After a quick montage to give us the premise of Bill and her mates looking for a place to move into while going to university (not sure why this is, when supposedly the school year already started but whatever) they are approached by an older gentleman offering them exactly the kind of place they are looking for. Of course, it just so happens that the house, along with its landlord, is a bit "off." Basically another Doctor Who take on the haunted house trope, there is nothing particularly special, memorable or exciting about this episode. The first act does get points for being sufficiently creepy, but beyond that there is very little redeemable here.
First off, the majority of the characters are just wooden horror fodder (and I blame the script more so than the actors) with nothing particularly interesting about them. The Doctor and Bill of course are fine, with some humorous bickering as Bill desperately tries to keep The Doctor out of her personal life, and considering the script Peter Capaldi and Pearl Mackie are given, they make it work admirably. But the villainous landlord especially feels like a cardboard cutout and comes off more irritating than actually creepy or intimidating. And once he reveals his intentions (which were not hard to guess) there was literally nothing interesting left to watch. The alien termites whatever they were, along with the twist that the landlord is the son and not the father of the wooden woman, were completely pointless and unsatisfying, adding a layer of nothing in an attempt to make an episode that ran out of steam 15 minutes in feel like it had some depth. But the only thing it really did do was make the episode feel like an odd fanfic, especially with the nonsensical undoing of all the deaths (which I normally wouldn't mind cause I prefer happy endings, but this was just ridiculous and without believable explanation), much like Forest of The Night in season eight, and did not deserve to actually be made into television. The good news, after this one we start to get into some better episodes. 6.5/10
First off, the majority of the characters are just wooden horror fodder (and I blame the script more so than the actors) with nothing particularly interesting about them. The Doctor and Bill of course are fine, with some humorous bickering as Bill desperately tries to keep The Doctor out of her personal life, and considering the script Peter Capaldi and Pearl Mackie are given, they make it work admirably. But the villainous landlord especially feels like a cardboard cutout and comes off more irritating than actually creepy or intimidating. And once he reveals his intentions (which were not hard to guess) there was literally nothing interesting left to watch. The alien termites whatever they were, along with the twist that the landlord is the son and not the father of the wooden woman, were completely pointless and unsatisfying, adding a layer of nothing in an attempt to make an episode that ran out of steam 15 minutes in feel like it had some depth. But the only thing it really did do was make the episode feel like an odd fanfic, especially with the nonsensical undoing of all the deaths (which I normally wouldn't mind cause I prefer happy endings, but this was just ridiculous and without believable explanation), much like Forest of The Night in season eight, and did not deserve to actually be made into television. The good news, after this one we start to get into some better episodes. 6.5/10