DOCTOR WHO has the most flexible format in television . A protagonist who can travel anywhere in time and space means you might be watching a historical drama and the next week an ambitious science fiction epic . The Hartnell years was very good at doing this . As the show progressed in to the Troughton era producers Innes Lloyd and Peter Bryant abandoned the historical stories and in their place came the base under siege / horror type stories and for about ten years this is what the show infamously becoming the show that "Sent children hiding behind the sofa. With producer Philip Hinchcliffe and script editor Robert Holmes in the mid 1970s they pushed the boundaries of the show which received great viewing figures but unfortunately so many complaints from concerned parents that Hinchcliffe was asked to move on and his replacement Graham Williams was ordered by the BBC that the horror element of the show was no longer allowed and from 1977 to the show's ultimate cancellation in 1989 any overtly scary story was conspicuous by its rarity . In short most of the masterworks from 1963-89 such as The Web Of Fear , Inferno , Pyramids Of Mars etc and its this type of genre the show has been remembered for
Under The Lake continues this noble tradition . An alien spaceship is found under a Scottish loch in the 22nd Century and as things take a bad turn the Tardis lands at this crucial moment as both the Doctor and the television audience are exposed to the plot . There's not a lot of originality but this doesn't matter in the slightest , there's no self referential continuity involving stories from 30 years ago and all the audience are asked to do is dim the lights , sit back and be enthralled by the on screen events
On its own terms there are a couple of flaws to the episode . Being a grumpy fan in early middle age I did think there was maybe a little bit too much running up and down corridors . It's a two part story therefore concentrate on atmosphere and characterisation rather than incident . It's also very noticeable that the Doctor and Clara are entirely different characters from those written and portrayed in the previous story . One constant irritant of Capaldi's Doctor is that the writing frequently shoehorns his character in to the environment of the story instead on trying to bring a consistent fundamental character to this Doctor . One also hopes that unlike Kill The Moon from last season the production team don't blow the resolution by a ridiculous plot turn . When all is said and done so far this is very much an enjoyable and tense 45 minutes of DOCTOR WHO