I knew there was a good chance I was going to love this
episode as soon as they dropped a Ghostbusters
reference in, just before the titles rolled. Not that the episode has much
of a Ghostbusters feel to it; Hide come from a much earlier tradition
of creepy ghost stories and pseudoscientific spiritualism, and such television
greats as Kneale’s The Stone Tape.
It’s long past time that Doctor Who did
a proper ghost story, after dabbling with the form and feel with such episodes
as The Unquiet Dead, The Empty Child and
Blink. However, as much as it
appeared we were finally going to have our ghost story at last, Hide changes into something quite different
but no less effective.
Much of the fun in this episode comes from seeing how the
story mutates as events play out, developing from a haunting to an
interdimensional adventure, all the while being, underneath it all, a love
story. Some commentators are even complaining now that Doctor Who is turning too many of its episodes into love stories,
which is ridiculous. A love story is one of the most powerful, emotionally
affecting story types ever devised and, as long as it’s done well, can be
profoundly moving. It is, surely, something we can all identify with, those
early, awkward glances and unspoken words that carry so much meaning. To
combine it with the format of a ghost story brings fear and love, two of the
most powerful, universal emotions, together.
Much of Hide’s
success comes from Neil Cross’s fine script, which makes a much better case for
his involvement in the series than his previous episode, The Rings of Akhaten. That script began with a love story, and then
drops the protagonists, proceeded tell
us another story else entirely, only telling us how great the characters were
in the final scenes. Hide shows us,
letting us get to know Alec and Emma through their actions and reactions to one
another, creating two very believable characters who centre the story. It’s
easy to see how Cross got another commission on the strength of this script,
written before Rings.
Of course, the script is nothing without decent acting and
direction to bring it to life. Jessica
Raine and Dougray Scott are both excellent here, making Emma and Alec
into fully formed individuals. Between
script and performance, Emma and Alec feel more real than any other character
we’ve met so far this year, including Clara, now on her fourth episode and
still feeling a little sketched in, in spite of some nice character moments and
a fine performance by Coleman. Part of this is down to Raine and Scott’s acting
style; both give very naturalistic performances that contrast well with the
more stylised take by both Coleman, and moreso, Matt Smith. The contrast helps
make Emma and Alec feel like part of the world, while the Doctor and Clara are
clearly interlopers.
Which isn’t to say that either Smith or Coleman let the side
down here. They are both on top form throughout, with Smith giving a
particularly sharp performance in the episode’s quieter moments. The one
standout scene for the two leads, when the Doctor takes the TARDIS on a trip
through the Earth’s entire history, plants them firmly at opposite ends of the
human experience, the (apparently) ordinary young woman and the ancient, alien outsider.
Smith makes the Doctor’s discomfort with, and distance from, human emotion very
clear, helped no little by Cross, who really seems to get this version of the
Doctor.
What’s most satisfying about the Doctor’s experiences in
this episode is that we finally see him genuinely frightened and out of his
depth. He begins as his usual, supremely confident self, his boundless
enthusiasm rubbing off on Clara (hence their cheeky introduction as “Ghostbusters!”)
Clara is the first to get spooked out, but the Doctor has further to fall, and
Smith portrays two distinct stages of fear. He freaks out during the wailing
woman’s manifestation, and is clearly affected by the experience, admitting
that he thought investigating her would be fun. Even then he’s working things
out, and is on the case, using his vast knowledge to ascertain just what, and
who, the witch of the well really is. In some ways, it’s a shame that there had
to be a science fictional explanation for the Caliburn Ghast. It was inevitable
that the Doctor would explain events away in a non-supernatural fashion, but it
would have been satisfying to see him faced with something inexplicable for
once. The only other time I can recall the Doctor truly afraid and baffled was
in Midnight, an episode that has yet
to be bettered in terms of a traumatic personal experience for the Doctor.
Still, the rationalisation of the ghost – a time-traveller,
caught in a pocket universe, stretching three minutes out over billions of
years – is an inventive take on the “time-slip” theory of hauntings. It’s once
the Doctor arrives in that pocket world – beautifully visualised in a washed
out palette and subtle CGI – that he enters his second stage of fear. Having
rescued Hila the time-travelling pioneer, he is left trapped, faced with a
threat that is totally unknown and no way out. The jingoistic “I am the Doctor!”
speech from Akhaten seems more
effective in retrospective when we hear it inverted to become “I am the Doctor,
and I am afraid.” He still has bravado to fall back on, but it rings rather
hollow this time.
