Flatline (Doctor Who)

250 – "Flatline"
Doctor Who episode
File:Flatline - Doctor Who.jpg Promotional image showing the trapped Doctor in the shrunken TARDIS
Cast
Doctor Peter Capaldi (Twelfth Doctor)
Companion Jenna Coleman (Clara Oswald)
Others Samuel Anderson – Danny Pink John Cummins – Roscoe Jessica Hayles – PC Forrest Joivan Wade – Rigsy Christopher Fairbank – Fenton Matt Bardock – Al Raj Bajaj – George James Quinn – Bill Michelle Gomez – Missy
Production
Directed by	Douglas Mackinnon
Written by	Jamie Mathieson
Script editor	David P Davis Richard Cookson
Produced by	Nikki Wilson
Executive producer(s)	Steven Moffat Brian Minchin
Music by	Murray Gold
Series	Series 8
Running time	45 minutes
First broadcast	18 October 2014 (2014-10-18)
Chronology
← Preceded by "Mummy on the Orient Express" Followed by → "In the Forest of the Night"

"Flatline" is the ninth episode of the eighth series of the British science fiction television programme Doctor Who, written by Jamie Mathieson, and directed by Douglas Mackinnon. The episode stars Peter Capaldi and Jenna Coleman, with Joivan Wade and Christopher Fairbank guest starring.

Plot

In the TARDIS, The Doctor is returning Clara back to where he had picked her up after an adventure, with Clara still maintaining the lie that her boyfriend, Danny Pink, is fine with her traveling with the Doctor. When the TARDIS lands, the Doctor finds something is draining energy from the TARDIS, and the energy field has caused them to land in Bristol rather than London. They also discover that the exterior of the TARDIS has shrunk down due to the power drain; the Doctor stays with the smaller TARDIS to figure out what is going on while Clara looks around. She encounters a local community service crew, working at repainting graffiti in the area. One of the workers, Rigsy who was responsible for some of the graffiti, explains to her about the strange case of locals disappearing, and the strange memorial mural of these persons being painted by an unknown person in a nearby pedestrian tunnel. Clara returns to find the TARDIS' exterior has shrunk further, trapping the Doctor within as he is unable to fit through the miniaturised doors. He hands Clara his psychic paper, the sonic screwdriver, and an audio/visual earpiece so he can keep in touch with her, and then has her carry the TARDIS with her to where he has tracked a large source of energy.

Clara poses as "Doctor Oswald" to convince Rigsy to continue to help her, despite the Doctor's hesitation towards any help Rigsy can provide. After finding nothing but a strange desert mural at the flat of the latest disappearance, Rigsy gains help from a police officer PC Forrest to gain access to the flat of the first known missing person. The Doctor instructs Clara to tear out the walls, believing the energy source to be within them. While they work, PC Forrest is sucked into the ground out of view of Clara and Rigsy, and when they reach her screams she has disappeared. They look around the room and find another strange mural, and the Doctor realises it's likely to be PC Forrest's nervous system, and believes the first mural was a closeup of human skin of the latest victim. The Doctor warns them they are dealing with entities that live in two-dimensions, the missing people the victims of the entities' experiments in understanding the third dimension. As Clara and Rigsy watch, they see the movement of these creatures as they trap them in the room by flattening the door and start surrounding them. The two scrabble aboard a hanging seat to protect themselves, and then swing through the nearby window to escape. During this, Clara receives a call from Danny, who has been waiting for her in London. The Doctor recognises from the call that Clara has lied to him about Danny accepting her continued travels in the TARDIS.

