Classic Horror vibes, Cabin in the woods, Mirror to another universe, the dead make an appearance……
It Takes You Away, is the penultimate episode of the 2018 series; this episode is full of mystery, adventure and emotion. You are left guessing for a while on what is really happening in this episode, what is the threat? However, the answer isn't that great, the threat is big for the characters as it causes emotional strain especially for Graham in particular. You are led to believe that the threat is big, which it is, but it isn't what you expect and become underwhelming at points when everything is put together near the climax of the episode.
This story is set in Norway, in an isolated location, a cabin in the woods. There seems to be a threat in the woods, a father missing, and his child is waiting for him to come back and a mirror which takes anyone who walks through to a gloomy cave, which we later find out to be known as the anti-zone, and through to the other side which is another universe. Although, we don’t spend much time in the beautiful Norway landscape, once we find out that the beast in the woods is fake and just sounds created by Erik (the missing dad) to keep his daughter (Hanne) in the house. Once we leave the house through the mirror, we enter a kind of labyrinth cave full of skin and meat-eating giant moths. We meet in the cave an Orc named Ribbons played by Kevin Eldon, we don’t know why Ribbons is in the cave or how he got there, however, it is clear he is a very clever alien who's very good at surviving in difficult situations. Once we met him, we get the impression Ribbons may have had something to do with the disappearance of Hanne's dad Erik.
This cave is full of unexplained plot elements from Ribbons to flesh eating moths to portals are just misleading elements that leads us to the real villain of this episode. The real villain is a sentient universe which is a piece of reality that is unintentionally harmful and incompatible to our universe and has been forced to sit on the side by itself yet all it really wants is to be part of our universe. As a result, it has tried to create a universe which the Doctor and her friends will like, that is why we meet people who have passed away, yet we are still incompatible with the sentient universe and that universe starts to be destroyed. The sentient universe isn't trying to be harmful, it is just lonely, so it actually isn't a real villain as it doesn’t want to cause chaos or harm anyone.
An odd moment is at the end, the Doctor talks to a frog which is an image the sentient universe has chosen; but it seems very random and doesn’t even look good or realistic. I feel like they should have chosen another form; it could be considered humorous that they chose a frog, but it didn’t look good and took away the effect that the ending moment had.
We get to meet a range of new characters in this episode, along with Ribbon, we meet Erik the missing dad and Hanne the blind daughter. Hanne is a strong and angry teenager who shows that even though she is blind that doesn’t stop her in doing what she wants, which is going through the mirror to find her dad. Erik is portrayed as a dad who is suffering with the loss of his wife and selfish as he has left his daughter for days all alone. I felt frustrated with this character as he put his needs above his daughters because he was finding it difficult to accept what has happened and move on. Along with this, we see that Graham is still going through grief and still blames himself for Grace's death which occurred in the first episode of the series. There is a heart-warming moment right at the end, where we see Graham reflecting what had happened and he finally gets his 'Grandad' moment with Ryan. It was more emotional as it wasn’t said in a tense, about to die moment; Ryan said it as he saw Graham was struggling with what had happened and he said it on his own terms. It was an emotional moment as we know from the start, since we met these characters that Graham wanted Ryan to call him grandad and he now finally feels comfortable to call him that.
This episode feels like a lot of things were all thrown in together to make one story yet really the anti-zone and Ribbons could have been its only story. However, this episode is still a great watch especially at the start until we go to the other universe. We think we are watching a horror film/story but that feeling soon goes once we leave the house. This episode is great for Graham as we get to really see how he is doing with his grief, but we get to see how strong he is and how his relationship with Ryan has really improved since we first met them. Ryan and Graham's relationship has improved greatly just in time for the series finale.
