The Haunting of Villa Diodati

There’s a theory that the second episode of any Doctor’s era epitomises the show at its most base. Any Doctor and Companion team could happily wonder through the Nerva Beacon, Starship UK, Platform One or even the plains of Desolation. I have a friend who has a theory that real Doctor Who, that is to say stories which feel as if the show runs through their bones, usually starts at the three-quarter mark of a new series. It’s a difficult theory to disprove: The Empty Child, The Satan Pit, Human Nature, Silence in the Library, The Hungry Earth – all feel as it they epitomise the fundamentals of the show: well-plotted, atmospheric, almost traditionally structured tales. Last year, it was Kerblam! and The Witchfinders occupying the trad-Doctor Who slot and fulfilling that unsaid brief admirably. In 2020, we find Can You Hear Me? and The Haunting of Villa Diodati. Last week’s effort certainly felt like the Doctor Who of everyone’s childhood in terms of chills. This week does it better. 

Despite the sumptuous nature of the lavish costumes and stately home, the over-riding colour we take away from The Haunting is black. Director Emma Sullivan spoke in Doctor Who Magazine about her fighting for the lights to be very, very low, and negotiating careful set-ups with her Director of Photography. It’s all for the betterment of an episode that’s sole interest is atmosphere. Lots doesn’t seem to make sense. Why does the skeletal hand emerge from a painting? Why does the skull find itself in the baby’s cot? Answers don’t matter to new-to-Who writer Maxine Alderton or indeed, this viewer. Like Ghost Light, the thrill of this strange horror story is in the very vivid threat of whatever is happening in a given moment, what is happening in the now. As in a nightmare, both the narrative and geography are off. Something is always amiss, even down to the not-quite-Cyberman of a harrowing childhood dream. These are the Cybermen as we always remembered them being but never quite were: coruscatingly frightening. The scene in which it snaps the neck of the maid and picks up the baby is a stand-out moment of terror in this scary and unsettling thriller. The follow-up scene, in which it gives its reasons for leaving the baby unconverted, is stark and brutal.

We see enough of the guest cast to get a good enough idea of who these Romantic poets and genii were, but given the runtime, it was always going to be a sketchy affair. Wisely, Alderton isn’t writing a costume drama; she’s writing a Doctor Who horror story and knows what Who does best. Jacob Collins-Levy makes for an economic portrayal of Lord Byron, skilfully managing to make a bastard charming. Maxim Baldry puts in a notable, unusual and sinister performance as Polidori. Lili Miller’s Mary Wollstonecroft Godwin, later Shelley, who you might expect to be the star of the show, is enchantingly energetic but is given surprisingly short screen time. Because unpredictably this isn’t the story of how she came up with the idea of Frankenstein. It’s the story of a group of friends, all equally important, and how they cope with the dark events of a stormy night in which frighteningly bizarre things happen. Just for once in Doctor Who too, the ghosts are allowed to be real; not holograms or shapeshifters – actual, real ghosts and all the spookier and more memorable for it.

Perhaps the only criticism I can make for the violent, breath-taking charm of this dark – I’ll say it – classic is Jodie Whittaker. She is doing something different here, for sure. The Doctor puts herself at the top of the metaphorical mountain and dismisses the much-vaunted flat team structure for the first time and Jodie rises to the occasion. However, she doesn’t play against the arrogance of the Time Lord, she plays up to it, making her lose any charm she might have had. I’ve made no bones about my dislike of Jodie’s performance. She’s an actor of complete instinct. She sees an arrogant scene and plays it arrogantly. She sees a sad scene and plays it sadly. She is at her best when the emotional trajectory of a scene is at its most obvious. But she doesn’t really understand text. Time and again she stresses the wrong words and fails to make the best sense of a paragraph. Her disdain for the Cyberman looks real but it doesn’t sound it. Whittaker is an actor of extraordinary heart (just look at any scene she plays in Broadchurch – magnificent) but sadly seems to be one of very little brain. She certainly does not give an intellectual interpretation of the Doctor and to inhabit the part successfully, you need both heart and brain. She never surprises, she never wows; she simply says the lines in an appropriate but simplistic reading, with very little nuance and a resolute lack of eccentricity. And she still can’t land a gag.

Despite a leading lady with whom I have very little affection, The Haunting of Villa Diodati is supreme Doctor Who. Like its Romantic antecedents, it flows with a poetic lilt. It doesn’t always make sense but strikes for the emotional jugular. Rarely is Doctor Who so frightening. Rarely are the Cybermen so strikingly visceral. Certainly, the show these days is rarely this spectacular. Ironically, for a series which is seemingly desperate to have its own identity (prizing morality tales and topical issue plays more than ever before) it is at its best when the fashion accessories are cast aside and it gets on with being Doctor Who. Spyfall proved this theory to be true, as did Nikola Tesla. Even the return of Captain Jack represented this season’s punch the air moment. Doctor Who doesn’t necessarily need to engage with social and political trends (Silver Nemesis is surely excremental proof of that). It needs to find its own identity, rather than have one forced upon it. Look at that list of episodes in the top paragraph. We can add another to that list of highlights. Again, the series’ three-quarter point marks the return of true Doctor Who, content to do what the show does best – be itself and frighten. The Haunting of Villa Diodati is the show at its peak, appropriately stripped back to its bones.

9/10

JH