Doctor Who Series 7.9: Hide (SPOILERS)

[Drops a Sweet Katana]

First half was pretty good. It had quite a creepy atmosphere about it and the quick glimpses you get of the monster were great. The second half, however, just lost it. Again, with the power of wuv? *mmmBLEUGH* I swear they've started really shoehorning it in in the worst possible ways. I mean the whole monster's got a girlfriend thing was just awful. It had nothing to do with anything in the episode and pretty much pissed away any sense of threat the monster had. It wasn't even explained what it was. In fact, looking at it now, it seems like they took two episodes and smooshed them together to make, well, that.

 

[Quaxar]

I liked the episode, it had a very good atmosphere and even the monster thing I could stand although I'd have preferred something a bit more menacing. However, I missed a bit of explanation.
Why does the TARDIS suddenly hate Oswin? Out of thin air, no less, people have done much worse things to her than take a wet umbrella inside. She has fled from paradox Captain Jack Harkness to the end of space and time but never used a hologram for a snarky remark.
"After 4 seconds [in the pocket dimension] I'm out of power, after 10 seconds I'm dead", yet they fly into it for clearly more than 10 seconds? I don't mind technobabble but if they expect me to just accept that they marched right into where they had just established they could never get out from again then I'm sorry.

At least they still haven't forgotten about the Oswin mystery like you might have suspected after last week's episode.
And next week... hooo boy, that's going to be interesting, it has the potential to both be brilliant and completely suck. I'll be on my toes.

 

[BrotherRool]

I liked the episode, it had a very good atmosphere and even the monster thing I could stand although I'd have preferred something a bit more menacing. However, I missed a bit of explanation.
Why does the TARDIS suddenly hate Oswin? Out of thin air, no less, people have done much worse things to her than take a wet umbrella inside. She has fled from paradox Captain Jack Harkness to the end of space and time but never used a hologram for a snarky remark.
"After 4 seconds [in the pocket dimension] I'm out of power, after 10 seconds I'm dead", yet they fly into it for clearly more than 10 seconds? I don't mind technobabble but if they expect me to just accept that they marched right into where they had just established they could never get out from again then I'm sorry.

At least they still haven't forgotten about the Oswin mystery like you might have suspected after last week's episode.
And next week... hooo boy, that's going to be interesting, it has the potential to both be brilliant and completely suck. I'll be on my toes.

The TARDIS hated Oswin in the other episodes this season too. In Rings it won't open her and she mentions feeling like the TARDIS doesn't like her. The guess is it's something to do with the anomaly nature.


The 10 second thing bugged me too, because they even had the solution of the TARDIS using the psychic to get out of there quicker than it could have done otherwise. That practically happened. And then they waste it on an overly long special effect

 

[Cabisco]

This season has felt kinda strange to me, nothing seems to have gone as well as it could have, or perhaps it's just these last few episodes.

As for Hide, you pretty much summed my feelings up on it. It felt like that was originally meant to be the ending, they wrote something that evolved into something much better but then didn't have time or a better idea to end it so went with a kinda crappy original one.

 

[Remus]

On the plus side, the TARDIS automated response system is getting a bit more reactive. Maybe Sexy's personality might start peeking through the more times it's used.

 

[shintakie10]

This is just another victim of Moffats ridiculous need to wait until the last fuckin minute to wrap stuff up.

Like the Slow Invasion. The fuck was that shit. I actually really enjoyed the idea of that episode. A lot of really slow burn build. Then bam, the reveal. Oh shit that was kinda cool. Look at the clock, huh...this episode only has 7 minutes left? Oh! Two parter maybe?!? Nope! The Doctor waved his screwdriver around and fixed everythin in a matter of seconds. Done, finished, have a good day.

I'm so fuckin sick of episodes endin that way. I get it, he's the doctor. He doesn't lose, but continually makin it look hopeless and then fixin it all before you can blink just cheapens the whole thing.

