These reviews are based on the UK broadcast of the series, which is several episodes ahead of the US broadcast, so beware of spoilers.
SUMMARY:
The TARDIS lands on an English estate in the 1920s, and the Doctor and Donna bluff their way into a garden party held by Lady Clemency Eddison. In attendence are her husband Colonel Hugh Curbishly and son Roger, as well as guests Robina Redmond, Reverend Golightly, and famed mystery writer Agatha Christie.
After glancing at a newspaper, the Doctor realizes the significance of the date: December 8, 1926, the day Agatha Christie disappeared. He tells Donna that Agatha's car will be found abandoned by a lake, and ten days later she'll turn up in a hotel with no memory of what happened to her during that time.
Suddenly the housekeeper, Miss Chandrakala, runs out of the house screaming about a murder. Up in the library they discover the body of another guest, Professor Peach, bashed over the head with a lead pipe. Agatha retrieves a scrap of paper from the fireplace, and after ushering everyone out of the room, the Doctor finds a sample of morphic residue. Someone in the house is a shapeshifting alien.
While the Doctor sends Donna to investigate the house, he and Agatha interrogate the others. As each one gives an alibi, flashbacks show what they were really up to: Roger having a rendevous with one of the male servants, Lady Eddison drinking, Robina loading a gun, and Col. Hugh looking at erotic pictures. Since no one is able to give a sufficient alibi, Agatha suggests they try to find a motive for the murder. They examine the partially burned scrap of paper, on which is written the word "maiden".
Donna discovers a locked room, and Greeves the butler tells her that many years ago Lady Eddison retured from India with malaria. She quaratined herself in the room for six months, ordering it to remain locked after she emerged. Donna hears the buzz of an insect near the window, thinking it to be a bee trapped inside. When she pulls open the curtain she is confronted by a man-sized wasp which breaks in and attacks her. She fends it off by focusing sunlight through a magnifying glass and barely avoids being stung. The Doctor and Agatha show up, and the Doctor takes a sample from the stinger embedded in the door.
Miss Chandrakala begins to wonder if the Professor was murdered for something he discovered, but on her way to see Lady Eddison she is crushed by a stone gargoyle pushed by the wasp. Her dying words are, "The poor little child." The Doctor, Donna and Agatha pursue the insect, but it gives them the slip by hiding amongst the guests once again.
The series of events seems to mirror the plots of Agatha's books, as if someone is mocking her. She and Donna have a heart to heart over her insecurities about her husband's unfaithfulness and the concern that her books will be forgotten in the future. She spies a flowerbed that has been recently disturbed and discovers a leather case.
Over drinks the Doctor, Donna and Agatha examine the case, which contains tools that a thief might use. Agatha suspects one of the guests must be the infamous jewel thief known as the Unicorn, while the Doctor determines from his samples that they are dealing with a Vespiform.
The Doctor realizes his drink has been posioned with cyanide, and he runs to the kitchen to consume things that he can use to detoxify his body, including ginger beer, almonds, anchovies, and a shock to his system, which Donna provides by giving him a kiss.
Later at dinner, the Doctor tells the assembled guests that he has 'poisoned' the soup by adding pepper. He hopes to flush out the Vespiform, since pepper has chemicals used in insecticide. A bolt of lightening knocks out the lights, and everyone panics when they hear a buzzing. When the lights come back on, Lady Eddison's necklace, the Firestone, has been stolen, and Roger is dead with a knife in his back.
Agatha is again wracked by self-doubt but the Doctor encourages her by telling her that her mysteries are the best becasue she knows about the hidden passions of people which can drive them to kill. If these murders are being commited in the style of her books, then she is the one who can solve them.
The Doctor gathers eveyone together, giving the floor over to Agatha as she runs through the evidence. She exposes Robina Redmond as an imposter and the Unicorn. Robina admits to her crime and returns the Firestone. She turns to Col. Hugh next, accidentally scaring him into admitting that his paralysis was faked. He tells his wife that he felt pretending to be wheelchair bound was the only way he could be sure of keeping her from leaving him.
Finally she comes to Lady Eddison, deducing that she was not afflicted by malaria on her return to England, but was in fact pregnant. She sequestered herself until she gave birth, then gave the baby away.
Lady Edison admits that fourty years ago, when she was a young woman in India, she saw a shooting star one night, then met and fell in love with a man named Christpoher, who revealed himself to be a Vespiform on Earth learning about humanity. He gave her the Firestone as a keepsake before he was killed in a monsoon flood. Professor Peach had managed to find the birth cirtificate, and for this reason he was murdered.
The Doctor declares the Reverend Golightly to be Lady Eddison's long lost child. On the same night that Lady Eddison was reading an Agatha Christie mystery, the Vicar came upon two boys stealing church property. His anger broke the genetic lock, transforming him into a Vespiform. The Firestone is in fact a Vespiform telepathic recorder, which allowed the minds of Lady Eddison and Golightly to connect. He finally knew his real heritage and also absorbed the works of Agatha Christie into his mind, giving him a template for how he thought the world worked.