Of course, he is rescued, and the use of the TARDIS works
better than it has any right to. Using the TARDIS as a means of rescue or
escape always risks seeming like a “Get out of jail free” card, but here it
works by furthering the intriguing relationship between Clara and the time
machine. If anyone suffers from too little characterisation out of the four
characters – not including Kemi-Bo Jacobs, who gets little to do as Hila – then
it’s Clara. She is very much in generic companion mode here, despite some nice
moments, with her characterisation being mostly subsumed in favour of the
ongoing mystery surrounding her existence, notwithstanding the aforementioned “Going
always” faceoff. Thankfully, Coleman is good enough to inject life into the
character with even slim material to work from.
The four cast members each get to play off each other in
various different pairings, although while Smith and Scott get a meaty
conversation about wartime ethics and the nature of life and death, Raine and Coleman
get to talk about the boys and be a bit lovey-dovey. It’s a sweet scene, but it
does rather tragically fail the Bechdel test.
The pacing of the episode is odd, but effective, gaining in
urgency as the nature of the problem becomes apparent, moving from the slow
burn of the early moments to the frenetic action of the conclusion. Or rather,
the beginnings of a conclusion. Cross is brave enough to leave the episode
unfinished, changing the parameters yet again, revealing that the Crooked Man
is merely searching for his mate, and had never broken through to our world in
the first place. A whole extra strand of the adventure is set up, and left for
us to imagine ourselves; actually depicting it is entirely unnecessary. After forty-five
minutes of beautiful performances, decent writing, and nerve-wracking direction
from Jaimie Payne, this clever, confident episode come not to a close, but an
opening.
The History of the
Earth: There’s a fabulous scientific howler in this episode, when the
Doctor claims he’s just visited the site of the house about six billion years
early. Current scientific consensus is that the Earth is a comparatively modest
4.6 billion years old.
Monster Monster
Monster! The Crooked Man (named only in the end credits) and his mate go
entirely unexplained. The actor beneath the latex seems to think, in the “confidential”
featurette, that he is someone who has been trapped in the pocket universe and
warped by it, which is as good an explanation as any. One unsolved mystery can
be accepted after answering the question of the Calibrun Ghast. It’s a very
interesting design, made all the more unsettling by some clever camera work. Face-to-face
it’s less threatening, but then, by that stage, it’s supposed to be.
Links and References:
Abundant. The Doctor’s orange spacesuit is the one he picked up in The Satan Pit, and later wore in The Waters of Mars. He used a “subset of
the Eye of Harmony” to open the wormhole, although quite what this implies
post-Gallifrey is anyone’s guess; it doesn’t look like he’s got a bit of black
hole there or anything. The Doctor only notices in this episode that the hat
stand present in the console room since 2005 is not there in the new version.
The blue crystal used
to focus Emma’s abilities is from Metebelis 3; there’s predictably been some
debate concerning Matt Smith’s pronunciation of the planet’s name. Quite a few
of his pronunciations seem a bit off to my ears though, but I guess that’s just
regional variations. The Doctor previously used a piece of Metebelis crystal in
a similar fashion in Planet of the
Spiders; considering that experiment led to the psychic subject’s death,
and that returning the crystal led to the Doctor’s regeneration, you’d think
he’d have left the stuff well alone. The psychochronograph might be a reference
to Dr. Philip Sandifer’s TARDIS Eruditorum, which he describes as “A
Psychochronography in Blue.”
Apart from the Ghostbusters
reference, the whole scene with the Doctor abseiling through the wormhole,
with Emma shouting his name into the light, screams Poltergeist. Did anyone else shout “Carole Anne!?” According to
Neil Cross in an interview with SFX, Alec Palmer was originally intended to be
none other than Professor Quatermass, but rights issues intervened.
Hanky-Panky in the TARDIS:
Jessica Raine is quite irresistibly cute in her 70s blouse and pullover.
Dougray Scott is, as ever, a very handsome man. Jenna-Louise Coleman continues
to make my heart skip a beat every time she smiles.
Best Line: “Every
lonely monster needs a companion.” The Doctor speaks from experience.
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