The Awakening Part Two

The one where the Malus gets inside the TARDIS...

The design of the Malus is splendid, and pretty scary too. It seems to personify evil, with its glowing green eyes, hooked nose and rictus grin, which seems to be laughing at us as it billows acrid fog from its mouth. I reckon the image of the Malus in the church wall, rubble falling around it as it pushes forward, gave a few kids nightmares back in 1984. And then there's the awful roaring noise it makes as it awakes, a cross between the roar of a leviathan and the sound of tearing metal. Even today - at the cynical old age of 45 - I still find the image and sound of the Malus a little unsettling.

There's a lovely little team with the Fifth Doctor, Will Chandler and Jane Hampden, but sadly it isn't really capitalised upon. There are some nice moments between the Doctor and Will, and the Doctor and Jane, but not the three of them collectively so much, which is a shame, as the dynamic could really work, the motherly middle-aged woman and the vulnerable innocent. I can imagine them as a pretty effective TARDIS team, if only Will and Jane would talk to one another!

The Awakening Part One

The one where cosplay gets a little too 'real'...

Right from the off, The Awakening sets out its stall as something a little bit different. It's also terribly familiar in some ways, but I do like how director Michael Owen Morris adds his own touch, with the galloping horses rapidly intercut with Jane Hampden's fruitless search for Ben. This juxtaposition of the ordinary with the extraordinary instantly builds a degree of tension as the viewer wonders who is coming (and coming very quickly) and how the two scenarios will meet.

It turns out that Ben is one of a bunch of men who have taken the art of cosplay far too seriously. It's all well and good dressing up in flowing wigs and cavalier finery, but the brandishing of weaponry at innocent bystanders, charging toward them on horseback, seems a little too dedicated. As we see throughout the episode, these war gaming cosplayers have taken verisimilitude a little too far...