#there are some very strong issues w how martha is written or treated by the narrative esp in th shakespeare ep

[aq2003]

i feel like ten and martha's friendship is kind of doomed from the start because like. ten kind of needs a friend to be around him lest he go insane (even if he's in semi denial about it). and martha likes and admires him in return. and they both inherently trust and rely each other, because how could they not. but also ten is very much not in a great place at all. he just lost rose and refuses to talk about her with anyone. the guilt is eating him alive and he's trying so hard to ignore it and it's resulting in him becoming more and more reckless and self-sacrificing. and he (unintentionally) puts it all on martha. he trusts her to save him and he also trusts her to sacrifice him in the name of saving people. and at the same time every time he finds himself getting closer to or more vulnerable with her he stops and pushes her away (see: his guilt over rose). and that is so unfair. that is so much to put on one person, especially someone that is in a spot of mutual care and trust. like i wish martha had met ten when he was more stable/healthy/not haunted by his extremely fresh grief but she didn't, and i think they will save each other over and over until one of them comes apart at the seams. basically

[the-desolated-quill]

Hide - Doctor Who blog

(SPOILER WARNING: The following is an in-depth critical analysis. If you haven’t seen this episode yet, you may want to before reading this review)

I’m going to be honest with you. I had completely forgotten this episode had even existed. I remember all the other episodes of Doctor Who, but Hide somehow slipped from my memory, and I don’t know why. I must have watched it when it was broadcast because at the time I used to watch Doctor Who religiously every Saturday until Moffat’s bullshit became too much for me, so I don’t know how I could have forgotten it.

Watching Hide again for the purposes of this was very much a journey of rediscovery for me. It was like watching for the first time all over again, and yeah, I liked it a lot. It’s got some problems, but I’d say it’s definitely a winner.

Hide takes place in a haunted house in the 1970s. Professor Alec Palmer and his assistant Emma Grayling are trying to make contact with a spirit inside the house, but when the Doctor and Clara show up, it turns out there may be a more scientific explanation for what’s going on.

Written by Neil Cross, who previously wrote The Rings Of Akhaten, Hide takes a lot of inspiration from the works of Nigel Kneale, most notably The Quatermass Experiment and The Stone Tapes (which is ironic considering how much Nigel Kneale reportedly hated Doctor Who at the time). When you watch the episode, it does have a very Kneale-esque feel to it. The plot itself feels like it could have been ripped straight out of one of the original Quatermass serials, but Cross manages to do just enough with it to make it his own and not have the episode just be a homage.

I think the two things that make Hide so effective is its simplicity and its scale. There’s no alien invasion or world ending disaster to worry about. It’s kept mostly to one location with only a couple of characters, which means there’s more time for Cross to really develop them as well as to play around with the idea and the setting.  In some ways Hide is a traditional ghost story, and it’s done very effectively. The atmosphere is really creepy and the episode does a really good job of keeping you in suspense, making you question just what is going on. What’s even more refreshing is the episode’s use of subtlety. There’s no giant info dumps or overly sentimental bombast like we usually get in New Who. It’s all pitched perfectly for the most part.

What’s even more impressive is how Cross transitions from supernatural horror to science fiction really subtly over the course of the story. Turns out the ghost isn’t a ghost, but a survivor that crash landed into a pocket universe, and what we’ve been seeing all this time are snapshots of her running away from a monster as well as the effects of time dilation. One second in the pocket universe represents hundreds of years in our universe. That’s a really clever idea and a very novel way of exploring the time travel aspect of Doctor Who. And the reveal at the end that the ‘ghost’ is actually Alec and Emma’s great great great great great great granddaughter is just the cherry on top of the cake. It explains why the psychic connection between Emma and the ‘ghost’ was so strong and you can tell Neil Cross was really thinking how all of this fits together.

Let’s talk about Alec and Emma for a moment. With such a small scale episode and more emphasis on characters, it’s important that the performances are at their best, and Dougray Scott and Jessica Raine don’t put a foot wrong. Alec is a very sympathetic character. An intelligent and well meaning man who fought in the war and sent many people to their deaths, leaving him with years of guilt and turmoil that made him decide to take up ghost hunting in the hopes that he can get in touch with his deceased comrades and thank them for their service. Emma too is very likeable and sympathetic. A psychic (empath to be precise) who can sense the feelings of others, and thus makes it hard for her to form close bonds with people because of the pain she would feel from sensing such intense emotions from them. It also ties into why she’s a ghost hunter because she says at one point that the ghost is lonely, and clearly she can relate to that due to her own situation. They’re both good characters and I like their relationship, which, again, is handled very subtly and effectively. If this was a Russel T Davies script or even a Steven Moffat script, there would probably be a lot of swelling music and OTT monologues as the characters confess their love for each other, but Hide thankfully doesn’t go that route, instead plumping for a less is more approach, which is more effective. Yes there are a few declarations of love here and there, but it’s handled really well and Alec and Emma’s feelings for each other are conveyed more through their actions and body language rather than dialogue. It’s a combination of great writing and great acting.

