Doctor Who: Every Series 2 Episode Ranked Worst To Best
3. The Idiot’s Lantern
The Doctor and Rose find themselves in 1953 London during the coronation of Queen Elizabeth. Here, a parasitic creature called The Wire is feeding off the faces of those who buy cheap television sets.
While this story does unfortunately have similarities to Fear Her, The Idiot’s Lantern is a better celebration of British culture, with fantastic set dressing and far better villains. Not necessarily just The Wire, but the violent and rude bully, Eddie Connolly. Forget aliens and androids, this guy is the real deal, and actor Jamie Foreman makes him exceedingly easy to hate. Tennant standing up to him, full of rage and bile, is excellent to see.
While Rose is sadly more absent here, this does allow for the Doctor to work with others to offer some variety to the series. Save for some holes in the script, The Idiot’s Lantern has a fantastic sense of identity.
It’s a rare scary episode with some (at the time) unnerving CGI moments, but The Idiot’s Lantern manages to be fun as well as frightening. It’s stylish, well-shot, and always moving, despite its subplot that centres on rather intense and contained family drama.