DOCTOR WHO-HIDE
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DOCTOR
WHO-HIDE
“There’s
something in the mist.”
Continuing
the brave rewatch of the Moffat/Smith era, we get a full half hour or so of
brilliant scares. I mean it. At least that’s what I thought when I first
watched it, alone, in a big house by myself on a dark stormy night. I seem to
recall it going south after the first 30 minutes or so or maybe 20. Let’s dig
in…
….
It helps
that, for once, there’s atmosphere and ambience at the haunted Caliburn house
but what’s more important is that even though it is 1974 at a deserted moor
(btw do not miss the same year’s---2012---THE WOMAN IN BLACK, which has genuine
scares and a real creepy atmosphere superior to this and despite what others
might say is a real improvement over the tepid, dismal 1989 UK TV movie, though a shocking ending happens in THAT
one)…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Woman_in_Black_(1989_film)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Woman_in_Black_(2012_film)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2qkyv45GhUA
…the real
reason this is involving is that the two people involved in this opening, Alec
and Emma, aren’t your typical Moffat caricatures but full fledged, fully
fleshed out real people who seem real, expertly played by both actors. We CARE
about them. Not sure after that first 20 minutes that these two remain
prominent in the story, though and that’s when it goes south. BUT for the
opening, this feels like a great horror story in a haunted house that modern
WHO hasn’t really yet explored in any great way.
And for now,
it works.
Then, it
gets ruined as the Doctor knocks, purposely (in his sociopathic manner) scares
Alec and then has Clara answer who they are with, “Ghostbusters.” Tepid and stupid. I’m not in the mood for
these two idiots.
The twosome
here, break the mood of POLTERGEIST in a way that Tom Baker (and almost all the
other Doctors) and his companions (though I don’t think companion was a term
used on the TV show right away and I believe it happened LATE in the Sarah Jane
era, maybe even her last story, though I do recall folks asking if the Doctor
was SARAH’S companion) didn’t. They move with care in a stor and seriousness.
And this is the problem with the Moffat Era: great starts sometimes, great premises
almost all the time, but horrid tone, horrid execution and a comic style that
breaks any horror, any scares, any serious thought about the ideas and “action”
on display.
I really, at
the time and NOW, couldn’t wait for Matt’s Era to end and felt even more so for
the entire Moffat Era to end when after a few episodes Capaldi (generally a
better Doctor and a more convincing one, maybe it has to do with the fact that
he was a fan?) had even worse scripts than Matt did, on the whole. I wished
Moffat left DW sooner than he did, like during THE 11TH HOUR.
This picks
up again with Matt’s usual rants and ravings but this time it’s actually not a
distraction but genuinely amusing and it’s nice Clara has to SHHH him as he’s
unaware he’s describing Emma’s empathic ability as not just the most
compassionate people you’d ever meet but also the loneliest and those with pain
and sorrow. Somehow, it works and Matt, when the scripts are good, and the
dialog is GREAT, can be a really good, even great Doctor. Clara, played by
Jenna, is, against all odds of the character mess the writers made for her, is
also a great actor and does well in almost every scene she’s in, though the
direction is usually flippant. Here, somehow, it works.
Writer Neil
Cross originally intended for the Professor in Hide to be Bernard Quatermass.
Palmer was created as a replacement when obtaining the license to Quatermass'
character proved impossible. BTW are there different ways to spell Quatermass?
I only just realized the differences!
In any case,
I don’t believe this character or this story would work if it WERE
Quartermass/Quatermass. He would just have had too much experience under his
belt to be settled into this story with the tension we feel for him and Emma. It’s
fine the way it is, at least for the first half.
The slower
pace as Alec tells the background actually works in the favor of the script and
the episode. Horror, unlike action adventure and science fiction, though all
three sometimes overlap (THIRTEEN GHOSTS, the remake) and sometimes in this
very show, is sometimes and usually better for a slower pace, as it builds
atmosphere, setting, tone, and background. Unfortunately, or fortunately,
horror has become less and less appealing to me, for a variety of reasons but
first and foremost might be that horror is usually and generally negative in
design and has a lot of bad energy based in fear, and in that it has things
similar to religion and those who would control us. Never mind…
…Matt holds
those candles awfully close to his face. I wonder if that’s special effects or
props or the real thing. He also holds them close to his co stars, especially
to the lady playing Emma in one scene.
