Doctor Who Series 10: 7 Big Questions After 'Knock Knock'
6. Is This Doctor Who's Creepiest Ever House?
Surprisingly Doctor Who has only really gone the full house
of horrors twice before (Hide, Ghost Light) and with writer Mike Bartlett being
a particular fan of Sylvester McCoy’s final season, the influence of the 1989 episode
Ghost Light is clear. But if that story is one of the show’s most ambitious
affairs with its meaning still up for debate today, then this one is a far more
traditional affair. Knock Knock is a blatant riff on all manner of horror
conventions, from Cabin in the Woods to Poltergeist.
Doctor Who has of course had its fair share of scary buildings, with the castle in Heaven Sent perhaps the most chilling. Another candidate would be that spooky children’s home in Listen which is introduced with a similar outside shot to signal the psychological horrors lying within.
The actual building used both in the exterior and interior shots in Knock Knock is Fields House in Newport, a Victorian listed building. The same location was used for Steven Moffat’s Blink in 2007 for the abandoned house where Sally Sparrow and Kathy Nightingale encountered the Weeping Angels. In real life then, this one has to be the creepiest. Not only has it been home to two of Doctor Who’s most fearsome alien races, it has also mysteriously moved from London to Bristol.