User Reviews

Sure, Love and Monsters isn't a 9 or 10/10, but it's definitely not a 1/10. I enjoyed the POV style found footage, and lots the camera work was great in this episode. The Abzorbaloff was a really bad villain though, but that doesn't undermine the rest of the episode and it's creativity. The characters were all likable, and I particularly liked how it didn't play out like every other episode and instead focused on what impact the Doctor has on the people who he surrounds himself with. I liked the use of Mr. Blue Sky by ELO, and I thought the ending was nice (apart from the weird Ursula-slab) and lots of the dialogue was great. Most people just rate this episode a 1/10 because of the bad villain, but they don't give it any credit for it's experimental nature and different style.

Love and Monsters isn't a classic episode, but it's not near as bad as everyone says it is. It's a weird episode, but it's also enjoyable and lots of fun to watch. 7.5/10

This was one excellent episode told in an intriguing style. In this episode, it is oddly centred on a character called Elton Pope (played to perfection by Marc Warren), who is obsessed with trying to find The Doctor ever since an encounter with him when he was a child. He tells us all his story with the use of his camcorder, mostly with very comical results. He then tells the story of how he meets Ursula, someone who is also trying to find The Doctor, and how they meet other people who want to join them in their search. Together they form a group that is dedicated to finding The Doctor. Elton then tells of his adventures with them and how wonderful things were.

However, when the group are unofficially taken over by the mysterious Victor Kennedy, things take a sinister turn when he takes a very serious approach to finding The Doctor. When Victor provides Elton with a lead on someone who can lead him to The Doctor, he believes he is pursuing a course that will lead him directly to The Doctor. However, things begin to get very strange when his fellow friends start to go missing one by one. To complicate things, Elton begins to develop feelings for Ursula, the one who helped him start the group in the first place. Despite all this, Elton is determined to find out as much about The Doctor with the use of the one lead he has...Jackie Tyler.

This was told in an ingeniously comical manner, and the clever thing is that it manages to be a good story even though The Doctor is hardly in it. It is also rather spooky how the whole thing comes together and we find out just how Elton's past is linked to The Doctor. Marc Warren plays the role of Elton to absolute perfection, and it would be great if he had a few more episodes. This is definitely one of the best episodes of the series.

The hypothesis of the experiment is "can a story be told in Doctor Who in which the idea of The Doctor drives the plot but the character himself hardly appears" - there's nothing wrong with the hypothesis but the results of the experiment prove deeply inconclusive because the method was awry.

It's hard to say who this story is aimed at. At it's best Doctor Who aims itself at all audiences simultaneously - fans and casual viewers, adults and children, sci-fi geeks and goth horror aficionados, and with the new series those who like their drama a little more emotional and sensitive are also catered to.

When it works each audience is catered for simultaneously. Here however each of the target audiences is served in small doses and alienated for the most part. Served up for the kids we have slapstick humour and fart gags which are sure to set the adult audiences teeth on edge. For the adults we get sexual innuendo and romantic comedy that pays some homage to the Confessions series.

Served up for the fans we have a story about Doctor Who fans! They're not really Doctor Who fans, they're a bunch of conspiracy theorists united in their belief and interest in the existence of The Doctor. Scenes of stroking police boxes and in-jokes about the history of fandom (is Victor Kennedy a satire on Ian Levine?). We have refer-backs to various stories from 2005, all told from the perspective of a passer-by - all self-referential and quite dull for the uninitiated. Served up for the casual viewer we have a certain camp self-depreciation, reminiscent of the old series during the mid-eighties in which the production team seem to be giving us a wink to say "don't worry, we don't take this stuff seriously either" - one surefire way to offend fans who for the most part think that maybe they should.

Goth horror fans may be disappointed to find that despite having a promising monster concept of a beast who absorbs his victims and wears their faces beneath his gelatinous skin the horror of this is downplayed, firstly by making the character a light-hearted comic one, and by having the obviously cheap rubber suit that comprises the monster costume exposed in broad daylight, leaving no room to suspend disbelief.

Despite some pretence at romantic comedy the episode also displays gross insensitivity at times, particularly in the closing moments. Having given a tragic but noble death for the heroine this is subsequently ruined by the plot development that the Doctor restores her to life as a disembodied face contained within a paving slab; a disturbing image of what one can only imagine to be a miserable existence. To make the development more disturbing the "boyfriend" of this object (and since she is an object with no means of self determination, should we say "owner" rather than "boyfriend"?) assures the audience that they have a love life of sorts, while balancing the paving slab on his lap. An innuendo that may thankfully go unnoticed by younger viewers, but is inescapable to the adult viewers, the more sensitive of which may well find the implication repugnant. While Doctor Who has it's roots in the horror tradition it is usually the role of the Doctor to fight against horror and for human dignity, and yet here he seems to be doing the exact opposite.

