Review - Flatline

Clara takes a turn at being The Doctor, investigating some extra-dimensional creatures in Flatline.

Season 8, Episode 9 - Flatline

In the cold open we see a terrified man trying to report to the police some knowledge of who is behind some unspoken plot. He claims whomever "did it" is everywhere, before promptly vanishing. As the person on the other end of the phone line keeps trying to talk to him, we see he appears to have been sucked into the wall and stretched out of all proportion.

We join the TARDIS crew just after another jaunt through time and space, as Clara is set to be dropped off in London in time to meet a still unsuspecting Danny Pink. Unfortunately due to some external force, the TARDIS gets stuck in Bristol. Quite apart from that, it begins to shrink as the unknown force begins leeching dimensional energy from it.

BBC budget cuts take a disturbing turn.

Naturally The Doctor gets stuck inside, leaving Clara to investigate what's going on. This leads her to a community service maintenance team who are painting over graffiti. Local graffiti artist Rigsy fills Clara in on a recent spate of disappearances, including that of his aunt. All of the vanished people have been painted on the walls of a pedestrian underpass by an unknown artist.

Clara has fun teasing The Doctor by pretending to be him, but pretty soon things take a serious turn when a Police Officer vanishes from the next room by being sucked into the floor. All that is left when Clara and Rigsy arrive is a tree-like pattern on the wall. The Doctor quickly identifies it as a human nervous system, and the creatures attack again.

Clara and Rigsy manage to escape as Clara takes a call from Danny. A call that sounded highly suspect from his end. Not sure if I'm being a bit sensitive to In-Who-Endos here, but that seemed crafted to sound sexual. Danny was pretty cool about it though, almost as if he already suspects Clara is still hanging out with The Doctor.

Eventually we end up back at the underpass where the mural of the victims comes to life and menaces the community service work crew, sending them fleeing into the rail tunnels. Working through Clara, The Doctor tries to communicate with the entities, believing (or maybe hoping) that they aren't malicious, but jut misguided. It was nice to see him take this angle, as it shows he is still compassionate and understanding, even if he is curmudgeonly.

Obviously he is wrong, because the creatures continue to attack, and eventually take on Three-Dimensional human forms. That's where this episode loses it a bit. In their Two-Dimensional form, they are much scarier and far more threatening than when they take on human form and become yet another lot of shambling zombies. If it wasn't for the fact that their victims had already managed to get trapped down a network of tunnels with one exit, they would be easily escapable, despite their ability to remove the third dimension from things.

"Advance slowly and act menacing."

They do continue to leech power from the TARDIS though, which eventually takes The Doctor out of the equation altogether. This leaves Clara to come up with a plan to help get The Doctor back all on her own. Naturally this involves using the special skills of Rigsy to help turn the monsters' power against them. The Doctor is then able to banish what he suddenly decides to call the Boneless to their own dimension, warning them not to return.

After everything wraps up, we are subjected to yet another clumsily added season arc teaser with Missy. At least this one was appended rather than breaking the action to cram it in.

The pacing of this episode is good, managing to hit all of the major stages I outlined in Go, go, go, Geronimo! without feeling rushed. Keeping The Doctor trapped in the TARDIS was an interesting way to do a Doctor-Light episode. Shrinking the exterior of the TARDIS also allowed us this little moment:

Creepy and kooky. Mysterious and spooky.

I liked the evolution we see in Clara here. With The Doctor absent, Clara became him in many ways. All Companions are changed during their time with The Doctor, but to see one start to so closely resemble The Doctor without somehow absorbing part of him like Donna did, is a fun experience. Is Clara becoming more selfish, arrogant and cocky because of her time with The Doctor, or was she always like that, and being around someone who is the same way has simply allowed those traits to flourish?

Anyway, overall this was a fun episode only slightly hampered by what I see as a lessening of the monster when they became 3D.

8/10

Can we fix it?

Not really much needs doing here, so I'll concentrate on trying to fix the shambling zombie version of the 3D Boneless without a total re-write of the final act. I think the best way to achieve this is maybe just alter the way they behave, which will not only make it seem a bit more realistic, but also provide a gradual ramp-up of their threat level.

So when the Boneless are 2D, they move around freely as indistinct blobs slithering over surfaces and flattening out objects. Their first attempt to take human form is when the mural comes to life. Here we see fairly smooth movement along the 2D plane. As they become 3D though, they need to act more like babies learning to walk, stumbling and moving clumsily, rather than shambling like zombies. They dip into 3D and jerk about trying to work out how to get around in this new dimension before falling back to what they know and sliding along surfaces again.

