By Niki Haringsma

Obverse Books, out now

Russell T Davies’ ‘love it or hate it’ Doctor-lite episode from Series 2 gets the Black Archive treatment, providing a lot more food for thought than you might imagine. Oh, and we do address the paving slab in the room!

I have a fanciful vision of the meeting at Obverse Books HQ where all the authors are gathered, waiting to see which episode is drawn out of the hat for them. ‘And for Niki Haringsma, it’s…’ ball drops out of the chute ‘…Love & Monsters’. The other authors heave a sigh of relief. And yet, Haringsma confesses to having picked this episode out of choice. What madness is this?

On reflection, this ‘Marmite’ episode is ideal Black Archives fodder. You don’t have to believe it’s a masterpiece, or even like it, the job is to assess it, and Haringsma sets some context around the necessity of double-banking with The Impossible Planet two-parter, also how Steven Moffat’s equivalent episode the following year (Blink) didn’t fall in to the same traps. It was the first of its kind and it made the mistakes.

Haringsma identifies the key hotspots that create the fan ire – the ‘racist’ Blue Peter competition-winning monster, the depiction of LINDA, the flagstone fellatio – but what really irks us? It’s not the fact that Elton is a fan and that the Abzorbaloff is a super-fan, it just feels like a case of Russell T Davies having gone ‘poacher turned gamekeeper’ and is now laughing at us?

Haringsma gets us to consider how Elton breaks the fourth wall, and there’s some detailed argument of Brechtian techniques used to shift from dramatic to dialectical theatre – turning us from audience into observers. The comparison to Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead is a good call, and one I frankly hadn’t considered before, while it’s also good that the more well-known precedents – Buffy’s The Zeppo and TNG’s The Lower Decks – are referenced.

What I truly hadn’t considered was Elton and Ursula’s relationship being a metaphor for a ‘monstrous’ queer relationship, an ersatz depiction of sex life of a disabled person. Was this interpretation intended by Davies? Probably not. I assume he just thought of a cheeky concrete-based blowjoke, and yet here’s the evidence that sometimes a cheap gag (stop laughing) can have wider implications.

By the end of this well-considered overview we’re reminded how the story idea was originally a pitch for a DWM comic strip, whether Elton is a reliable narrator, and consider the nature of fan transformative content.

Verdict: I still don’t like Love & Monsters, but having read Niki Haringsma’s analysis of the episode I have a better understanding why. Kudos to Obverse Books for covering the show’s classics and less popular stories. 7/10

Nick Joy