Doctor Who Series 11: 10 Huge Questions After It Takes You Away
7. Is Hanne Safe With Her Father?
Erik’s behaviour is almost impossible to understand if the episode is to be taken literally. Are we really meant to believe that a grieving father would leave his blind daughter alone and use fear to protect her? Yes, as Hanne says, he is ill and his grief has clouded his judgement, but it is still a stretch to accept his methods as plausible. The over-protection is understandable, having lost someone her dearly loved, but the reasoning behind it is selfish. He is protecting his daughter from his own absenteeism.
Ryan is suspicious from the start, but surprisingly there is no direct link made between his views on Erik and his own experiences of a father who let him go because of his grief. Ryan, it turns out, is partly right. There are no monsters other than Erik himself.
For a story which turns on the twist between real horror and surrealism, it’s unfortunate that the Erik and Hanne aspect of the story seem as farfetched as the mirror universe ruled by a god disguised as a frog. Perhaps this whole story could be one of the fairy tales the Doctor might one day tell her own grandchildren.