Hi all! It’s an exciting day here. Not only am I bringing you yet more horror from our favorite science fiction show, but the new season starts TOMORROW!
Dr. Who returns. Eeeeeeekk! I’m hoping for more terror out in space.
But first let’s go back to the Tenth Doctor played by David Tennant back in 2006 and an episode that takes us back in Earth’s history.
Title from 2006 episode
The show begins with screaming. People dressed in elaborate gowns and wearing masks race through a hall. Behind them a shadow drifts across the wall and a terrible ticking, whirring sound makes your blood freeze.
Cut to 3000 years later…The Doctor in the TARDIS lands on what seems to be an abandoned space ship.
Scene from The Girl in the Fireplace
When they find a fireplace, one that leads to Paris in 1727 and to a little girl named Reinette Poisson… a real life person, who becomes Madame de Pompadour (for all you history buffs read about her in Wikipedia).
Reinette has a problem. Tick-tocking creeps out from under her bed where a clockwork man hides.
Scene from The Girl in the Fireplace, 2006
The Doctor vows to helps her, that nothing will hurt her. As he goes back and forth between the ship and France, time is lost, first it’s been weeks, then years. And he faces a grown up Reinette, who is still being stalked by the clockwork men. These guys freak me out. Those smiles. The malicious way they stare. *shudder*
Scene from The Girl in the Fireplace
The Doctor corners one and asks what happened to their ship?
“We did not have the parts,” clockwork creepy man says.
The Doctor demands to know what happened to the crew.
“We did not have the parts,” ticking tocking grinning man repeats.
Oh dear. Yeah. There’s a heart wired into the machinery. There’s an eye installed in a camera.
But why are they there? Why Reinette?
Repairs are incomplete. “One more part is required.”
They need Reinette. Why? “We are the same.”
But… “She is incomplete.”
And what is hidden under those weird masks?
Doctor and clockwork robot in scene from The Girl in the Fireplace
Robots. Robots with click-clacking gears, who will kill people and use their body parts to repair the ship.
They have opened doors into different times in Reinette’s life to find when she will be complete, for she is the last part they require, her brain the final piece.
Madame de Pompadour in scene from The Girl in the Fireplace
Robots in the future… our future will do anything to continue their jobs, to keep spaceships running. Even murder. Those masks scare the crud out of me. The unnerving ticking sends chills up my spine. But killer clockwork men is the real nail in the horror coffin. Proof that our favorite sci-fi show loves to take a trip into the land of the scary.
Oh, you might want to know… why her? Why are they the same?
Take a look at the name of the ship…
Scene from The Girl in the Fireplace
Scenes from 2006 Dr. Who episode The Girl in the Fireplace thanks to Google Images.
Thanks to Stephen Moffat for the bit of terror in the show