For all it's negatives the episode does have some genuinely funny moments, and some genuinely tender ones. It's flaws however are too large to overlook, and it's a shame because the fundamental idea for the story is quite workable and had it worked would have made this a unique sort of Doctor Who episode.

Marc Warren turns in an excellent performance as the central character Elton Pope, and the semi-regular character of Jackie Tyler is given more depth than usual and played sympathetically by Camile Coduri. Peter Kay on the other hand is typecast and given little chance to stretch his acting muscles as his character is written around him and based strongly on his existing comedy personae.

This story is a perfectly cromulent episode. I cannot understand why it scored so poorly, the story is told in a unique way, the plot is good and it has a bizarre but decent ending with one rather....interesting joke too. It's not the best episode of Dr Who, not by a long shot, but it's worth more than a 6.something!

I honestly don't understand how much hate this episode got. It's not amazing by any means but it's still entertaining enough. The episode follows a quirky group called LINDA lead by a sweet but odd guy named Elton trying to investigate the Doctor.

The first act is basically a cute rom com story between Elton and Ursula. The second act is still comedic enough with Elton's investigations leading him to Jackie Tyler. The third act (basically the uprising against the bad guy) does fall a little flat, descending a bit far into the absurd but also has its poignant moments as well.

Yeah the ending joke is a little off-color and quite frankly Ursula probably either should have remained dead or the whole gang should have been brought completely back. Ursula's partial return to existence as basically a tile was not the uplifting humorous choice the writers were going for. But overall I thought the episode was entertaining enough, as well as quirky and charming. 7.5/10

A great concept, which could have led to a wonderfully funny/poignant episode is completely wasted on 45 minutes of rubbish.

As a long-time fan of the "Classic" program, I have mostly enjoyed the new series, accepting the darker tone of the Doctor's character as a result of some truly horrible off-screen experiences. However nothing makes a fan feel cheated like having your main character act as outrageously out of character as the Doctor does at the end of this episode, resurrecting the heroically self-sacrificing Ursula to a horrific half-life as a face on paving slab. The Doctor I have come to know would have respected her for her sacrifice without torturing her afterward with existence as a piece of rock (one who gets to give head to her boyfriend with no prospect of satisfaction in return as well, geez don't even get me started on the implications of THAT one).

There are some good early moments, particularly as they explore LINDA's development from basement conspiracy nuts to basement pop band, but the whole story starts falling apart as soon as Victor Kennedy appears. From that point on the comedy becomes forced and usually rude, while the tragedy is not given the full exploration that it needs to make a real impact after the sheer goofiness that has come before.

I didn't mind the decision to do a comic episode, or to tell it from an outside perspective,it could have been brilliant, but to make something like this work you need a happy ending or a truly tragic one, not the sort of half-baked semi-comic deus ex machina we get here. It was such an unlikely way for the Doctor to behave that I have been forced to spend the last 24 hours trying to wash this story out of my mind permanently. Not only do I have no intention of watching it again, I have already written it out of my personal canon.

I admire Russell T. Davies for how hard he has worked to make this new incarnation of Dr. Who happen, but his writing continues to leave a great deal to be desired. I think it is no coincidence that the best episodes (The Empty Child, School reunion) have been written by others.

Just as a side note, this is also the first episode of Dr. Who that has truly frightened my son, he didn't like the Absorbaloff monster one bit.

This episode seemed to draw a lot from Clockwork Orange only instead of forcing the viewer to identify with a disgusting psychotic like Alex we get a sweet lost soul like Elton who loves ELO and is otherwise existing on the fringe of society.

This episode starts with a visual sight gag taken straight from Scooby Doo but of course, we take this with a grain of salt since it's Elton doing the telling and he's stumbled onto a scene that defies description so like the rest of us, he uses pop culture references to describe his reality.

Elton joins a Doctor Who fan club that sort of just turns into a club of people sharing their interests, baking, ELO, novel writing, etc. Then the serpent enters the Garden by way of Victor Kennedy, an elitist Comic Book Guy-type character who sucks all the fun out of the hobby group by taking the hobby seriously.

Soon after, club members go missing but the group does feel it's on the verge of finding the actual Doctor so they allow their seduction by this mysterious Victor Kennedy to continue. The closer they get, the more members go missing and we see the folly of trying to meet the Doctor. Of trying to make a beloved fictional character real instead of just enjoying our lives and our proper mates and jamming to ELO or whatever. Falling in love.

And that brings me to the only weak spot of the episode. When love is lost, one must let it go. It seems that the, of all people, would know this and wouldn't go and give an imitation life to Ursala. But oh well, it's only a story, and a very engaging one for the most part.