I seem to
recall that there was an audio about a witch in a well in the BIG FINISH audio
range (possibly an 8th Doctor audio). It was released in 2011. Hmmm.
https://tardis.fandom.com/wiki/The_Witch_from_the_Well_(audio_story)
Nine and a
half minutes in is the best part as Clara and the Doctor go looking for the
ghost of the woman from the unfound well. The music works, the sets work, and
the creep factor is high.
There are
also some THE HAUNTED vibes here (not the tepid 1999 remake but the original
(and great) British film from 1963). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Haunting_(1963_film)
Something
BBCA must have cut happens now. The Doctor asks Clara if she feels anything and
then says, “Your pants are so on fire.”
She laughs.
WHAT? What
does that even mean? Does it mean what I think it means? Does the Doctor…wow.
Okay so…it
IS interesting how Emma warns Clara not to trust the Doctor and that there’s a
cold sliver in his heart AND that the TARDIS doesn’t like Clara is also
revealed as she tells the Doctor she thinks the TARDIS is looking at her and
doesn’t like her. He tells her it is like a cat, a bit slow to trust but will
get there in the end. Now, both of these are viable story paths but…should they
be used? I mean the show has shifted over time, almost under our noses to be
about the adventures and travels OF the Doctor to being ABOUT the Doctor
himself and his traits and stuff. Yes, it is nice to have mystery about the Doctor.
Is it likely to work that you make your leading man seemingly shifty and
untrustworthy to his companion(s)? I don’t know. It seemed to work for BLAKE’S
SEVEN and sometimes characters like Dr. Smith from LOST IN SPACE and Mr.
Fitzhugh from LAND OF THE GIANTS but for the Doctor? Not really sure. Though
I’m not really sure ANYTHING in the Matt Smith/Capaldi era really works for
long or at all.
Also having
the TARDIS not like a companion? It’s risky at best. I mean we, as fans or even
audience members who are not die hard fans, have more exposure to the TARDIS
and we like the TARDIS and if she/he doesn’t like the companion, should we?
Should WE trust Clara?
To underline
this, Matt’s sociopathic Doctor shuts the door on Clara and has to remember to
let her in!?
Another
story point: just as the show was establishing a really unsettling and dare I
say, even scary, haunted house story, the pair take off in the TARDIS. As if to
underline that this is DOCTOR WHO and it cannot possibly be a ghost. THAT story
would have been worth exploring down a road less traveled: the Doctor facing
the possibility that there are things he does not know about (ala Quartermass’
real worth as a story character at times) and that for once, a supernatural
cause rather than a science fictional one or in the fictional universe, a
science factual one. It could have been about his facing his own prejudices and
maybe changing his ideas as he sort of did after THE IMPOSSIBLE PLANET/THE
SATAN PIT (watching PLANET OF THE OOD where he tells Donna it WAS the devil
that turned the Ood on that occasion to red eye; she of course says, “If you’re
gonna take the mickey out, I’m going to put my hood back up,” and not hear
him).
Instead,
here with HIDE, we break total
atmosphere to go off site…and it ruins the story.
They
actually don’t move from the spot but go to the same spot in a different time.
As if rubbing it in, the spacesuit from THE IMPOSSIBLE PLANET/THE SATAN PIT is
brought out by the Doctor. He also looked for the umbrella stand that he was
sure he had.
At about
20:12 (interesting number, that), there’s a real genuine jump scare that’s not
a cheat: the ghost/thing by the window as Alec talks to Emma and both are
looking out the window and so IS THE GHOST.
This is not
a cheat because it’s the thing itself and not some cat jumping into frame or
something stupid like in the horrid version of THE AMITYVILLE HORROR, which
wasted a scary and good book on a terribly written, acted, and executed 1979
film. This could be the last time DOCTOR WHO really scared me…or anyone. Well,
other than Missy sitting in a café so insane and so dangerous that even the
military are afraid of her (and as much as I hate Missy that scene and others
make her VERY scary even though the Master isn’t really insane in the way that
Missy or the Sim Master of the Chibs Master is).
