Who In Review: Flatline
Peter Capaldi's era was a step up from his predecessor. Whilst there were still issues with the writing and (often glaringly) the plotting of each season, Steven Moffat seemed to be pulling his act together. With commitments to Sherlock waning (only one episode would air during Capaldi's tenure), the Show Runner seemed able to finally focus on Doctor Who and ensure that it was almost coherent and vaguely watchable. Granted, the first three quarters of Series 8 were littered with malfunctioning computers and misunderstood aliens - the dreary stalwarts which had populated Matt Smith's stories - and even featured the revelation that the Moon is an egg and, Moffat's most audacious conceit in his time as show runner, a story with no plot and no monster and no explanation as to why! But then came along
Flatline
It had been a while since there'd been anything that actually felt like a threat in Doctor Who (other than a diminishing number of episodes per year). From the disturbing pre-credits sequence to the unknown cause of the TARDIS exterior shrinking we had a creepy mystery that needed solving, and the Doctor was trapped in the TARDIS leaving his fate in the hands of the worst companion on the show since... well, Amy Pond. To be fair, Clara is actually very good in this story (until she starts going on about how brilliant she was at the end, but that's Clara for you and one of the reasons why she's such a terrible companion). She takes control and revels in being the one in charge, and even though she harps on about it, she does a good job. The narrative is helped by the presence of Rigsy, brilliantly portrayed by Joivan Wade as a talented street artist doing community service on the Council Estate where people are disappearing. The fact that he's a graffiti artist and made to clean up his work brilliantly underplays the figures in the subway, and whether you worked out what they were before they start moving or not it's a chilling moment when they do! It's also a nicely underplayed fact that the people Clara teams up with have all broken the law in some way - all, that is, except the obnoxious one, Fenton, who's their supervisor. It's a nicely understated piece of subversion which is easily overlooked. It's also a shame that they're all picked off one by one leaving Rigsy and Fenton as the only survivors from the group.
Neverthless, the fate of this group of people and the nature of the 2D aliens (I'm not going to call them by the name the Doctor gives them at the end because it's silly) is one of the most disturbing of the Moffat era. The realisation of the creatures - first off as an effect like running paint - is quite brilliant. Moffat may have done the 'intangible alien' thing to death, but Jamie Mathieson excels here. The effect making its way up to the doomed PC Forrest is incredibly unnerving, the sight of her being pulled into the carpet accompanied by the crunching of bone entirely horrific. That the next thing you see of her is her nervous system spread out on the wall is one of the goriest aspects of an episode in a very long time! So when the creatures go after Clara and Rigsy the tension is palpable.
The effects in this story are some of the best of the era. From the flattening of door handles to the slow reveal of George flattened against a wall and cabinet in the warehouse, the camera work and CGI is stunning. And then we have the creatures themselves, horrifying travesties of the Human form, lurching after their prey like juddering, stop-motion nightmares, their features barely recognisable and their limbs bending in the wrong places and directions. The fate of Al is possibly one of the best jump scares in the show's history. On first watch, I was dimly aware of movement behind the group in the tunnels, but the giant hand grabbing Al was abrupt and unexpected, the first sign that the creatures had managed to break through into the third dimension.
The best thing about Flatline, though, is that the monsters are exactly that. The Doctor tries to communicate with them, tries to reason, and they don't want to know. They're aware that they're killing people and they don't care. It's incredibly refreshing after so many episodes full of misunderstandings and redemption. Even the season finale doesn't go this far, with the Cybermen being tools and Missy carrying out her plan just because she wants the Doctor to be her friend again.
And whilst it's a story full of tension and excitement, it's also got a sense of humour. The scene where Clara returns to the rail yard and discovers a Character Options TARDIS is hilarious, as is the scene where she pulls a sledge hammer out of her handbag. Then, of course, there's the Adams Family sequence which mixes charm, humour and drama whilst being one of the most surreal, silly and memorable sequences of the season. It's hardly surprising, then, that Flatline took second place in the DWM 2014 Season Survey for Favourite Story and Favourite Monster (both behind Mathieson's other episode Mummy On The Orient Express) and the top two positions for Best Special Effect, nor that Mathieson was voted Best Writer of the season (receiving over 20% more of the vote than even Moffat!). Jamie Mathieson's next contribution to the series, co-written with Steven Moffat, wouldn't be quite as great as his first two serials, but his return in 2017 resulted in one of my favourite stories of Capaldi's final season, Oxygen.
