Once could be luck. Twice is talent, and Jamie Mathieson is a damn talented writer.
Flatline owes a rather large debt to the Sarah Jane Adventures, but that doesn't make it any less fantastic. Plot and pacing are a thing of beauty in this, the episode which finally sees Clara Oswin Oswald come into her own, take the stabilisers off her bike, and save the world with a little help from her very own side-kick companion.
The episode opens on a hair-raising teaser. A terrified man whispers down the phone to the police that "...they're everywhere"... that the danger is "in the walls". Moments later he is caught, vanished, vacuumed, out of existence. And all we're left with is a telephone handset swinging off the hook. That brilliant, compelling, creepy, shot leads us into the opening titles.
How could a viewer not be hooked?
This episode begins with the Doctor and Clara landing back on earth, at the end of another off-screen adventure. Clara has asked to be dropped off at the same time and place they left from. The TARDIS has landed at the right time but, place-wise, location is ishy. They're in Bristol, not London. What's interesting about the displacement isn't the geography but the geometry. Or would that be the physics? For the TARDIS, now landed, is oh-so-much smaller on the outside. And, as the episode progresses, she's getting smaller still.
It's a fabulous visual. A moment which calls to mind children's classic literature; namely Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Gulliver's Travels.
Those iconic double doors, at the end of the walkway, shrink. The Doctor's face looms large as he peers out from within. To Clara (and to the viewer) he looks like Alice, grown to an impossible size, trapped and contorted within the White Rabbit's house. A lovely contrast to the moment when Clara sets the TARDIS upright on a mantle and the Doctor opens those double doors to reveal himself as, the Doctor from Lilliput.
Set design and special effects go hand in hand with plot (and fantastic bantery-dialogue) to make this episode as good as it is. Interestingly, given that I found Milk's special effects extraordinary and spine chilling, this is apparently - according to the Guardian - the low budget episode of the series. [Link leads to current Guardian review] Something about the use of colour and the way the special effects look really reminds me of the little I know of comic artwork; albeit that my knowledge of graphic novels is very scant indeed, outside of my having read Neil Gaiman's Sandman.
It's something about the use of colour, overall. The way the energy streams, pouring forth from alien palms, are animated. It's reminiscent of the look of films like Sin City. And then there's the TARDIS in cube form, painted that shade of blue, shut up tight in stasis mode. Though, yes, the ship in that form is also highly reminiscent of The Pandorica. It's both apt and a lovely nod to the fact that, without power, the shielding turns a home into a prison and eventually into a tomb. Once the two dimensional aliens suddenly take three dimensional form, wearing "the bodies of the dead as camouflage", those shifting, partly pixilated, partly blurred, forms are the stuff of impressionist nightmare.
In comparison, last week's mummy isn't remotely frightening.
As Clara walks away from TARDIS, tasked with investigating possible alien phenomena in the vicinity, she's following in the footsteps of previous companions. Most notably she's following in the footsteps of one Sarah Jane Smith. And, mere moments later, she meets Rigsy who reminds me, more than a little, of Clyde Langer from The Sarah Jane Adventures. That isn't purely because this teenage boy (and Rigsy does come across as a teenage boy, one probably ASBO'd for his graffiti, hence the community service) is Black British. He is also wise-cracking, flirtatious and, like Clyde Langer, artistically talented.
Clara steps into the Doctor's footsteps, adopting title, psychic paper and sonic screwdriver. Inescapably, Rigsy follows, stepping into hers. He asks how Clara got the job travelling with the Doctor, and throughout their subsequent adventure personifies how travelling in the TARDIS (or fighting aliens with the Doctor) can quite literally change a companion's life.
