Doctor Who: Series 10, Episode 4 – “Knock Knock” (2017)

Pretty decent horror yarn, I’d say.  Good spooky atmosphere, and the plot goes to some interesting places, although it gets shakier when it comes to explanations.  This one is by a new writer – Mike Bartlett, who I’m not at all familiar with – and overall, I think he acquits himself fairly well.

Back on earth, Bill’s adventures in real estate with her five prospective housemates take a turn for the odd when they’re offered a surprising deal on renting a beautiful old house.  With a creepily-anachronistic landlord, odd goings-on, and a mysterious tower that they’ve been told in no uncertain terms is absolutely off-limits, there’s obviously something up, and despite Bill’s best efforts to convince herself otherwise, the Doctor knows a freaky alien problem when he sees one and volunteers himself for the case.

All the haunted-house stuff comes off well – lots of eeriness, but it’s all just plausible enough at first that it makes sense that Bill and her friends could shrug it off.  And when the monsters show up, they’re quite skin-crawlingly creepy.  David Suchet guest stars as the strange landlord, doing a bang-up job in the role, and things get pretty interesting as it all comes to a head.  In particular, there’s a good “gotcha” bit that pays off in a satisfying way.

That said, it could use some tightening up around the edges.  By the end, I still didn’t know exactly why or how what happens happens, but it doesn’t feel like it’s intentionally left hanging, either; it feels like a step got skipped somewhere.  Also, while Bill’s housemates are enjoyable enough, I would’ve preferred a little more shading on them.  With a small group of people trapped inside a creepy house being menaced by unknown forces, this is essentially a base-under-siege story without the base, but those stories succeed best when we feel like we know and/or care about all the people in the group, not just the Doctor and his companion.  Each of Bill’s housemates is drawn just a bit too thinly to really work.

As usual, though, the main attraction here is the Doctor-companion stuff.  The story actually separates Bill and the Doctor quite a bit, putting them in scenes with different housemates more than each other, but they both do well in their own parts of the plot, and they’re their usual awesome-duo selves when they are together.  I especially love Bill’s not-so-subtle efforts to signal the Doctor’s exit early in the story.  I don’t mind it, since, with the Doctor’s current cover, all of her housemates know him as a professor at the university, and that makes his continued presence weird to explain – it never comes across as mean or dismissive to me.  Besides, the Doctor’s reactions to the whole thing are great, and him finding excuses to hang out in a haunted house with a bunch of college kids is fun.  And the big climactic putting-it-together scene might drop a few important details, but the Doctor and Bill’s interactions throughout it are excellent.