Who Reviews It Takes You Away by Tony J Fyler

Tony’s pining for the fjords.

If there’s been a theme in Series 11, it’s the relative absence of Evil Aliens. It Takes You Away continues that theme, with a story in which the danger is driven by a case of a life form being in the wrong space-time at the wrong…erm…space-time. But around that central idea is woven something really rather interesting.

Landing in a Norwegian wood, the Doctor and her team seem distinctly over-curious about a cottage with no smoke coming out of its chimney, and essentially commit breaking and entering to make sure Nothing Dodgy’s Afoot.

Just one word of advice to the Doctor, and to writer Ed Hime. In this modern world, if you’ve just broken in to someone’s remote Norwegian cottage and you’re trying not to frighten them, don’t send two men to check the upstairs rooms. Nine times out of ten it’s going to immediately cast you in the role of aggressors.

Hanne though, the only apparent occupant of the cottage, is blind – though she probably would have shunned Graham’s pocket-sandwich just as much if she could have seen it.

Meanwhile, it becomes clear that Something Dodgy Is, in fact, Properly Afoot. Hanne’s dad, Erik, is missing, presumed either coming back, run away, or eaten by the scary-sounding monster outside.

So far, so straightforward – very European fairy-tale, this mystery cottage with a lone girl in it, her parent mysteriously absent, while a monster rages over the land, but doesn’t dare to try the door.

Then, for an extra fairytale twist, Graham looks into the mirror and things go totally tonto. The mirror becomes a portal to a kind of dark enchanted forest with a goblin-guide, the oddly unimpressive Ribbons, with his chilling but frankly nicked-from-Stephen-King red balloons of light.

If anywhere, this is where It Takes You Away gets a bit tedious. Like – and we appreciate the heresy of this – a couple of episodes of Genesis of the Daleks – the story spends its mid-section traipsing and/or running through a Terry Nation-style inimical environment, chatting about things and not getting very far. Having scared the jeepers out of arachnophobes earlier in the series, this time a straight borrow from The Green Death gives us evil flies as an unashamed pace-killer while we wander round the Exposition Zone, and back in her cottage, Ryan tries to make friends with the Norwegian girl he’s insulted.

The arrival in the Other Place brings some solidly weighted considerations though – not for Erik, Erik’s being a selfish git and cuddling an alternate universe who really just wants to be loved, while his actual, flesh-and-blood daughter goes increasingly hungry in a cottage in the woods, presumably eventually destined either to schlepp to civilization despite the sound system of doom and the actual bears and bear traps, or to die of starvation while hiding in a cupboard. That apparently considered abandonment makes it very difficult to have sympathy for Erik, despite the fact that we know he’s mourning the loss of his wife. He is, as the Doctor eventually calls him, an idiot with a daughter who needs him.

But Graham.

Oh, Graham. We’ve loved Graham in Series 11, and he’s mourning too. We know how cool Grace was, so we understand why he’s mourning, and that being with the Doctor, travelling the universe, helps him heal, helps him move on from the shattering unfairness of a moment in his life that killed all his expectations dead.

And there she is. Grace – alive, well, knowing things that only Grace would know. And he could stay with her. Or, as it happens, she could go with him, with the Doctor and Ryan and Yaz.

And the whole thing unfurls in the Doctor’s memory of a dark fairytale, courtesy of Granny 5. A living universe that wants to be with us, wants to be loved, but can’t exist in the same space-time as our own. The lonely universe that is the Solitract. And as the impossibility of a happy ending dawns on us, and breaks Graham’s heart all over again, Jodie Whittaker’s Thirteenth Doctor steps up. Steps forward, and does the thing only the Doctor can do – makes the big sacrifice, opens her hearts to the lonely universe to save the lives of her friends, and of the strangers she’s barely met. It’s one of Jodie Whittaker’s most Doctorish Doctor moment of the series so far – a bit of a speech, but more importantly, the taking of responsibility for the sake of her friends, the saving of them all from an impossible situation. It’s a glorious, understated moment, the Doctor volunteering to stay behind in a universe that’s lonely and to be its friend, so that everyone she knows and everyone she doesn’t gets to live. And just as much as that, because every lonely person has a friend in the Doctor.

Annnnnnd then, because this is after all Doctor Who, there’s a fake frog.

Fandom has been ripping itself to pieces over that frog, bless it, secure in the knowledge that its opinions matter. Personally, I’m finely balanced on the frog. On the one hand, would it have been the perfect opportunity to bring Carole Ann Ford back to the show, as a life form the Doctor loves with as much force, for instance, as Erik loves Trina or Graham loves Grace? Why yes, yes it would. Failing that, would it have been a great excuse for some powerful CG wizardry to show us the universe as a whole, or even to bring a version of the Tardis itself into the Solitract? Yep, that would have worked too.

But on the other hand – of course it’s a frog. A slightly unrealistic, drawn-from-memory frog, of the kind that used to delight the last person the Solitract used to ‘be.’ A universe learning about our own existence, spiked into feelings of delight by the look of a frog, and keeping hold of those feelings through its manifestation as that frog, that source of delight. Yes, on this other hand, there’s never been anything more entirely Doctor Who. So yeah – the universe, experienced as a frog.

Sadly though, as with several episodes this series, the mid-section faffing about really cut down on the time allowed to develop the ending into something as satisfying as it should be. In this case, we lost the chance to see the Doctor develop her friendship with the Solitract. One woman and her universe could have been delivered to us in a montage that would have shown us something about how this still relatively new Doctor thinks and feels, what she loves to do or wants to do – the Solitract and the Doctor could have been shown doing and being all manner of things; starsurfing off Orion’s Belt, saving people from a giant aggressive monster; meditating in a space library; eating fried egg sandwiches on Brighton beach. The Solitract wants to learn about us, wants to experience the universe through us, and the Doctor could have given it so much of that potential – as she said that she would. It would have been wonderful to see her keeping her promises before the universe started collapsing. But no – time restrictions meant we went straight from ‘I’ll stay and be your friend’ to ‘You’re a frog now – frogs are cool’ to ‘You have to let me go. Be brilliant on your own.’ That was a sad anti-climax to an episode that did quite a lot of things right, but it gave the Thirteenth Doctor the chance to show how like us she can sometimes be, going all the way back to her reaction to Grace’s funeral and her memories of her own family. She mourned the loss of a new friend, ‘a whole conscious universe’ - which is of course a description of any human being - and her friends shared looks, or hugs, of acknowledgment, glad for the chance to still have what they had.

But It Takes You Away had one more sob and sniffle moment to give us before the credits rolled. Having saved him physically from the AntiZone, Ryan stood with Graham, united in their grief for Grace, shared his vulnerability, and then gave the old man a gift of acceptance he’d been waiting for for years. The mirror to another universe might take you away, and offer you everything you could possibly want, but right there in that moment, it was Ryan who most helped Graham to heal.

It Takes You Away is an odd contender for episode of the series – not as socially relevant as Rosa, not as beautiful and broad as Demons of the Punjab, and let’s not forget, it features a mad talking frog, but there’s enough right about it to make it perhaps the most solidly Doctor Who episode of the series so far. As with some other episodes, a scripting tweak for pace and balance would have helped it, would have lessened the faffing about in the mid-section and given the Doctor and the Solitract a little more time together before everything went frog-shaped, but fans have been forgiving ponderous mid-sections since…well, since The Cave Of Skulls, or at least certainly since The Dead Planet. It Takes You Away, godawful title notwithstanding, is an episode of Doctor Who you’ll remember fondly in years to come, and sink into comfortably, knowing the frog is coming. And you’ll smile, and roll your eyes, and watch it anyway.