In the early stages, this will allow the group to escape them by, for example, swinging across a gap on a chain or even just jumping over, much like Clara and Rigsy escaped on the convenient suspended chair. This forces the Boneless to take a long way around, because being unable to move through the third dimension, even a tiny crack is a huge obstacle.

This trick could ultimately be what forces them to move fully into the third dimension. The group think they're safe on the other side of a gap, when one of the Boneless pulls itself out of the floor or wall and unsteadily steps across. The Boneless' proficiency in the third dimension increases as the chase continues, and they spend less time stumbling back into 2D, and move more smoothly. They eventually start exhibiting the ability to project their dimensional power, rather than needing to touch or crawl over something to flatten it. This shows them rapidly learning how this new dimension works, and stops them from being just another shambling monster.

Everything else in this episode is okay, although I probably would have made sure it didn't sound like Clara was having some bedroom fun when Danny called her during the attack scene.

Season 9 wrap-up

As Season 9 comes to a close, let's have a little look back.

My scores

Episode 1 - The Magician's Apprentice 9/10
Episode 2 - The Witch's Familiar          7/10
Episode 3 - Under the Lake                   8/10
Episode 4 - Before the Flood                 6/10
Episode 5 - The Girl Who Died             9/10
Episode 6 - The Woman Who Lived     10/10
Episode 7 - The Zygon Invasion            9/10
Episode 8 - The Zygon Inversion         10/10
Episode 9 - Sleep No More                    9/10
Episode 10 - Face the Raven                 8/10
Episode 11 - Heaven Sent                    10/10
Episode 12 - Hell Bent                           8/10

                              Season Average =  8/10

This season started off quite strongly with The Magician's Apprentice, but then again, I'm a sucker for Davros. Sadly this story fell short in the conclusion, as dos the next one. After this little false start, the season was very solid. The introduction of Ashieldr was a breath of fresh air. It's always fun when someone can challenge The Doctor, and Maisie Williams was superb in the role.

The loss of Clara was probably about due. As I've said before though, its impact was considerably lessened by the addition of two more episodes with her appearing, and the knowledge that she had what was likely a considerable life after that. Her death went from a cautionary tale about the dangers of hubris to essentially showing her being rewarded for her arrogant behaviour with effective immortality.

For all that though, I know I would love to watch at least a little bit of the Clara and Ashieldr show. The things those girls could get up to.

Have fun, you crazy kids!

Ongoing problems

Thinking about my pet peeves, Season 9 had:

• A whopping 6 episodes with In-Who-Endos
• 3 episodes that resorted to Deus Ex Screwdriver
• 2 episode with problems associated with Needlessly Recurring Monsters
• 1 instance of there being Too Many Monsters
• 1 episode that got a little bit Go, go, go, Geronimo!

I'm not sure, but this could be a record with regards to In-Who-Endos. Most of them added nothing as well, like Clara's couple of references to a lesbian fling with Jane Austin. It's so frustratingly unnecessary.

I thought with the early loss of the Sonic that we'd get less Deus Ex Screwdriver this season, but the immediate introduction of the seemingly even more powerful Sonic Sunglasses kept it relatively alive. Still not as bad as some seasons for actual usage, but as a concept, the sunglasses annoyed me no end. I'm glad to see them go, even if the new design of the sonic is a bit... elaborate.

Add more glowing bits!

The large number of two-parters has all but eliminated Go, go, go Geronimo! as an issue. That said, a couple of those two-parters were probably more like loosely related standalone episodes. The Girl Who Died / The Woman Who Lived could easily have been split up with no loss of coherency. Similarly, Face The Raven, Heaven Sent, and Hell Bent were only technically the same story because each picked up immediately after the last and were steps in getting The Doctor to Gallifrey. The stories themselves were reasonably separate.

I'll also point out that most of the stories showed The Doctor in his new Rock and Roll guise, playing the electric guitar for no real reason. I'm categorising this as his Annoying Catch Phrase, and very much got to the More of the Same stage.

Season Arc

The Hybrid arc was one of the most blatant since the reboot. Davros fully explained the prophecy in the second part of the first story, so it was out there early. This meant we had to have several stories that attempted to pile confusion onto the situation by adding a bunch of things that could be referred to as Hybrids like Ashieldr and Osgood.

