At first glance Face the Raven, written by Sarah Dollard, is a whodunit, or a why-dunit. Who put that tattoo on the back of Rigsy's neck? Why did they do so? Who's the woman lying dead on the pavement? Did Rigsy kill her? But, as the episode unfolds, neither fantastic sets nor special effects can disguise the fact that this is as much prologue (for the series two-part finale) as it is stand-alone adventure. Plus, given the way it ends (turning like a TARDIS key in a lock) it's really all about Clara Oswald - her journey with the Doctor through time space and the fourth dimension - and the end of that journey.
-
Two roads diverged in a wood and I - I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference. (Poem - The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost)
It can be said Clara Oswald has been living on borrowed time since the end of series eight when she hugged the Doctor, said her goodbye's, and walked off down a Cardiff high street into her own future. It was a quiet departure from the TARDIS. A mature end to madcap adventures through time and space. A valid choice, taken in the face of Danny Pink's self-sacrifice. But, it was not a choice Clara stuck with. Given half an opportunity and a wish from Santa (via dream crabs sucking the life out of her, one brain-freezing moment after another) Clara took up adventuring again, having truly, madly, deeply missed the Doctor and the TARDIS. When she dreamt she was back on board (in Last Christmas) her face was luminescent with joy. And, once again, she took the road less travelled.
Anyone who reads the British press knew Jenna Coleman left the TARDIS some months ago. She's off to be Queen Victoria. Thus we knew it would be the end of the road for Clara, sooner or later. I didn't expect to be moved. I was. Nor did I expect Jenna Coleman to give such a compelling and nuanced performance. Over the years in which she's played Clara, there've been episodes Jenna was brilliant in, others I've been more than a little ambivalent about. I've always felt Clara's character's arc regrettably resembled that red leaf kept from her childhood, buffeting in the wind, even after Trenzelore.
All companions become like the Doctor. That is their triumph and their tragedy.
For most of this episode Clara and the Doctor are working in concert, her good cop to his bad. But, in so doing, we're repeatedly reminded she's stepped into the Doctor's footsteps on this hidden, cobblestoned, street and elsewhere. Here, in so doing, she missteps - fatally.
Face the Raven was originally entitled Trap Street and was conceived as a stand alone episode. It wasn't part of the series arc. Nor did it feature Ashildr/Me or Rigsy. Both characters are a little underused within such a large ensemble cast, but Dollard has woven them into the action pretty seamlessly. In particular, I think Rigsy's return to the Doctor Who universe is a brilliant one. Rigsy encapsulates the change from teenager to adult in a way a young child can easily understand. Let's not forget that when we first met him in Flatline, Rigsy's 'tags' and street art had earned him community service - and not for the first time either. A year on (if linear Whoniverse time runs on a similar lines to Earth time) he's a changed man. Older. Wiser. Steadily employed. Reliable. And the proud father of a new human, Lucy, who looks very new indeed. Maturity as the result of Fatherhood? Or adventures in two and three dimensional space with Clara and the doctor? I'd say both. Here, it's strongly implied his adventure with Clara and the Doctor garnered him Ashildr's attention. More so, that she knew he'd made enough of an impression to warrant being given the TARDIS' phone number. It isn't Clara's mobile he calls, after all. Rigsy is the bait in a trap set long ago, just as Clara was once the bait in Missy's trap. And what a trap it is.
Waking one morning with no recollection of the previous day, a tattoo counting down on the back of his neck, Rigsy does what anyone with the Doctor's number would do. He phones the TARDIS for help. Help does indeed arrive, but at a very high price for Rigsy is the worm on Ashildr's baited hook. And, as Ashildr reminds the Doctor (and the viewers) he can't resist a mystery.
The Doctor: "Oh, that's not boring. That is very not boring".
