I Just Crawled To Say I Love You

Doctor Who
Hide
Series Seven, Episode Nine


Oh dear.  Neil Cross again.

Okay, it's wrong to judge a book by its cover (although strictly speaking, that's what book covers are for), so it's probably wrong to think Hide will be rubbish just because I've seen The Rings Of Akhaten.  (Twice.)  Still, I won't deny I was concerned about getting, shall we say, a repeat performance.

Surprise!  It's not rubbish.  In fact, I'm not sure what it is.  This might be one of the most bizarrely all-over-the-place episodes of Doctor Who ever.

"Well what do you suggest I call it?
Night Of The Romantic Bogeymen?"

To start with, it's a scary movie, with four people trapped in a haunted house.  There are numerous nods to The Haunting, which is nice as that's a film I love.  We have a woman overly invested in a ghost, a cold spot, writing on the wall, one room being the "heart" of the house, a mysterious banging on the doors, even a "Whose hand was I holding?" scene.  The trouble with all those references, though, is there's not a smudge of originality between them, and none of it bothers to go for the jugular like it should, because the tone's several miles away from unsettling.

The moment the Doctor and Clara turn up, from a winceful Ghostbusters reference to that plinky-plonk comedy music Murray Gold must be able to do in his sleep by now, the tension largely disappears.  When we get to the hand-holding bit, a moment of oh-dear-god-aaaaaargh! in Robert Wise's movie, it's played like a pantomime.  Couldn't we tone down the zany, just a little bit?  It is actually okay to frighten your audience without pouring on a gallon of Matt Smith Kookiness to make it all better.  (It's even more okay to give Matt Smith more to do than just smug kookiness.)

We veer back towards scary later on, after it transpires the ghost isn't the problem: it's just a stranded time-traveller running away from something else.  Okay.  To be honest, this being Doctor Who I suspected it would turn out to be some sort of victim trapped in something wibbly-wobbly, because there's always a sci-fi explanation for everything, be it ghosts, werewolves, vampires.  Call me old fashioned, but I find this has the same effect as revealing the Wizard of Oz to be a useless old fart with a smoke machine.  If everything is either aliens or timey-wimey, then everything becomes ordinary after a while.

Anyway, the monster is nothing short of brilliant.  Bizarre to look at, never seen either fully or directly, and the jittery way it moves brings to mind old-timey stop motion.  It is terrifying, and yes, more like it, please.  So it's a shame this all turns out to be a gigglesome misunderstanding, and the monster is harmless – to use the Doctor's words, "This isn't a ghost story, it's a love story."  Oh, goodie.  Your mileage may vary on this: if you're a hopeless romantic, the way Hide concludes may leave a sappy grin on your face.  Being a cantankerous fanboy curmudgeon, I was left thinking, "How the hell is this going to frighten anyone the second time round?"

Oh well.  Like it or not, it's a love story.  Actually, it's three: the ghost-hunting Professor and his psychic assistant are in love, or so a lot of clumsy dialogue and starey "glances" tell us (in fifty foot neon lettering); the psychic assistant and the ghost/time traveller are actually distant relatives, and their psychic bond is a familial one; and the scary monster is actually a lovesick scary monster, longing to get back to its lady counterpart.  (Scaring the crap out of everyone it meets is apparently unintentional.)

"Phew, caught up with you at last!
So, do you want to like, go to a movie or something?"

You spend most of Hide putting up with the first of these, which exists seemingly because Alec is a man and Emma is a woman and they're in the same house.  (With respect to Dougray Scott and Jessica Rayne, they're both playing it so straight with Neil Cross's yakkety-yak dialogue that it's like two hatstands being told they're betrothed.)  When the ending comes along and lets rip the other two love stories, it's too much.  How did the Doctor magically figure out Emma and Hila are related?  And was there no less random way of the Doctor figuring out the monster's intentions than having him suddenly stop in his tracks and experience a flashback?  It's like Neil Cross leaned into frame and shouted, "You forgot the last bit!"

Come to think of it, the Doctor is less than dazzling in this one, like when he has the wit to ask "The Witch Of The Well?  So where's the well?" after we've seen it written down right in front of him.  And when he clocks what's really been banging on those doors, it's a good minute or two after it already became thuddingly apparent to the viewer.  Keep up, Doc!  Elsewhere, he's tediously omniscient and smug about everyone and everything, producing names and dates so readily that he must have peeked at this week's script.  He's inconsistent and, strangely for Matt Smith, really quite irritating.  (Speaking of which: it's the 50th Anniversary year, with references aplenty, and no one told Matt how to pronounce "Metebelis 3"?)

