Series 2 Episode 6: The idiots lantern

A banished alien creature arrives on Earth and needs human brains to feed on in order to take physical form. The creature calls herself "The Wire" and projects herself as an image of a woman in a television set. She enlists the help of a television maker from the 1950s to satiate her unusual hunger. Even by Doctor Who standards, this was a very strange episode.

This episode focuses on the lives of the Connolly family where an over-bearing father who cares only about his image, and his submissive wife and son who are both afraid to speak the truth about what is really going on. It turns out that Mrs. Connolly's mother lost her face while watching television one night, and ever since then, she was locked away in a room upstairs. While the effect used to create the blank faces looked impressive, it raises many questions about how some of these faceless people were able to survive for months. How do they eat or breathe? While Doctor Who has never been about asking complex scientific questions, there are some cases where common sense should prevail.

The police would come and take the faceless people away and lock them up in cages. This was in an attempt to "clean up" London before Queen Elizabeth's coronation in 1953. This was the most watched television spectacle of its time and a perfect opportunity for The Wire to gather enough faces to bring about her liberation from her electronic alien prison. Obviously, the Doctor figures out a way to stop this from happening, and using the help of Mr. Connolly's son, Tommy, he is able to modify The Wire's transmitter into a receiver and reverse the signal and trap her in a videocassette. It's a very simplistic solution to an extremely bizarre problem.

Overall, this was an extremely bizarre episode that requires the audience to perform many leaps of logical faith, but unlike previous scientifically challenged episodes, the payoff here isn't worth the lack of logic. The story was marginally interesting, and the only real highlight was when Rose and the Doctor arrive at the Connolly's home completely overstep Eddie Connolly's authority in his own house. Rose points out an interesting fact that the Union Jack is only known as such when flown at sea. The UK flag is officially known as the Union Flag on mainland. The Doctor had enough of Eddie's bullying and gets into a heated discussion about letting the duo help. Interesting anecdotes aside, this episode was far from being one of the Doctor's better voyages.
 
Rating: 7/10