Doctor Who - 'Under the Lake'

Alien top hats. Weird.

“So we are fighting an unknown homicidal force that has take the form of your commanding officer and a cowardly alien, underwater, in a nuclear reactor. Anything else I should know? Somebody have a peanut allergy or something?”

Travelling in search of adventure, the Doctor and Clara stumble into a haunted underwater mining platform. At first quite calm, the ghosts show them a mystery spaceship and then quickly turn murderous. The Doctor and Clara will have to work with the surviving crew of the base to work out what the ghosts want before they kill them all.

The Good

• A classic Who set-up, with a decent cast of supporting characters including a deaf-mute CO and a corporate idiot, makes for a promising start.
• Despite a shortage of really quotable quotes, the dialogue was zippy and the interaction with Clara remains good.
• The empathy flash cards were, in quick succession, funny, silly, and an effective reminder of the Doctor's ongoing alienness. Interestingly, I've also seen the humanity of this least human of Doctors praised, and that's quite an achievement. Conversely, the scene where the Doctor cautions Clara not to 'go native' in the TARDIS was a nice reminder that she is not exactly a paragon of humanity at this point.
• Away from empathy, Peter Capaldi does some excellent 'don't stop to think about it' exposition.
• The twist that it isn't daytime, but the station's daytime mode that disabled the ghosts was a lot of fun.
• Points for not feeling the need to spell out why Lunn wasn't killed.
• Points also for the Doctor not leaving the entire crew to die for being icky soldiers, and indeed for the fact that - against my worse expectations - he never neglected anyone else to save Clara and got them killed because of it.
• The cliffhanger was pretty badass.

The Bad

• Not only does Thoros of Tivoli look weirdly Victorian undertaker for an alien, he is crepily reminiscent of those faceless top-hat dudes in 'The Name of the Doctor'.

The Ugly

• Doctor Who's glass ceiling of death remains firmly in place, with another black man rising to a command position only to die first. On the plus side, the remaining crew are not all white.

Theorising

So, the two-parters provide ample theory-bait, at least in the short term, but there's not a lot of arc material appearing here, and I think that could be deliberate. On the surface, it looks as if this series is swinging towards self-contained two-parters instead of one-offs and arcs. I quite like the thought.

Within this two-parter the big question is: "What happened in the past and how terminal was it, long-term?" I presume that this is the reason for being so clear that, no, these are ghosts, somehow, not copies or echoes, but real live ghosts, as it were. Now, of course there's a trick, because there are loads more episodes to go, but I'm actually pretty excited to find out what it is. There is also the question of who might survive; always a tough one. I suspect that at the very least Lunn will sacrifice himself by looking at the words.

Top Quotes
You're probably expecting the 'kiss it to death' line in here, but I found it somewhat overdone myself.

• "Thank you, but I actually don't need your help. I can speak sign. Go ahead. (pause) No, no, actually, I...I can't. It's been deleted...for semaphore. Someone get me a selection of flags."
• "You – whenever I step outside, you’re the smartest person in the room."
• "Two weeks of Mysterious Girl by Peter Andre, I was begging for the brush of Death’s merciful hand." 

And the Doctor's empathetic flashcards:

• “I completely understand why it was difficult not to get captured.”
• “It was my fault, I should have known you didn’t live in Aberdeen.” 
• “I didn’t mean to imply that I don’t care.”
• “No-one is going to be eaten/vapourised/exterminated/upgraded/possessed/mortally wounded/turned to jelly. We’ll all get out of this unharmed.”
• “I’m very sorry for your loss. I’ll do all I can to solve the death of your friend/family member/pet.”

The Verdict

Another strong entry in a series that seems determined to shake off bad baggage. I think that, while they did make the Daleks look a little incompetent, the first two episodes scored a hit by having two classic enemies - three if you count Davros as separate from the Daleks - without it being a huge song and dance. Not the end of the universe; just another slightly apocalyptic dust up. The trick in 'Under the Lake' is going novel. Yes, it has a lot in common with any number of base in peril stories, and in particular 'The Impossible Planet', but the ghosts are different enough and the sense of dread subtle enough to work. The fact that the whole thing could so easily have been a single parter, but still fed organically into a cliffhanger was especially impressive.

Score - 7/10