Clara has plenty to do, for once.  Apart from some thankless bonding with Emma (because they're both girls and them's the rules), there's the remarkable scene where the Doctor inadvertantly shows her all of Earth's history, birth-to-death.  Well, not that remarkable – it's Rose seeing the Earth get roasted, essentially – but it stops the episode in its tracks and raised my eyebrows.  Matt Smith gets to put across the full alienness of the Doctor (asked if it's okay that humanity just perished, he answers: "Yes"), Clara gets to react to it.  It's necessary stuff (yet more of it, the price of constantly changing the cast), but it's the Best Thing Here.

We also get more of Clara's uneasy relationship with the TARDIS, which really doesn't like her.  It even says so, using a voice interface thingie.  (I'm not sure I like that bit, as it renders the Doctor's chat with the TARDIS in The Doctor's Wife a lot less special, but it only seems to be here because the script hit a brick wall.)  Of all the Clara Who hints, this is the one I'm most interested in, and I hope there's more to come.  As for finding out more about her, despite the secret purpose of this episode being a way to find out more about her, we still don't.  Thanks for that, again.

So, what of Neil Cross's writing, post-Rings Of Akhaten?  There are a couple of real gems here, although television being a collaborative effort we don't necessarily know whodunit.  I'd like to know who to thank for "Collapsing universe, you and me dead, no time complete sentences, abandon planet!", what with "Ignorance is Carlisle" sounding so much like Steven Moffat.  Elsewhere, though, some of that Ringsy loquaciousness is a problem.  The characters talk too zarking much.  When Alec starts psychoanalysing the Doctor the moment he's out of the room, you want to reach into the screen and smack him.  He's not even the psychic one!

Okay, this is cool, but seriously now:
you need keys.
It's not rocket science.

As for the plotting, well, if you're going to set up that the TARDIS can't rescue the Doctor without draining its batteries, a problem so dreadful you have to invent a voice interface to tell Clara about it, don't promptly do it anyway with no consequences.  (Twice.)  Similarly, when Emma uses her psychic link to make all this possible (I think), it's stated that she can't keep it up without serious harm to herself.  A quick pep talk from Alec, however, and she just decides to make the effort.  Well, is it dangerous, or isn't it?  (Now what episode does that remind you of?)  As for the Doctor literally hitching a ride on the TARDIS, and Clara being able to fly it just by asking it nicely... no thanks.  And might I add, grrr.

Hide is many things, predominantly somewhat of a mess.  There's far more going on here than there was in Rings, or Cold War for that matter, and for sheer variety it's quite a memorable episode.  The monster's certainly excellent, and some people are going to want to hug the ending to little gooey pieces.  There are good bits dotted throughout.  I don't know, though.  I like scary things to remain predominantly scary.

Maybe I'll feel better disposed to it some other day.  For now, I'd rather rewatch The Haunting.

Bored Of The Rings

Doctor Who
The Rings Of Akhaten
Series Seven, Episode Seven


The writing staff for Doctor Who seems to be getting smaller these days, with the same few names being drawn over and over, presumably from a fez.  It's cause for celebration when a new one pops up, and knowing nothing about Neil Cross before The Rings Of Akhaten, I was optimistic.  Finally, some fresh blood!

Well, you can put away the party hats.  Rings Of Akhaten sucks.  Not only is it yet another boring, wishy-washy, will-that-do? sort of episode, but it heralds the arrival of yet another Doctor Who scriptwriter who evidently doesn't bring very much to the table.

The opus gets off to a questionable start, showing us the meet-cute that brought Clara's parents together.  Her dad was hit in the face by a leaf and, naturally, stumbles in front of a car, only to be rescued by his soon-to-be missus.  It's a bit like Father's Day, without any of the emotional power or ring of truth.  (Do people really say "Oh my stars"?  Has anyone ever reacted that much to a leaf in the face?)  This is followed by a so-naff-Richard-Curtis-wouldn't-touch-it speech about the universal importance of that leaf, and then a montage of Clara's childhood which tells us such vital information as, Clara had parents, and a childhood, and then she grew up.  Her mum dies at some point, which would be much sadder if we knew anything about her besides her apparent fondness for total morons, and tendency towards exclaming things clumsily.

A new, less-than-impressive Doctor Who monster is born.

The Doctor is present for all of this, because he's trying to learn more about Clara, apparently in the creepiest way possible.  He's not doing any better than we are, incidentally: he now knows Clara was born.  Wow.  Thanks for that.  (And seriously, enough with the Doctor meeting people at random points in their lives.  It's getting so other writers are doing Steven Moffat's ideas to death.)

