The Doctor Who Mid-Week Review: Hide

Doctor Who Mid Week Review

OK so it isn’t mid-week, but at least it is BEFORE the next episode airs!  😛

Hide is episode nine of the 7th season (series) of Doctor Who post revival.  Originally it looked like the Christmas Special, The Snowmen, was going to be a numbered

Doctor Who Hide Poster

episode, but most listings no longer indicate that.  So we are on episode nine.  This episode features the Doctor and Clara traveling to 1974 to meet up with Prof Alec Palmer and empathic psychic Emma Greyling who are hunting a ghost in the old Caliburn mansion.  The professor is looking for the ghosts, and his partner’s empathic abilities seem to draw them out.  This ghost seems to be fairly well known in  the local lore, and we find out there has already been one significant encounter…so enter our intrepid time travelers.

The Doctor and Clara offer their assistance in hunting this ghost, and our story is off.  What is this ghost and why is it here?  What is creeping in the shadows of the mansion?  What is the true objective of the Doctor, ’cause lets admit it, he always seems to have one these days?  Most of these questions have answers in this episode.  So impressions…

This episode was incredibly inconsistent and just not quite right.  What started out as a brilliant introduction was sullied by the arrival of the main characters. The Doctor enters with a horrible line and Ms. Coleman delivers the followup with the acting skills of a sheep. So cut to the intro, and we come back to things being better.  The Doctor sets to figuring things out and then here we are back to people just acting weird.  Alec and Emma steal the show early, and never let it go really.

All We Need is a talking dog

The dynamic between the characters, their internal struggles and tragedies lead to much better interactions than the “goofy” Doctor we get in this episode and the almost flat Ms. Coleman.  Don’t get me wrong, they have some good scenes, but it almost seems like they burned through the chemistry early.  Though this may be intentional, but you’ll have to see the spoilers section for my thoughts on that.

Visually, as with all the episodes this season, this offing is again dead on.  Just the right mix of cheese and awesome.  The scenes are set to fit the tone, and enhance the situation.  The same goes for the sound.  While not the creepiest soundtrack or sound work, it fits in and helps immerse the audience   Our supporting characters fit in, and go along with the Doctor in

Who is in the window

the way that people do when they recognize someone know way more about what is going on than they do.  The Prof is even reluctant to let the Doctor in, under his guise as being from the Ministry or possibly military, but being an ex-military man he gives in to the Doctor’s pressuring.  The Doctor, unfortunately  seems so focused on something that he is even more brash than normal.  It is like this mystery is in his way, and when it becomes more serious, he takes it seriously, but seems in a hurry to rush it.  It’s like he can’t be bothered to try and understand humans, and especially one human in particular.  Also, what’s up with the whole fear thing.  I believe there are things the Doctor fears, but I don’t know why this situation did.

Thumbs up

Overall it is a good episode, but didn’t improve on Cold War in my opinion.  We are about halfway through the second half of this season (I hate splitting short seasons) and we haven’t really hit a stride yet.  There was a nice callback to The Water of Mars with the orange spacesuit, and a callback to the TARDIS of old with the coat tree referance.  Hopefully we are looking to take things in a better direction on the home stretch here, but overall this is not quite how I was hoping the 50th anniversary would be.  then again, maybe it is just me.  What do you all think?  Anywho…on to the spoilers sweeties!

[spoiler]

Earth’s beginning

The Doctor’s real motives: So at the end we learn the Doctor’s real motives.  But is Emma telling the whole story?  She has already shown distrust of the Doctor, and he has now twice asked her to take action action that was extremely draining and harmful to her.  Emma has pretty much no motivation to trust the Doctor or tell him anything.  I believe Emma knows more about both of them than she is letting on.  Three times Emma and Clara had “meaningful” conversations, giving Emma plenty of opportunity to read Clara.  It was clear Emma got strong feelings on the Doctor from just a few moments of exposure, so I am sure she had a very solid perspective on Clara.  I don’t believe she thinks Clara is a direct threat to the Doctor though.  So yet again we have a non-clue.

