Teresa Reviews “The Unicorn and the Wasp” (2008)

Fidelity to real life: 2 hatchet jobs

Agatha disappeared for 11 days. That’s a fact. She never discussed it so Doctor Who delivers the answer! No, this didn’t happen, but it’s far more realistic than that dreadful Vanessa Redgrave biopic.

Quality of movie on its own: 5 hatchet jobs

Give yourself license to laugh and let go of your preconceived notions about Agatha’s disappearance. If you can’t let go, don’t watch. If you can, you’ll love it.

Read more of Teresa’s Agatha Christie movie reviews at Peschel Press.

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Obviously, Agatha Christie did not meet Doctor Who and Donna Noble at an English country house party. Nor did she meet a giant space wasp who murdered three people and tried to poison the Doctor. There was no high society jewel thief named the Unicorn. The space wasp didn’t give Agatha amnesia. The space wasp’s father didn’t conduct a torrid affair with an English peeress in India, nor did he father her illegitimate, half-alien baby, later given up for adoption. Agatha also disappeared in December, and it’s not December. Everyone’s wearing summery clothes and they’re out on the lawn enjoying afternoon cocktails so I’d say it’s August.

Knowing all that, this is still a far more realistic, plausible, and faithful depiction of the reasons behind Agatha’s eleven-day disappearance than Agatha (1979), the dreadful, made-up-from-whole-cloth Vanessa Redgrave biopic. What a travesty that flick was. It depicted Agatha as weepy, maudlin, suicidal, dopey, subservient, and incompetent. About the only thing it got right was that she’d recently discovered that Archie was cheating. It is definitely true that Agatha Christie, while at the spa in Harrogate, did not maneuver Archie Christie’s new cookie into murdering her by electrocution so the Crown would hang the cookie and Archie would be sad.

What drivel.

That leads one to the question of how accurate is the Doctor Who episode, particularly since Doctor Who is not known for top-notch scientific or historical verisimilitude.

We meet Agatha when she’s invited to a cocktail party, given by Lady Eddison. Lady Eddison is a major fan of her novels. Lady Eddison is fictional but it’s true that everyone, high or low, liked Agatha’s novels. She was well-regarded from the very first novel The Mysterious Affair at Styles and her reputation, popularity, and sales grew and grew with each short story and novel. Loads of highfalutin people would have been overjoyed to invite Agatha for a visit and have her accept. Lady Eddison was not unusual. We even see her poring over Agatha’s latest book — one that took the world by storm — The Murder of Roger Ackroyd.

Agatha is alone, because she’s discovered Archie’s affair. She — true to character — doesn’t want to discuss it. It’s embarrassing and uncomfortable to admit that her adored husband’s a cheating dog. She was devastated and did not want to be the subject of gossip. All very accurate. The film omits the trauma of her beloved mother’s death, but that was another subject Agatha didn’t like to talk about, so we’ll concede this point.

Lady Eddison’s house party looked like what I’d expect; there’s an assortment of interesting guests, including the local vicar. Since Doctor Who uses his psychic paper to prove his bona fides and can talk his way in anywhere, he and Donna get invited in. Reasonably accurate.

The murders begin, which did not happen. Agatha works closely with the Doctor to solve them. She’s observant, intelligent, a good judge of character, can think outside the box, and can put clues together. All very accurate since if she didn’t have those skills, she wouldn’t have been able to write sixty-six whodunnits, loads of short stories, and mystery plays that are still read and performed today. There’s a reason why Agatha is the world’s bestselling novelist by miles.

Agatha feels unsure of the quality of her novels and wonders if anyone will read her after she’s gone. Will she be forgotten and fade into the mists of time? I don’t know if she felt insecure about her writing, but she was an author, so I’m sure she did. Every author wonders what the public sees in their novels when the words on the page never quite measure up to the wonderful book in the mind.

Agatha is logical, sensible, forthright, and doesn’t let the Doctor run roughshod over her. Why would she? He’s behaving strangely, says strange things, and seems to be daft. Would Agatha do this? Probably. She knew her place in the world, and it wasn’t being at the beck and call of some loon.

Agatha takes responsibility for her novels deranging the mind of the giant killer space wasp. Well, she would. She was a responsible person meeting her obligations, which was another reason the worldwide panic over her disappearance was so mortifying. She was a private person and having everyone and their brother discuss her private life was awkward to say the least. How responsible was she? She had a book contract to fulfill, even when her life was falling apart. So she wrote The Big Four, followed by The Mystery of the Blue Train in 1928.

In her autobiography, Agatha mentions that it was while writing Blue Train that she knew she was a professional writer. She delivered a book, even when she finally divorced Archie and their marriage was irretrievably over. Archie married his cookie one week later. Agatha persevered.

In 1928 Agatha also wrote the Poirot short story “Wasps’ Nest.” Wasps featured prominently in it. A few years later, Agatha wrote Death in the Clouds (1935). A wasp is found in the plane’s compartment where no wasp should be, and the victim seems to have been stung to death. Are those stories coincidental? Perhaps not.

So there you have it. A Doctor Who episode is far more plausible in every way than the Vanessa Redgrave biopic! At 45 minutes, it zips along so you’ll wish you got to spend more time with Agatha, the Doctor, and Donna Noble. That’s very unlike Redgrave’s opus where you feel each minute dragging itself past you, like slugs inching their way over your hostas and chewing them into lacy death.

You will need to watch this episode twice (at least!) in order to catch all the Agatha references worked into the show. It’s not just dialog either. Take a drink every time you spot a title, a technique (such as reflections in glass-fronted book cases), a murder weapon, a visual reference (yellow irises on the table), or a visual joke. I’ll provide the first one: Doctor Who is a mysterious man in a brown suit. There’s even references to Clue (Cluedo for British readers). Professor Peach is obviously based on Professor Plum and he’s murdered in the library with a lead pipe. Miss Robina Redmond is Miss Scarlett. You can match up the rest.

Don’t miss this episode. It’s fun, it’s fast, and it provides an Agatha Christie trivia drinking game all in one.