Under the Lake

255a – "Under the Lake"
Doctor Who episode
275px The ghostly adversaries as they appear in the episode – Prentis (Paul Kaye, centre), and former crew members, Pritchard (Steven Robertson, left), and Moran (Colin McFarlane, right)
Cast
Doctor Peter Capaldi (Twelfth Doctor)
Companion Jenna Coleman (Clara Oswald)
Others Colin McFarlane – Moran Sophie Stone – Cass Zaqi Ismail – Lunn Morven Christie – O'Donnell Arsher Ali – Bennett Steven Robertson – Pritchard Paul Kaye – Prentis
Production
Writer	Toby Whithouse
Director	Daniel O'Hara
Script editor	Nick Lambon
Producer	Derek Ritchie
Executive producer(s)	Steven Moffat Brian Minchin
Incidental music composer	Murray Gold
Series	Series 9
Length	1st of 2-part story, 45 minutes
Originally broadcast	3 October 2015 (2015-10-03)
Chronology
← Preceded by Followed by → "The Witch's Familiar" "Before the Flood"

"Under the Lake" is the third episode of the ninth series of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who. It was first broadcast on BBC One on 3 October 2015. It is the first part of a two-part story, the second of which is "Before the Flood"; both are written by Toby Whithouse and directed by Daniel O'Hara. The two episodes are set in different time periods – "Under the Lake" takes place in 2119 and "Before the Flood" is set in an earlier time, initially described by Brian Minchin as being "a few hundred years before episode three" but later revealed to be 1980.

It is set in an underwater mining facility called the Drum, where alien time traveller the Doctor (Peter Capaldi) and his companion Clara Oswald (Jenna Coleman) arrive three days after the crew have unearthed an empty black spaceship. The crew members then start dying, and the survivors find themselves faced with an army of hollow-eyed homicidal ghosts. In the form of Prentis, played by Paul Kaye, this episode sees a return for the Tivolians, a race last seen in the 2011 episode "The God Complex", also written by Toby Whithouse.

Plot

In 2119 at an underwater base on Earth, a joint-military-industrial team discover an alien vessel among the ruins of a long-submerged town. Bringing the vessel aboard with remote drones, they find it empty, one of its two power cells missing, and four strange glyphs carved into the stark white wall. Suddenly, the ship's engine comes to life, and team's commander Moran is killed when pushing another out of the way of the exhaust. Later, the remaining team encounter Moran and an alien being dressed as a mortician, both ghost-like in appearance and silently chanting words at the team before they attack them.

The Doctor and Clara arrive a few days later via the TARDIS, finding the alien ship and the glyphs, but no trace of the crew. The ghosts attempt to attack them, and in their escape, they find the rest of the team hiding in the base's Faraday cage, as the ghosts cannot cross its walls. Acting commander Cass, a deaf woman that speaks through her translator Lunn, explains the situation to the new arrivals. The Doctor recognises the alien ghost as a Tivolian, a cowardly race that would never confront others. The base's automated systems switch the environment from "night" to "day" cycles, causing the ghosts to disperse.

In the command centre, the Doctor, initially dismissive of the idea of ghosts, becomes excited about the possibilities. Suddenly, the base's systems revert to "night" mode, triggered by the ghosts. Before they can restore the "day" cycle, Pritchard, the operation's corporate representative, is killed by the ghosts, and soon appears as a third one. Cass calls for a rescue submarine, but learns one has already been sent; the Doctor overrides the command and sends back the incoming sub, believing the ghosts had made the call for the submarine for a nefarious purpose. The Doctor proposes a plan to capture the ghosts in the Faraday cage using holographic projections sent by his sonic sunglasses. Once trapped, Cass finds she can lip-read what the ghosts are chanting: the repeated phrase "the dark, the sword, the forsaken, the temple". The Doctor recognises these as galactic coordinates to lead some entity to Earth, and realises that the ghosts are looking to create more of themselves to boost the strength of the signal of those coordinates; only those that have looked at the glyphs are susceptible to being harmed by the ghosts. He asks technicians O'Donnell and Bennett to use the remote drones to reexamine the sunken town, and within its church, they find a stasis chamber that had been carried by the ship. The chamber is brought onto the base but cannot be opened.

Without further leads, the Doctor proposes to go back in time to learn the origin of the signal. Just then, the ghosts override the base's systems, opening external hatches to flood part of the base that would prevent the group from accessing the command centre or the TARDIS. They race to beat the automatic flood doors, but Clara, Cass, and Lunn fall behind and are trapped on the far side of the base. The Doctor is unable to travel to Clara using his TARDIS because it refuses to be near the ghosts but he promises that he will return for Clara, and takes O'Donnell and Bennett to the TARDIS. After the TARDIS departs, Clara, Cass and Lunn witness a new ghost outside the base's window: that of the Doctor.

Continuity

The Doctor says that the ghost in the top hat is from the planet Tivoli, first mentioned in the Eleventh Doctor story "The God Complex", which featured a member of its native species named Gibbis.

