DOCTOR WHO: Mr. Harvey Thinks You Should HIDE

Season 7, Episode 9 “Hide”

Something is haunting the halls of Caliburn House, an entity that history calls “The Witch In The Well”. To this mysterious house comes a scientist, whose past is a web of secrets and lies, and his young assistant, intent on finding the true nature of the haunting.

And then the Doctor and Clara arrive…

Spoilers from here on out kids, so if you haven’t watched “Hide”, then go forth and do so!

Seriously. This review is way late, so if you haven’t watched “Hide” yet, you are way behind.

Well, right off the bat, let’s get this out of the way: I know why they offered Luther scribe Neil Cross “The Rings of Akhaten”. It’s because he wrote “Hide”, and this is, quite simply, one of the best episodes of this season. It even manages to make the “Love is the answer” thing that has popped up in Who over the last few years actually work, and that is no small feat. Now, ’tis true, I have been quite critical of several of this season’s stories, so calling this one “one of the best” might seem like damning with faint praise, but no no, I really did massively enjoy “Hide”.

One thing that works right away is the production design, which is crucial when dealing with a “ghost story”. Luckily the BBC is a deft hand at period pieces involving old mansions, so the setting of Caliburn House is suitably spooky, as is the forested pocket dimension. The latter especially works, with its lighting and fog, giving us something that is recognizable and yet quite eerie. I know the story is set in 1974, but really, it could be the 50’s or 60’s without any problem, and I think one of the few problems with the episode, and not that it’s a critical one, is that setting it in ’74 means Dougray Scott, playing Professor Alec Palmer, is playing older than his age here. More on that in a moment.

Story-wise, the pacing problems that plagued “The Rings…” are absent here, with the story clipping along at a brisk pace without feeling at all rushed. And since Who is far from unfamiliar with the supernatural turning out to have a more science or alien origin, especially in the Original Series, it’s nice to see this type of story make an appearance again. Cross has said that he was inspired by the Quatermass serials, and as someone who watched and loved those as a child, I can definitely see that influence, and in a good way. He also wanted to have this episode involve Quatermass and the Doctor meeting, but alas, ’twas not to be. Actually, that’s probably for the best, as combining those two classic pieces of British science fiction would have certainly required either a two-parter or a script that flowed nowhere near as well as this. And flow it does, establishing our two guest stars right away, and giving them some character, as well as setting up the basic premise of the episode. First we have Scott’s Professor Palmer, with his mounds of equipment, and then we have Jessica Raine’s Emma Grayling, a young and powerful psychic, both there to try and contact the Witch in the Well.

Professor Palmer is an interesting character. He served in World War II, in the Special Operations Executive, created during the war to run espionage and sabotage behind enemy lines in Europe. He’s a man who was a soldier and a hero, who became a teacher and a scientist, but it’s the soldier and the espionage part that is the most interesting aspect of the character. The SOE, often called “The Baker Street Irregulars” (both a Sherlock Holmes reference, and because their offices were on Baker Street), was one of the most secret intelligence agencies of WWII, employing anyone who could get the job done, and that job was often quite nasty, leading to its other major nickname, “The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare”. (By the by, Ian Flemming used the SOE as one of his inspirations for James Bond, and in a nice little bit of casting here, Dougray Scott was on the shortlist to take on that role, losing out to Daniel Craig.) But here is a man who was a warrior, a soldier, turned to a man of peace and science, trying to solve mysteries and investigate the universe with the aid of a talented young assistant… sound familiar at all to anyone? The parallels are definitely there, and made even more so by Emma referring to him as Professor throughout the story, evoking the 7th Doctor and Ace, just a wee bit.

Palmer is also someone whose lies, and secrets keep him cut off from those closest to him, something else he shares with our Time Lord. He knows Emma loves him, and he loves her in return, but his past, and those secrets, keep him from reaching out to her. He’s killed, he’s responsible for sending allies to their deaths, and the weight of those lives is a heavy one. And all you have to do is watch the Doctor’s face as Palmer tells him this, to see that he knows that all too well. It’s one of many wonderful quiet conversations in this episode, conversations that reveal much about the Doctor, even when he’s not the obvious subject, because in many ways, he really, really is. One does wonder, in this buildup to the Anniversary Special, just how much we’re going to be looking at who the Doctor is, through the eyes of those around him.

Oh yes, the age thing. OK, Scott is 47. Jessica Raine is 31. She’s a very young looking 31, but still, put the two side by side, and the age difference is obvious. Is this a big deal? Of course not, not really, because love knows no bounds and stuff, but consider this a moment: Palmer served in WWII. WWII ended in 1945, and this story is set in 1974, 29 years later. For Palmer to have done the things he did during the war, to have been in what seems to have been a leadership position and muster out as a major, he likely ended the war in his 30’s. Which makes him, what? 60? 65? Really? There’s nothing here that made 1974 a necessity, so why is Palmer older than Scott? Is it a big deal? NO IT’S NOT. It’s just… odd. Anyway.

Another of those great quiet conversations happens between Emma and Clara, starting off at first as Clara asking about Emma and Palmer’s relationship, but again, it turns into a discussion of the Doctor. Jessica Raine gives us a curious creature in Emma… someone who seems fragile in some ways, but who is, in fact, incredibly strong. Whether it’s gently breaking down Palmer’s walls or facing a ghost, her quiet demeanor masks a woman who, when faced with time travelers and pocket dimensions and some really nasty psychic pain, grits her teeth and pushes on. She is, in fact, the reason the Doctor has come to Caliburn House, because she is both a powerful psychic and an empath, and the Doctor has a mystery to solve in in Clara. Of course the answer he gets isn’t the one he wants, but it’s that strength that makes it possible to pierce the barriers of the pocket universe.