While I did really enjoy Hide for the most part, I do have some issues with it. First I’m slightly annoyed by how the episode treats the male and female characters. Hide very quickly has the Doctor pair up with Alec and Clara with Emma, and you think fair enough. Makes sense I guess. But while the Doctor and Alec get to have all these interesting discussions about their past and angst, Clara and Emma are reduced to talking about the men in their life, which profoundly irritated me. Hello! Emma is an empath who has trouble with social interactions! Do you reckon she might have an interesting backstory to tell?! I feel it undermines the whole romance angle because it puts more emphasis on Alec and his feelings and worries, whilst any that Emma has is merely an afterthought.

Something else that undermines the episode are the monsters. Apart from the fact that the animatronic puppets they use for them are utter crap, I don’t understand why this episode needed to have monsters in it in the first place. Doctor Who is such a flexible format and there are loads of different kinds of stories you could tell, which is why it always puzzles me why we always seem to revert back to the monster of the week format, to the point where a monster gets shoehorned in for no reason other than the BBC feel they have to. The reason Hide works so well is because of the uncertainty of it all. The fear factor comes from us and the characters not knowing what’s going on. Why cheapen that with some shitty monster? (yes I know it looks like John Carpenter’s The Thing and it’s meant to reference just how much influence Nigel Kneale had on the sci-fi genre and how under appreciated he is today, but it’s still pointless). And then it just got worse when it turned out the monsters aren’t monsters at all, but long lost lovers trapped in different universes wanting to reunite. Dear God, give me strength! Any subtlety the episode had at that point just sailed clean out of the window. Why couldn’t they have just kept it as a ghost in a pocket universe? That was fine. I was enjoying that.

But the worst thing of all is the Doctor and Clara. People wonder why I don’t like the Eleventh Doctor very much, and for me it’s because of episodes like this. Hide does a really good job of setting up a creepy atmosphere, it’s all very tense and chilling, and then along comes Matt Smith with his goofy antics and hands waving around like windmills to spoil it all. I mean for fuck sake, where’s his off switch?! I recognise this is more of a personal taste issue, and if you think Matt Smith is funny then good for you, but I just can’t stand him. And it’s even more infuriating this time around because he’s effectively trampling all over the creepy atmosphere and destroying the tension. Plus there are some scenes that are just inexcusable. There’s a bit where the Doctor is about to use Emma’s psychic powers to open a wormhole to the pocket universe, and she asks whether or not it’s going to hurt. Now obviously the Doctor would be straightforward with her and say yes, it will hurt. How he conveys that depends on the incarnation. If it was Tom Baker or David Tennant, it would probably be in a sympathetic tone and maybe they’d attempt to reassure her. If it was William Hartnell or Peter Capaldi, they would probably be more blunt and to the point. What does Matt Smith’s Doctor say to her?

“No... Yes... Maybe. I don’t know. I’d be interested to find out.”

Yep, they actually try to play it for comedy. Okay, three things. One, fuck you, two, that feels really out of character, and three, how can you be so callous and insensitive?! What makes you think the prospect of a character we happen to like feeling incredible pain and agony is somehow amusing? At this stage I’m practically counting the seconds until he regenerates.

But as bad as the Doctor is, Clara is even worse. Jenna Coleman seems to have reverted back to Asylum of The Daleks mode, where she’s this smug, obnoxious, lecherous cow. She never takes the threat seriously and, like Matt Smith, keeps undermining the tension. One really horrid scene is when Emma closes the wormhole due to the excruciating pain and the Doctor becomes trapped on the other side of the wormhole. Now if it was any other companion like Sarah Jane or Martha or, hell, even Amy, they would probably try to reassure Emma and either convince her to try again or find some other way to save the Doctor. What does Clara do? Berate Emma for leaving the Doctor behind before proceeding to have a full blown argument with the TARDIS. I should also note that it isn’t Clara who ends up saving the Doctor in the end, but the TARDIS itself. Clara was too busy bitching and whining like a tiny child who hasn’t got her way to do much good. Remind me, why am I supposed to like her again? What is it about her that makes her companion material? Oh yeah! The bullshit Moffat mystery! Like I give a fuck about that!

And speaking of bullshit Moffat mysteries, apparently the TARDIS doesn’t like Clara very much. I can understand why, quite frankly. The problem is it feels more like delusional anthropomorphic personification rather than an actual thing that’s happening. In both The Rings Of Akhaten and Hide, Clara can’t open the TARDIS doors. Yes it could be because the TARDIS doesn’t like her, but a more likely explanation is that she doesn’t have a key. In Hide, the TARDIS initially refuses to help Clara. Yes it could be because it doesn’t like her, but a more likely explanation is because the TARDIS could die if it went into the pocket universe, like the Doctor said it would. It’s all just utter bollocks that never goes anywhere. What’s worse is that it’s completely reversed. The TARDIS magically changes its mind for no reason and let’s Clara in to save the Doctor, and then this whole plot point is never brought up again. Same goes for the conversation Clara has with the Doctor when they witness the entire life cycle of the Earth from birth to death and Clara is bothered by the fact that the Doctor doesn’t seem emotionally affected by it. You could have done something with it, but it’s just really clunky and it’s never addressed or brought up again afterward. So what’s the point of bringing it up?

Despite a few flaws and the most obnoxious Doctor/companion pairing in Who history, I still really enjoyed Hide. It has a great central premise, likeable and well developed characters for the most part and decent execution. Two episodes, two wins for Neil Cross. Any chance of a third?