Love & Monsters

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175 – "Love & Monsters"
Doctor Who episode
Loveandmonsters.jpg
Abzorbaloff reveals himself
Cast
Guest stars
Production
Writer Russell T Davies
Director Dan Zeff
Script editor Simon Winstone
Producer Phil Collinson
Executive producer(s) Russell T Davies
Julie Gardner
Production code 2.10
Series Series 2
Length 45 minutes
Originally broadcast 17 June 2006
Chronology
← Preceded by Followed by →
"The Satan Pit" "Fear Her"
IMDb profile

"Love & Monsters" is an episode of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who. It was broadcast on 17 June 2006. It is one of the more comic episodes in the series, and has relatively few scenes featuring the regular cast.

Contents

[edit] Synopsis

An ordinary man named Elton Pope becomes obsessed with a man called the Doctor and his strange blue box, joining a group of like-minded people in hopes of finding him. But when the mysterious Victor Kennedy joins the group, the fun stops and Elton discovers a darker side to his hobby.

[edit] Plot

"Love & Monsters" is presented as an excerpt from the video diary of Elton Pope, a young ELO fan, describing his encounters with The Doctor. Elton's on-camera narration forms a present-day frame story to a series of flashbacks related to his investigation of the Doctor. Elton recounts a chance meeting with the Doctor, and recalls having seen the same man as a young child. Searching the Internet, he discovers others, including Ursula Blake, who have also reported similar experiences with the Doctor. Elton and Ursula form LINDA—"London Investigation 'N' Detective Agency"—with three others, Bridget, Bliss, and Mr. Skinner, and meet in a library basement to discuss their experiences, but soon their activities become more social in nature. Elton and Ursula become closer through these meetings.

One day, LINDA finds its meeting interrupted by the portly Victor Kennedy, who points out that LINDA has lost its cause and reinvigorates the group to seek out the Doctor's location. Elton is given the task of getting close to Jackie Tyler, Rose's mum. Elton manages to find Jackie but when he starts asking too many questions about Rose, Jackie shoos him off. Meanwhile, two of LINDA's members, Bridget and Bliss, appear to have left the group, Victor explaining their absence as having decided to move on in their lives. After one meeting, Elton and Ursula depart, while Mr. Skinner remains at Victor's request. When Ursula realizes she had forgotten her phone, the two return, and discover that Victor is really a grotesque alien being (later named an "Abzorbaloff" by Elton), with the faces of the former LINDA members and others protruding from his body, still conscious of themselves. Elton is unable to stop the Abzorbaloff from absorbing Ursula, but makes for his own escape.

As the Abzorbaloff chases him, Elton is forced down a dead-end alley. However, moments before the Abzorbaloff can touch him, the TARDIS appears and the Doctor and Rose step out; Rose angrily confronts Elton for upsetting her mom. The Abzorbaloff, now with the Doctor in range, tries to absorb the Time Lord, but the absorbed members of LINDA use their willpower to hold back the Abzorbaloff's body, forcing it to drop its cane. The Doctor realizes that the cane contains a field generator that keeps the Abzorbaloff in control of its body, and Elton smashes the cane apart. The Abzorbaloff and the absorbed people begin to dissolve, and while the Doctor realizes it is too late to save the others, he manages to use his sonic screwdriver to keep Ursula's essence alive in a piece of paving stone, which Elton has kept in his room. The Doctor realizes that he has seen Elton before as a young child, and apologizes to him for the death of his mother at the hands of an elemental shade he had been chasing years ago.

In the conclusion of Elton's narrative, he demonstrates that he and Ursula still have a romantic, if not unconventional, relationship. He further postulates that while one could have a conventional life, "the real world is much stranger than that; it is so much darker, madder, and so much better."

