Without fail, some of my favorite Doctor Who episodes are the unabashedly weird ones. Usually once a series, there’s been one episode that just baffles or enchants because of its sheer out-thereitude. While Series 8 has had its share of strangeness, due in no small part to Peter Capaldi’s divisive (though I generally quite like him) portrayal of the Doctor. His episodes have been pretty straightforward, though, even the ones that have upended expectations. That is, until this week’s, which I can honestly say hasn’t quite been done this way before. “Flatline” by Jamie Mathieson, who did last week’s “Mummy on the Orient Express” (which I initially thought was just okay but have now decided I like quite a lot), is a science fiction idea that doesn’t normally get shown, but should. The Doctor goes through time and space all the time, but very rarely are any of his adventures to do with dimensions. But, when his whole spaceship’s identity is based on “relative dimension,” it was only really a matter of time before things went a little haywire.
The Doctor is about ready to drop Clara off back home for her lunch date with Danny, and she chats about taking her toothbrush and things out of the TARDIS even though Danny’s TOTALLY okay with her traveling in it still (yeah, sure). The Doctor lands the TARDIS in the right time but not the right place (he’s in Bristol) and something a bit funny’s happened: the TARDIS’ exit door has gotten smaller. Hmm. They exit to find that, on the outside, the TARDIS has indeed shrunk to be about the size of a trashcan. The Doctor loves not knowing what’s happening, though Clara is much more concerned about how they’re going to put it right. He sends her off to investigate (but, really, what on Earth is she going to find on a council estate that’ll give her clues?) and the Doctor returns to the TARDIS to see what’s up.
Well, believe it or not, Clara DOES find something. A foot tunnel in which are graffiti of people’s backs. Nearby, a group of men are painting over other graffiti, including a teenage boy named Rigsy (Jovian Wade) who is on community service for having graffitied in the first place. The old grouch in charge of the project is Fenton (Christopher Fairbank) and he forces Rigsy to paint over his own art to begin the punishment. Rigsy sees Clara at the tunnel and inquires as to who she lost. You see, all the portraits of people’s backs represents a person who has disappeared from the estate mysteriously. Clara goes back to the TARDIS to tell the Doctor what she and finds that is has now shrunk to the size of the toy TARDIS I have on my desk. The Doctor is still normal sized on the inside but now he’s trapped. He hands Clara the sonic screwdriver and the psychic paper, as well as an earpiece so he can see and hear what she’s doing. She puts the TARDIS in her bag and goes off, excited to get to be the Doctor.
Without much provocation, and despite the Doctor attempting to tell her to lie to the boy to not scare him off, Clara tells Rigsy about the Doctor and the TARDIS and all of that. They go into the flat of one of the missing people and find a strange pattern that looks like desert sands on the wall. Using the psychic paper, they then get a police constable to show them into another apartment, believing Clara to be with MI-5. The PC gets sucked into the floor, turned into drawings and lines, and then a pattern emerges on the wall, which the Doctor quickly deciphers to be a central nervous system. The desert pattern in turn is actually skin cells. Whatever entity this is is two-dimensional and attempting to either infiltrate, learn, or just destroy. The Doctor hopes they just don’t realize they’re hurting anyone.
Danny calls while Clara and Rigsy are escaping the crawling 2D creatures, and the Doctor then finds out about Clara’s lying. True to form, he’s much more upset that Clara lied to him than to Danny. There’s no time to talk about that, though; Clara and Rigsy head back to the tunnel where Fenton and the others are about to paint over the memorial, but the Doctor has a horrible realization: what if they aren’t a tribute at all? What if the 2D aliens are trying to mimic the people they murdered? Clara can barely articulate this when one of the group gets sucked into the wall, and the paintings begin to turn around. They all run for an old train yard and the Doctor tells Clara that, if she is indeed going to be the Doctor, she’s going to have to establish dominance in the situation before Fenton does. And Clara is great at it!
But they still have to run, because the 2Ds are closing in on them and the further into the train tunnels the humans go, the fewer places there are to run. The Doctor makes Clara a “2Dis,” or a device that can put things in three dimensions that the aliens have made two. They’re sucking energy from the TARDIS so the Doctor can’t do much else, and now the aliens are becoming three dimensional themselves. To quote Egon Spengler, “This is extraordinarily bad.” As the aliens close in, and the Doctor’s life support failing, Clara has to think on her feet (“what would the Doctor do?”) in order to save everyone, restore the TARDIS and the Doctor, and ultimately save the world.
I think this episode is really, really fantastic…mostly. The idea of 2D aliens that leech energy from 3D beings is one, as I said, we haven’t seen on Doctor Who before, or in sci-fi much at all. The visuals of the beings, and especially the janky, half-chalk look of them once they turn 3D, are chilling and quite effective. FINALLY, a show like Doctor Who tackles the great debate over 2D and 3D, although he comes down decidedly on the steroscopic side of the argument.
