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Doctor Who/Recap/S30/E10 Midnight: Difference between revisions
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The Doctor and Donna go to an alien spa on a beautiful but uninhabitable planet called
"[[What Could Possibly Go Wrong?]]?" asks the Doctor.
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Sky, hunched on the floor, starts talking. She repeats anything anyone says. The Doctor is intrigued, if a bit scared, and tries to make contact with whatever's inside her. It's only when Sky starts talking in ''sync'' with her fellow passengers that everyone realizes they're in a horror story.
The Professor's assistant recites lines from Christina Rossetti's "[[Goblin Market]]", which doesn't exactly make things ''less'' creepy. Also, Rose briefly shows up on a screen, screaming at the Doctor. [[Doctor Who/Recap/
The Doctor still tries to befriend the creature, knowing there's a good chance that it's just scared, or curious, or trying to be nice. The passengers, however, take a vote to throw Sky into the sunlight. And while the Doctor tries to talk sense into them, the creature realizes that the Doctor is the cleverest person on the bus, and begins talking in sync ''only'' with him.
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And now, the entire [[Bus Full of Innocents]] is suspicious of him ''because'' of what are usually his strengths: his cleverness, his confidence, his take-charge attitude, and the breadth and depth of his knowledge all mark him out as something other than human. Which he ''is'', and that's the most dangerous thing to be in a mob of terrified humans. Nothing a sonic screwdriver could fend off.
He never gets a chance to convince them otherwise, because they're all [[Dangerously Genre Savvy]]
This isn't one of those times when the Doctor just gets up and [[Doctor Who/Recap/
Twenty minutes later, the rescue team arrives, and the Doctor has learned a few painful lessons about mob mentality. This episode marks the beginning of a shift in the Doctor's attitude: he realizes that while [[Humans Are Special]], all [[Humans Are
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* [[Alliterative Name]]: Sky Sylvestry
* [[Alone in a Crowd]]: The Doctor at the end, sitting in the aisle of the bus.
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* [[Bavarian Fire Drill]]: Subverted. The Doctor does his usual thing with psychic paper, bluffing his way into the cabin and generally making it clear that he knows what he's doing... which leads the passengers to suspect he has something to do with the alien.
* [[Bittersweet Ending]]: Big time. This episode does not end on a happy note.
** Made even worse by the fact that, even when {{spoiler|River sacrifices herself}} in the [[Doctor Who/Recap/
* [[Bottle Episode]]: Takes place almost entirely in a single room. There is a minimum of special effects, most restricted to CGI scenery.
* [[Break the Cutie]]: The Doctor and Dee Dee to a lesser extent. Here's hoping she told the Professor where to stick his research...
* [[Burn the Witch]]
* [[Bury Your Gays]]: Played with here by gay author [[Russell T. Davies]]. Sky's ex-partner was female, and the hostess notably addresses her passengers as "ladies and gentlemen and variations thereupon".<ref>This is presumably more because the passengers might not all be human; the Doctor isn't, for a start.</ref> Neither of these things is [[Played for Laughs]]
* [[Bus Full of Innocents]]: Horrifyingly subverted.
* [[Can Only Move the Eyes]]
* [[Chekhov's Gun]]: The Doctor's {{spoiler|[[Catch Phrase|catchphrases]]}}.
* [[Continuity Nod]]: The Doctor says Rose Tyler, Martha Jones, Donna Noble in rapid succession.
** He also mentions a friend in another universe, which COULD refer to [[Doctor Who/Recap/S18/E05 Warriors Gate|Romana and K9]] rather than [[Doctor Who/Recap/
* [[Death in the Clouds]]
* [[Death World]]: The "ex-tonic" sunlight destroys any living creature within seconds -- ''in theory''.
* [[Deconstruction]]:
** As well as everything that goes wrong for Ten in this, nobody believes him when he says his name is "John Smith".
** Has a similar plot to RTD's "[[Doctor Who/Recap/2007 CS Voyage of the Damned|Voyage of the Damned]]", but handled very differently. Also goes a long way to turning over most of the hallmarks of the programme so far; the Doctor fails almost completely, we never learn anything about the alien (not even if it's actually dead or not at the end!), all the [[Humans Are
** Even [[Catch Phrase|Catchphrases]] and a [[Running Gag]] get a dark twist.
** And the Doctor's usual methods of sorting out an alien problem, i.e. getting a close look at it, talking to it, etc. backfire completely
* [[Demonic Possession]]: Kinda-sorta.
* [[Developing Doomed Characters]]: We spend five or ten minutes meeting the [[Humans Are
* [[Driven to Suicide]]: [[Word of God]] says that Sky planned to kill herself at the waterfall.
* [[Eldritch Abomination]]: One theory for the nameless ''thing'' that succeeds where gods and monsters have failed in utterly '''breaking''' the Doctor.
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* [[Fighting From the Inside]]: Presumably the reason {{spoiler|the Doctor}} pauses and stumbles over words when {{spoiler|the alien is making him repeat things}}, and ''certainly'' the reason he manages to hook his foot around the leg of one of the seats.
* [[Foreshadowing]]: When the Doctor knocks on the door, and the creature knocks back, count the number of knocks. Even the closed-captioning calls attention to this one.
** Also, when {{spoiler|the Doctor is possessed}} he mentions darkness and diamonds, {{spoiler|which is something the Toclafane talked about.}} What do these foreshadow? {{spoiler|[[The Master (trope)|The Master]] .}}
* [[Go Through Me]]: "If you try to throw her out that door, you'll have to get past me first!"
** {{spoiler|So they do.}}
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* [[Hell Is That Noise]]: Every word out of Sky's mouth post-[[Nothing Is Scarier|whatever it was that happened.]]
* [[Heroic Sacrifice]]: {{spoiler|The Hostess.}}
* [[Humans Are
* [[Invisible Monsters]]: The creature that possesses Sky is never seen. A few vaguely humanoid shadows are seen from the cockpit, but not by the viewers, and that's all.
* [[Ironic Echo]]: "Don't. Don't do that", is one for previous episodes.
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* [[No Name Given]]: The Hostess. [[Tear Jerker|Very pointedly]] lampshaded. Also in the credits she is just called "Hostess".
* [[Nothing Is Scarier]]: Made all much worse because this is the ONLY enemy / creature in the show history that is never identified somehow.
** Not only that, but what makes so much worse is that we don't even know... if the creature is capable of spreading paranoia or if it was just [[Humans Are
*** We also have no idea if it's trapped on Midnight or if it can manifest in other places. And the way that the creature describes itself, speaking of being from the "Dark and the cold", is eerily similar to creatures like Death and Abaddon from ''[[Torchwood]]'' and The Beast.
* [[One Word Title]]
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{{quote|Taking a big spaceship with a bunch of strangers across a diamond planet called Midnight... ''what could possibly go wrong?''}}
* [[Uncanny Valley]]: The way the Sky-creature moves its head at first is just ''wrong''.
* [[Wham! Episode]]: [[Humans Are
* [[What Could Possibly Go Wrong?]]: The Doctor gets this exact line in the teaser.
** [[Captain Obvious|Doubles as]] [[Tempting Fate]].
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{{reflist}}
[[Category:Recap]]
[[Category:Doctor Who]]▼
[[Category:Doctor Who/Recap]]
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