Golightly changes into his Vespiform self, but Agtha grabs the Firestone and drives off, getting the Vespiform to follow her as the Doctor and Donna chase after them. They wind up at a lake, and Donna throws the Firestone into the water. The Vespiform follows after it, drowning, but since the jewel is connected to Agatha's mind now, she also begins to die. The Vespiform releases her at the last second, saving her life and leaving her unconscious.
The Doctor tells Donna the psychological trauma will have wiped Agath's memory of recent events. They leave her car to be found in the morning, then travel ahead ten days to drop her off at the hotel in Harrogate where she will be found. The Doctor suggests that flashes of memory will occasionally bleed through her amnesia over the course of her life, influencing her writing. He shows Donna a copy of Death In The Clouds, with a giant wasp on the cover. This edition was also printed in the year 5 Billion, proving that Agatha Christie will become the greatest selling novelist of all time.
REVIEW:
Since the start of the new series, there's been a list of things the production team does every season. One of those things is to present a 'celebrity historical', a story in which the Doctor and his companion(s) meet someone famous. In Season 1 there was Charles Dickens, Queen Victoria and Madame du Pompadour in Season 2, and William Shakespeare last year. It's that time of year again, and now they give us Agatha Christie, the Queen of Crime herself, literally the best-selling author of all time.
The casting of Christie was critical, and in the end the team took David Tennant's suggestion of Fenella Woolgar. Woolgar has that definite Christie quality to her, and her sensitive portrayal of the author, especially at the time when she had discovered her husband's infidelity, was well received and even approved by Christie's grandson.
The production team mulled over whether to have a young Agatha Christie or an older one, but the real life mystery of her ten day disappearance in 1926 was the perfect opening to allow the world of Doctor Who to blend itself with the world of Christie.
The plot is an intentional cliche of the whole murder mystery genre, including the game Clue. The very first murder is Professor Peach in the library with a lead pipe... It doesn't take you long to see where this is going. The story also pokes fun at the old fashioned British aristocracy, and that whole idea of "We're British, so we keep a stiff upper lip and carry on in the face of adversity."
There are some nods to modern remakes of Christie's works, such as Roger's hidden relationship with Davenport. While such a thing could have occured, the literature at the time, including Christie's novels, never acknowledged it due to its taboo nature. But in some recent dramatizations of Christie's novels, plots have been altered to add in things that were never there originally, such as homosexuality, incest, and so on.
For Christie fans, the script is a real treat, as many of her novels are name-checked, either in talking about the actual books or slipping titles into the dialogue. The complete list comes to twenty: Murder On The Orient Express, Why Didn't They Ask Evans, The Murder At The Vicarage, Cards On The Table, Appointment With Death, N or M?, The Body In The Library, The Moving Finger, Sparkling Cyanide, Crooked House, They Do It With Mirrors, Cat Among The Pigeons, Endless Night, The Secret Adversary, Nemesis, Taken At The Flood, The Murder Of Roger Ackroyd, And Then There Were None, Death Comes As The End, Dead Man's Folly and Death In The Clouds.
When it came to creating the alien enemy for this story, it was no accident that Russel T Davies chose a giant wasp. He was inspired by the cover of an older printing of Death In The Clouds, which prominently featured that particular insect. This would also tie in nicely with the episode, suggesting that Christie never forget her adventure with the Doctor entirely, allowing flashes of remembrance to inspire her later works.
REACTION:
This is a quirky one right out of left field. I have to admit that of all the episodes this season, this is the one I was looking forward to the most, because I have been an Agatha Christie fan for years. I've read the books, and my family has a lot of the Poirot and Miss Marple TV episodes on VHS & DVD.
Straight-up comedy is a rareity in Doctor Who, usually because humor is worked into the mix of every story. I think having a comedy every now and then is good though, because it helps to highlight the practically limitless format of the series. If you're a fan of Christie or the mystery genre in general, this is a story that will have you laughing a lot.
To add to the excitement there's a couple of gems in the casting. Felicity Kendal plays Lady Eddison, and if you're a fan of British comedy from the 70s you'll recognize her from her role as Barbara Good in The Good Life (known in the US as Good Neighbors). And then as Col. Hugh there is Christopher Benjamin, who is well-known to classic Doctor Who fans as the boisterous Henry Gordon Jago in The Talons Of Weng-Chiang (1977), and Sir Keith Gold in Inferno (1970).
Once you watch the episode a couple of times, you begin to realize that it actually makes a lot of sense despite the comedic elements and genre cliches. The only thing setting it apart from the standard murder mystery is the fact that Reverend Golightly is an alien as well as Lady Eddison's illigitimate son.
The only part that can be painful to watch is when the Doctor is trying to detox the poison from his system.
Personally I love this one, but several friends have told me they didn't really care for it, so in the end your milage may vary depending on your attitude toward comedy and the mystery cliches.