As with Matt Smith's time on the show, the Capaldi era wasn't without its faults, and even the best stories had their issues, but Flatline is the pinnacle of the era. It may not be Capaldi's best performance (for that we need to look at the following year's Zygon story or any number of episodes from Series 10), and it may not feature his best companion (again, see Series 10) but it's the very definite point where Doctor Who got its mojo back, the point where I knew that, regardless of its faults, I could happily continue watching the show; the point where the Doctor stated categorically that he's "the man that stops the monsters". It felt good to have him back.
Flatline
It had been a while since there'd been anything that actually felt like a threat in Doctor Who (other than a diminishing number of episodes per year). From the disturbing pre-credits sequence to the unknown cause of the TARDIS exterior shrinking we had a creepy mystery that needed solving, and the Doctor was trapped in the TARDIS leaving his fate in the hands of the worst companion on the show since... well, Amy Pond. To be fair, Clara is actually very good in this story (until she starts going on about how brilliant she was at the end, but that's Clara for you and one of the reasons why she's such a terrible companion). She takes control and revels in being the one in charge, and even though she harps on about it, she does a good job. The narrative is helped by the presence of Rigsy, brilliantly portrayed by Joivan Wade as a talented street artist doing community service on the Council Estate where people are disappearing. The fact that he's a graffiti artist and made to clean up his work brilliantly underplays the figures in the subway, and whether you worked out what they were before they start moving or not it's a chilling moment when they do! It's also a nicely underplayed fact that the people Clara teams up with have all broken the law in some way - all, that is, except the obnoxious one, Fenton, who's their supervisor. It's a nicely understated piece of subversion which is easily overlooked. It's also a shame that they're all picked off one by one leaving Rigsy and Fenton as the only survivors from the group.
Neverthless, the fate of this group of people and the nature of the 2D aliens (I'm not going to call them by the name the Doctor gives them at the end because it's silly) is one of the most disturbing of the Moffat era. The realisation of the creatures - first off as an effect like running paint - is quite brilliant. Moffat may have done the 'intangible alien' thing to death, but Jamie Mathieson excels here. The effect making its way up to the doomed PC Forrest is incredibly unnerving, the sight of her being pulled into the carpet accompanied by the crunching of bone entirely horrific. That the next thing you see of her is her nervous system spread out on the wall is one of the goriest aspects of an episode in a very long time! So when the creatures go after Clara and Rigsy the tension is palpable.
The effects in this story are some of the best of the era. From the flattening of door handles to the slow reveal of George flattened against a wall and cabinet in the warehouse, the camera work and CGI is stunning. And then we have the creatures themselves, horrifying travesties of the Human form, lurching after their prey like juddering, stop-motion nightmares, their features barely recognisable and their limbs bending in the wrong places and directions. The fate of Al is possibly one of the best jump scares in the show's history. On first watch, I was dimly aware of movement behind the group in the tunnels, but the giant hand grabbing Al was abrupt and unexpected, the first sign that the creatures had managed to break through into the third dimension.
The best thing about Flatline, though, is that the monsters are exactly that. The Doctor tries to communicate with them, tries to reason, and they don't want to know. They're aware that they're killing people and they don't care. It's incredibly refreshing after so many episodes full of misunderstandings and redemption. Even the season finale doesn't go this far, with the Cybermen being tools and Missy carrying out her plan just because she wants the Doctor to be her friend again.
And whilst it's a story full of tension and excitement, it's also got a sense of humour. The scene where Clara returns to the rail yard and discovers a Character Options TARDIS is hilarious, as is the scene where she pulls a sledge hammer out of her handbag. Then, of course, there's the Adams Family sequence which mixes charm, humour and drama whilst being one of the most surreal, silly and memorable sequences of the season. It's hardly surprising, then, that Flatline took second place in the DWM 2014 Season Survey for Favourite Story and Favourite Monster (both behind Mathieson's other episode Mummy On The Orient Express) and the top two positions for Best Special Effect, nor that Mathieson was voted Best Writer of the season (receiving over 20% more of the vote than even Moffat!). Jamie Mathieson's next contribution to the series, co-written with Steven Moffat, wouldn't be quite as great as his first two serials, but his return in 2017 resulted in one of my favourite stories of Capaldi's final season, Oxygen.
As with Matt Smith's time on the show, the Capaldi era wasn't without its faults, and even the best stories had their issues, but Flatline is the pinnacle of the era. It may not be Capaldi's best performance (for that we need to look at the following year's Zygon story or any number of episodes from Series 10), and it may not feature his best companion (again, see Series 10) but it's the very definite point where Doctor Who got its mojo back, the point where I knew that, regardless of its faults, I could happily continue watching the show; the point where the Doctor stated categorically that he's "the man that stops the monsters". It felt good to have him back.
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