One numeral counting down to the next on the back of Rigsy's neck is unusual enough to warrant his getting a full body scan aboard the TARDIS. Then, from one moment to the next Peter Capaldi turns his performance on a knife edge; the Doctor going from fascination to being almost frozen in shock. We know instantly that he's discovered something terrible. We know before he stops calling Rigsy "local knowledge", or starts reaching for his emotional-cue cards. Given Capaldi's performance in this scene I'd go so far as to say that if Clara hadn't adamantly insisted they investigate and fix this, it's likely the Doctor would have offered ham-fisted apologies (for the fact that Rigsy had scant hours left to live) and run.
Instead they're off to what isn't the British Library, looking for maps, with Miss Oswald teaching the class (watching along at home) about the nature of trap streets:
-
Clara: "A trap street. You know, when someone's making a map, a, um... cartographer, uses a fake street, throws it into the mix, names it after one of his kids or whatever. Then if the fake street, the trap street, ever shows up on someone else's map, they know their work's been stolen. Clever, right?"
The set - or street in Cardiff dressed by the prop department - is fantastic, twisty, encased and composed of enough historic architecture to appear frozen in time. It's part Diagonalley, part Victorian covered arcade gone to seed. I assume the wooden boards covering windows are there to camouflage modern logos but they help create a sense of a small, tightly-packed, community struggling with limited resources. A community which may be scrounging from the world outside its own safe haven, under Mayor Me's auspice.
This street is a camp. Refugee? Concentration? Prison? These beings who live together in supposed peace, hiding from forces which might exile them off-world, or send them back into battle, do so because their need for sanctuary apparently superseds all else. Reinforcing that perception, far more than the fate of Anah and her oracular daughter Anahson, is the tragic story of the elderly man about to face the Raven because he stole medicine to help his wife. Ashildr shows no mercy even when begged to two beings who, going by appearance, could be anyone's grandparents. That in itself is a stroke of writerly brilliance from Dollard, both capturing the inevitability of what Rigsy (and later Clara) will face and highlighting the unmerciful nature of Ashildr's rule. Whilst she too may be trapped by the Chronolock she wears (possibly having made some faustian deal, prior to kidnapping the Doctor to keep her people safe) make no mistake Ashildr is a ruler. Or a warden.
As regards world-creation, from the grid upon the cobblestones (visible when the misdirection circuit is activated and de-activated) to the way faces change from human to alien, and back again (as the luckworm telepathic forcefield is disrupted) CGI is beautifully, sparingly, used for greater impact. The special effects are fantastic in this episode.
Sarah Dollard has created a vibrant microcosm of the universe, on a twisty cobbled street, introducing the Who-niverse to a race of two-faced beings from the planet Janus, no doubt inspired by the Roman God "of beginnings and transitions,[1] and thereby of gates, doors, doorways, passages and endings. He is usually depicted as having two faces, since he looks to the future and to the past" (quote from wikipedia) Interestingly, Janus was also the God who presided over the beginnings and endings of conflict, which surely this is. For Face the Raven leads the Doctor to what the trailer for the next episode implies is a grander, greater, trap.
It's not incidental that Clara agreed to take up travelling with the Doctor again (at the end of last years Christmas Special) because, he asks her to do so. Having asked her twice - having almost begged - there's a sense he's right (in this episode) to finally realise he does have a duty of care towards his companions. This is especially true in this series (and the last) as he's taken on a more parental mantle with Clara. Children grow up, make their own mistakes, and make their own way in the world. Clara's increasingly reckless behaviour (and belief in her own indestructibility) can be read as something usually seen in teenagers and young adults, rather than someone in her late twenties. But it can also be said Clara was forced to mature early, given her mother's death. And when her friends went off to university? She became a soufflé-making au-pair, responsible for other people's children. Thus, in a sense, her travels with the Doctor can be seen as a reaction, an extended gap-year-en-TARDIS if you will.