Hopping back to the present, Clara wants to go somewhere "awesome", so the Doctor selects Akhaten: a multi-alien society that's a great excuse for the props and costume departments (and Murray Gold) to go crazy.  What follows is a bit like The End Of The World, if the companion's reaction to alien life was a lot less interesting, and no one was in any immediate danger.  Clara deals with everything quite well: she's quite enthusiastic, quite friendly, quite... dull, actually.  When does she get good?

Anyway, she comes to the aid of a little girl, Merry, who must sing to a god in order to keep it from waking up.  This god feeds on stories (as in, psychically-infused objects that have personal meaning, though your memories alone will do; see also, "nonsense", "piffle", and "total bollocks").  If it wakes up it will presumably do so on a larger scale, or... something?  It's never really clear.

Merry's song goes awry, or so I'm guessing, and she's sucked into the god's temple with what looks like a ravenous mummy.  Ooh, human sacrifice, it's about to get good!  Except the mummy is there just to wake up the real god – a huge carnivorous star – and serves no other purpose.  Same goes for the Vigil, three incredibly scary-voiced thingummies that stalk around trying to ensure Merry goes through with the ritual.  Good grief, they are brilliant!  But weren't there a couple of hooded guys doing that job earlier?  Well, that was a waste of a good monster.  (Incidentally, they can be defeated by sonic screwdriver abuse.  Sigh.)

The only danger facing the girl is that her "soul" will be eaten, but since that consists of "stories", and since the monster eats those all the time even when it's asleep, with no detrimental effect on anyone, just what the blethering poppycock is actually at stake?  (Besides Clara, whom Merry inexplicably offers to the mummy in place of herself.  At least, that's what I think was going on in one scene.  WTF?  Why doesn't Clara react to that?)

It's around here you notice that over half the episode has elapsed, and yes, this really is it.  All that's going on is standing in a room talking about some sort of doom possibly happening.  (Oh no, the mummy's going to get out of its glass cage!  Okay, it hasn't, but I'm sure it will!  Eventually!  Golly, that glass sure is thick!)  Some of the dialogue works: the Doctor's speech to Merry about how life started in the universe, for example, actually sounds like some thought went into it, and it makes a nice, spiritual-yet-scientific statement about the beauty of life.  Good speech!  A few earlier comments raise a smile as well, like Clara not being able to think of anywhere to go in the TARDIS, and the Doctor saying (after he finally drops a companion off precisely where and when they wanted him to), "Hole in one!"  But most of it's just talking, lurching into speechifying, interspersed with sonic-screwdriver-squeezing.  It's an episode in which tumbleweeds would have made a welcome distraction.

"You know what would liven things up?
Stalking through your childhood."

When the Doctor finally confronts the god/star/giant internet smiley (what were they thinking?), having finally run out of ways to point the sonic screwdriver at stuff, he offers it his memories in the hope of overfeeding it to death.  There's a real moment where you think "Oh no!  He's giving up his identity to save these people!  That's horrible!  What a huge effect that will have on the series!", etc., etc.  But after the god soaks up all that Doctory goodness, guess who's still got all his memories and is completely fine?

Blurgh.  So Matt Smith acts himself to tears against a green screen, lumbering through one of the most overwritten (and frankly, unoriginal) speeches ever to clog up his inbox, and for what?  The whole situation deals in such vague, abstract notions that it just doesn't matter.  Not.  One.  Bit.  It's never explained why the monster's such a threat.  It's never explained why the Doctor's memories (which it "eats" but still somehow leaves in tact) are not enough to destroy it.  And when Clara produces the all-important-leaf, which is apparently charged with the "infinite" energy of all the days her mother might have lived, just because she says so... well, I haven't got a sodding clue how that works, either.  (Nor do I know how she retrieved the leaf at all, since the TARDIS was deliberately refusing her entry earlier.  Hey, great scene, and a lovely tease for whatever's going on with Clara – but hello, editor?)

What's this episode supposed to achieve?  I'm guessing some clarification on what Clara is all about.  Sadly, it offers no help, beyond a garden variety tragic past.  She says "I'm not a bargain basement stand-in for somebody else", but just saying that doesn't magically make it true.  Close your eyes and picture any other Doctor Who companion here, and what's the difference?  As for the Doctor's relationship with Clara, besides creepily stalking his way through her entire childhood, he regards her with as much interest as he'd normally reserve for a mysterious petri dish.  This isn't a friendship, it's a project.  Is that different?  I don't think so (see Amy), but it sure isn't fun to watch.

There's little else to say about an episode that attempts to sing its audience to sleep, other than: it succeeds.