by drawing them.

Rose, while wandering down one of the estate streets, hears a noise coming from one of the garages and decides to investigate. As she opens the door a round, fuzzy scribble creature flies forward, hitting Rose square in the face. She falls backwards, landing flat on her back on the driveway. The scribble creature then begins to attack Rose, who swats at it helplessly. Luckily the Doctor arrives just in time, deactivating the scribble with his screwdriver. The scribble lands on Rose's chest, and the Doctor helps her to her feet. The Doctor is able to deduce from detection of residual energy and the carbon nature of a scribble that had attacked Rose that the problem is coming from an alien influence.

Intrigued, the Doctor investigates and through talking to Chloe, he discovers that the disappearance is related to the Isolus, an alien life-form, who had befriended Chloe as she had a troubled childhood including an abusive father. The Doctor warns that the Isolus is desperate for love too, and will use the billions of people watching Olympic opening ceremony to renumber its family.

The Doctor returns to the TARDIS, which locates the Isolus pod to the Close. However, the Doctor and thousands at the Olympic Stadium start to disappear, leaving Rose to dig the pod up (to Kel's protestations). Rose realises that she needs to offer the pod heat, which she does by throwing the pod towards the torch, which had subsequently became a morale beacon, that is passing the Close. As the missing children start to reappear, Rose realises that so will the demon-like drawing that Chloe had made of her father. Rose and Chloe's mother are able, though, to calm Chloe enough to destroy him.

As the torch-bearer approaches the Olympic Stadium, he staggers, but the Doctor completes the run and lights the Olympic Flame, allowing the Isolus to return home.

As the Doctor and Rose walk off to watch the Games, Rose remarks that however hard they attempt, nothing will ever split the two of them up. However, the Doctor does not seem so sure, as he surmises that a storm is approaching.

Cast

 * The Tenth Doctor - David Tennant
 * Rose Tyler - Billie Piper
 * Trish Webber - Nina Sosanya
 * Chloe Webber - Abisola Agbaje
 * Maeve - Edna Dore
 * Tom's Dad - Tim Faraday
 * Kel - Abdul Salis
 * Driver - Richard Nichols
 * Neighbour- Erica Eirian
 * Police Officer - Stephen Marzella
 * Commentator - Huw Edwards

The Doctor

 * The Doctor mentions that he "was a dad once," a reference which was previously implied numerous times by his relationship as grandfather to Susan Foreman. This could also refer to his relationship to his adopted daughter Miranda Dawkins. However, this is a shock to Rose.

Galactic Law

 * The Doctor invokes the Shadow Proclamation.

Music from the real world

 * Trish sings "Kookaburra" to Chloe.

Races and species

 * The Isolus are beings that can draw power from other beings' extreme emotion.
 * Humanoid catkind are mentioned.

Story notes

 * Fear Her is a story which replaces an unwritten script originally allocated to Stephen Fry.
 * The Doctor has travelled with several children throughout all his lives, but this is the first televised story to deal with actual child abuse.
 * In 2009, Doctor Who Magazine conducted a reader poll to rank the first 200 Doctor Who stories in order of preference. Fear Her ranked 192nd out of 200, earning it the dubious distinction of being the lowest-ranked story of the 2005-present revival.
 * The London 2012 logo seen at the start is the bid logo, not the current logo.
 * The writer, Matthew Graham, noted on the DVD commentary that the scribble creature was never to be called a "scribble monster", as the Doctor would never call anything a monster.
 * The idea of a child bringing things to life through drawings was also featured in the 1991 Eerie Indiana episode 'Who's Who'.
 * The Tenth Doctor's involvement in the 2012 Olympics has sparked a petition from thousands of fans all over the world wishing David Tennant to carry the Olympic Torch.
 * This episode's plot has a significant number of paraellels with The Idiot's Lantern. Both take place in suburban London; both occur during the lead-up to a significant event which places the eyes of the world on Britian; the television broadcast of said event figures strongly into the plot of both episodes; both feature plots where people in the area are disapearing mysteriously; both feature an alien who kidnaps people and traps them in a two-dimensional medium; both have a subplot about an abusive father, who serves as a secondary antagonist; both feature a climax where one of the two leads is captured by the alien and the other must rescue them; and both end with the Doctor and Rose enjoying a celebration in the middle of the street. The two episodes originally aired less than a month apart.

Ratings

 * 7.14 million

Myths
to be added

Filming Location
Temorfa, Cardiff

Production errors

 * The BBC News Channel uses the the BBC News 24 logo. This logo was no longer used as of 2007 and the episode is set in 2012. The writer of the episode doesn't know that, he can't predict the future; plus this is the Whoniverse, not the real world and in the Whoniverse maybe the BBC News 24 is still used in 2012.
 * When the Doctor and Rose are walking down the lane, the road is perfect, with no blemishes. However, when the Doctor later picks up the Isolus pod, there is a clear paving spot.

Continuity

 * The Doctor uses his telepathy as he did in DW: The Girl in the Fireplace.
 * 2012 previously featured in DW: Dalek, and is the home era of Adam Mitchell.
 * Each of the kids reacts to coming back from being in their pictures just as people did in DW: The Idiot's Lantern when regaining their faces.
 * The Doctor previously had a sensation in his hands in DW: The War Machines.

Timeline

 * This story takes place after DW: Love & Monsters
 * This story takes place before DW: Army of Ghosts

Home video releases

 * This was released on a vanilla DVD (a DVD release containing no extra features) along side Army of Ghosts and Doomsday.
 * It was also released as part of the Series 2 DVD boxset.