An Hour of Who a Day: July 19: "Under the Lake"

July 19: "Under the Lake"

Stuart Manning's poster for "Under the Lake"
(from Doctor Who: exclusive Under the Lake
and Before the Flood posters revealed)

Hey, a good old-fashioned base-under-siege tale! We haven't had one of those since, ooh, "The Time of the Doctor"? Or maybe "Mummy on the Orient Express", depending on your definition? Perhaps "Nightmare in Silver"?

OK, so maybe there've been a number of base-under-siege tales recently. But this one feels a bit special because it's actually an underwater base, rather than just a confined area. So we get lots of lovely corridors to run down and rooms to hide inside, with a small, shrinking cast being attacked by what seems to be ghosts. Although, in a bit of a twist, once the ghosts kill you you become one of said murderous ghosts, which in some ways is more frightening.

Fabulous job on the ghosts, by the way; the missing eyes and hollow skull are really effectively creepy -- a nice combination of practical and CG effects. The slight shimmer they have when they move is also well done. Oh, and if we're praising design choices...the largely empty spaceship is striking in its minimalism (and do I detect a hint of Quatermass and the Pit in the design?), and as I noted above, the base set really is a fabulous, sturdy-looking set. Plus (exciting, this) we get our first proper look at the newly-added roundels to the TARDIS interior (after some brief glimpses in the last two-parter).

So "Under the Lake" looks gorgeous, and it's also well cast, with everyone giving their all and providing some extra nuances for each character (even Steven Robertson, in the rather thankless role of company man Pritchard). My favorite might be the paring between Zaqi Ismail as Lunn and Sophie Stone as Cass, though; there's a real affection there that's obvious from the get-go. (And speaking of Cass, Sophie Stone is the first deaf actor given a role on Doctor Who.) Not convinced about the "I've deleted sign language" joke though -- obviously this is so everyone else can understand what Cass is saying, but it does seem like a bizarre suggestion in terms of in-universe continuity. (So he can delete languages now? Why would he need to? Isn't it all part of the TARDIS's built-in telepathic language translator? The underlying suggestion seems to be that sign language isn't really like spoken language, which isn't true; beyond replacing the verbal component with a manual one (literally manual, as in "hands"), sign languages obey all the rules of language and grammar. In other words, despite their best efforts, this is ever-so-slightly condescending toward signers.²⁶⁴)

The other major thing in "Under the Lake"'s favor is that it's not only great to look at, but it's smartly written too. There's a sense of cleverness in the script, as it sets up the transmitter idea without bringing attention to it until the proper moment (as with Lunn being safe from Pritchard's ghost because he hadn't seen the symbols), and there's also the way Toby Whithouse delights in observing several of the ghost clichés (they're translucent, they can walk through walls (and apparently don't need to obey the laws of gravity, based on a couple shots), they only come out at night (which may not strictly be an actual cliché, but it still helps with the atmosphere of the story)), with even the Doctor at a loss to explain, concluding that they must therefore be ghosts. Great care is taken to build up the atmosphere of faint dread, with occasional bouts of panic (unexpectedly switching to night mode) to help punctuate the mood. The stuff with leading the ghosts to the Faraday cage is a fun part, and the Doctor's confrontation with them is pleasingly cheeky. Speaking of which, this version of the Doctor's cluelessness about human emotions and customs is perhaps the best yet, with his genuinely not realizing he's being upsetting, and needing literal cue cards to properly convey the necessary platitudes; we're light-years ahead of the insulting Doctor early last series. And here in this episode we also get our first look at the character arc for Clara this series: that of being perhaps a bit too reckless, possibly as a way to fill the void left by the loss of Danny Pink. And while it's brought up, it's not dwelt on too much, which is a good move.

Clever cliffhanger, by the way; after the Doctor decides to travel back in time to see what started all this ghost business (which is a novel way to break out of the "base-under-siege" format), we suddenly get a ghost version of the Doctor, out in the lake. Suitably creepy, and it makes you look forward to what's next...

²⁶⁴ Fun fact to counteract that bit of crankiness: when the Doctor says he can speak sign, as he says to her "Go ahead" he actually signs "You're beautiful", which explains Cass's slightly surprised reaction.