Here I am, Mr unpopular opinion giving this widely hated episode a solid 9/10. An episode, which on the surface, appears like sloppy storytelling, with an exceptionally cringey villain. What I see is totally different. I see the whole episode based on obsession, mistrust and deluded characters. Elton is with a group of doctor seeking fanatics who are blatantly a shot at real life super whovians. Like the real life whovians, they are obsessed with he doctor, not going a second without thinking of him. Ever so slowly they bond, and the bond is expressed in the correct way for the pace of the episode. Overall they are portrayed as boring, sad, delusional no-lifes, and I like that part of the episode. We are then introduced to Mr Kennedy, and this is where the theme of mistrust enters the episode in spectacular fashion, as he instantly takes authority, reinstating order into their true destiny; to find the doctor, which is clearly forgotten. He appears a lot more knowledgeable, but as well as that, very suspicious, but these no lifes cannot see that. What really makes this episode entertaining is Eltons clear social awkwardness, as he tries to bond with jackie, all just lucky for him really. The sense of an elimination process comes into play as Elton and his comrades disappear one by one, which greatly blends with the non suspicions of the super whovians. The major downfall to this however is that someone thought it'd be a good idea to have them all ignore the really loud screams, unrealistic. We soon come to the final standoff, and we finally see Mr Kennedy as, the abzorboloff. A truly unique monster, absorbing bodies for heck knows the reason. Russel T Davies uses his maximum ability to use a child's creation to appeal to everyone, and it has a made the love-hate relationship of the episode. I saw the abzorboloff as a dangerous monster, and certainly not laughable, just disgusting, ugly, unique. The end of the abzorboloff's life comes when the doctor finally turns up. This was somewhat of a disappointment, but it all makes sense. Yes, the characters forgot that it was the doctor and worked together to finally do something useful, and it all payed off. Rose, certainly annoyed withe elton after a misunderstanding from both jackie and Elton, makes her very few lines powerful, and left s thinking that he'd be left to die. Overall the episode for me was an incredible experiment, which worked off well.

So upon an initially reluctant rewatch of "Love & Monsters" for the first time in years, I can't believe I'm genuinely saying this... But I actually loved it which was extremely unexpected.

Yes, it's camp. It's crazy. It's bold. It's ridiculous. It's experimental. It's silly. It's outrageous. It's so atrociously bad, it's fantastic. I sat there laughing all the way through & beamed from start to finish.

Having subjected myself to 2 whole arduous seasons of Doctor Who written by Chris Chibnall - a writer who's abysmal but takes himself & his work seriously, I'm now thankful for anything which even remotely resembles a story that could be adapted in to an enjoyable script. This is what he's done to me - I'm now openly admiring what used to be THE most hated installment in the show's history.

Here, Russell T Davies has enormous fun with this episode & it shows in every scene as he injects life & a perceptible energy in to each one, refusing to take the vast majority of the narrative seriously, satirising multiple genres & the absurdity of the concept itself - & the tone (although very inconsistent) is a breath of fresh air after such a heavy two-parter which preceded it.

Not to mention, this outing also provides the rare opportunity for the audience to witness the life of Jackie Tyler as she tentatively awaits her daughter's eventual return home from between trips & Russell (not one to usually waste potential) capitalises on this immediately. The impact of Mickey's departure is finally explored & we get some really great moments of character progression for Rose's mother - who often finds herself sidelined in most of S2. Hence, Camille Coduri knocks it out of the park with her performance, definitely has time to shine & delivers one of the most heartbreaking little scenes between herself & Elton when she acknowledges the emotional difficulties of being left behind by everyone else - without her husband, her daughter, the Doctor or Smith who she could usually rely on for support. It's an uncommon insight I appreciated - seeing a more vulnerable, exposed side to her character - viewing the hardened exterior we've associated with her just crumble under the weight of the burden.

Of course, the episode's far from perfect & undoubtedly not a masterpiece, but it's a fun interlude (acting as a palette cleanser) which gives the audience a much needed smile before the events that are due to unfold.

Oh dear oh dear...

OK so this is how NOT to do an episode where the doctor doesn't actually appear very much.

I'm told you either love it or hate it - guess which category I fall into? The monster appearing in this episode was designed by a schoolboy in a Blue Peter competition on BBC1. Fair enough. And the idea of him absorbing fully grown people into himself could have been quite scary.

But it wasn't. Peter Kay gives a comedy performance as the monster. And the script is fairly childish. More CBBC than BBC1.

I understand why the doctor is out of the episode so much. But if you want to see exactly how it should be done, skip straight ahead to 'Blink' in series 3!