My girflriend was makin a point about how Moffat is too obsessed with tryin to be clever. He thinks he's so fuckin clever by layin out all the pieces, but not quite connectin them until suddenly everythin comes together. Except, as she points out, he's not fuckin clever. He doesn't lay all the pieces out, he leaves most of them on the table and holds that one piece, the most important piece, until the very end and springs it on us and we're supposed to be all wowed and shit, but really we're just annoyed.

I really like Dr. Who, but these last 2 seasons have just been horribly disappointin and entirely too stale. We had, what...1 really good episode last season and 1 serviceable while the rest ranged from shit to what the fuck did I just watch? This season its turnin out the same. The first episode? Not that great, but not terrible. Second episode? Borin as shit. I didn't even finish it honestly. This episode? Exactly like the slow invasion in that there was a ton of build, a lot of effort that looks like it could go places, then it falls off a cliff into wtf this is such bullshit land at the end.

 

[ChristopherT]

I really didn't care for this episode. I'm fine with Scooby Doo moments but I just didn't expect them to be in this episode, yet there they were. Not a big deal, just didn't help getting into the spirit of it all. The inconsistencies kind of got to me. As others have said the TARDIS wasn't supposed to be able to simply fly in and out of the pocket universe, but not only does it break that info drop for the hell of it, it does it twice.

But the one that really gets to me is when the Doctor is in the pocket universe time seems to move at normal speed. Now I can understand some sort of timey-whimey bull crap about when the portal between the universes is open time is equal between the two. However, then the portal closes, and the Doctor is stuck there and time seems to then move at the same rate. It makes no sense.

It's stated that in the pocket universe time moves slower. Time traveling woman 'crashes' and spends '3 minutes' or hours or whatever in the pocket universe. These 3 minutes are equivalent to thousands or millions of years of Earth universe normal time. So, the Doctor jumps in, saves her, he gets left behind - in the normal universe she arrives, portal closes, then a few minutes pass then they open the portal again. For the Doctor, in the pocket universe the time between the portal closing and opening again should have happened so quickly he wouldn't have even been able to notice, yet for him the portal doesn't seem to open for at least a few minutes - a few minutes which should then equate to a few thousand or million years of normal time and not the very few minutes that it did.

 

[Thaluikhain]

My girflriend was makin a point about how Moffat is too obsessed with tryin to be clever. He thinks he's so fuckin clever by layin out all the pieces, but not quite connectin them until suddenly everythin comes together. Except, as she points out, he's not fuckin clever. He doesn't lay all the pieces out, he leaves most of them on the table and holds that one piece, the most important piece, until the very end and springs it on us and we're supposed to be all wowed and shit, but really we're just annoyed.

Argh, yes.

"Look at the shiny thing, isn't it shiny?"

"Hey, a shiny thing, I'd like to see more about this and see how it fits into-"

"Well, you can't, never mentioning it again. But look, another shiny thing!"

Keeps throwing things at the screen in the hopes the audience will like some of them. It's annoying because a lot of them aren't bad, they just don't do anything with them so they don't work.

To be fair, though, NuWho has suffered from this since it started, though Moffat has done that with other stuff.

 

[octafish]

I thought Not Bond was quite good as Not Quatermass, I liked his character even if it was slight. There were some "proper who" moments in the middle...but that ending was terrible. Still I'm loving the Colin Baker tribute titles.

 

[megaman1N]

Hey guys, new here... just wanted to throw in my two cents.

I thought Hide was good until this love story started developing. The subplot was super cheesy to me. I'm wondering if it's just me, but I personally like it when the episode focuses more on the doctor being brilliant rather than the situation mostly getting out of hand and then the doctor sort of randomly saves the day.

What was that one episode where the doctor had to save a street from a stranded baby alien that possessed a young black girl. That was a really strong episode. Despite all the crap going on in the background, the doctor was behind the scenes being awesome.

