Doctor Who Review: Under The Lake – 7 Ways To Sink Or Swim

3. The Body Electric

The crew retreat to a Faraday cage, an enclosure that blocks electrical fields, in order to protect themselves from the imminent threat. The ghosts can only grasp metal which is a good conductor of electricity. Does this have something to do with the missing power cell? Have the dead been converted into some kind of electrical impulses and is that how the signal is being generated? This is such a clever episode, enjoyable on so many levels. It’s not necessary to understand what a Faraday cage is (I certainly had to look it up) to enjoy the premise but it’s obvious the writer put a lot of thought into this and it lends an air of welcome authenticity.

Since Cass kept Lunn from entering the spaceship he is the only one who has not seen the marks on the wall. Will he be the key to resolving the situation? If the cliffhanger is anything to go by he may be the only one left. Unfortunately the reveal of the Doctor’s ghost was not the best cgi effect but the idea was certainly effective. The two-parter format this season is proving its worth. There was a danger of sacrificing story coherence for the sake of gimmickry but so far the episodes are confidently written and well characterized and use their shock endings in a way that furthers the plot rather than killing it.