“Hide” S07E09 Doctor Who Review
After the erm episode 3 and the universally reviled episode 2, finally a storyline that feels like good old fashioned Doctor Who. Haunted house, check; rainstorm, check; two guest characters that are secretly in love with each other, check; scares that aren’t really scary but are the kind of family friendly scares that apparently give children nightmares – you know, the best kind, check.
And thank God for that as we were starting to wonder if the ever reliable Doctor Who was going downhill, but wonder no more as now we know it definitely is.
No longer can we blame pacing issues and what I can only assume to be missing script pages that resulted in every other scene being plugged with a cute child singing in what the producers must have assumed every DW fan is going to get all misty-eyed over (ep 2) or the man heavy, grim setting, military action episode that we all know from watching the next week preview is going to be dull (ep 3).
This week should have been brilliant, a triumphant return to form. We were all willing it to happen because the last thing a fan of the show wants is to give up on it (as was demonstrated by JH when I tried to point out a major plothole – more on this later). But from the moment I heard the phrase ‘Ghostbusters’ and it made me shudder I knew this wasn’t going to be right. What we had been distracted from in earlier episodes was blatantly clear in this one: Clara has not been given a personality. For some reason I have yet to fathom as I know they have previously worked well together (AJ – though by the end of this rant I think I have), there is no chemistry between the Doctor and Clara, so the writer (Neil Cross in this instance, who is also responsible for the abysmal Rings of Akhaten – Ep 2) has shoehorned it in with such clumsy imprecision you can’t hear anything over the screams of desperation (the whole holding hands ‘bit’, brings out my eyes, makes my eyes hurt, not bliss = Carlisle). To compensate Matt Smith is on full babbling overdrive with a hit ratio of 1 in 7 (although we had the sublime ‘I’m giving you a face, can you see me giving you a face’, we had lots of the ‘don’t move, don’t breathe, well ok breathe’ ilk). Clara just seems totally confused. When serious, she is a joy: insightful, levelheaded, sometimes poetic, but definitely a woman who knows her own mind. Then they try to make her fun, because the Doctor is fun, so his friends need to be fun because that’s how friendship works. But fun around the Doctor equals recklessness and quite often automaton like subservience. Not to mention cheesy, camp 1950’s style dialogue. None of which fits the headstrong and independent Clara, but instead of developing the show to incorporate this new balance in the relationship, it tries to smoosh Clara into the old formula:
the Doctor jigs out of the Tardis, the companion hot on his heels asking why they aren’t in Rio/Vegas/the crystal shores of Naath, the Doctor bumps into some locals, works out what’s really going on and then winks at the companion, says something flippant and flirtatious about all this death and destruction being exciting and the companion giggles, jumps up and down and gives him the kind of look that suggests she wants to take him or a battery operated toy behind the bike sheds.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not knocking the formula. Formulas have been used for decades because they work and they worked for the likes of Rose Tyler and Amy Pond, but I also remember the fate of Martha Jones and having seen what Jenna-Louise Coleman can do in the guise of Oswin and the double life of Clara the governess, I don’t want her to befall the same fate. Especially when they managed to change the formula so effectively with the best companion so far (Donna Noble – if you want me to list my reasons and explain to you why you are wrong if you don’t agree, I’ll do so in another article).
The result of all this square pegging is that Clara ends up almost schizophrenic, bouncing between cheesy (Ghostbusters), mirroring the Doctor (that’s the chap), awesome – which is what she should be (entire life cycle of the Earth, birth to death, and you’re ok with that?) and actually schizophrenic (why would I want to do that [ . . .] dare me).
It’s just so frustrating because Clara could be and should be so good! Arrgghhh!!!!
I seem to have wandered off the reviewing part of this article, but this was all I could think whilst watching the show.