And then there’s that conversation with Clara, where Emma warns her that the Doctor has a sliver of ice in his heart, and the conversation with Palmer, where she makes it clear that she, like we do, knows the Doctor lies. But the biggest conversation comes when the Doctor takes the TARDIS and Clara from the birth of the Earth to its dying days, solving the mystery of the Witch of the Well.

The Doctor: What’s wrong?
Clara: Did we just watch the entire life cycle of earth, birth to death?
The Doctor: Yes.
Clara: And you’re okay with that?
The Doctor: …Yes.
Clara: How can you be?
The Doctor: The TARDIS. She’s time. We.. wibbly-vortex, and so on.
Clara: That’s not what I mean.

It’s second nature to the Doctor, isn’t it? Moving through time, seeing the birth and death of worlds, of civilizations, of the people he knows and cares about. But it’s not to Clara. Here, for the first time, she sees the world she lives on, the world she was born on, reduced to a series of snapshots, and suddenly, she realizes just how alien the Doctor really is:

Clara: To you I haven’t been born yet, and to you I’ve been dead a hundred billion years. Is my body out there somewhere, in the ground?
The Doctor: Yes, I suppose it is.
Clara: But here we are, talking. So I am a ghost. To you, I’m a ghost. We’re all ghosts to you. We must be nothing.
The Doctor: No, no. You’re not that.
Clara: Then what are we? What can we possibly be?
The Doctor: You are… the only mystery worth solving.

I’ve seen a lot of talk about this scene online, and a lot of folks saying that the Doctor is talking about Clara as that mystery, but that’s just wrong. First, there’s the context. She’s talking about everyone who isn’t the Doctor, obviously including herself, but there is that repeated “we”. The Doctor’s response isn’t about her, specifically, although yes, she intrigues him. And this is the Doctor we’re talking about, who has made Earth his second home, who has made himself the guardian of humanity, who returns to our wee planet over and over… to think he’s only talking about Clara is just thinking really narrowly. We know he doesn’t really understand us completely, however much he sees right through us; just look at his interactions with those closest to him over the last 50 years of storytelling, and here where we see the casual way he talks about Emma’s painful emotional life, without a thought to how she might feel about it. It’s an important scene. It does emphasize how different from us the Doctor is, and how much the world he inhabits is so much bigger than ours, and most importantly? That we are… the only mystery worth solving.

Smith and Coleman both do excellent work here, aside from a couple of off moments with Clara, but since this was actually the first episode shot with Coleman playing this version of Clara, that can be forgiven. Otherwise, with the quiet conversations both actors really shine here. The moment where the Doctor says he is afraid is quite good, and Smith gives us that mix of cheerful adventure mixed with world-weary sadness that we have come to see hardwired into the Doctor throughout the episode. The reveal that this has all been a way to try and use Emma’s abilities to try and figure out Clara, and his realization that the monster and the Professor are quite like him plays across his face extremely well.

And then there’s the nicely worked in continuity moments, with shout outs to Metebelis III from the 3rd Doctor’s “The Planet Of The Spiders”, with a certain thought amplifying crystal, and to both the 4th and 8th Doctors, with the appearance of the “subset of the Eye of Harmony”. We also have the further development of the relationship between Clara and the TARDIS, leading to something of a truce it seems, if not before the TARDIS being… something of a bit of a bitch to the Doctor’s latest Companion. One does recall “The Doctor’s Wife” and a certain comment about strays…

Our time traveler, it must be noted, is a bit of a cypher, and that’s OK actually, as Kemi-Bo Jacobs’ Hila Tukurian isn’t really the focus of the story here, despite being the cause of the mystery at Caliburn House. She’s the start of the story, and appears, for a time, to be the goal of the story, but in reality, she’s a means to an end, and as such, we get as much information as we need about her. With the story unfolding as it did, it didn’t bother me one bit that we know incredibly little about her, because we simply don’t need to, do we? Because the real focus is Emma and the Professor, the Doctor and the aliens.

And that brings us to our monsters this week — extremely alien and quite the effective design by the way — and the power of love, doesn’t it? I have, more than once, noted the use of the “love saves the day”, theme that has popped up in Who, and I have been fairly critical of that use, but here, it actually works. What saves it is that moment where Clara thinks the Doctor is holding her hand, and of course he isn’t, but think about that for a moment. The “monster” reached out, and held Clara’s hand. Not an attack, not anything else but a simple gesture, and that is why the Doctor went back to the pocket universe, and that is why, although again, there are plenty of complaints bouncing  around the web about the ending, I thought it worked extremely well. And the way it ended not quite at the end, with the reunion of the two alien creatures happening after the credits and out of our view? Excellent. Because it was about the Doctor understanding that the “monster” was just looking for a way to find his mate, and as the Doctor said:

“Every lonely monster needs a companion.”

And he would know… wouldn’t he?

Yeah… pretty excellent episode here, and yes, my vote for the best of this season.

So there it is, my much delayed review of “Hide”. Next up is this weeks episode, “Journey to the Center of the TARDIS”… can you guess what I thought of it?

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