In some ways, I felt this arc didn't have enough time to play out. Perhaps this is the one drawback of having so many two-parters. It would have been nice to see this arc play out over a longer period. There are a bunch of other things that could possibly be considered Hybrids that could also have been referenced here. River Song is basically a Hybrid. Rose Tyler absorbed the Time Vortex, so maybe that counts. Then there's the Doctor Donna and even Cyber-Danny. References to these as possibilities of being the prophesied Hybrid would have allowed a greater tease and more confusion.

Another way to fix this would be to reorder the episodes. Having Davros' story coming after initial teases of the Hybrid would allow more subtle references to possibly go over audiences heads, only to have Davros reveal the truth around mid-season. A good reordering of the season would be:

Episode 1 - The Zygon Invasion
Episode 2 - The Zygon Inversion
Episode 3 - The Girl Who Died
Episode 4 - Under the Lake
Episode 5 - Before the Flood
Episode 6 - The Woman Who Lived
Episode 7 - The Magician's Apprentice
Episode 8 - The Witch's Familiar
Episode 9 - Sleep No More
Episode 10 - Face the Raven
Episode 11 - Heaven Sent
Episode 12 - Hell Bent

There would of course need to be a couple of minor re-writes, but I feel like this would work quite well. We'd start with the very strong Zygon story which ends with The Doctor looking all shifty when Osgood refers to herself as a Hybrid (rather than him using the term). This wouldn't mean anything to audiences yet, but The Doctor's reaction would show it's important. I'd then downplay the reference to Ashieldr as a Hybrid at the end of The Girl Who Died by not actually using the term. Saying she is part Human, part Mire would be enough. By splitting up the Ashieldr stories, you give audiences time to forget about the Hybrid. Sticking the Fisher King story in there would add confusion by referencing the Minister of War, which I originally took as the season arc, coming as it did straight after the Hybrid thing seemed to be resolved.

After the events of The Woman Who Lived, The Doctor gets depressed about the Hybrid, because he has realised (wrongly) that Ashieldr is it, so he goes on his bender, and we get the Davros story. A quick break from that whole thing with Sleep No More, then into the three-part finale to wrap the season up.

Another small benefit of putting the Davros story mid-season is that The Doctor doesn't lose his sonic, and therefore the Glasses don't need to exist for most of the episodes!

Review - Hell Bent

After forcing his way out of his Confession Dial, The Doctor takes on Gallifrey, Hell Bent on saving Clara.

Season 9, Episode 12 - Hell Bent

We start this episode with The Doctor entering the diner from The Impossible Astronaut. There he meets a waitress who looks like Clara, and begins telling her a story.

The story follows directly on from the events of Heaven Sent, with The Doctor finding his way back to the barn of his childhood first seen in Day of the Doctor and revisited again in Listen. Here he is treated as a returning hero, a fact that only makes the Timelord High Council even more nervous. After refusing several personal visits of increasing importance, he eventually receives Rassilon himself. 

Even negotiations

The Doctor is in no mood to parley though, and he immediately orders Rassilon off "his planet." Rassilon responds by ordering his soldiers to fire on The Doctor. The do, but every one of them elects to miss. This is shortly followed by a mass desertion. Rassilon makes to finish the job with his gauntlet, but is stopped by The General. Cut to a shuttle leaving the planet. 

The Timelords still want to know about the Hybrid though, and The Doctor convinces them they need to speak to Clara about it. Using some Timelord jiggery-pokery, they extract Clara from her final moments in order to find out what she knows, her body time looped in its final heartbeat. 

Of course it's all a ruse so that The Doctor can save Clara. They run. The Doctor is manic, and you can see he doesn't fully believe what he's attempting will work. But being The Doctor, he tries it anyway. Eventually stealing another TARDIS, he pushes to the end of the universe, trying to break Clara out of the time loop. When they arrive, he finds Ashieldr waiting. She's managed to out live the universe. 

She doesn't look a day over a billion

We get treated to some banter about the nature of the Hybrid, with theories flung back and forth. Whilst Ashieldr's theory is supposed to be the one we believe, there is still enough wiggle room to bring something else into play. Perhaps for Christmas. We know River will make an appearance, and she's pretty much a Human/Timelord hybrid. It'd be fun if my bit about Missy came to pass though. Half Timelord, half Cyberman fits the prophesy too.

The Doctor also reveals he plans to use a neuro blocker to erase Clara's memories of him, in much the same way hid did with Donna Noble. After finding this out, Clara forbids it, saying her past is hers, and he has no right to rob her of it. With Clara having supposedly sabotaged the neuro blocker, they both decide to use it, with one of them sure to forget the other.