[edit] Continuity

  • This episode is set two years after "Rose" and new footage of the Auton attack is seen here featuring Elton Pope. New footage featuring the Slitheens' ship from "Aliens of London" and the Sycorax ship from "The Christmas Invasion" is also included in this episode, again shown through Elton's experience of these events. In the episode commentary, Russell T Davies notes that in an early draft, Elton had been witness to more events in Doctor Who history: in this draft, Elton's third birthday party was evacuated because of the Dalek invasion of Shoreditch, his mother was killed by a plastic daffodil, and Elton also witnessed the Loch Ness Monster rising from the Thames. Prior to the revival of Doctor Who, Davies had considered pitching this story idea to Doctor Who Magazine as a comics story. Davies had also considered making the viewpoint character of the story a woman but felt that he already had enough focus on female guest characters that season.
  • During the Auton attack scene, the logo of Henrik's department store can be seen both on Elton's shopping bags and on the taxi which almost runs him over. Henrik's was the department store at which Rose used to work, which was destroyed at the beginning of "Rose", but was seen to have re-opened in "The Christmas Invasion".
  • Jackie informs Elton that her friend Mickey is now gone, a reference to his departure in "The Age of Steel".
  • Victor Kennedy's pictures of Rose include stills from the episode "Rose", as well as two of her entering 10 Downing Street in "Aliens of London" in which the Ninth Doctor can also be seen, albeit from behind. Bridget also mentions "different forms of the Doctor, which come and go".
  • Kennedy mentions that "Rose's Torchwood files are strangely lacking" because they were corrupted by the "Bad Wolf virus". "Torchwood" is a recurring phrase in the 2006 series, as "Bad Wolf" was the previous year. This line was included to establish why Torchwood does not know what Rose looks like in "Army of Ghosts", as explained by writer Russell T Davies on the MP3 audio commentary available on the bbc.co.uk website for that episode.
  • The copy of The Daily Telegraph that the Abzorbaloff reads has the headline "Saxon leads polls with 64 per cent". Russell T Davies observes this in the commentary, saying, "Look at the headline. That's all I'm going to say." This is the first appearance of the name of "Mr Saxon", a feature of a story arc in Season Three of the series.
  • Rose remarks on the Abzorbaloff's resemblance to the Slitheen — the Abzorbaloff states that he comes from Clom, the sister planet of the Slitheen homeworld Raxacoricofallapatorius. Clom was later mentioned in The Stolen Earth as one of the 27 stolen planets.
  • Nearing the end of his story, Elton wonders how long it will be before Rose and Jackie "pay the price" - for being with the Doctor - a reference to the "Army of Ghosts" and "Doomsday".
  • In "Time Crash", the Fifth Doctor mentions LINDA.
  • A Hoix is later seen briefly in the Torchwood series 2 finale "Exit Wounds".

[edit] Production

William Grantham's original drawing for Abzorbaloff.
  • According to Doctor Who Magazine #370, this episode had the working title of "I Love the Doctor". In the episode commentary/podcast, Russell T Davies states that the story originally began as an idea for a Doctor Who Magazine comic strip.
  • Unlike the vast majority of Doctor Who stories, "Love & Monsters" has only nominal appearances by the TARDIS crew.
  • The Elton character was originally supposed to be a woman, but Davies changed it to a man, since such strong female characters as Lady Cassandra and Sarah Jane Smith were already in the series.[1]
  • The creature that Elton sees at the start of the episode is credited as the "Hoix". Davies notes in the commentary that the name was invented only after the episode was shot and a name was needed for the credits.
  • The Abzorbaloff is a monster designed by nine-year-old William Grantham of Colchester, Essex for a "Design a Doctor Who Monster" competition held by Blue Peter. The first prize for the competition was to have the monster appear in an episode of Doctor Who. William was (according to Phil Collinson in the commentary) disappointed with the rendering of the monster because he had envisaged it being "the size of a double-decker bus."

