Doctor Who: Knock Knock
Written by Mike Bartlett
Directed by Bill Anderson
Starring Peter Capaldi, Pearl Mackie, David Suchet
Knock Knock is a haunted house story. A traditional sort of horror, it earns its scares from dark rooms, claustrophobic corners, eerie music, and shifting walls. In tune with these classic horror tropes, Knock Knock keeps its monster unseen for the majority of the episode, letting the viewer’s fear of the unknown grow with every creak of the floorboards. When the monster does eventually make itself known, the tense atmosphere continues to send shivers down your spine thanks to a skilled supporting cast and a twist that I didn’t see coming. In short, Knock Knock turns Doctor Who into a horror movie this week, and it’s a welcome change of pace in a series that continues to experiment with genre.
There’s an energy to the guest cast in Knock Knock that makes the episode feel modern and contemporary. Bill’s friends have an amazing natural chemistry as they’re introduced in a sequence that feels all too real as they look for a house-share and have to choose between at tiny offshoots of bedrooms in terrible neighborhoods, and that chemistry continues through their initial nights in the too-good-to-be-true mansion they end up choosing. One of the sweetest scenes was where one of the boys hit on Bill and she gently told him she was more into girls. I like these characters and want to spend time with them. The strong setup pays off when we see this cast subjected to horrific fates inside the house. These are events that often go heard rather than seen, subjecting the audience to the same blind terror as the characters.
David Suchet is immaculate as the Landlord, slow and still with his tuft of grey hair and dark, furrowed eyebrows calling to mind a different sort of villain. Like the house itself, he seems like a remnant of an earlier era in all the best ways. The way he creeps out of the shadows with an authoritarian sense of presence makes the audience recoil. Every time he snaps at any of the kids is horrific all on its own. When this stoic persona eventually shifts in the final scenes, he reveals a completely different character, a counterpoint to the well of stillness was played previously giving way to some genuine humanity. It’s surprising that this is Suchet’s first appearance in Doctor Who, but it was honestly worth the wait. His appearance in Knock Knock fits the subject matter perfectly and it would be a poorer episode without an actor of such gravitas filling the role.
Surprisingly, with such a strong supporting cast, it was the the dynamic between Bill and the Doctor that seemed the most off to me. The Doctor in particular shows his clingy side by elbowing into Bill’s space even after being told to back off. It’s not a great look on the Twelfth Doctor and a bit of a retread of previous series, especially with the rest of the gang embracing him as the cool professor. On the plus side of this, we do get some fun dialogue with Bill claiming the Doctor is her grandfather, with him protesting his age, and it’s good to see Bill establishing her boundaries. I think it was mostly just a shock to see her pushing him away so soon. This distance works for Knock Knock, which sees the Doctor and Bill come to the endpoint of the episode separately. It’s Bill that figures out the big twist, showing her use as a companion by observing what the Doctor’s missed, and while I definitely preferred their dynamic in earlier episodes, the isolation is the right for the horror-leaning episode.
Bill Anderson has done enormous favours in directing this script by showcasing the claustrophobic aspects of the house. It genuinely feels like certain scenes were pulled straight out of The Haunting, and it probably makes the best use of the house of any past episode, an impressive feat considering Blink was filmed on the same location.
Mike Bartlett deserves recognition for this script though. The creaking and shifting house gives way to alien insects that have the Doctor putting his mind to work listing what they could be. Including dryads. I have a history with dryads, so the fact that this is the name he settles on made me laugh more than it should have, but it wasn’t a reveal that took away from the horror at all. They’re neutral creatures, much like the robots in Smile or the sea creature in Thin Ice. The tenth series of Doctor Who seems be playing on a theme of no “monster” being inherently evil, the human element always playing a larger role. The fact that it was all done out of love gives Knock Knock a heartfelt scene to end on, though I adore the strength of its convictions not to entirely redeem its villain by the end.
Not seen until the very end of the episode, Eliza was one of my favourite “monsters” of the season so far. Her initial reveal, wooden fingers crawling their way out of the shadows, put chills down my spine. While there was a beauty in her carved appearance, the way the characters recoiled at her presence spoke volumes. Watching this beautiful carving with an insect crawling out of her mouth, seemingly without notice, is exactly the sort of twisted joke Doctor Who lives to tell. I think the final twist was incredible and the sacrifice was handled perfectly. While not a ghost story, the alien presence within the house was handled with enough care the highlight the human story that made use of the themes of change, renewal, and moving on to suit Doctor Who perfectly.
Overall, I do wish Knock Knock had avoided the tendency to give otherwise dark episodes a happy ending. Just when everything seems to be ending in ultimate peril, here’s a reset button and every character who was horrifically killed off earlier in the episode comes back to life. It’s a disservice to how much Knock Knock did the horror genre right that we get relief from the terrors we’ve witnessed. I get why they did it, but it’s still a choice that made the episode weaker overall. Somewhere there’s a script with the ambition to make Knock Knock a truly dark entry in Doctor Who canon in which only the Doctor and Bill survived.
The Verdict
Watch It. As far as haunted house stories go, Knock Knock covers the expected ground and delivers on most of its initial promises. It’s an episode that gives its supporting cast enough to do that they feel fully realised, and David Suchet especially steals the show. I’ll give any episode that has Capaldi in the Listen sweater a watch, but the old school horror vibe of this episode in particular opens up dark corners of Doctor Who that haven’t been touched on in years. It’s a full on horror movie. It’s just a shame that everybody lives.
