"Hide" is the ninth episode of the seventh series of Doctor Who, starring Matt Smith as The Eleventh Doctor and Jenna Louise-Coleman as Clara Oswald. It was written by Neil Cross, who wrote two episodes for Series Seven, his previous episode being The Rings of Akhaten.
Hide is a ghost story, a gothic adventure told in an old mansion on a dark and stormy night. A psychic and a researcher are there to find out the secret of a ghost who has been appearing there since ancient times. Into this dark and stormy night comes The Doctor and Clara, ready to help find out the mystery.
Last week was a "Base Under Siege" plot, and this week we have a Doctor Who Gothic. Its been a while since we've seen an episode that plays the ghost story idea so straight, although The Unquiet Dead, Blink and The Unicorn and the Wasp all come close. This episode manages to set up a suspenseful mood perfectly, with the first half of the episode's cinematography and direction setting up an appropriately mysterious mood.
But Doctor Who never dabbles in the supernatural: vampires are always aliens, werewolves are always robots, and ghosts are always...well, I won't give any spoilers, but the supernatural feeling of the episode is ruined as we go on to find out the story behind the "ghost", which is a hodge-podge of extradimensional spacey-waceyness that isn't really that important.
Like most of the episodes in this latter half of Series Seven, this episode seems cramped. The story is introduced, and a mood is set-up, but then too many things are thrown in and too many plot twists and moods and character motivations are introduced and explained too quickly. And once again, I find myself wondering if the program has changed, or if I am just getting used to the formula.