Doctor Who spoiler review: The Haunting of Villa Diodati is a tale of ghosts and monsters
By James Aggas
Tonight’s episode of Doctor Who gave us a rather unusual ghost story. But what major monster did The Haunting of Villa Diodati also feature? (Spoilers follow.)
The Haunting of Villa Diodati is a Doctor Who episode of two clear, distinct halves. The first half takes on the form of an atmospheric ghost story. The second half…well, we’ll get to that in a moment.
The first half worked particularly well, exploring a key night in history with some very creative minds: Mary Shelley (known as Mary Godwin at the time), Lord Byron, John Polidori and Percy Shelley. With the four of them wanting to tell ghost and horror stories, it’s unsurprising that someone would want to tell a Doctor Who story set during this time. (In fact, this isn’t the first Doctor Who story to explore such a major night, but we’ll explore that in another article.)
As well as exploring the key historical characters and their relationships, writer Maxine Alderton is also keen to tell a ghost story with a classic sci-fi twist. However, she doesn’t overdo that latter aspect, and we get a lot of genuinely creepy and atmospheric moments over the course of the story. The Doctor and her companions continually entering the same rooms particularly stuck out.
So the ghost story aspect of The Haunting of Villa Diodati was handled nicely. But what of the second key aspect? What of the monster that features in the episode? Well, that’s something we need to look at in more detail. (Please be aware, spoilers follow.)
While we were given a spooky and atmospheric first half, how well did the second half unfold?
Photo Credit: Ben Blackall/BBC Studios/BBC America
The Lone Cyberman
So, in what’s a surprise to pretty much no one by this point, (even the show’s official Facebook page hinted that this story would be key to the two-part finale,) The Haunting of Villa Diodati featured a Cyberman. A “lone Cyberman”, exactly as Captain Jack described back in Fugitive of the Judoon.
How was this aspect of the story handled? Well, there was a slightly interesting twist given to it in that we could see the face underneath, at least partially. Often, it’s nice to be reminded that the Cybermen aren’t just robots, but essentially walking, talking corpses with a mechanical mind. Steven Moffat explored the horror of them well in Series 10 finale, World Enough and Time and The Doctor Falls.
However, it has to be said, they did seem to be a little more emotional than usual. This was partially down to the writing, in which Ashad seemed to be filled with a lot of anger and rage, as well as the performance of Patrick O’Kane in the role. So I think that aspect could have been improved, at least.
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A single life
The episode did give us a good hook for the finale, letting us know that the Doctor and her friends were heading to something big. More than that, the Doctor’s desperation to stopping the Cyberman while trying to avoid changing history gave us a more interesting side to Whittaker’s Doctor.
The moral dilemma of choosing between billions of lives in the future or a single life in history was an interesting one. Especially since that life was Percy Shelley, and so his death would possibly change history in larger ways than in most other cases. As a result, it gave us a different (although perhaps slightly easier) take on the idea.
Overall, The Haunting of Villa Diodati was an interesting episode. While the return of the Cybermen was arguably its weakest aspect due to its execution, the rest of the episode was enjoyable. Especially for telling a ghost story in its first half and exploring some rather interesting historical characters. One of the stronger episodes from Series 12.
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What did you think of The Haunting of Villa Diodati? Do you think it was a strong return for the Cybermen? Do you think it explored Mary Shelley, Byron and its other major historical characters well? Let us know in the comments below.