C+Q - Hide (2013)
If there's one thing Series 7 taught me it's never trust the
hype. Asylum of the Daleks promised 'every Dalek ever' but what
we actually got was a few old designs hidden in the background
like easter eggs that you'd only ever notice on the tenth
viewing. Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS promised an amazing
in-depth tour of the TARDIS but what we actually got was a
single stretch of corridor re-lit a few times and scenes set in
different rooms like the library shot in extreme close-up so you
can't see anything. Similarly, Hide promised to be scary.
Instead, it's just a standard sci-fi storyline running around in
a white sheet making ghost noises while going to extraordinary
lengths with bullshit made-up science to explain why it's
wearing the sheet.
Chalk circles, cold spots in an otherwise warm room, a creepy
old house, a ghostly figure that can only be seen in
photographs, and the words "Help Me" appearing in spooky writing
on the wall. With the exception of the writing on the wall which
is literally never mentioned again and only appears in the
episode because "WooooOOOOOOoooo! SpooooOOOOOOooookky!",
everything else actually does have a pretty solid explanation,
but so much of it is clearly reverse-engineered from a desire to
hit all those haunted house tropes. As a result, this episode
never comes close to being scary or creepy, and part of it comes
from the fact it explains everything.
When this episode takes off the white sheet and is actually
being Doctor Who, it's incredible. Neil Cross has written some
of the best scenes for Series 7 and I think he's potential
showrunner material. The scene where the Doctor takes photos of
"the Witch of the Well" at various points in Earth's history and
talks to Clara about everyone around him being a ghost is
beautiful.
But when it IS running around in a white sheet trying to be
scary, it just didn't work. Why is the ghost called "the Witch
of the Well"? I know that N-Space and her pocket universe are
supposed to be linked via a "reality well", but who on the
planet Earth other than the Doctor could have known it was
called that and then incorporated it into her nickname? Why did
the house get colder when the "ghost" appeared? There are tons
of obvious tropes ("Do you feel like you're being watched?"),
each one of which makes Hide significantly less terrifying
because it's obvious that Neil Cross is just working from a
template and templates create repetition, repetition creates
routine, routines create a comfort zone, and comfort is the
antithesis of fear.
Off the top of my head I can name five episodes (Silence in the
Library, Listen, The Empty Child, Dalek, and Blink) which are
all scarier than this because they all have a sense of
originality and subtlety, and they illustrate the threat in
relatable human terms instead of using artificial Hollywood
tropes. Using easily recognisable imagery like lightning
flashing at night outside an old stone house immerses the viewer
in a sense of security. Not a FALSE sense of security by the
way. For it to be a false sense of security, you'd need to
suddenly subvert the formula to abruptly shock the audience into
reality, whereas Hide makes you think that it's going to be a
paint-by-numbers ghost story and then is. Yes, there's all the
sci-fi stuff with Hila Tacorien, but even when the Doctor jumps
into the reality well, the pocket universe just turns out to be
another cliché horror setting: a creepy old forest. There's
never a moment where you feel on-edge because this episode
knowingly wraps you up nice and warm in the comfortable and safe
visual language of standard horror. It's more boring than scary.
But perhaps it's not trying to be scary. I mean, I know it is
because that's how it was marketed to me, but let's play
pretend. Maybe it's trying to be silly campy fun. But silly
campy fun wouldn't feel the next to explain everything in
ridiculous detail. Fun doesn't need to justify itself. This
isn't a romp that I can sit back and enjoy like The Husbands of
River Song, this is a 'what's going on in this big creepy
house?' story.
Hide is an alright episode, but it's let down hugely by a
reliance on horror clichés which, instead of adding to the
episode by creating an effectively terrifying atmosphere like
Cold War, merely serve as a distraction. Huge amounts of
exposition clutter the script in an attempt to justify the use
of these tropes in a science fiction context and it just feels
like too much of a coincidence that every single element of this
entire situation resembles a traditional haunted house story.
Look past that and there's a truly wonderful Doctor Who story
buried in here with loads of great themes and ideas that
should've been given more time to expand.