The great TARDIS mysteries: So the TARDIS is still behaving weird.  The Doctor can just run up and open the door one time and then needs a key the next. I suppose that could be an evolution of the “open with a snap of his fingers” but yet Clara can’t get it.  She STILL doesn’t have a key.  He even has to go over and open the door for her, but yet no key.  There is a discussion about Clara feeling like the TARDIS doesn’t liek here and he simply says the TARDIS is like a cat, slow to trust, yet this is a completely different behavior pattern than we have seen before.  So later in the ep, the TARDIS and Clara have a conversation via the TARDIS voice visual interface hologram.  As was previously stated, the TARDIS could go to the pocket dimension, but would be drained in four seconds.  Clara convinces the TARDIS to go anyway, and it flies itself to the rescue (Yet Emma can open the portal again even

Clara and the TARDIS

though the TARDIS was hooked up to the gear, by all appearances powering it).  But it is CLEARLY in the pocket universe for longer than four seconds, not once but TWICE!  And that ending was pure lunacy.  I suppose the argument is because Emma has the portal open, the TARDIS has a link to the main universe and can thereby stay in the pocket longer, ore get back easier.  So the TARDIS is apparently in even more control of itself than it was after “The Doctor’s Wife”, and it all just seems a little strange.

The Great Intelligence:  Haven’t forgotten about that little bugger have we?  So it has been there twice when Clara has.  There will be a connection.  I have seen the theory that Clara is like the snowmen, made of the GI.  There is evidence to support this.  In this episode Clara states that she is not happy.  This could be part of the reluctance or was she mirroring the monster?  She was very sure of the professors feelings for Emma…because she could reflect them?  She could fly the TADIS because she is mirroring the Doctor, which could also explain why the TARDIS doesn’t like Clara.  There are examples from the other episodes too.  Also she has saved the day every time.

Earth’s end

What is the Doctor Doing:  He seems to be testing her.  Putting her through a series of tests to see how she reacts.  To see if he can force the “real” Clara to reveal herself and then allow him to figure it out.  He doesn’t seem to trust her.  He has never explained even the most basic things about their travels, well ok maybe the most basic, but key things he just leaves out.

Clara:  What is she?  Who is she?  What is her connection to the other two versions?  Which is the original?  Is there an original?  All we know now is a lot of nothing.

11th most disgusting thing ever invented – whiskey.  So was that some sort of oblique 11th Doctor ref?  What are the top 10?  Maybe that is what Clara was waiting for Emma to ask, but it failed.  Is it a line the Doctor ever used?  I don’t know.  It was thrown out there very obviously, but never had a resolution.

Sliver of Ice: So we know this right? The Doctor does what he has to, always.  I mean he had to “die” because he became to

The latest in empath headwear

big, too much the warrior.  Even his first form he was more than a bit of a hardass.  But now Clara seems to have even more reason to be reluctant with the Doctor.  Again this may be why Clara seems so flat many times in this episode.  She is not getting the special attention a companion normally has lately, and she is more just getting tugged around space and time and being thrown into what seem to be tests.  All the Doctor cares about is solving the riddle that is Clara, and she is being jipped of the full experience for it.  Not that he doesn’t have cause to be wary of her, but still….

The lady who gave the number: So we still have no clues as to who gave Clara the Doctor’s number.  The obvious answer would be River, but I am not entirely convinced of that.  Someone connected to the Great Intelligence perhaps?  Someone else?  I keep wondering on this one.  I almost want to believe it is Clara that gave herself the number, but that seems unlikely.

Is this all a dream?:  Things have been very odd.  The Doctor is off.  his companion is off.  The TARDIS is off.  The Doctor thought the coat tree from earlier seasons was in the TARDIS control room.  Is any of this really happening?  Is the Doctor actually in the clutches of a great enemy and these stories are just fictions to keep him occupied or even force the Doctor

The not-monster

into revealing secrets?  Not likely, but something weird is definitely up.

[/spoiler]

As always, share your thoughts and ideas below.  Use the spoiler tags as necessary. 😀