When pondering what the ghosts actually are, the Doctor eliminates the possibility that they are Flesh avatars ("The Rebel Flesh" / "The Almost People"), Autons (Spearhead from Space et al.), or digital copies in the Nethersphere ("Dark Water" / "Death in Heaven").

One of the Doctor's "cards" has him offering reassurance that no-one, among other disasters, is going to be "exterminated/upgraded". This is a scripted response to potential Dalek and/or Cybermen encounters. Another is an apology for dropping someone off in Aberdeen, a reference to the episodes The Hand of Fear and "School Reunion" when the Doctor mistakenly dropped off companion Sarah Jane Smith in the wrong town.

Outside references

When planning to abandon the base, Cass wants her superiors to send marines or "ghostbusters", an allusion to the 1984 film. She tells the Doctor that he can do the "whole Cabin in the Woods thing" if he wants to stay, another film reference.

The Doctor mentions meeting Shirley Bassey and reveals that he is not a fan of Peter Andre's "Mysterious Girl": after suffering a two-week earworm of the song, he "was begging for the brush of death's merciful hand."

Production

The "Readthrough Draft" of the script for this episode, glimpsed in the online "Doctor Who Extra" focusing on Cass & Lunn, was titled "Ghost in the Machine".

Cast notes

Colin McFarlane, who plays Moran in this episode, had previously featured in the 2007 Christmas episode, "Voyage of the Damned", in which he voiced the Heavenly Host, and additionally appeared in spin-off series Torchwood, in four episodes of Children of Earth, as General Pierce.

Broadcast and reception

Overnight viewings for this episode were 3.74 million, a small improvement from the episode broadcast a week beforehand, The Witch's Familiar. However the final consolidated ratings were 5.63 million, the second lowest of any episode of Doctor Who since the show was revived in 2005. Much like the previous episode, the lower ratings are possibly due to the England v Australia match in the 2015 Rugby World Cup airing simultaneously. The episode received an Appreciation Index score of 84.

Critical reception

Professional ratings
Review scores
Source	Rating
Rotten Tomatoes (Tomatometer)	81%
Rotten Tomatoes (Average Score)	7.6
The A.V Club	B+
Paste Magazine	8.7
SFX Magazine
TV Fanatic
IGN	8.5
New York Magazine
Daily Telegraph
Radio Times

"Under the Lake" received very positive reviews from TV critics, with many praising the episode's creepy atmosphere and old fashioned style. The episode received a score of 81% on Rotten Tomatoes, with an average score of 7.6. The site's consensus reads "Part one of two, "Under the Lake" scares up a good, old-fashioned ghost story, which may remind viewers of the original series – for better or worse".

Morgan Jeffery of Digital Spy praised the episode, labelling it "atmospheric". He further went on to say "It's this sense of claustrophobia that is among the episode's biggest selling points – watching a crew's camaraderie crumble as the pressure gets to them never grows old. Gloomy visuals and a haunting score from Murray Gold also do much to generate atmosphere and tension" and closed his review stating "Chills, action, adventure – this is old-school Doctor Who given a modern sheen and, most of all, it's enormous fun". Michael Hogan of The Daily Telegraph acclaimed the episode, awarding it a perfect five stars. He said "This rollicking, hair-raising romp demonstrated that the sci-fi franchise still has the power to thrill and chill in equal measure". He closed his review by claiming "Forty minutes flew by and the credits rolled too soon, leaving on a creepy cliffhanger that left me baying for more. If next week’s conclusion of the story – and the 12-part series as a whole – can keep up the standard set by the opening three episodes, we’re in for a treat. Doctor Who will have regenerated once more".

Alasdair Wilkins of The A.V. Club also enjoyed the episode, awarding it a B+ grade. Calling the episode "impeccably structured", he further stated that it "has a tightness of narrative focus that often eludes the first episodes of Doctor Who two-parters". He closed his review by saying the episode "works beautifully as a propulsive monsters story" and stating "A simple, focused first episode figures to set up a twisted, sprawling second half. But even without seeing the payoff, it’s hard to imagine more efficient narrative construction for whatever that conclusion might be". Jon Cooper of The Independent lavished praised onto the episode, calling it "spooky with a sci-fi slant" and saying that "while the show has tackled this sort of narrative countless times before, it has rarely been done with such palpable tension and slow-burning dread". He further stated "As secrets were uncovered and deductions made, the plot rattled along with a pace that ended up as satisfying as it was intriguing", and closed his review by saying "in terms of wonderfully solid and spooky TV there’s nothing to moan about here". Scott Collura of IGN was also highly impressed with the episode, awarding it a score of 8.5/10, deemed by the site as "great". He particularly praised the episode's cliffhanger ending, stating "But oh, the ending of this episode! So great", and summarised his review with "I always welcome the creature-feature Doctor Who episodes, and "Under the Lake" does that tradition proud. The shimmering, ghastly specters are scary enough, but the apparent fate of the Doctor in this cliffhanger is the real shocker".

External links

• "Under the Lake" at the BBC Doctor Who homepage
• "Under the Lake" on TARDIS Data Core, an external wiki
• "Under the Lake" / "Before the Flood" at Doctor Who: A Brief History of Time (Travel)
• "Under the Lake" at IMDb