The next
conversation Clara has with the Doctor is also interesting but it’s interesting
in that it scores a point against this era and this Doctor because, confronted
with Clara’s insecurities about her being dead and his callousness about having
watched the end of life on Earth and seeing it from birth to death (while also
breaking the premise of the haunted house theme here), his only answer to her
is, “You are the only mystery worth solving.”
As if this
conversation were worth an entire OTHER story or not---it might have confronted
the fact that Clara and others are NOT ghosts but spiritual beings who are even
more immortal than ANY Time Lord. Moffat, not sure of his allegiances but RTD
certainly didn’t believe in an afterlife, ghosts, spirits or God (and IMO that
makes someone very wrong in life and in their opinions about almost everything
and smug and just misguided) but here could have been a DW universe changing
premise about life after death…and they opt out of it as much as the Doctor by
just cutting short the conversation with a cryptic comment from the Doctor, who
DOESN’T SEEM TO CARE about Clara or any of us with such a comment.
That, plus
the idea of interrupting a haunted house scary adventure to go off on…well,
another time travel excursion (can’t really call it an adventure as he does
very little by way of adventuring and she does none) AWAY from the house and
the two people we care about (who could be killed by the time they get back,
sort of?).
They return
to the haunted house but the theme has been destroyed.
It’s even
more destroyed when the RTD atheist factor rears its ugly head again.
Clara tells
Emma she’s seen that “Everything ends.” Oh, here we go.
I’m a bit
perked up by Emma’s, “Not everything.” BUT it’s just her feeling that sometimes
some love doesn’t end.
All of this
is more pop humanism and pop psychology and pop life in a way. Moffat and RTD
know less about life and spirituality than most of us in the audience and yet
they are lecturing us on how sad it all is, how we all die and end, and how
it’s only important to love now and let that survive. If it doesn’t we’re not
remembered or something equally sad at that or like that.
STAR TREK
and its various iterations do the same nonsense to us, trying hard to reach for
some message to relay to us and usually the messages are all wrong (we die, we
end, unless we have a legacy seems to be what the recent seasons of the abysmal
PICARD is about but the TREK movies seem to herald this message, too, perhaps
in a less “over the head” manner).
Modern Who
seems rooted in trying to get us to not believe, not have faith, and not really
think we’re worth anything unless we prove it to someone, mostly to the Doctor,
a God like figure himself and all of this is wrong.
God does
exist and we do not have to prove our worth to him at all. He knows it.
Religion would tell us differently and they are lying to us or are themselves
well meaning but misguided, relying on old texts and arguments, almost as much
as the atheists and humanists are. Religion gives God a bad rap, a bad name.
There is no hell, no devil. BUT there is a God and an afterlife and we ALL go
there.
Modern Trek
is even worse in that it tells us we are nothing unless we have a family, a
partner, someone to love us, and/or children and a legacy to leave behind.
Otherwise, TREK says, we are nothing and worthless, even if we’ve saved the
universe(s) countless times.
We are
constantly sent the message that unless we have someone who cares for us, has
sex with us, or tends to us when we’re old, we are useless and should be sad
pout pouts.
Anyone who
says they are not bothered by this thought, in the TREK universe, is mad to
feel as if they are lying, led to believe they are fooling themselves or have
to change to “find” someone quick before they die and are “lost” forever,
forever in the ground dead.
I find all
of this pop spirituality or lack of it, disturbing. Not that it changes my mind
but in adventures and sci fi and action shows, the ideas that the writers try
to foist off on me/us, I’d rather they not. Not that anything is off or
wrong…it’s all good, even those who believe such crap will go to the afterlife
of peace and goodness.
It’s all
good. It’s all all right. If we don’t find it here, we will find it there.
There’s no
judgement, no source of evil, no punishment.