Clara and Rigsy return to the rest of the community service group, who are about to paint over the murals in the pedestrian tunnel. The Doctor realises that the images are masquerades for the two-dimensional creatures; after the creatures take one of the services workers, Clara leads the rest away with the creatures chasing them. They take shelter in a nearby engine repair warehouse, where the Doctor helps Clara to try to communicate with the creatures using mathematics. When another worker is taken, Clara and the surviving members flee into a disused subway tunnel. As they explore, they find their only escape route has been flattened to two dimensions by the creatures. They soon find that the creatures have learned how to manifest themselves in three dimensions by drawing even more power from the TARDIS, taking the forms of the missing persons, and start to give chase to the survivors. The Doctor provides Clara with a device to restore the dimensions of the door, and they just manage to escape. However in the chaos, the TARDIS is shrunk further and falls down a shaft on to an active railway line. The Doctor activates the TARDIS' siege mode to protect it from an oncoming train, but without power is unable to return it to normal or to communicate with Clara.

Clara uses the sonic screwdriver to stop an out-of-service train, and they attempt to ram the creatures to prolong time to get back in contact with the Doctor. However, the train is simply transformed into two dimensions; as they escape, Clara finds the TARDIS now looking like a plain Gallifreyan cube, and takes it with her. Taking shelter in a disused office space, Clara comes up with a plan to provide energy to the TARDIS by having Rigsy paint out a fake access door on the back of a large poster, so that when the creatures attempt to pull it into three dimensions, they instead feed their energy into the TARDIS, restoring it to normal. Realizing they have no interest in peace, the Doctor uses the sonic screwdriver to stop the creatures, whom he dubs "The Boneless", sending them back to their dimension with a warning to those who survive the trip to never return. The Doctor returns everyone to the surface safely. Clara rejects a call from Danny, catching the Doctor's attention; he notes that she enjoyed 'playing the Doctor' for the day.

The episode concludes with Missy, seated in a darkened room, watching Clara's adventure on a tablet computer. Missy says with regard to Clara that she has "chosen well".

Continuity

The TARDIS exterior was also shrunk to doll house size in the 1981 serial Logopolis, with the Fourth Doctor trapped inside.

The further-miniaturised TARDIS in "siege mode" resembles the Pandorica, the inescapable prison first mentioned in "The Eleventh Hour" and shown fully in "The Pandorica Opens".

Reception

Overnight viewing figures were estimated at 4.55 million, the lowest overnight rating for the show since "The Hungry Earth" in 2010 and the second lowest rating since the show returned in 2005.

The episode received positive reviews.

Neela Debnath of The Independent praised Capaldi and Coleman's performances and believed this episode to be the stronger of Mathieson's two episodes, although she was critical of the CGI effects. Matt Risley of IGN gave the episode 8.3 out of 10, praising the concept of the episode and the performance of Coleman, but critisising the guest cast. Morgan Jeffery of Digital Spy gave a mixed review of the episode, calling it "a bumpy ride." He too was critical of the supporting cast, citing lack of depth to their personalities. He was however, positive of the CGI, calling it "the most impressive and distinctive this show has featured in recent memory." Overall he gave the episode 3 stars out of five.

Reviewing "Flatline" for the Telegraph, Michael Hogan noted that ""Listen", "Kill The Moon", "Time Heist", "Into The Dalek" - all have been stories to compare with the best since the show’s 2005 reboot. This episode... maintained the high standard and surpassed all of them except perhaps "Listen"." Hogan noted that Christopher Fairbank was billed as the guest star but Jovian Wade outshone him. In conclusion Hogan stated that the episode was "outlandishly original ideas, smartly executed. It was thrillingly unsettling and ultimately satisfying." Dan Martin writing for the Guardian states that Jamie Mathieson's script "is one of the more effective demonstrations of how to do the “cheap one”." Martin also stated that Clara is "becoming more and more like the Doctor".

The A.V. Club awarded the episode a B+, stating that "the show is on a hot streak we haven’t seen in a long, long time". They closed their review by saying "'Flatline' isn’t perfect, but it underlines just how great the 12th Doctor and Clara have been for each other, and how great their pairing has been for the show, if for no other reason than their complex relationship has forced the show to be thoughtful in a way it hasn’t in quite some time".

External links

• "Flatline" at IMDb