Doctor Who - Toby Whitehouse on Under the Lake

The second Under the Lake interview is with writer Toby Whitehouse.


“I wanted to tell a ghost story in the universe of Doctor Who, and doing with it what the series really thrives upon - taking a traditional idea and finding the sci-fi spin which makes it unique and fresh.
We had talked a lot about where to set a ghost story to give it that new edge, and after thinking of making a ‘haunted house’ into a ‘haunted space station’, the idea of the even more claustrophobic location of an underwater base suddenly seemed like a really different way to go. A group of people trapped at the bottom of a lake surrounded by the scariest ghosts we could invent - that’s definitely something you would only get to write for Doctor Who.

“As the story progresses, it moves from being a ghost story into a ghost story with time travel, and reveals the protagonist who’s behind this whole situation. I’ve always been fascinated with the dramatic possibilities of time travel, and employing it in a ghost story gives you a whole new level of horror to play with - what happens if you met your own ghost? Could you prevent that future? Would you sacrifice yourself to the big bad monster to save the people around you? What’s not to love in a timey-wimey paradox - the Doctor vs. Ghosts vs. Time Travel - surely not everyone will get out alive…