Who Review: Under the Lake

The year is 2119, and a team in an underwater mining facility comes across a vessel in what appears to be a submerged town. Inside the vessel they find markings scratched on the walls, but there doesn’t appear to be anyone there. Anyone, that is, except for two ghostly figures who attack them, killing one of the team. To their horror, that team member has become one of the ghostly people.

A few days later, the Doctor and Clara materialize on the base, but it’s deserted. There are signs of human activity only hours before, but it seems they took supplies and ran away. The Doctor discovers the markings, and then the ghosts, which then turn on him and Clara…

SPOILER ALERT!! My comments may (and likely will) contain spoilers for those that haven’t seen the episode. If you want to stay spoiler-free, please watch the story before you continue reading!

This is the first of the second two-parter of a season that Steven Moffat promises us will be filled with cliff-hangers. I grew up on Classic Who, so no complaints from me on that front! In this episode we see Clara all gung-ho for monsters and adventure, which is really what you want from a companion. But given last season’s double-life, it’s nice to see she’s thrown her lot in with the Doctor totally.

The production team certainly wanted to turn the creep element up this time, and I wonder if the later viewing time in the UK reflected that. The ghostly people are particularly eerie. My 11-year-old didn’t much care for their “soulless eyes.” Lots of atmosphere and suspense, which makes for good Who, so top marks there.

One of the notable features of this story is the fact that one of the main characters is deaf, and is accompanied by someone who signs for her. The more cynical people might roll their eyes and mumble about Doctor Who trying to tick all the politically correct boxes. But I’ll be among those who applaud this move. Why not have a deaf person on the team? We see deaf people with active roles in society, so why should it be a surprise that we have a deaf scientist on the crew? I did have a minor quibble with the Doctor referring to her as the smartest person in the room when he isn’t there; this comes across to me as pandering, as if to say, “Okay, we’ve included a deaf person, now let’s be super, super nice to her to show her how much we value deaf people.” It was unnecessary. However, on reflection, perhaps such attention was necessary in light of the fact so few deaf people appear in dramas like this. If deaf actors/characters were commonplace, we’d think nothing of it.

We had some nice touches of humor, especially in the form of flash cards Clara has made for the Doctor to help him respond appropriately to tense, awkward, and emotional situations. Sensitivity to human emotions isn’t one of the Doctor’s strong characteristics, and even less so with this incarnation. The scene where Clara tempers the Doctor’s enthusiasm about one of the crew members being killed and turned into a ghost by having him read from one of the cards was a nice insight into both the Doctor, and their relationship. Clara knows the Doctor well enough help him with this deficiency, and the Doctor trusts her enough to allow her to help him.

In the end the Doctor discovers these “ghosts” are the souls of the dead being used to boost a signal to a planet somewhere, each new soul providing an extra boost to the signal. An interesting concept, especially for Doctor Who, especially for New Who which has, until last season, avoided messing with supernatural concepts. I mean, the last “ghost” story we had was “Hide” in Season 7, and that spook turned out to be an astronaut trapped in a pocket universe. To be fair I’m going to reserve further comment until after next week. Let’s see how this concept plays out.

That cliffhanger, though. The Doctor… those eyes… That was good!

The first two-parter set a high standard for this season, and I think this episode continues the trend. I enjoyed it and look forward to next week’s resolution.

What did you think?