So, the plot: the Doctor has hijacked what appears to be a typical ghosthunting exercise that turns out to be more than it seems. Already I’m optimistic. The episode opens well, with the right amount of atmosphere and fine acting to make Professor Parmer and Emma Grayling instantly likeable. In fact Dougray Scott and Jessica Raine are on top form from beginning to end, their oh so obvious attraction done as subtly as they can muster given the fact that Neil Cross goes out of his way to shove it in our faces throughout. Unfortunately the Doctor and Clara turn up and that’s when the clunking begins, through no fault of MS and JLC, who try to do a good job despite reading lines that seem to have been written on the back of a fag packet. There are some nice touches, such as when Clara gently steers the Doctor away from social pitfalls and most of the conversations between the boys and the girls alone, but the forced chummery between the Doctor and Clara which ends up being detrimental to the cause is it trying to promote is often too much to bear. The stand out scene for me is when he lets them be who they are, in the TARDIS after the Doctor has just visited the death of the Earth.
The whole episode seems to be oddly paced, you look up at the clock and realise you have been watching for 25 minutes but nothing much has happened. There’s an awful lot of soul searching but not a lot of action. It sort of plods along with the occasional blip in the norm, a knock here, a shiny black disc hung from the ceiling that the special effects guys promised would not look like a black disc hung from the ceiling after the post production but still does here, and then a lot more talking about feelings everywhere else. It’s not until the Doctor works out what is going on and goes on a day trip through the Earth’s lifespan that it starts to heat up. And it is a very interesting and unique twist, until the timey whimey bullshit rears its ugly head. I’m a DW fan, I don’t expect any of the made up physics that are the key to a good DW story to stand up to any rigorous questioning, but I do at least expect them to make sense in the context of the made up physics. Especially when they have gone to such pains to explain it to you. Here’s the thing, saying timey whimey paradox can get you out of most things, which is probably why it’s at the beginning, middle and end of the episode, but it doesn’t explain away the fact that the doctor specifically states that Hilla has been running in her universe for about 3 minutes and that time runs slower there. It does not run topsy turvy or backwards or upside down, so it must run linear to ours. He cements this fact by saying that about 1 second in there is about 100,000 years to us. Then how can 3 minutes of her running be the equivalent of the birth of the Earth to 1974 but when the Doctor goes in, 3 minutes is the equivalent of a night in our universe? I know it was 3 minutes because I timed it. I posed this question to JH, whose response was a rather patronising ‘Oh you just don’t get paradoxes’. To which I explained that Hilla being their great great granddaughter, the fact that the Doctor photographed her at the death of the Earth but now she has been rescued so she won’t be there, these are all paradoxes and I get that, but I don’t get why there were very clear rules on how these physics worked only for it to be forgotten. ‘Ah, let me explain,’ was the answer. So he got his pad out and started to draw a diagram. Which made him go umm, then I got my pad out and drew this:
Timeline of our universe and pocket universe
And you know what? All it would have taken was a couple of lines of dialogue. ‘Doctor, surely if you go in there for even one second it will have been 100,000 years in our universe before you come back again.’ ‘Ah ha, have no fear Clara because blah blah psychic link blah blah anchor blah blah timelines in sync . . ‘ or some such nonsense. I don’t think this was necessarily a failing in story, it was most likely a failing in writing, but don’t expect your audience to fill in the gaps for you. Most of us wouldn’t be able to explain away real physics let alone the physics you have made up in your head. Though of course most DW fans will give it a stab rather than admit it just doesn’t add up (the idea for the psychic anchor also came from JH, when he realised paradox didn’t cover it).
Lastly, the tacked on and rushed second ending is a shame. I have no problem with an extra twist and hardly ever feel they are unnecessary, which is the usual criticism. I just don’t think you should cram it in at the end as if you think it’s unnecessary. If this is what your story was really about, give it your attention!
I like this episode. I know it doesn’t seem like it but I do, but I don’t love it and that’s a shame as I should. All the elements were there but they were poorly executed. It left me with a hollow feeling and it was only by rewatching it that I could start to pinpoint why it didn’t work. It’s a disappointment that goes deeper than just a bad episode because you know what it could have been. He wrote Luther for crying out loud!
6/10