 

[megaman1N]

A really good episode. Despite that awful ending.

I mean seriously? A scary, rarely seen monster with unknown intent and the entire enigma is ruined by the fact that it's a trying to get back to its one true love?
What. the. hell?
It ruined the all the suspense of the episode by using a giant ass pull to explain it all in the last literal minute. I mean come on! I have never been so disappointed by an episode of Doctor Who in my life. What the hell Moffat? At least the last couple of episodes where feeling won the day were not too bad, I enjoyed then in fact. But this nonsense?

What is the point of a scary episode if you are going to reveal that everything wasn't actually any threat to start with. No one would have died, no one was actually in any kind of danger. 'Blink' had the Angels as a legitimate threat. They were unknown, threatening, would kill you, we're trying to destroy the solar system (as an extension to feeding themselves on the TARDIS energy) and there was no guarantee that any of the characters would survive or not because they weren't the Doctor. And this turns out to be just a misunderstood monster looking to get back his girlfriend?!

The episode would have been fantastic if it had literally ended 60 seconds earlier

I usually enjoy Moffat's work too.....but to be fair, I always believed that you can't save a poorly written story with atmosphere alone and special effects alone. All the shortcomings due to plot and what-not...that's all in the written story and Niel Cross wrote this one.

Seeing comments about poor reveals about every plot point in this episode is all rooted back to the story. I get more excited for an episode when certain people do the writing.

Also.....I can't shake the feeling that Season 6 had some of the best episodes with Matt Smith and The Eleventh Hour is still my favorite Matt Smith episode!

 

[MrTwo]

I usually enjoy Moffat's work too.....but to be fair, I always believed that you can't save a poorly written story with atmosphere alone and special effects alone. All the shortcomings due to plot and what-not...that's all in the written story and Niel Cross wrote this one.

Seeing comments about poor reveals about every plot point in this episode is all rooted back to the story. I get more excited for an episode when certain people do the writing.

Also.....I can't shake the feeling that Season 6 had some of the best episodes with Matt Smith and The Eleventh Hour is still my favorite Matt Smith episode!

The episode you mentioned earlier would be 'Fear Her', all the way back in the good old days of Season 2. And yeah, I agree with you that Matt Smith's first season was his best. Not his fault, the writing has just gone downhill.

OT: I'm beginning to dislike Neil Cross, because he wrote both the "Rings of Akhaten" and "Hide", and they've been the worst episode this season (and out of all Matt Smith's, I would say). The "Rings" episode was poorly explained and wasted a ridiculous amount of time on the song, that could've been spent actually making the plot make sense. Hide was slightly better, but yeah, the ending cheapened it and there are a few plot holes that are totally ignored, as people have mentioned before.

And I just looked up that this guy wrote for "Spooks" and created "Luther", which are both very well written shows, so WTF.

Moffat needs to actually write more episodes, as his are always better. He wrote the opening episode, which wasn't amazing, but it was better than all the others. If you look back through Matt Smith's tenure, all the best episodes are Moffat-written:

- "The Eleventh Hour"

- "The Time of Angels/Flesh and Stone"

- "The Impossible Astronaut/Day of the Moon"

- "A Good Man Goes to War"

- "Asylum of the Daleks"

... and he wrote "Blink", one of my favourite episodes ever, and "Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead", which was also awesome.

They really need to just do more 2 parters, because they can't fit everything into one episode. They either spend a long time on the resolution with no building up the world, or the build it up and then have the Doctor fix everything with a few sonic waves.

Sorry guys, I didn't mean to write an essay, so TLDR - Hide and Rings of Akhaten were rubbish, Moffat needs to write more episodes and MAKE THEM TWO PARTERS.

 

[MeChaNiZ3D]

Agreed, it ruined the whole build up and enigma of the entire episode. And I'm getting that a lot recently with the series, an episode of slow burn and then in the last 2 and a half minutes, waves the screwdriver and all done. Turns out it was something trivial. And that whole afraid bit where the Doctor was just in the woods, that monologue was painful.