When we first meet Rigsy, he's just walked away from the work-crew supposed to oversee him paint over his graffiti tags. He's obviously wasting his talent, has been in trouble with the police, and is quite possibly estranged from his family. By the end of the episode, he's been pivotal in Clara and the Doctor's struggle to save the Earth ("Your last painting was so good it saved the world," the Doctor says to him. "I can’t wait to see what you do next!") and has realised he can turn his life around. Plus, he's calling his mum. Something about that phone call and the way the actor, Joivan Wade, delivers the line makes me think it's the first call home Rigsy's made in a while.
Like most companions Rigsy is quick thinking and fast on his feet. After all, it was his idea to try and escape the monsters oozing out of the floor and the walls by climbing into the iconic 1960's bubble chair. And Clara? She then swings into action, using it to crash through a window and out onto the street below. Like all good companions, with their Doctor, Clara and Rigsy make a good team.
It is Doctor Clara, and not the Doctor, who really alters Rigsy's point of view of himself. She saves him, both literally and symbolically, showing herself to be one hell of a phenomenal teacher while doing so. I am, of course, referring to the moment when Clara steps into the train driver's compartment and talks a frightened, depressed, teenage boy out of being a big-damn-but-dead hero. This, with little more than the help of a well-placed head-band and a pep talk.
A fantastic nod to phenomenal teachers, any and everywhere, who ever inspired troubled and talented students to go on and do great things. In that moment, as later, Clara Oswin Oswald is heroic.
Jenna Coleman is magnificent, as Clara evolves - over the course of the episode - from an adventurous, enthusiastic, eager, bright, young woman to someone who is also inspiring, capable and brilliant under pressure. That evolution shows in the juxtaposition between Coleman's performance when Clara's talking to Danny on the phone and, later, when she takes control of the ragtag team she's leading, by leaning in to whisper to Fenton that she's the best hope he has of staying alive.
There's a fantastic nod back to Deep Breath running throughout this, for this time, in the dark, it's Clara who has the Doctor's back, and the world's too. She quite literally saves the Doctor's life, and probably the TARDIS's life too - twice.
In that first episode, under pressure and possibly facing death, Clara drew on lessons learnt in the classroom, when facing Courtney Wood's lip. Here, in an inverse reflection of that moment, she twice draws on lessons learnt at the Doctor's side. And Clara's grin, upon realising she can turn the power the monsters are using to attack back upon them? A thing of beauty. Coleman's smile was bright enough to power the TARDIS.
Her quick wits and Rigsy's spray paint can, win through.
And, earlier, when the miniaturised TARDIS lies on the train tracks, with a train fast approaching and the Doctor spirals into panic (Listen to Peter Capaldi's harried delivery as the Doctor thinks aloud: "Can't Teleport… no power" etc: the Doctor is panicking) Clara is the one who quite literally thinks out of the box, references another childhood favourite, and gets him to make like "Thing" in The Adams family and so move the TARDIS. It is thanks to her that the Doctor manages to move himself, and his home, out of the way - much like a tortoise might.
The TARDIS, complete with Doctor, as a Giant Tortoise. Given the species life-span, I can see the allusion.
It's a marvellous moment and one that Mathieson inserts with the right amount of comedic flair, to break up the tension. Peter Capaldi/Twelve then gifts us with a little celebratory dance, right before the ship over balances and falls back onto the live rails, the cathedral bell tolling as a danger signal. The interplay of comedy, drama, action and a pinch of horror is superbly done - throughout. If I had to say anything negative about Mathieson's writing, it's only that the scaffolding of his structuring somehow still bleeds through and draws my eye when it shouldn't. Maybe it's an issue of pace. Or timing. I'm unsure.
In Flatline, possibly as a nod to the word play inherent in the title, death and rebirth is as much a motif as death alone. Clara and Rigsy both travel down into a subterranean world. Having saved the day, they come back out into the daylight, forever changed. And the Doctor? Trapped in his TARDIS, which is slowly running out of all forms of power, life support draining, he begins to suffocate. Thus, he begins to die as a human might. He faces death without the possibility of regeneration, as he did on Trenzelore. Worse he faces dying, cold and alone, not knowing if Clara can hear his final words.