I also love the way this was made effectively into a Doctor-lite episode because of trapping him in the TARDIS. He’s omnipresent, but all of his stuff was probably filmed in a day or two. The dimensionality of the TARDIS is not something that gets played with nearly enough, despite the “It’s bigger on the inside” line. I also loved that it’s used here by Rigsy and the Doctor saying that it’s never been truer. Plus, the image of the Doctor’s hand coming out of a tiny TARDIS is always going to be funny to me.
The main reason I enjoyed this is, as has been the case for most of the season, Clara. She seems absolutely elated to get to be the Doctor for once but does so in her inimitable Clara way. When she talks Rigsy out of needlessly killing himself with the use of a hair tie, she makes him see how silly he’s being while still giving off that air of “Look, I don’t really care about you, but I’ll miss this hair tie,” which she obviously doesn’t mean. She makes her “companion” succeed on his own, which is a very Doctory thing to do. And at the end, she looks legitimately heartbroken when the Doctor refuses to tell her she did good as the Doctor, with his very heavy response of “You were an exceptional Doctor; goodness has nothing to do with it.” I really think Clara’s obsession with traveling in the TARDIS is going to get her in loads of trouble, and it makes me really nervous.
Oh, can we talk for two seconds about the Missy tag? Okay, so clearly she’s got her eye on Clara, fine, we could probably have figured that… but she has an iPad? The Gatekeeper to the Netherworld needs a tablet to do things? Maybe this is to indicate that she isn’t quite so godly after all, or maybe it’s just because iPads are everywhere, even in heaven.
All in all, I think this episode really delivered a unique and funny story with proper creepiness and some excellent Clara stuff. Definitely Jamie Mathieson should come back, with two excellent episodes in a row. Now, I said a bit ago that I really, really liked it…mostly. That “mostly” has to do with the human characters, especially Rigsy, who I felt was just kind of boring and generic. Oh, he’s a graffiti artist so he has to paint a fake door on a poster to trick the aliens. Clever, I guess. Fenton, too, was pretty one-note, although I did like that he didn’t even have enough imagination to see anything on the psychic paper, because he’s clearly not a creative type like Shakespeare or Agatha Christie. I know he was a character meant to be hated, but he was just that and was mostly a bother, despite the good performance from Fairbank.
But, like I said, this episode is great and I’m excited to see more from Mathieson in the future.
Next week, however, we get Frank Cottrell Boyce’s script directed by Sheree Folkson. The title is “In the Forest of the Night,” and it’s got about the least interesting Next Time trailer I’ve ever seen. Let’s hope the finished product isn’t like that. But, anyway. Enjoy!
Images: BBC
This was probably the strongest episode yet of this new season. Doctors 10 and 11 had their own “I am the Doctor!” moments — this was Capaldi’s. Whereas Tennant gave the rundown to the Titanic survivors and Smith made his proclamation as all the baddies converged on the Pandorica, Capaldi finally has found enough of his Time Lord arrogance/self confidence to proclaim himself the Defender of Our 3D Plane of Existence!
Capaldi’s Doctor has almost wallowed in insecurity since Deep Breath, but it appears that he is beginning to find himself again.
On another important front, though — why the heck is Clara so amazed that Capaldi’s Doctor is so different from Smith, when she has referred (in the 50th anniversary special) to being able to recall her multitude of lives with all of the prior incarnations of our favorite Time Lord? How can she be so astounded at the Scottish Monster’s inability to show empathy when she knew Hartnell’s Doctor? And Tom Baker’s? And specially Colin Baker’s? Anyone who knew all of the prior Doctors should be able to see right through Capaldi’s hard exterior to see the man inside, and Clara seems completely unaware of her own memories. A little too much ret-conning being done here with Clara, methinks.
But…they established she doesn’t remember ANY of the Doctors. They’re not even like the same people anymore. She didn’t even know she’s strewn through time until eventually we learn it. She’s met the 11th Doctor like two times in his past and present, but 21st century Clara didn’t recognize him. To this Clara, she only knew the 11th Doctor and now this one, and they’re completely different people.
Sorry to bump the thread, but the Clara that comes out of the timeline *does* remember the other Doctors, at least as of “The Day of the Doctor.” She tells the War Doctor that she’s known all of the Doctors, and in some ways she likes him best — because he’s the “youngest in spirit” of all of them that she’s met. Before exiting the timeline, as well, the “real Clara” asks Eleven who John Hurt is, saying she knows all of his faces and doesn’t recognize that one. So, she’s been shown as remembering them all after exiting the Doctor’s timeline.
