Sunday 21 April 2013

Doctor Who: Hide - Spoiler warning


Well that was awesome…right up until it became Doctor Who…

So this wasn’t a bad episode by any stretch of the imagination, but the central problem with it is that it starts with a kind of creepy, scary atmosphere that completely evaporates as soon as the Doctor figures out what’s going on.

There is a measurable point in the episode when you can say “ok, the scary stuff’s over now”. This jumping in tones doesn’t destroy the episode, but it does definitely have an irritating effect, in the way that it goes so quickly from dark to light.

Also, I have absolutely no love for the reveal at the end. It wasn’t a bad guy it was just trying to find it’s wife. While this kind of ending does serve to deliver a message of not judging things on first appearance, it does beg the question of why the alien THAT IN NO WAY RESEMBLES ANYTHING FROM THE EVIL DEAD didn’t attempt some form of communication rather than chasing people round a pocket universe. It’s like Sirius Black from the Harry Potter series  - why don’t you just tell a couple people about your motives instead of acting like a villain all the time?

Moving on, I liked the interaction between the TARDIS and Clara. It clearly doesn’t like her for some reason. It also shows her herself (in the form of it’s visual interaction hologram) as the only person it could find in the universe who she could empathise with. Is it being catty, or it is showing another version of her that it’s found in history?

But she does manage to convince the TARDIS to enter the pocket universe, risking it’s own life twice…I mean I assume she convinced it the second time, as they seem to have reused exactly the same footage for it. Does the budgeting oversight guy from the BBC sit in on the filming and editing?

Overall, a good episode that could have been better had the original atmosphere been maintained throughout.

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