The Eaters of Light feels a lot like a throwback episode of Doctor Who, it really does have the feel of another era. Of course, that isn't surprising given that this episode has been written by Rona Munro, the first classic series writer to give us an episode in the modern era. Munro actually wrote the final story for the classic era, Survival, which featured Sylvester McCoy and Sophie Aldred in 1989. The overall retro feel leaves this episode open to the same criticism's as Empress of Mars but Munro has the advantage over Mark Gatiss - her first outing on the show was during a period of high experimentation. The show was dying and the producers were desperate to try anything to keep it from being cancelled. Survival was the last bid for the producers to add darker depths to the Seventh Doctor and his companion Ace and Munro gave us a story which did just that, while playing into larger arcs, leaving threads hanging for new arcs, gave us a more reflective look at younger people, a powerful villain and sets the story in places recognisable as modern London. The last few series' of Sylvester McCoy's era anticipated a lot of Russell T. Davies' innovations for the modern series which was brought back in 2005.

But The Eaters of Light isn't just an exercise in empty eccentricity. Much like Sarah Dollard's, Thin Ice, this episode also looks at imperialism. Munro skilfully blends political and personal matters here, the Roman army is a weapon built entirely on overwhelming force but it is one that relies on thousands of scared teenagers who are set upon innocent farmers. The Roman Empire is terrible and vast but only really in aggregate and that reality makes the cowardice of the teenage soldiers all the more inevitable. And there never was an alternative but to attack, the Roman army was the biggest hammer in Ancient Europe and every problem almost always became the nail. And all these points come across a lot better because it isn't the Doctor who is making them. Instead it is up to Bill and later on, Kar, to diagnose the problems with the Roman worldview. But for the Pict, her wisdom is mostly painfully learnt, while Bill's insights aren't just learnt from the TARDIS or her time on board - but her perceptiveness that earned her a spot on the TARDIS in the first place.

And that this reminder comes from the show's resident alien is surely some kind of irony, one that sort of ties in with the Doctor's plan to sacrifice his future guarding humanity from the other side of the gate. That has been his lives' work after all. But it is in this final moment that Munro's script changes from elusive and thoughtful to a bit mushy. The basic idea is sound, but the way the gateway works isn't put across strongly enough for the Roman and Pict sacrifices to actually mean anything. If the Doctor had worked out that he could spend many more regenerations holding back the eaters of light, then how much could mere humans with short life spans really hope to accomplish? That might have been more navigable had the visuals been able to distract one from the script's weaknesses at that point. Both the gateway and the actual monster are Doctor Who CGI at its wonkiest and a slower and more meditative episode like this one could have really benefited from a strong climax but the cairn scenes fall very short in this regard.

At its best, this episode really does crackle with ideas, most of which are firmly rooted in characters and cultures - especially the scene where Bill learns her exclusive attraction to women makes her 'limited' by Roman standards. Of course, I will leave up for debate as to the veracity of that outlook, but it does work in the context of this episode. Where this episode struggles is in its attempts to attempts to bring these ideas together in service of a story that is greater than the sum of its parts. What is left is a bunch of thoughtful scenes which fare a lot better than many from the modern era. This episode positions itself as a mirror image to the previous one, Empress of Mars, whose chief thing was a lot of attractive elements. This episode was too lightweight for me to enjoy it as much as some others did, but it is the sort of undercooked material that I am more likely to embrace. And while The Eaters of Light wasn't what this series needed to return to the form it had in its beginning and while it isn't as high in standard as Munro's Survival, it is a welcome break from the norm...
Comments
Post a comment