Maybe it's just me, but Doctor Who set in the woods just feels right. There's something scary and spooky about the coverage offered by the foliage and the height of trees allow any assailant to drop down from above or spring out from below and from any angle. There is something very Earthly yet remote and removed from everyday town life. On top of that are the fairy tales and legends of Little Red Riding Hood, Peter And The Wolf, Robin Hood... adventure and danger, excitement and fear. You never know what you might find if you brush aside those branches or peep through the bushes and the unlikely contrast of technology and nature has a certain delicious appeal. From the title of this episode, it's clearly time to go down to the woods, and we could be in for a surprise...
We join the action as a young school girl is running through the trees. Is she running from something? She occasionally waves her arms about her head as if swatting mosquitoes away but there is nothing visible that we can see. She is wearing a red coat... is it too much to assume a Red Riding Hood association? She reaches a small clearing where she finds big blue Police Box, and notices the St. John's Ambulance sticker. She knocks on the door and when a tall grey heard man opens the door, she asks for the Doctor, explaining that she is being chased. The man ushers her in to his impossibly large room and she doesn't bat an eyelid...
This is no ordinary girl. The Doctor is disappointed that she doesn't seem to be confused by the TARDIS being bigger on the inside (having given a new explanation that it is like a glass of cola that is only small but has a huge amount of sugar in it), but she explains that she finds everything confusing so she doesn't say anything. The Doctor, however, is confused. Not only has a young girl apparently been sent to find him, but he isn't sure where he is himself. He sets a course for Earth and he TARDIS cuts out stating in a clear Sat-Nav voice "You have reached your destination". The Doctor disagrees because he is supposed to be in London yet they are clearly surrounded by a forest. The girl points out that this is London, in fact it is Trafalgar Square at the base of Nelson's Column...
Unfortunately, the shot that follows is slightly wrong. The camera rises up the column to reveal the statue of Nelson looking out over London and between all the buildings are trees. That's all fine, we see other familiar landmarks the Shard, the Eye and the Palace of Westminster, all approximately in the right place... but Nelson should be looking south as the Camera is, yet he faces to the right, meaning west. To compound the error, he appears to be looking towards the Sun... nothing wrong with that, but the following scene establishes the time as being early morning so the Sun should be in the East!
Clara and Danny have been supervising a sleepover for a group of "Year 8 Gifted And Talented" at the London Zoological Museum (as identified by a rare screen caption) and they are surprised to find themselves surrounded by trees that have sprung up over night as they force the door open. Clara is delighted to have something new and amazing to show the Doctor as opposed to him show her such things... so she is a little deflated when she phones him and discovers that he has already seen it. She's also shocked to learn that Maebh, the little girl, is with him rather than her and Danny where she should be.
The adventure from here is a trek through the woods to bring the two parties together (a whole bunch of kids running amok in the TARDIS and none of them phased by the dimensions! One of them asking "What are the round things for?") and then an attempt to understand what is going on. In the process, Clara and Danny have a domestic when he realises that she has lied to her and is still spending time with the Doctor, and they encounter first wolves and then a tiger - both escaped from London Zoo (presumably where the trees had buckled the fencing, though there is no evidence of this destruction anywhere)
It's a reasonable story with some clever ideas, the Doctor can't get any readings from the trees because they are real, genuine wood with no moving parts, no circuitry, no communication yet as Maebh points out there are other ways to communicate because she can't talk to her mum but she knows she is worried for her... It takes the imaginative thinking of a child and the Doctor's willingness to listen to establish a communication with the life force at work. Maebh had been waving her arms to clear away the thoughts that were surrounding her noisily but the Doctor was able to use his sonic screwdriver to give them a voice through her "We are the life that prevails... The Sun creates, the Sun destroys"
Again, we are given drama and conflict between Clara and the Doctor as they try to save the day. Clara questions all the futures they have seen and surely this can't be the end of the world but says "If you can't save everyone, save those you can... the TARDIS is a lifeboat", yet when they arrive back at the TARDIS she explains that saving the children won't help them because they will always want their parents and that Danny won't leave them to be saved himself and she won't leave him... so in the end the idea was actually for her to save the Doctor for once and so they all leave him to run away in the TARDIS alone. Until he realises the truth of the situation...
This is a story about nature doing what it needs to and us letting. The government set about trying to burn the trees to clear them away but the trees "withhold oxygen" so the leaves don't ignite... trees that won't burn, drawn into existence from ancient seeds encouraged to grow by building solar energy so that when the solar storm erupts the trees are there to absorb it and burn away like an airbag taking the impact of a collision.
Arguably, it is Maebh and the kids who save the day when they write a script for her to broadcast to the world (this time, tapping into the telephone networks and phoning everyone at once) telling them to stop destroying the trees. She then finishes with a plea to her older sister, who has run away, to come home. There is a subtle reason for the missing sister angle but it is resolved far too easily when she turns up among the last fizzling bushes at their home as if returned by the trees themselves or maybe she had been hiding there all along... she's been missing for a year!
Danny finally calls Clara out on her lies but, as before, tells her to go home and think about it, then tell him how she feels and what she wants to do... hold that thought as you approach the next episode...
There is humour and cleverness throughout the story, even if the premise and backbone are a little weak. The kids are brilliant rather than annoying or rubbish as can often happen, but then they are given some really intelligent lines. When the Doctor says he doesn't know what's going on Clara pushes forward with teacher-like authority in the face of difficulty stating that "he says he doesn't know... pretends he doesn't care... then the clever kicks in", though she later feels unexpectedly frightened, expecting to find a "gingerbread house with a cannibal witch inside"... ah yes, Doctor Who in the woods, always a winner!
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