Religion on
one side will not bring you this message of peace, preferring instead to rely
on a thousands of years old book written for another culture in another time
ages ago and twisted from three or more different languages to mean something
that is usually used to control people politically, financially, or spiritually
or just mistranslated by mistake.
On the other
side, writers like RTD and Moffat and TREK writers, would try to get us to
swallow that THIS earth and what we see, hear, and touch is all there is and we
should make the best of it because we do not get another go around, another
chance. Nothing could be further from the truth. BOTH of these sides are so
very wrong.
In any case,
back to DOCTOR WHO…
The less
interesting story of a lost time traveler named Hila Tacorian who is from the
future who is trapped in a place where time runs more slowly than it does where
the Doctor, Clara, Emma, and Alec are. A second to her is 100,000 years to
them.
This is
somewhat intriguing of an idea but nothing new.
The Doctor
tells Alec that the paradoxes in time travel by and large resolve themselves.
She is in a
pocket universe, a distorted version of their own, they happen sometimes but
never last for long. So this is easier to believe than spirits and an
afterlife? Sigh.
Okay, it’s
not Matt’s fault but his quick delivery does sometimes add to the nonsense and
yet that’s sometimes endearing. Here, though, the lines give him yet another
sociopathic feel: Emma asks if it will hurt and he lies at first, then says,
flippantly, he doesn’t know and is eager to find out…or was he only talking
about himself and not about how it will affect Emma? He makes light of possibly
pain?
Alec remains
worried for Emma’s life and in a nice, but brief scene, she asks him to read her
mind via…love.
Instead of
being attentive, in the TARDIS while the Doctor works on a gizmo and connection
to get him into the pocket universe, Clara is sitting down. Shouldn’t she be
watching what he’s doing to make it seem interesting rather than boring?
The Doctor
goes through the wormhole into the pocket universe with, “Geronimo,” and a less
than confident one.
Problem is:
here, there is no joke and while that’s a good thing, most of the things that
happen and that are said as dialog in Moffat’s Era are often just build up for
a gimmick, a punch line to a joke, a laugh and here, we are off footed and off
put and not in a good way to expect a dumb thing the Doctor will say or do and
when it doesn’t come we’re often grateful and/or disappointed.
As a fan
once said on a video, or an article, if Moffat’s characters don’t take their
universe seriously, why should we? Thus, when something tense happens, it’s not…well,
as tense as it should be, if it’s tense at all.
The pocket
universe is well executed and visually stunning. The mist stuff echoes, well,
THE MIST by Steven King (both the movie and the novel).
Okay, while
Clara getting into the TARDIS, even though calling her a cow more than once and
seeing the interface as herself (and she blames the TARDIS for that, too!),
wouldn’t the TARDIS being able to let someone in have come in handy HUNDREDS OF
TIMES in the past? This then rings hollow while being nice if in isolation.
With about 8
minutes left to go, we still haven’t seen the monster…and I find that
refreshing. Like the pocket universe, the haunted house and frankly everything
visually about this episode, the monster is well realized. That it hasn’t been
seen in full yet is marvelous.
Well, that
resolved itself, didn’t it? Well, not quite.
Okay, I
rather liked that a lot more than the first time I saw it. It does feel rather
unfinished. The monster, as many in Moffat, looks terrific and is horrid
looking all at once but why does it look like that? What about it makes its
face so twisted. Sure, it’s scary and it’s different but does it make sense? Is
it a mutant?
Never mind.
The idea that a ghost story is not a ghost story but a love story is unique. And
I’d probably give this a 9/10 now as opposed to a 6/10 in the past. Sure, Clara
and the TARDIS bits are a bit…flippant and the Doc going back feels wrong
somehow but I do like that he acknowledges that he is sometimes a bit slow (at
least THIS Doctor is). We don’t see a lot of the creature being reunited with
his love but I would have sworn we did on BBCA.
All in all,
I rather enjoyed that more than when I first saw it. Maybe expectation being
low and all that. This has rather great visuals, a great guest cast, and for
once, a resolution that is a happy one and that I can get on board for. I also
thought the pocket universe was being destroyed but I guess memory does cheat
as it is not.
This worked
for me this time out. I rather liked it.
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