12.9: Flatline

In which Clara takes the lead, while the Doctor gives the TARDIS a big hand. (Geddit?)

Broadcast: October 2014

Watched: March 2022

“You really do throw your companions in at the deep end, don’t you.”

Genuinely clever and funny and creepy and full of ideas: you can see why they immediately got [writer Jamie] Mathieson back in to do the previous episode. Love the tiny TARDIS, the opening with the guy smeared across the wall like the skull in The Ambassadors (not the ones of death, except metaphorically), the people as murals, the stuff being flattened, all the animated effects and the way the 3d boneless move.

Best of all, though, is the Doctor moving the tiny TARDIS, by *hand*, like the Thing from The Addams Family, all to the dramatic 12th Doctor theme. And as an encore we also get a deconstruction of and commentary on the Doctor’s MO, as he has to narrate to Clara what he *would* do if he were there. They get a lot of material out of this one being Doctor-lite.

It’s really, really good… but I don’t feel that warm towards it – I remember liking it a lot less than Mummy. I think maybe it’s because of the characters? Rigsy is quite uncharismatic, even though he literally steals a train and tries to sacrifice himself; Fenton is actively horrible, and when he says the creatures are gloating he turns out to be right. Everyone else is a cypher (Mathieson has said a lot ended up cut for time reasons).

I really, really hope RTD gets Mathieson back in, he’s brilliant, and he’s only done a couple of episodes.

Other things:

• PC Forrest doing this heartfelt monologue about how the police are letting everyone down in the background while Clara and the Doctor have a chat is hilarious.

• Why the f*ck does Clara take a phone call when she’s about to die? Convenient there’s one of those ceiling mounted chairs in that room, isn’t it.

• LOVE the Doctor calling his de-flattener the “Two-dis” and then being annoyed Clara doesn’t get it.

• Bristol! We’ll be seeing a lot of you soon. Does Doctor Who Bristol have an underground?

• The “You are monsters. That is the role you seem determined to play. So it seems I must play mine” speech is great, but ruined slightly by the “I name you the boneless” bit. Since we never see the Boneless again and they don’t need a name it just makes the Doctor sound like a twat who thinks he’s in a TV show.

• How does all this fit with Planet of the Giants?