For a change it is The Doctor who is left abandoned, waking up in the Nevada desert. Eventually it is revealed that the Diner itself is the TARDIS they just stole from Gallifrey, and Clara and Ashieldr set off to return Clara to Gallifrey so that she can die as destined. Of course, Clara notes that because she is not aging at all, they can go "the long way round".

The Doctor returns to his TARDIS, where he receives one final message from Clara, along with his new Sonic Screwdriver. Thank the Gods, we have seen the last of those bloody sunglasses.

Victory!

All up this was a solid episode that tied everything together without trying too hard. My major issue was that nothing much actually seemed to happen. Much of the episode consisted of The Doctor telling Clara stuff. Or more accurately, The Doctor telling Clara about telling Clara stuff. It was a shame Timothy Dalton couldn't reprise the role of Rassilon. It took me a bit to realise he actually was Rassilon, and not some other Lord President. And now we've had an actual on-screen gender-swapping regeneration. I hope this keeps people satisfied for a while and they stop demanding it of The Doctor.

The whole bit in the Cloisters with random Daleks, Cybermen, and freaking Weeping Angels was a bit ripe. Had the whiff of Too many monsters, that did, especially as they'd just introduced a fairly interesting new Monster in the Sliders, which got rather overshadowed by these cameos. The Matrix is an interesting thing though, an it is clear that this was the technology Missy was using to create the Nethersphere in the Season 8 finale, and that would tie in nicely with my little idea for the Rani too.

Having Clara effectively still "at large" did, as I predicted, somewhat diminish her departure in Face the Raven. That said, how could you not get caught up in thinking about what her and Ashieldr could get up to in a TARDIS?

Not exactly perfection, but not a weak way to go out either.

8/10

Can we fix it?

Not a huge amount to do here, but first up, I'd dump all the additional monsters from the Cloisters. They added nothing but a few poor jump scares. The Sliders themselves are creepy enough, and could provide enough tension as the pair traversed the Cloisters.

I'm really not sure what to do about the big background dumps The Doctor has in this episode though. They are undoubtedly important, but just hearing The Doctor tell Clara stuff isn't exactly story telling at its best.

Review - Heaven Sent

The Doctor deals with his grief at the loss of Clara by working his way through a labyrinthine castle, whilst avoiding the embodiment of one of his earliest nightmares in Heaven Sent.

Season 9, Episode 11 - Heaven Sent

After a mysterious hand throws a switch and crumbles to dust, The Doctor arrives, having been teleported away from Earth at the end of Face the Raven. He lets us know that despite his promise to Clara not so seek revenge, he will likely be doing just that.

Before long we see the castle he is in has video screens scattered around it. These screens show monster vision from a creature which is slowly lumbering its way closer to The Doctor. Backed into a dead end, The Doctor reveals that he is afraid to die. Surprisingly, following this revelation, the creature freezes, and the castle begins to rearrange itself, allowing him to escape. As the creature returns, The Doctor realises that it resembles a dead body covered in veils and flies that gave him nightmares as a child.

Understandable.

As The Doctor devises an escape plan, we are introduced to the little gimmick of the episode that allows The Doctor to explain stuff to someone even though he is alone. He goes to his happy place. As he continues to explore the castle, and prompted by questions from his own sub-conscious masquerading as Clara, he works out that the castle is a torture chamber designed to get truths out of him.

There are quite a few clues that kinda telegraph the ending a bit. The Doctor seems to determinately fail to address them though. Perhaps that's the point. He knows what is going on deep down, but is still fooling himself. That said, there are a couple of inconsistencies, like the clothes. I suppose it probably works out somehow. 

At least one naked Doctor.

I don't want to spoil the ending of this one just in case, but it was awe-inspiring. It really was a perfect episode, with a complex mystery, a creepy monster (even if it is another zombie-like one) with a few jump scares too. They managed to make Clara present, but at the same time remain absent. I do feel that her protracted goodbye last week was lessened slightly by showing her again. Her appearance towards the end probably would have had more impact had she either been absent for an episode or two first, or if her demise had been more sudden. 

None if that detracts from this episode in itself though I simply cannot fault it. It is blessedly free of any of the issues that usually irk me, wonderfully paced, and a top-notch ending. Definitely the best episode in at least three seasons. 

10/10

Can we fix it?

Not at all. Perfection.