I think I saw one Easter Egg maybe two in Flatline. I saw A113 on the first train. A113 is an Easter Egg that has been making it’s appearance in Toy Story to Doctor Who’s Flatline episode. You can see A113 on the auto tag of the tow truck from Cars. It’s in Brave and it was on the class ring of the show the guy had the computer chip in his head played by Josh Holloway. Did the second train have a sign as an Easter Egg. I remember it had S & M on the sign. Did S & M have any thing to with Steven Moffat’s initials?
did this episode remind anyone else of “The Silence in the Library,” freaky monsters you can’t really see (or in the walls..shadows…you get the gist). ugh, freaky things
I just loved watching the TARDIS crawl around like Thing from The Addams Family.
If you ever read “Flatland” by Edwin Abbot, so much deja vu this episode. That being said, still a great episode, if not a little wibbly wobbly. http://theinsightfulpanda.com/2014/10/19/doctor-who-flatline-into-the-episode/ Also, OMG Missy has an iPad lol
Sorry, this
http://theinsightfulpanda.com/2014/10/19/doctor-who-flatline-into-the-episode/
I think you’ll find there is a reason why the episode is titled “Flatline”.
Really? So what is it?
Finally got to see what I’d been waiting for, with ANGRY CAPALDI emerging at the end with the “I tried to talk you” moment. Rapidly heading to best Doctor EVER territory for me.
On second thought, the real problem this year and the reason that Clara is no longer working for me is not HER: It’s Danny Pink. He is a completely unnecessary character made of 100 percent artificial ingredients. It’s his presence that’s throwing the whole series off-balance. Why does Clara have to have a boyfriend anyway? — Especially when their relationship is built on air… it’s absurd with me. When she declared her “love” for this complete non-entity of a character I felt the whole show lurching off the tracks. In fact, that was when I had had enough. So, don’t call me a Clara-hater. It’s her useless boyfriend who has to go.
Agree but Clara needs to go with him and live happy ever after away fro the Doctor!
I’m glad you liked this one Kyle. I think it had a little bit of everything. So I would’ve been confused if you didn’t like this one too.
I was hoping they’d go with the more Star Trek the Next Generation possibility of the creatures not being hostile, just different, but no, they went the only way that I can remember Doctor Who going, there’s always a bad guy. Too bad, the Doctor is willling to get along, but apparently there’s always something that has to be destroyed.
Do all the people who have been in the Tardis this season count as companions? It seems like every show has a handful of passengers these days.
“There’s always a bad guy”Wow, I think you have a faulty memory. At least 4 episodes this season have the “bad guy” being non-existent, misunderstood or repenting.
I think other than the Capaldi premiere, this has been my favorite episode so far. It was actually creepy and yet incredibly funny. Now last week’s ending makes a little more sense. Clara’s lying to everyone and that looks like it’s going somewhere.
I have already seen it a second time!
The thing with Fenton, and I didn’t even really think about it until this morning, is that while, yes he’s a one note annoying character, he’s also a throwback. There haven’t been a lot of characters like that in New Who, but if you go back to the ’70s, and the Pertwee era in particular, characters like him are in there as foils to the doctor all over the place. The usually old man who doesn’t believe any of this nonsense, and thinks he should be in charge and everyone should just keep a stiff upper lip and carry on. It’s very old-school Who.
My favourite bit was when the Doctor handed Clara the sledgehammer, and she pulled it out of her handbag. Such a classic little gag!
Missy may be a Pandora-like character whom the Time Lords dispersed as a punishment. Yet, she still could influence other characters in a way that is not specified. When I saw the last scene, it confirmed something that I had suspected since Hide, when the Doctor asked Emma if there is anything unusual about Clara, because he suspects something is odd. When Clara entered the Doctor’s timeline in The Name of the Doctor, Missy may have been able in some way to latch onto the Impossible Girl and reintegrate herself. If this were the case, it could allow Missy to be a recurring character for years to come as she uses the Doctor to find the Time Lords and take revenge from wherever she is still trapped. It also explains Clara’s multiple personalities and why she sometimes says that she does not know who she is. The last scene was great. It may finally start to explain what has been going on since Asylum of the Daleks. The current Doctor should suspect something. Otherwise, why would he give Clara access to the Tardis telepathic link, which presumably he designed for himself?
I think the point of the iPad was that it’s *flat*.
personally i think it is because it is a device we are all familiar with that can show a camera-feed
This episode DEFINITELY had a series 1 or 2 feel to it and it felt NICE! It was funny yet suspenseful and… the Boneless looked like they could easily fit into like a horror video game, especially when they were semi-3D.
“Clara goes back to the TARDIS to tell the Doctor what she and finds that is has now shrunk to the size of the toy TARDIS I have on my desk.”
HEEEY! Doctor Who and no sleep sound like a good idea, but it accidentally a large part of that sentence. I’m gonna go get some brain ointment for that mental charlie horse you just gave me. OW!
Also: dig the review, love the “weird” episodes. Need to watch more Doctor.
I liked this episode and your review always gives me a deeper understanding of the episode
</sarcasm>