Tooth and Claw (Doctor Who)

Plot

The Doctor attempts to take Rose to Sheffield in 1979 to see Ian Dury in concert, but ends up in the Scottish moors in 1879. They encounter a carriage carrying Queen Victoria, who has been forced to travel by roads to Balmoral Castle as a fallen tree has blocked the train line to Aberdeen, feared to be a potential assassination attempt. The Doctor poses as Dr. James McCrimmon using his psychic paper, and the Queen invites him and Rose to join her as she travels to the Torchwood Estate, a favourite of her late consort Prince Albert, to spend the night. The royal party is unaware that the Torchwood Estate has been captured by a group of monks from a monastery in St. Catherine's Glen led by Father Angelo, forcing its owner, Sir Robert MacLeish, to play into their ruse as they take the place of the house's servants and guards. The monks, having arranged for the fallen tree to force the Queen to the estate, have brought a man infected with a form of lycanthropy, hoping to pass its nature to the Queen and create a new "Empire of the Wolf".

The Doctor soon realizes the trap they have fallen into, and helps to save Rose, the Queen, and Sir Robert from Father Angelo's men and the werewolf by taking shelter in the estate's library, its wood coated with oil of mistletoe wood to stave off the beast. They study the library and discover evidence collected by Sir Robert's father, a polymath, and Prince Albert which indicates the werewolf is really the current form of an alien species that fell to earth in 1540 near the monastery, surviving by passing its lycanthropic form from human to human. The Doctor also realizes that the estate was designed as a trap for the werewolf, as by use of its strange telescope along with the Queen's Koh-i-Noor diamond, its cut fashioned by Prince Albert, they can force the werewolf to revert to human form and destroy the alien lifeform.

Sir Robert sacrifices himself to allow the Doctor, Rose, and the Queen to prepare the telescope in the Observatory. They are able to trap the werewolf in the concentrated light of the full moon collected by the diamond. The transformed human being begs for the Doctor to kill him by increasing the power of the light concentration, which he obliges. As they recover, the Queen finds a small cut she insists came from a wood splinter, but the Doctor remarks to Rose that all her children will carry a form of haemophilia (see Haemophilia in European royalty), and that perhaps this was simply a Victorian euphemism for lycanthropy. The next day, the Queen dubs the Doctor and Rose with royal titles before banishing them from the British Empire, apparently "horrified" by their connection to and comfort in a world she does not understand (as she is aware that the Doctor is an alien). In honour of Sir Robert's sacrifice and his father's ingenuity, she orders the creation of the Torchwood Institute to help defend Britain from further alien attacks declaring that if the Doctor returns, Torchwood will be ready to deal with him.

Continuity

In the Third Doctor story The Curse of Peladon (1972), the Doctor mentioned having been in attendance at Queen Victoria's coronation. The Fifth Doctor meets Victoria (and is appointed her Scientific Advisor) in 1863 in the Past Doctor Adventures novel Empire of Death and she is also involved in the events of the novel Imperial Moon, taking place in 1878, where the Doctor's companion Kamelion poses as Prince Albert to convince her to keep the events of the novel secret. The canonicity of the novels, like all non-televised stories, is unclear.

A werewolf also appeared in the Seventh Doctor serial The Greatest Show in the Galaxy (1988), while silver bullets were mentioned in Battlefield (1989). Werewolves feature in the Past Doctor Adventures novel Wolfsbane, the Eighth Doctor Adventures novel Kursaal and the Big Finish Productions audio play Loups-Garoux. A race of werewolves, the Wereloks, turn the Fourth Doctor into a werewolf in the Doctor Who Weekly comic strip story Doctor Who and the Dogs of Doom (DWW #27-#34), although he manages to devise a cure for his condition in the TARDIS.

Rose is wearing a T-shirt with a crown on it, a reference by the costume designer to Queen Victoria's presence in the episode, but also in keeping with Rose's expected visit to a 1979 Ian Dury concert. In the episode "Attack of the Graske", he took Rose to an ABBA concert in 1979 at Wembley Arena, and quoted the Status Quo song "Down Down" at one point in the same episode. The Doctor introduces himself as "James McCrimmon". Jamie McCrimmon (Frazer Hines) was a young Scottish piper from the 18th Century, and a companion of the Second Doctor. When Rose first encounters the wolf in its human form it says it can see "something of the wolf" in her and that she has "burnt like the Sun", a reference to the 2005 series episode "The Parting of the Ways".

