Doctor Who: In The Forest Of The Night<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The episode "In the Forest of the Night" continues a number of themes that have\u00a0been woven throughout this season of Doctor Who: fairy tales and fear;\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2014\/10\/doctor-who-in-the-forest-of-the-night.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Doctor Who: In The Forest Of The Night\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The episode "In the Forest of the Night" continues a number of themes that have\u00a0been woven throughout this season of Doctor Who: fairy tales and fear;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2014\/10\/doctor-who-in-the-forest-of-the-night.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Religion Prof: The Blog of James F. 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{"id":26894,"date":"2014-10-27T07:01:00","date_gmt":"2014-10-27T11:01:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/exploringourmatrix\/?p=26894"},"modified":"2014-10-27T07:01:00","modified_gmt":"2014-10-27T11:01:00","slug":"doctor-who-in-the-forest-of-the-night","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2014\/10\/doctor-who-in-the-forest-of-the-night.html","title":{"rendered":"Doctor Who: In The Forest Of The Night"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

The episode \u201cIn the Forest of the Night\u201d continues a number of themes that have\u00a0been woven throughout this season of Doctor Who: fairy tales<\/a> and fear; Clara\u2019s strength, her increasing resemblance to the Doctor, and her relationship to Danny Pink; and whatever is going on with Missy. (The \u201cnext time\u201d clip suggests that the season finale<\/a>, in which the season arc with Missy will need to be explained rather than resolved, should be fascinating).<\/p>\n

$\"In-the-Forest-of-the-Night-capaldi-sonic\"$ The episode has some wonderful moments of dialogue. I was amused by\u00a0the comparison of the TARDIS to a Coke \u2013 which is only \u201cthis big\u201d but contains \u201cthis much\u201d sugar. And given the similarity the sonic screwdriver has had to a magic wand in recent seasons, it was nice to hear\u00a0the suggestion voiced that it\u00a0isn\u2019t<\/em> one, that it can\u2019t fix everything. Great phrases from the Doctor included when he talked about the forest as \u201cmankind\u2019s nightmare\u201d \u2013 the focus of so many stories that keep us up at night \u2013 and about catastrophe as \u201cthe metabolism of the universe.\u201d And of course, when Clara says, having seen what it means for the Doctor, that she does not want to become the last of her species.\u00a0I also liked when the Doctor echoed Clara\u2019s words from \u201cKill the Moon,\u201d saying that this is his world too. The Doctor learning from Clara has been a major theme this season.<\/p>\n

But my favorite lines were from Danny Pink, when he said, \u201cI don\u2019t wanna see more things. I wanna see the things in front of me more clearly.\u201d<\/p>\n

Doctor Who has a long history of taking things from fairy tales and making them even scarier within the show \u2013 from the details in \u201cThe Mind Robber<\/a>\u201d down to the newer seasons with the weeping angels and clowns and dolls and vampires and things under the bed. In this episode, fear becomes a thing that makes us attack that which is trying to save us. And so there is an insightful point there \u2013 that fear makes us attack friends\u00a0and allies while making us blind to where the real threat lies.<\/p>\n

The idea that the Tunguska blast was trees protecting the Earth makes little logical sense. But the symbolism of trees protecting us, and us trying to cut them down, remains poignant<\/a>. And the notion of scary events being forgotten, except for fear embodied in fairy tales, is not far fetched. For\u00a0real-life examples of how fairy tales can embody cultural memory of trauma, see Charles H\u00e4berl\u2019s paper, \u201cFlights of Fancy.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

I was disturbed by the suggestion that people hearing voices should stop taking their medication, since it may be that mystical beings are trying to communicate with humankind through that person. People who experience vivid dreams, hallucinations, and other such phenomena have a long history of being revered as prophets or something similar. But today, we understand more about mental illness, and it seems unlikely that powerful beings would find themselves completely unable to communicate with humanity because someone took necessary medication. It\u2019s a dangerous message for a show to deliver \u2013 especially about and to children.<\/p>\n

What did you think of \u201cIn The Forest of the Night\u201d?<\/p>\n

$\"In$ <\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"