[edit] Cast notes

  • Totally Doctor Who presenter Barney Harwood appears as an extra in this episode wearing a red hat, when Elton asks an old lady where Rose lives, and also during the flashback to when Elton sees the spaceship crashing into Big Ben from "Aliens of London".
  • Russell T Davies cast Peter Kay after Kay wrote a fan letter to him in praise of the new series. Kay was originally to play Elton Pope, but he felt that the role was too similar to roles he had played in the past, such as Eric Gartside in Coronation Street. Consequently, he got back in contact with Davies and asked if he could stretch himself as an actor and play the villain, and Kay was cast as Victor Kennedy/the Abzorbaloff.
  • Actress Bella Emberg previously had uncredited roles in the Third Doctor serials Doctor Who and the Silurians and The Time Warrior.
  • David Tennant and Shirley Henderson both appeared in the film Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, playing Barty Crouch Jr. and Moaning Myrtle, respectively.

[edit] Outside references

 This section may contain original research or unverified claims. Please improve the article by adding references. See the talk page for details. (January 2008)
  • Elton John appears in a video clip on Elton Pope's video diary.
  • The scene where Elton watches the Doctor and Rose flee from the Hoix has them running back and forth through a series of doors lining a long hallway, a set-piece characteristic of classic cartoon or comedy series such as Scooby-Doo, The Benny Hill Show, or in the Three Stooges shorts. Later in the episode, Elton remembers the LINDA band playing an ELO song perfectly, where earlier we had seen their actual far-from-perfect version. In the commentary it is noted his memory may not be entirely reliable, so whether events in the episode happened the way he remembers them is debatable.
  • As noted in the commentary, the acronym "LINDA" was previously used on the British children's television programme show Why Don't You?, which featured the "Liverpool Investigation 'n' Detective Agency". Russell T Davies worked on the series for some years.
  • Elton, a fan of Jeff Lynne and his Electric Light Orchestra, dances to ELO's "Mr. Blue Sky", which is later used as incidental music. LINDA also perform ELO's "Don't Bring Me Down", and the song "Turn to Stone" appears during the montage of Elton in Jackie's house. Ursula and Bliss perform an acoustic version of "Brand New Key" with guitars.
  • Kennedy uses an Apple PowerBook G4 to display clips of the Doctor and Rose.
  • Jackie plays Il Divo's Spanish cover of "Unbreak My Heart" when she is trying to seduce Elton.
  • The Stephen King quote which Elton mentions ("Salvation and damnation are the same thing") is from The Green Mile. The actual quote reads: "Sometimes there is absolutely no difference at all between salvation and damnation."

[edit] Broadcast and Reception

  • The overnight viewing figures for this episode's original broadcast were 6.22 million, a 38.3% audience share and the highest rated programme of the day. Its final audience figure was 6.66 million making it the 15th most watched programme of the week.[2] The episode scored an Appreciation Index of 76.[3]
  • This episode was released in the UK, together with "The Impossible Planet" and "The Satan Pit", as a basic DVD with no special features on 7 August 2006.
  • The title of the French version of this episode is simply "L.I.N.D.A.". [4]
  • The scene where Elton says he and Ursula have "a bit of a love life" was criticized by some commentators, who felt that the resultant implication of having oral sex with a paving slab was unsuitable for Doctor Who's large audience of children; others, however dismissed this dialogue as a harmless joke that children would not understand.[5]

[edit] References

  1. ^ Andrew Pixley (2006). "Love & Monsters". Doctor Who Special Edition #14 — The Doctor Who Companion: Series Two: 81. 
  2. ^ Lyon, Shaun (2006-06-28). "Love & Monsters Final Ratings". Outpost Gallifrey News Page. http://www.gallifreyone.com/cgi-bin/viewnews.cgi?id=EEVEVEEEEyzLjSOOWB&tmpl=newsrss. Retrieved 2006-07-11. 
  3. ^ Outpost Gallifrey "Blink-AI figure and Sunday Ratings". http://gallifreynewsbase.blogspot.com/2007/06/blink-ai-figure-and-sunday-ratings.html 2007-06-11. Retrived 2009-12-21
  4. ^ Elliot, Benjamin (October 18, 2006). "This Week in Doctor Who". http://tv.groups.yahoo.com/group/thisweekindoctorwho/message/441. 
  5. ^ See Second Flight - Back to the Vortex 2: The Unofficial and Unauthorized Guide to Doctor Who 2006 by J. Shaun Lyon for information on this controversy.

[edit] External links

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