The Tenth Doctor mentions the "First Anti-Grav Olympics", which the Eleventh Doctor then references in "The Bells of Saint John" (2013).

Production

In the scene where the Doctor and Rose meet the Queen's guards, the Doctor slips into a Scottish accent, which is actually actor David Tennant's native accent. Michelle Duncan and Jamie Sives were unable to attend the readthrough for this story, and their parts were read by Tennant's parents, who happened to be visiting the Doctor Who set. Tennant told reporters at the series' press launch, "Because it's set in Scotland they were delighted to be asked to read in. My mum played Lady Isobel and my dad played Captain Reynolds and they were in seventh heaven. And they were genuinely cheesed off when they didn't get asked to play the parts for real! I was like, 'Chill-out, Mum and Dad, back in your box!'"

Treowen House in Dingestow, Wales, was one of the sites for filming this episode, representing Torchwood House in the Scottish Highlands. Exterior shots were filmed at Craig-y-Nos Castle, Swansea Valley. The monk fight scene was filmed at a courtyard in Dyffryn Gardens, St Nicholas.

At one point during filming, Billie Piper's hair caught fire. Interviewed in Doctor Who Confidential, director Euros Lyn said that various martial arts films were viewed in researching the opening fight sequence, including Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.

The werewolf in this story is computer-generated. Pauline Collins stated in a BBC press release that there were two performance artists who demonstrated the movements that the werewolf would do and talked about the problems of overacting in a situation where one was simply reacting to a green screen. A deleted scene was included on the boxset DVD, where the Doctor and Rose, after being knighted, run off towards the TARDIS.

Cast notes

Pauline Collins appeared previously in the series as Samantha Briggs in the Second Doctor serial The Faceless Ones (1967). This makes her the third actor from the classic series to appear in the new series, following William Thomas (Remembrance of the Daleks and "Boom Town") and Nisha Nayar (Paradise Towers and "Bad Wolf"/"The Parting of the Ways"). Collins had been offered a role as a companion in 1967, but had turned this down. According to the accompanying episode commentary, actor Tom Smith, who played the Host, attended drama school with David Tennant.

When Sir Robert offers to precede the Queen out of the window, she calls him "my Sir Walter Raleigh". Actor Derek Riddell had played Raleigh in the BBC drama The Virgin Queen, screened earlier in the year. The script originally had Victoria refer to Sir Francis Drake, until Riddell pointed out that this would have been incorrect for the reference the Queen was making.

Broadcast and reception

Overnight ratings for the episode peaked at 10.03 million (during one five-minute segment). The audience Appreciation Index was 83. The episode received an average of 9.24 million viewers, taking the timeshift into account. The Defending the Earth! site update for this episode features another "live" message from Mickey Smith to the viewer. Mickey mentions how he was tracking satellites on the Torchwood website but was kicked out. He then re-directs the viewer to the Torchwood House site, telling them to access the telescope feed by using the password "Victoria" and help him search for the satellites.

This episode was released on 5 June 2006 as a basic DVD with no special features, together with "School Reunion" and "The Girl in the Fireplace", and as part of a second series boxset on 20 November 2006. This release included an audio commentary by writer Russell T Davies, visual effects supervisor David Houghton and supervising art director Stephen Nicholas.

Ian Berriman of SFX was highly positive of the episode, calling it "frigging ace" and praising Collins' portrayal of Queen Victoria. He particularly praised Davies' writing and the tone of the episode. IGN's Ahsan Haque gave the episode a 7.8 out of 10 rating, highlighting the cinematography and special effects used on the werewolf. However, he thought that the story was "entertaining" and had a "few exciting moments", but it was unsatisfying with elements such as the werewolf chase feeling out of place for Doctor Who. For the website in 2010, Matt Wales named "Tooth and Claw" the seventh best Tenth Doctor episode. However, Dek Hogan of Digital Spy was less positive about the episode, finding it a let-down after the series opener, though he thought the wolf "looked great".