Day 894 - Hide

The scene shown in the picture above legitimately terrified me. 

Professor Palmer and his psychic friend, Emma are exploring a supposed haunted house that the professor has just bought. It's not long before the Doctor and Clara turn up to join in the investigations. The Doctor claims to be be an inspector from the ministry which kind of made me chuckle as I remembered all the problems the third Doctor used to have with these pompous officials so it's a little weird to see the Doctor impersonating one.

Playing Emma is Jessica Raine who is most well known for her part in Call The Midwife but who, for me, is mostly associated with playing Verity Lambert, one of the original creators of Doctor Who in the Doctor Who biopic which was broadcast last year for the 50th anniversary of the show. Thinking about it, David Bradley is also in this series of Doctor Who and he played William Hartnell in the biopic so there is a lot of crossover. And Brian Cox played Sydney Newman and played the voice of an Ood in Doctor Who in 2009! Things like this excite me. Anyway, moving on...

This episode is proper creepy. The picture shown above is from a scene where the Professor and Emma are looking out of the window, there is a sudden flash of lightning illuminating the figure stood behind them, reaching out towards them!

As well as this ghost like figure we also have the monstrous Crooked Man, he looks and moves about in a really freaky way! I found out afterwards that it's actually a bloke in a costume and not a cgi creature as I imagined! The creature is so deformed I just assumed that there couldn't be a real person on there. Also I think they did the weird movements by having him act them backward and then reverse the tape which gives this really unnatural feel to it. It's fucking horrible basically!

So what else can I say. It's sort of a haunted house type story really with some alternate realities and time travel thrown in for good measure. I like the growing relationship between the professor and Emma during the story. It's obvious they both like each other but not of them can be the first to admit it. I also liked the idea behind the reasons for the professors obsession with ghosts. During the war he was forced to kill or in someway be responsible for the loss of men's lives. As such he needs to know what happens after we die.

Also, rather unusually it is revealed at the end of the story that the Doctor had some motivation to take them to this house as he needs Emma's opinion as to who or what Clara is. He is told she is noting more than a normal girl which only heightens the mystery as to how he can keep meeting different version of her throughout time and space.

Something else which is odd is that there seems to be a growing theme that the TARDIS does not like Clara (locking her out etc) and I'm not sure why that is. Knowing what is to come I can't really think of a specific reason behind it, unless this is something which has still to be explained.

And I can't believe I nearly forgot this! In further links to previous Doctors we see the return of the Metabelius crystal from The Green Death and Planet Of The Spiders from the third Doctors's era. The fact that Matt Smith completely mispronounces Metabelius is something that still upsets fans but I away just put it down to the fact that his Doctor just pronounces things differently. I mean lets get some perspective! Tom Baker always used to pronounce Gallifrey weirdly!