Knock Knock

I was anticipating a great horror story featuring the great David Suchet. What I got instead was a brilliant parent-child emotional story featuring the great David Suchet perfectly playing creepy and victimised.

The entire cast were a joy to watch throughout, as were the parallels between our heroes and enemies as they played off a parent-child story. There weren't many spooks, but it made up for it with the emotional weight at the conclusion. This episode shows how great Mackie's Bill and Capaldi's Doctor work well without needing each other throughout the entire story. Perhaps not as good as Series 8's "Listen", but certainly better than Series 7's "Hide", when comparing Doctor Who horror stories.

Episode 4 "Knock Knock" - 9/10

This episode owes a lot of credit to Shirley Jackson. "The Haunting" was a play and two movies, one "updated" for more modern tastes in the last 90s or early 2000s. The bugs are classic horror devices, but the knock knock was pure Shirley. Love having David Suchet as the landlord.

Do not understand why people are ragging on this episode. Classic is classic.

There was a parasitic alien bug, could absorb you in an instance if you stood, with a complicated timbre, you'd be turned into a timber, a knotted polished plank of periodic wood.

This is basically a twist on a haunted house story. The creepy atmosphere - a big old house with a strange landlord, creaking and scuttling noises and mysterious attacks beginning to happen - works really well.

The biggest plus to this episode is the big name guest actor David Suchet putting in a wonderful performance with real depth. He is a mixture or creepy and gentle then properly scary when he gets angry but he is also very moving when he gets upset.

Peter Capaldi is on usual top form and makes so much entertainment from his humour mixed with his dark intensity.

Pearl Mackie continues her excellent performance as Bill who is a really really good companion. She is strong and full of personality without dominating or being pushy or annoying.

Bill's student friends are believable and well acted and the dialogue all round is high quality. This continues in the end scenes where Nardole makes his usual cameo and the mysterious situation that requires the Doctor and Nardole to guard a vault is built up further with the prisoner within becoming more obvious and interest in that ongoing thread growing nicely from the scene.

The direction and effects are very good and tension and atmosphere are cleverly built. The creepiness is a really great aspect of the story and the payoff is surprisingly emotional and thoughtful. The woodlice creatures are an interesting 'monster' that can be compared to the maggots in The Green Death, although the wish to include bioluminescent elements is a bit too similar to the fish from the previous episode, Thin Ice, and to creatures appearing later this series, so that is a tiny thing I would have changed with the design to avoid overuse of the same thing.

Really this brings everything I want or expect from a Doctor Who episode - a creepy situation, a threatening monster, strong dialogue, amusing humour, great acting and a decent plot. I therefore rate it very highly.

My Rating: 9.5/10.

Series 10 Episode Ranking: 4th out of 14.

A take on the teen horror movie set in a haunted house. Noted playwright and television writer Mike Bartlett's debut Doctor Who episode 'Knock Knock' referenced a joke that we all heard as youngsters.

Bill and her university chums seemed to have sorted their student digs several terms in advance, what they are left with is unsuitable and even then student loans can only stretch so far.

Luck is at hand David Suchet's creepy landlord comes to the rescue, he has a big creaky house, a tower that is out of bounds and plenty of wood. As soon as they go in things start to go bump.

Conveniently the Doctor is helping Bill to move in and decides to stick around and investigate. He quickly gathers that a big draughty house without all the modern conveniences and a landlord harking back to a different age chimes danger.

At its heart, it is the Doctor and companion get split up and one by one the rest disappear. Not a big shake as the rest of the students were thinly sketched and the acting suitably wooden.

An ominous episode which will soon bug you out. A rare event these days, I watched this episode with my daughter who was home on study leave. She and her university mates are currently looking for digs for the autumn term. Whoopee!