Clara travelled back to Trenzelore and Christmas. Then, she was with him at what would have been his end. Here, he has no way of knowing if they will be reunited. That may be one reason the Doctor's so angry at the tail-end of the episode. But, actually, I think it's down to the fact that, in walking in his shoes, Clara makes the Doctor turn and face himself.
Pulling up his coat collar, adjusting his Crombie Coat, he becomes the man who takes a stand. The Oncoming Storm. The Destroyer of Worlds. He hates that. Hates having to name the two dimensional aliens as monsters and thus destroy them. More so, he cannot see himself as good.
As C.S. Lewis wrote of Aslan, which is oh so fitting for the Doctor: "Safe?” said Mr. Beaver; “Don’t you hear what Mrs. Beaver tells you? Who said anything about safe? ‘Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good. "
His anger in my opinion, is due to his pre-occupation with the word 'good' and his self-judgement. Steven Moffat loves mirroring. Here, Clara mirrors the Doctor, almost exactly, even looking back at him from a reflection in an actual mirror. But she's not the only mirror in the text. Fenton is one too. That older, angry curmudgeon of a man who is even more derogatory about Rigsy than the Doctor was (when he called him a fluorescent pudding brain) represents the darker side of the Doctor's personality. It's a fitting allusion, more so than the invading monsters, so named. And then there's the fact that none of the people he rescued (council worker, train driver, Rigsy) feel comfortable enough to shake his hand in thanks, let alone to hug him. Clara is hugged in his stead.
He stands apart. Alone. And it's because he's a curmudgeon, not because he's an alien. But, that doesn't mean he isn't a good man. The Doctor is a good man. Sometimes though, he isn't a very nice man. But, nice and good aren't interchangeable.
Emotionally, the focal point in this episode is the fact that Doctor lies but, somewhat hypocritically, won't accept being lied to. On the one hand this is a symbol of Doctor as father (or father figure if you prefer) being lied to by his almost daughter, about her boyfriend. It's somewhat inverted here, as a trope, in that she's also lying to her boyfriend about her father-figure. And, I do believe the Doctor sees himself as father-figure and interprets Clara's lying - and his dislike of it - in that vein. He also isn't sure he can trust her, if she lies to him.
That said, Jenna Coleman is obviously playing Clara as a woman in love with a formidable, far older, powerful man. And if you don't believe me just watch the scene after the Doctor confronts the alien monsters and saves the day. He stood in their path, held the sonic screwdriver aloft like a lightsaber, and Clara is a-glow with admiration, and love. Unrequited? Yes I still think so. But it's still a valid reading in the text. Once upon a time, when Angel the Series was on television I do remember it had been suggested to Alexis Denisoff that he play Wesley as if he were in love with Angel. They didn't tell David Boreanaz a thing, but the reading was there in the portrayal. I see that here too.
The Doctor loves Clara and he is damn proud of her. That's why he tells her she was a fantastic Doctor - twice. Which she so was. But, it's not a romantic love on his part. Was it ever, when he was Eleven? Actually, I'd say not. Not consciously, for he was still a grieving widower for much of the time they travelled together.
Life lessons for Clara about lying or obfuscating to your best friend or boyfriend? That is probably coming up in the next episode.
And, taking of mirrors, Missy is revealed (in the tag) to be watching Clara from the shiny reflective surface of a tablet (looks like an iPad) which is so close to being a magic mirror. In that scene I almost read Missy as the Evil Queen and Clara as Snow White. Although, I'm willing to accept Clara as pawn in some chess game that is soon to reveal itself.
Flatline is a gem of an episode. It's a celebration of Clara Oswin Oswald. And, a celebration of all companions and the way they change, running with the doctor. Well-paced, taut, with great dialogue, and gorgeous photography and special effects.
Would that all episodes in the series were this successful.