A girl walks though a forest and finally comes to the TARDIS, as she knocks on the door, the Doctor (Peter Capaldi) opens it and she tells him she needs help, she needs a Doctor. He brings her in and finds that they are in London and the forest has grown overnight. Elsewhere the school party begins to get ready to leave and neither Clara (Jenna Coleman) nor Danny (Sam Anderson) have realized that the girl is missing. They open the door of the museum but it's surrounded by trees. Planet earth no longer is a mass of countries and sea but is all green. One ep for the environmentalists this one.
The Doctor finds he's at Trafalgar Square and the lion is wooden so there's no way the Sonic will work. Clara is called by the Doctor and tells her about the girl and she's with him. Her name is Maebh (Abigal Eames) and she tells him to look after her. His response, "I'm a Doctor not a childminder." Though it's a bit funny he doesn't ask her who told her to find the Doctor, when he first tells him she needs the Doctor. The school party finally comes across the TARDIS and enter it. Being children, their hands would go everywhere and it's the Doctor who has to control them, not Clara or Danny, so much for being teachers. Surprising a PE, I mean, Maths teacher would accompany them to the museum, wouldn't it have been a history teacher. Well that's what happened when we were at school. Anyway, that aside and the fact that Clara was meant to call their parents but didn't cos she was side tracked by the Doctor, she thought she was getting one up on him by telling him how London is covered in trees. He already knew. Danny finds the exercise books in the TARDIS so knows that Clara has been seeing him and keeping it from Danny. Maebh's book had a drawing of the sun and trees.
They search for Maebh and the Doctor thinks she's probably leaving breadcrumbs like Hansel and Gretel, seems he's been reading again. Clara adding they'll find her in a house made of gingerbread with a cannibal witch. Then makes a comment about how these are the stories that would give them nightmares in the night. Er, I didn't get any such nightmares from reading fairytales and the like, did anyone? Meanwhile there's news reports of how the tress have affected other countries and the government Cobra committee has been set up to 'fight' the trees. Their solution is to burn a path through them. Has the government ever come up with realistic solutions that actually work. Rhetorical question! ha.
They comes across these men who set fire to the tress but ii doesn't burn. The fire is extinguished. Maebh comes across animals escaped from the zoo and walks through the gate to save herself when Clara wants to reach out and get her. She's chased by wolves who are chased away by a tiger and Danny catches up to them and flashes torch light in the tiger's eye. Maebh disappears again and they run after her, she's waving her arms in front of her and they think she should have her medication. She's got issues as her sister, Annabelle going missing and their solution was to medicate her.
They find Maebh and she tries to send the trees back but she can't stop it. The Doctor realizes earth will be affected by the solar flare, just as the Bank of Karabraxos was in Time Heist. There's nothing they can do to save them. He uses his sonic to dissipate the lights and they speak trough Maebh, telling him they've been here for an eternity really and through all their human wars, after which they will still be here. They're not here to harm them. Maebh tells them Clara's thoughts led her to the Doctor, couldn't she say thought properly, sounded like 'fought.' Clara convinces the Doctor he can use the TARDIS as a lifeboat and can save some of the people. It was a way for her to lure the Doctor there and she tells him he should go and the human race can save itself now. That he should go somewhere else and save them. He adds he also walks here and breathes their air. She convinced him to come here to save people otherwise he wouldn't have come. These children need to be with their parents she tells him and they will always want them.
The Doctor realizes there's a way to save the planet and that the trees build up oxygen and will release it when the solar flare passes, thus saving the planet. The Tunguska incident in 1908 which didn't blow the whole planet off its axis, so it's happened before and so they can still be saved. The impact will burn off the excess oxygen in the atmosphere. However Danny tells them the government is planning on spraying defoliating agent on the leaves. This is another useless attempt by the government to rid the trees. The Doctor must warn them but Maebh says she started it, so she wants to do it. Reading out a message to the world to leave the trees alone.
There's lots of references to Danny being a soldier again, okay only one, but he says it again this time, as if we didn't know already by now. He doesn't want to see what he's lost but the things that are in front of him. He doesn't want to see the solar flare but his life is here. The children want their mums too. "Fear a little bit less, trust a little bit more," as he quotes Maebe to Clara. He wants to know the truth even if he doesn't like it.
Then the Doctor mentions lying again as a direct reference to what Clara has been doing and even Danny now knows she's been spending time with the Doctor but keeping it from him. A bit of a comedic romp through London covered in trees and also poor Nelson losing his other arm too when his Column collapsed! Clara introduces the class to the Doctor, but do they mean to say that they didn't already know about him with his stint as the caretaker.
As they watch the solar flares being soaked up by the oxygen like an airbag, Missy (Michelle Gomez) also watches again, who else. Clara wonders how they'll explain an overnight forest disappearing the next day and he says they'll forget. They forget their fears and turn them into fairy stories, if they remembered then superpowers would stop having wars, having babies. As Maebe returns home with her mother, the hydrangeas disappear to reveal Annabel (Eloise Barnes).
The TARDIS telling the Doctor "you have reached your destination" over and over when he thinks he had to be somewhere else. This ep was a reversal of the last one where the Boneless were harming everyone here and had evil intentions. Here the trees are the opposite and are here protecting the earth as they have done so over the years. Though it takes a while for this to click for the Doctor that Earth has been through this and survived. Forgot to add the Doctor referring to Clara's face as being too round again! Ha.
The next episode looks good especially as we need to know the truth about Clara and seems Missy is behind all this. Has she been manipulating everyone form the outset and as soon as we met Clara? Okay I'm just observing, ha.
No comments:
Post a Comment