Exuberant, adrenalised by the blind faith that the Doctor will always save the day and right the wrongs of the universe, we see Clara leaning out of the TARDIS, whooping with exhilaration, as they fly over London. Her actions can can be read as recklessness, or her being negligent with her own life. But recklessness is only one reading. Her actions are also a homage to the man her Doctor was before this regeneration. Eleven did much the same when we first saw him flying and crashing over London, prior to landing in Amelia Pond's garden. And he was just as exhilarated when UNIT flew the TARDIS to Trafalgar Square (in Day of the Doctor) with him hanging on for dear life. Plus, you may recall Amy Pond talking a walk in space, outside the TARDIS, in her nighty. The ship can extend her force-field so could be complicit in keeping Clara safe, as she leans out of the double doors mapping London below with the Doctor's sonic specs.
Clara fought and won against her Zygon clone in The Zygon Invasion and the Zygon Inversion. On that day, she saved the Doctor's life and her own. And, on another, she saved three Doctors, enabling them to be a Doctor not a warrior. She does overreach herself in this episode, but is it hubris?
-
Hubris:(in Greek tragedy) excessive pride towards or defiance of the gods, leading to nemesis.
Clara's rightly confident she understands Doctor 101 and the steps involved in saving people.
-
Clara: "…This is Doctor 101. We're buying time. We get all the aliens on our side in the next half an hour, and then we reveal I've got the chronolock, not you, and boom! We buy ourselves more time to find the real killer."
Rigsy: "The Doctor would never let you do this."
Clara: "Doctor 102 - never tell anyone your actual plan."
But, in my opinion, she doesn't offer to take the chronolock from Rigsy simply to be clever. Clara offers to do so out of the kindness of her heart and the generosity of her spirit. Above all, Clara's a good friend: to the Doctor, to Rigsy and even to Ashildr, who may not recall their actual conversations but who values them and Clara. Clara cares, supposedly so the doctor doesn't have to. She may have tragically overreached herself, believing she could out think Ashildr (and the community bent on pinning a murder on Rigsy) but her offer wasn't made simply from over confidence.
Her farewell scene is phenomenally well played by both Coleman and Capaldi, heightened not only by the musical score but by the grief Peter Capaldi lets shine forth. Grief, pride, and pain seeing Clara's life cut short. And, far, far, too poignantly, for once the Doctor isn't reaching his hand out to a companion and asking her to run - he's asking her not to. It's a fantastic, moving, gripping scene. And, when the Doctor reminds Clara she's more breakable than he is it's not just a reference to time lords and humans. Human life is fragile. People lose their lives suddenly, often in tragic circumstances. Watching Clara's final scene - her running out into the street to spare the Doctor the moment of her actual death, the raven flying through her midriff, a small explosion of light sparking in the centre of her being, her body falling back onto the cobblestones - I couldn't help but see resonances (in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks in Paris on November the 13th) which were in no way intended by the writer. Human life is fragile.
Whilst I have loved some of the echoes of Clara Oswald, scattered across time and space, she herself never captured my heart as the Rory-Williams's did. But her death was poignant, well scripted, beautifully acted. And, it made me cry. Thank you Peter Capaldi, and Sarah Dollard too.
Staying true to the spirit of her original title Dollard's episode is a trap sprung for all the main characters, for Ashildr too is caught by the trap of her own making. Watch Maisie Williams and you will see Ashildr devastated by how her trap has played out, at having caused Clara's death albeit inadvertently. Ashildr is also devastated her actions solidified the Doctor's previous misgivings about her into fury and loathing. He warns her that it's a very small universe when he's angry, which I assume (and hope) foreshadows some future plot.
Anahson: When I look at you, I can't tell your past from your future, and there's so very much of both.
As Clara Oswald exits stage right, she tries to ensure her Doctor will stay true to the name he chose for himself, rather than turning to the warrior side of his nature. Clara tries to get him to value her memory, not dishonour it. It will be fascinating to see how that plays out over the next two episodes.
Face the Raven is glorious in many ways, particularly as regards world-creation, set design and special effects. And, as usual, acting from Peter Capaldi is fantastic. This series we've had two-parter episodes that could easily have been condensed into one episode. This? I wish it had been lengthened out into two. It was a fitting farewell to Clara Oswald. But, personally, I prefer to remember her walking away from the Doctor down a British high street in the middle of the day. I prefer to remember last season's finale.
Goodbye Clara.