Doctor Who: Tooth and Claw – Review
Happy Werewolf Wednesday, everyone! This week I’d like to talk about a werewolf story that is near and dear to my scifi loving heart: the season two, episode two offering from Doctor Who, a beauty of a television episode called Tooth and Claw.
In an attempt to take his traveling companion Rose (played by Billie Piper) back to 1979, the Tenth Doctor (played by David Tennant) instead goes a little bit farther than intended to 1879. The pair end up in Scotland, on the road that goes to Balmoral Castle and who should they happen to come across on that road by Queen Victoria herself, forced to travel by road by a deliberate tree felled on the train line. Posing as the Queen’s protector, the Doctor and Rose join the traveling party and come to spend the night at the Torchwood Estate, where a wicked plot against the Queen is brewing, involving godless monks, mistletoe, and, what else? A werewolf. Or, as the Doctor later explains, an alien being that fell to Earth and inhabited multiple generations of hosts.
Po-tay-toh, po-tah-toh.
I love when scifi can’t resist the allure of the magical and fantastical and this episode is a werewolf story at it’s finest: we have brave men torn to shreds, stories of children of the local villages being sacrificed to the beast, the threat of transmission of the curse by the slightest scratch or bite – it’s awesome, pure Universal Monster Movie fun and shouldn’t be missed by any werewolf aficionados. I always enjoy watching this episode, especially around Halloween. The special effects used to render the werewolf are quite good too, certainly by Doctor Who standards. It’s a terrifying beast that is hard to look away from!
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