Doctor Who 7.9: Hide
Clara (Jenna-Louise Coleman) and The Doctor (Matt Smith) ain’t afraid of no ghost — well, for the most part — in “Hide.”
“This isn’t a ghost story,” The Doctor announces at one point this week. “It’s a love story.” Thankfully, “Hide” provides enough of each to keep itself lively.
Writer Neil Cross’ second outing on the show wisely steers clear of much of the schmaltz that dragged “The Rings Of Akhaten” down. Instead, the feels are mostly dialed down here, kept to the background while the new Team TARDIS goes a ghost-busting alongside another doctor (Dougray Scott) and his own companion assistant, Emma (Jessica Raine).
It’s always nice when the people The Doctor visits don’t hold his intellect against him. But in a particularly nice touch, Cross makes Alec Palmer into a character Eleven doesn’t just like, but relates to, and Matt Smith and Scott do a good job of letting the similarities between them breathe.
“That’s often the way it is, when you’ve seen a thing or two,” Alec tells Emma, recognizing the weariness in his opposite number, as well. “Experience makes liars of us all.”
It’s also good to see Emma use her empathic abilities to steer Clara right: “Don’t trust him,” she warns. “There’s a sliver of ice in his heart.” (Emma is, of course, proven right, as the Doctor later secretly asks her for more information as to what Clara actually is; “a perfectly normal girl” is not going to cut it.)
Picking up on last week’s scare-filled outing, “Hide” acts as another guidepost for Clara. Whereas “Cold War” showed her the human cost of running with The Doctor, this week he inadvertently showed her just how vast his “anywhere in time and space” boast can really be, as he whisks her back and forth through the beginning and end of the planet while investigating the same piece of land.
Needless to say, the twice-dead woman doesn’t take it well: “To you, I’m a ghost,” she protests. “We’re all ghosts to you. We must be nothing.” Emma’s subsequent confirmation to Eleven that Clara is “more scared than she lets on” continues this half-season’s trend of letting us see both Clara and The Doctor confront their fears more openly.
But this time, Clara also gets a visible victory over not only her jitters but her own anxiety over the TARDIS not liking her. Even if Sexy is like a cat, it’s still worth something that Clara is able to convince her to leap headlong (lightlong?) into a pocket universe to rescue their man. Does this mean she’s finally eligible for a key?