Often a stand alone episode can be a big disappointment (ie. 'The Curse of the Black Spot' earlier this series), and most would have been expecting no more than that from this episode. Written by a new writer who's never written a Who episode before, but has appeared in one (Remember The Lazarus Experiment from an earlier series involving the tenth Dr,, Tennant? Well this is written by the man who played that inventor of the machine akin to the fountain of youth), expectations were rightly or wrongly not high.
Anyways, to the story! The basic pretense is a small scared young boy, who is told by his parents to put all of his fears in his cupboard where they can't hurt him, sensible move if he was a normal boy, however George is not a normal boy! He is a Tenza, another new monster, a psychic with a powerful perception filter. Through the first part of the episode things continually get deposited into the cupboard, the link between these things is they all scare George. From the lift (which goes in the cupboard whilst Amy and Rory are in it), to the Landlord, from an old lady who creates a scary shadow on George's window, to even the Doctor and George's father.
All that scares George is sucked into a world where everything is made of wood, saucepans, fruit, chicken, knives, forks, soup and painted to look like the real thing, the swift minded would have noticed at this point that this is inside a Dolls House. This Dolls House is a psychic repository inside the cupboard for George's fears!! Meanwhile back in the dolls house, Amy and Rory have met the Peg Dolls (see right). These guys are spooky, dolls scare me nearly as much as clowns and that's saying something! They catch everyone who enters the repository and turn them into Peg Dolls too.The Tenza named George latched onto his 'mum and dad' when they were desperate to have a son, he singled them out as potential hosts to 'foster' him. One of the wonders of a perception filter is that it's user can mould the minds and memories of those around it to suit it's needs (like the weeping angels do).
What scares the Tenza more than anything else is somebody coming to take him away, when the Dr realizes what George is he is terrified and so banishes the Dr to his cupboard too. By this time Amy has been captured by the Dolls and turned into a Flame Haired Peg Doll, but by making George aware that he need not be afraid of the things in the cupboard, that only he can remove them and save everyone the Dr convinces George that he is controlling the fears in the dolls house and to enter the cupboard and face his fears. As soon as George does this the Dolls try to prey on him, however his Dad convinces him that he'll never send him away (his main fear) banishing all of his fears and destroying the Dolls House. The ending to this episode was really fairly emotional, achieving something which I'd have thought impossible creating empathy to the characters which we've only known for 42 minutes! CONCLUSION: PLEASE LET DR LAZARUS WRITE MORE DR WHO EPISODES!ANSWERS
1. The perception filter used by the Tenza is the same as that which the Tardis uses to make itself bigger on the inside, this is how the Dolls House is bigger on the inside. 2. The sonic screwdriver still doesn't work on wood. 3. There's still a reference to the Dr's death at the end of the episode =[
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