Another thing I didn't like was the whole time disparity between the real world and the pocket universe which seemed to disappear when it came to moving between them. With no explanation as to why time is all of a sudden equal in both.

Lastly, the Tardis deciding that despite saying it would die in 10 seconds and be stranded after 4 in the pocket universe, it warps...why? Did it lose all sense of self-preservation?

 

[The_Echo]

I kind of liked that they decided to make the monster not really a monster at all. Though I was a bit peeved they didn't show the reunion. Felt like a really sudden ending.

It was unconventional, and I like unconventional Who. Besides, the theme of the episode was love, so it fit.

This episode also made me realize how much better Clara is as a companion than the Ponds. I'm actually starting to like the Eleventh, when I found him only tolerable before. Almost certainly due to Amy kind of being unpleasant and the Doctor obsessing over her.

This episode isn't without its faults, but I think the show as a whole is going in the right direction.

 

[introverted_surd]

I don't usually have a problem with plot holes and want to hit people who point out things like loopers logic doesn't work but this episode just pissed me off. The story was about a time traveler trapped in another dimesion that is infitely slower than ours. Yet when the doctor goes into to it without any acknowledgement it suddenly runs at normal speed. He can be in their for five minutes and it's only five minutes in our universe and yet the begining was all about how the other universe was slower.

I don't mind plot holes but for the love of god please don't have a plot hole about something they explained earlier because that's just INCREDIBLY poor writing.

 

[BrotherRool]

It's stated that in the pocket universe time moves slower. Time traveling woman 'crashes' and spends '3 minutes' or hours or whatever in the pocket universe. These 3 minutes are equivalent to thousands or millions of years of Earth universe normal time. So, the Doctor jumps in, saves her, he gets left behind - in the normal universe she arrives, portal closes, then a few minutes pass then they open the portal again. For the Doctor, in the pocket universe the time between the portal closing and opening again should have happened so quickly he wouldn't have even been able to notice, yet for him the portal doesn't seem to open for at least a few minutes - a few minutes which should then equate to a few thousand or million years of normal time and not the very few minutes that it did.

Thats pretty easy to solve though right? You say that there's a time element in the portal as well as a cross dimension element. I don't think Matt Smith actually communicates with the psychic directly which would be the thing that's impossible to do

 

[KeyMaster45]

*snip*

Think you've got your numbering wrong, this is only episode 9 of the 7th series by my count.

 

[TIMESWORDSMAN]

"Oh hey guys let's cut DW's budget a bit and move most of it's writers to other projects no one will notice trust me."
-The BBC

Seriously, Doctor Who is a "Monster of the Week" show right now, it's Scooby-Doo with half the crew and a larger vehicle focus.
Not that I don't still enjoy the show, but it's certainly not tackling the ideas and stories that it was two or three seasons ago.

 

[Silvanus]

it's Scooby-Doo with half the crew and a larger vehicle focus.

This. I can't believe I didn't notice it.



OT: The episode, weeeell... It had promise, and then proceeded to ruin that promise. I'm drawn into a ghosty episode because I want to see a Doctor Who episode involving some ghosts, funnily enough.

To default back to Sci-Fi-alternate-dimensions-monsters-aliens-deus-ex-machina just makes it more of the same. And by that, I don't mean, "more of the winning formula", I mean practically identical in resolution to any other Tennant or Smith episode.

They could have made something far more memorable, with a far lower budget, if they just decided to actually stay true to the horror/ creepy concept.

 

[Berithil]

Agreed about that ending.

It was a pretty good episode, up until the last literal minute. Seriously, were they trying to sabotage the episode? The whole "monsters in love" thing contributed nothing to the episode. It would've been just fine keeping the monster an enigma. But instead they have to go ruin the whole thing.

Ugh....