In the episode, alien time traveller the Doctor (Matt Smith) and his companion Clara Oswald (Jenna-Louise Coleman) visit a mansion in 1974 owned by Professor Alec Palmer (Dougray Scott), which appears to be haunted.

There he discovers a bizarre "Crooked Man" (Aidan Cook), who also seeks to escape the pocket universe and be reunited with its mate in the mansion.

Cross wanted to write a scary episode and was inspired by Nigel Kneale's works The Quatermass Experiment and The Stone Tape.

The storyline of "Hide" was kept to a restricted setting and characters, although it was expanded thematically to flesh out the monster with a love story that paralleled that of Professor Palmer and Emma.

In November 1974, Professor Alec Palmer and his assistant Emma Grayling collect photographic evidence of a ghost in Caliburn House.

As Emma reopens the gateway again with Palmer's encouragement, the TARDIS briefly flies into the pocket universe and moves close to the ground, allowing the Doctor to jump and hang on before the creature can grab him.

Executive producer Caroline Skinner, who was new with the seventh series, knew him and offered to work his schedule around writing an episode; he was willing to do it.

[4] Executive producer and lead writer Steven Moffat was pleased to have Cross join, as he was a showrunner in his own right with Luther.

[7] Subsequent to filming her appearance in this episode, Raine was cast as Doctor Who's original producer, Verity Lambert, in a docudrama made for the show's 50th anniversary, An Adventure in Space and Time.

[5][11] Cross only had Coleman's five-minute audition for "Asylum of the Daleks", in which she played a different but mysteriously linked character to work from, and some editing was done to her lines to make her sound less "bitchy".

[2] The Doctor recites in his dialogue the lyrics "Birds do it, bees do it, even educated fleas do it" from "Let's Do It, Let's Fall in Love" by Cole Porter as he realises that the Crooked Man is just a lost lover.

However, the Doctor is in fact alluding to the Special Operations Executive, a British World War II organisation that Professor Palmer was a part of.

[16] In addition, "Hide" received 1.53 million requests on the online BBC iPlayer for April, placing sixth for the month on the service.

Neela Debnath of The Independent praised how the episode blended a haunted house story with a science fiction tale, highlighting the twist at the end of "ugly aliens have feelings too".

[19] The Guardian's online reviewer Dan Martin said that it had "the hallmarks of an episode that will be discussed for years to come", including the guest stars and atmosphere.

[22] Morgan Jeffery of Digital Spy awarded the story four out of five stars, writing that it flowed better than Cross' last episode, "The Rings of Akhaten", and allowed for the exploration of several themes.

While he was positive towards the way the story was tied back to a time traveller, he felt that the ending was "perhaps less interesting than what's come before, simply because it feels more familiar", though it was still "solid".

He praised the smaller scope and focus on character, but wrote "the left-field genre detour didn't completely convince, and felt jarringly underwhelming considering the spooky set-up, but at least it tried something unique".