June 26: "Hide"

It's a slightly odd feeling, traveling back to 1974.  Sure, it was 39 years earlier (so not exactly recent), but now we're traveling back into years during which Doctor Who was active.  It's not the first time, but whereas things like "Father's Day" and "The Impossible Astronaut" / "Day of the Moon" didn't have quite the same impact because we were in places not typically associated with the show during those times (a wedding and Cape Kennedy), "Hide" is set in prime Pertwee territory: a haunted, isolated manor.  So initially you feel a bit off, watching Matt Smith and Jenna-Louise Coleman instead of Jon Pertwee and Elisabeth Sladen.

The feeling soon passes, however, as you get sucked into an effective, well done ghost story.  Neil Cross does a good job of slowly drawing you in, as we first meet Alec Palmer and his assistant Emma Grayling and learn a bit about the history of the ghost haunting Caliburn House.  The high-tech-for-the-70s equipment, combined with all the photographs, creates a good effect, and the Doctor and Clara's exploration is also handled well -- the cold spots, the loud noises, and the realization that they're not the ones holding each other's hands are great fun, and the quick flashes of something are glorious.

Alec and Clara watch as the Doctor explains to Emma his plan to
rescue the time traveller Hila. ("Hide") ©BBC

But what makes "Hide" special isn't just that it does a great job of evoking that feeling of ghost stories, of quiet tension and suspense, but that it keeps changing the game in reasonable ways.  So the ghost isn't a ghost; it's a time traveller, stuck in a pocket universe where time runs achingly slow who needs to be rescued, thanks to the empathic psychic Emma -- think Troi from Star Trek: The Next Generation.  (Incidentally, this allows Matt Smith to join Sylvester McCoy in the ranks of "Doctors who can't pronounce Pertwee planets correctly" (Metebelis III is twice pronounced as [mə.'tɛ.bə.lɪs] instead of the original [mɛ.tə.'bi.lɪs] -- supposedly the production team caught the mistake and fixed it in ADR, but the edit was accidentally left out).)  He works this out by traveling through the entire history of Earth, taking pictures every few hundred thousand years -- something which freaks Clara out as she thinks about it.  That's understandable; what's less understandable is Clara's accusation that "We're all ghosts to you.  We must be nothing", which I have to confess is a viewpoint I can't comprehend.  If you can see everything then it becomes nothing?  I think I see what Cross is driving at (something like, "If the Doctor can experience everything, then what makes anything important?"), but it's expressed in a really strange way.  (Or, as the Doctor said to Amy in "The Beast Below" (in response to a similar observation): "Oh, lovely.  You're a cheery one.")

But weird thoughts from Clara aside, this is a taut, entertaining story; the way the ghost story gives way to time travel, but with something even more disturbing chasing Hila the time traveller (in the form of the Crooked Man), there's still that element of tension and terror, and it's striking that we see the Doctor respond as well: "You want me to be afraid.  Then well done.  I am the Doctor, and I am afraid."  It's a scary costume, and the way it's shot, so that it's juddering as if it's out of phase with the universe, is really effective.  This alone would make "Hide" a great story, but then Neil Cross goes one better:

DOCTOR: Oh, I'm so slow!  I am slow.  I'm notorious for it.  That's always been my problem. But, but I get there in the end.  Oh yes.
CLARA: Doctor?
DOCTOR: How do sharks make babies?
CLARA: Carefully?
DOCTOR: No, no, no.  Happily!
CLARA: Sharks don't actually smile.  They're just, well, they've got lots and lots of teeth. They're quite eat-y.
DOCTOR: Exactly.  But birds do it, bees do it, even educated fleas do it.  Every lonely monster needs a companion.
CLARA: There's two of them?
DOCTOR: It's the oldest story in the universe, this one or any other.  Boy and girl fall in love, get separated by events.  War, politics, accidents in time.  She's thrown out of the Hex²⁴⁸, or he's thrown into it.  Since then they've been yearning for each other across time and space, across dimensions.  This isn't a ghost story, it's a love story!

(from The Doctor Who Transcripts - Hide)

The way Cross gives us another twist, one that's pleasingly non-xenophobic with a beautiful message, is gorgeous.  I was already on board with "Hide", but that cemented it for me.  This is a knockout of a story.  One to treasure.







²⁴⁸ The script began life as "Phantoms of the Hex", with the Hex being the name of the pocket universe the Lost Lord (an ancient Time Lord criminal) was imprisoned in, but as the script was revised the Time Lord aspect was dropped, along with any mentions of the Hex -- except for this one here, which slipped through.