Latest Site News

[Calum]

5

The Haunting of Villa Diodati



Series 12
Written by Maxine Alderton
Guest starring Lili Miller, Jacob Collins-Levy, Nadia Parkes, Maxim Baldry, Patrick O'Kane, Lewis Rainer

Audience Appreciation Index score: 80
Reviews: Radio Times (5 out of 5 stars), Rotten Tomatoes (7.9 / 94.0%)

Chibnall brought in a lot of new writing talent during his era of the show, opting not to involve any writers from both RTD and Moffat's eras of the show. None of the new writers brought on board managed to achieve what Maxine Alderton did, in my opinion. As far as debuts go, this was the strongest guest writer debut of the era for me, and brought excitement levels (and delivered, too) to a new level when she was announced to be writing again for Series 13. The Haunting of Villa Diodati was a very good start, even if in the end it did just serve to deliver a message about what was to come in the following two episodes, and end up seeming much like The Halloween Apocalypse retrospectively in that it leaned heavily towards being more set-up than self-contained story alluding to more. Nonetheless, there's so much to enjoy in this episode and before the Lone Cyberman appeared, it was a classic, fun ghost story involving one of the most iconic writers.

Although the first act of the story sets the tone beautifully, we shift very quickly from a haunting, creepy ghost story with all of the correct elements that quite neatly lead to the inspiration for Mary Shelley's writing of Frankenstein (albeit undermined slightly by the fact that if you consider it canon this is something Big Finish have already covered in their own stories by having the events of The Silver Turk inspire the exact same thing), to a story that becomes central to both Captain Jack's warning earlier in the series, as well as quickly learning that none of the episode's prior events were in fact ghosts at all, but merely a security system in the house itself to prevent the Cyberium from being found. It's all very clever though, and Maxine Alderton's writing manages to keep it entertaining and interesting in equal measures. And what she manages to achieve her is an absolutely wonderful scene between the Thirteenth Doctor and her companions where I found myself gasping at the screen when the episode aired... 'THIS IS THE DOCTOR'. The flat team structure becomes not so flat and it's the Doctor at the summit... the whole scene sent shivers down my spine - this was the moment that for me Jodie really cemented herself as the Doctor, and although not quite in character it reminds us of the burden and the responsibility that the Doctor carries on their shoulders in situations like these.

Could the episode benefitted from not having it rely so heavily on the foreshadowed arc to be resolved in Ascension of the Cybermen and The Timeless Children? Quite possibly. But for what this episode is, and with one of the best guest casts in the era too, I think it's safe to say this was a solid ghost / Cyberman story. It was something new, and I think there's something quite appealing about the idea of the Cybermen infiltrating historical periods of time (this episode, The Next Doctor) as opposed to always being in present day or the future. If RTD was paying attention then hopefully Maxine Alderton isn't a name that's going to be confined to the Chibnall era of Doctor Who and that we see her return at some point in the future to write for Ncuti Gatwa or another Doctor.