First broadcast 20 April 2013.

When I reviewed this episode on its original broadcast, I liked it a lot but noted that “all up, this episode is almost a classic. Who knows? Given a few rewatches it may wind up crossing the line.” I am returning 13 seasons and 98 episodes later to confirm that, indeed, “Hide” has aged incredibly well and is – to my mind – one of the very best episodes of Matt Smith’s tenure in Doctor Who.

Is it a classic? We Doctor Who fans seem to have a particularly strong relationship to the word. Over its many decades the series has generated key serials and episodes that seem to bear a common seal of approval: stories that the vast majority of fans agree represent the series at its very best. It is essentially a canon, including such iconic crowd-pleasers as “Genesis of the Daleks”, “The Caves of Androzani”, and “Blink”. They are, ultimately, consensus choices by the subculture. It’s up to fans in general to include “Hide”, but I do think they should rewatch it and give it serious consideration.

While Doctor Who is the most popular science fiction television property on British television, it does have its antecedents. After all, the BBC alone has been producing science fiction television since RUR in 1938. A decade prior to Doctor Who, the biggest genre show in town was Nigel Kneale’s Quatermass. Neil Cross’ “Hide” script is an unashamed love letter to Kneale’s work. Not just Quatermass either, but also Kneale’s unparalleled television play The Stone Tape (1972). Cross has taken Kneale’s penchant for blending modern-day scientists and the supernatural, and adapted it to Doctor Who.

“Hide” is a knowing pastiche in a fashion very familiar to the series, openly playing with somebody else’s ideas while throwing in a mad wizard in a time-travelling spaceship. The Doctor (Matt Smith) and Clara (Jenna Coleman) arrive at an English mansion in 1974 to interrupt paranormal experiments being conducted by Professor Alec Palmer (Dougray Scott) and his psychic assistant Emma Grayling (Jessica Raine). Before long, their investigations unveil not one ghost but two, as well as time travel and a gateway into a pocket universe.

Part of why the episode succeeds is its breakneck pace. It hits the ground running, shifts rapidly from one plot revelation to another, and literally cut to credits in media res without bothering to show the full ending. It doesn’t need to: everything played out before that final shot makes it a foregone conclusion. It is incredibly well directed by Jamie Payne, who gives the episode a hugely cinematic aesthetic and a visual style well beyond its budget.

“Hide” does a tremendous job of playing with horror tropes, and then giving them a science fiction explanation. It is the sort of genre blend that Doctor Who used to do famously in the 1970s. It not only makes the mid-70s period setting a perfect one, it makes these echo with a sense of Doctor Who at its height. Sure the visuals would be more primitive if “Hide” had been made 35 years earlier, but take out Matt Smith and Jenna Coleman and throw in Tom Baker and Elisabeth Sladen and the episode would work just as effectively.

This episode delivers great horror and great science fiction. It features two immensely talented guest stars, a creepy and memorable monster, funny dialogue, a surprising plot, and several smart nods to Doctor Who‘s past. Is it that much-vaunted “classic”?

You tell me, but it damn well should be.