After 50 years and more than 250 adventures, coming up with new ideas can be a little tricky and while there is something appealing and satisfying in reusing favourites, creating new monsters with similar appeal can be hit and miss. However, every now and then something truly original and creative graces out screens. The early days had plenty of these of course because everything was new - the TARDIS being bigger on the inside, the Daleks, telepathic communication, an insect filled planet, the travellers being scaled to half an inch tall, all within the first 13 stories - but the striking innovations tend to thin out after that and truly innovative ideas become somewhat scarce. Every now and then though, a story idea crops ups that makes you sit up and take notice and Flatline is one of them. In fact, there are three elements at play within the narrative that all have merits in their own right. Subtly woven through it all is the continuing drama with regards to Danny and Clara as well as the more obvious quest for Clara to identify with the more complex depths of the Doctor.
The episode opens with an establishing scene of course, and this time it's a man talking on his phone reporting that "they are everywhere... all around", the atmosphere is that of something very creepy and sinister which results in the man falling out of shot and appearing shortly afterwards as a stretched image on the wallpaper border strip - stretched to such an extent that it takes a very sharp angle from the camera to reveal it. Element one in place, roll titles...
Element two comes shortly after the titles. Clara is continuing to lie that Danny is perfectly fine with the idea of her travelling with the Doctor and the Doctor himself is doing his part to keep the peace by returning her to the same time she left and the same place... only he appends his statement with "...ish" adding some long needed uncertainty in the TARDIS's accuracy, though 120 miles isn't too bad. As she turns to leave, Clara discovers the episode's second element... the TARDIS door is somewhat smaller than it usually is by roughly 50%! As they duck down and clamber out, they discover that the the Police Box as a whole is smaller than it ought to be - something that hasn't been seen since Logopolis in 1981. Clara is frustrated to discover that they are in Bristol while the Doctor is rather excited by the mystery of the TARDIS. As he says, "The TARDIS never does this. This is huge! Well, not literally... Can't you let me enjoy this moment of not knowing something, it happens so rarely"
Element three comes as a result of this dimensional anomaly. Clara walks off to find out if anything locally might be the cause, discovers that people have been going missing, then return to find the TARDIS is even smaller with the Doctor back inside it, barely able to get his hand out through the doors! Thus Clara has to take the lead and become the Doctor, much to the real Doctor's dismay. She even picks up her own companion in the form of Rigsy, a graffiti artist on community service about to paint over a mural to the missing. Clara removes the little Police Box from her bag and flicks the doors open to introduce the real Doctor eliciting the familiar "It's bigger on the inside", to which the Doctor remarks "You know, I don't think that statement has ever been truer!"
People being trapped as two dimensional images, the TARDIS exterior being reduced in size and Clara being forced to play Doctor. This is surely an adventure that Verity Lambert and Sydney Newman would have been proud of. The special effects that follow just get better and better as the aliens responsible first flatten objects to their own two dimension, the venture out into the unfamiliar third. There is a rather beautiful mural that looks like a line drawing of a country scene with trees and plants and a fence, only closer inspection reveals it to be a rescaled nervous system! The idea of flattening door handles is a tricky one to represent but the moving camera angle makes it work, followed by furniture that gradually collapses. As the flat lifeforms inhabit the people in the mural (which aren't painted but are actually the people flattened out) they are seen to turn around very eerily, but this is nothing compared to their attempt at a three dimensional representation... flickering, sketchy people with a lurching gait as they struggle to walk. The Doctor describes it as "wearing the dead like a camouflage"
As well as being inventive and creepy, Flatline also has its share of humour and clever lines, though they are sometimes quite dark. On the one hand Clara says that she hopes she can keep everybody alive, the Doctor replies "Welcome to my world!", and on the other he makes a joke about 'Pi' and 'pie' in relation to circles. When confronted with the miserable and heartless community service leader he remarks that "A lot of people died and maybe some of the wrong people survived", in contrast to a gadget he created earlier described by Clara as a 'de-flattener' but named by him as a '2Dis' (which he has to explain is a pun, a play on the two dimensional aspect and the word TARDIS, "it's a two-dis")
Further development and innovation for the show sees the Doctor throw the TARDIS into 'siege mode' whereby nothing can get in or out and it takes the form of a cube, complete with Galifrean markings (though looking strangely reminiscent of the Pandorica!) Sadly, at this point the TARDIS doesn't have enough power to get out of siege mode so Clara is truly on her own - having been guided by the Doctor up until now via an implanted communication device (an earpiece that then used 'nano tech' to hack into Clara's optic nerve - step up from Rory's glasses in The Girl Who Waited). The clues to her solution have been scattered throughout the episode, so the reveal isn't a huge surprise but it all cleverly links together.
One moment that doesn't quite work for me, minor though it is, comes just before the Doctor puts the TARDIS into siege mode. It has landed on a train track and is in danger of being hit by an oncoming train. To move it, Clara suggests the Doctor does it like "The Addams Family". Thus he puts his hand through the door, stands the Police Box up and 'walks' it with his fingers, looking like a hermit crab. I'm fine with all of that. The problem comes from the way he stands the Police Box up by kind of waggling his hand and not making any physical contact with anything! He should have been pushing against the ground, or simple crawl along with the Police Box still on its side. Very odd directorial decision. The general effects of the Doctor being inside the small Police Box work very well with just exception. It was hard to pinpoint the reason, but as Clara goes to put it in her bag, the superimposed image of the Doctor's face suddenly looks flat. I eventually realised this was due to the movement. As brief as the shot was, the camera angle of Capaldi's shot didn't change so the picture had to be distorted to keep it with the prop and there was no change of lighting either, all of which lost any sense of real depth. I now realise that this was probably the cause of a similar flat looking superimposition in Day Of The Moon as the camera pulls back from the rocket capsule. This is a very minor error in an otherwise flawless and frankly impressive episode which ends with another dark twist on what it is like to be the Doctor... Clara is pushing him for praise and acknowledgement that she made a good Doctor and he's being a little harsh and dismissive (including the line about the wrong people surviving) She says "Admit that I did good... I was the Doctor and I did good" to which the Doctor replies "You were an exceptional Doctor, Clara. Goodness had nothing to do with it..." again reflecting on the sometimes bad nature of his life. The final line, however, goes to Missy "Clara, my Clara. I have chosen well"...
Two more things worth noting before I go, are Clara's attempt as using the Doctor's Psychic paper, and the guest appearance of Matt Bartock. Clara does fine, stating they she is a Health And Safety Inspector, however the thuggish Community Service Leader just doesn't see it. Unlike any other people in the past who have been trained to recognise the trick, the Doctor reflects that in this case "It takes quite a lack of imagination to beat psychic paper!" Matt Bartock, meanwhile, is best known and well loved for playing paramedic Jeff Collier in the long running drama series "Casualty" for the last seven years where his paramedic's overalls were green... and here he is just a couple of weeks after his fatal last appearance in "Casualty" again wearing an all green outfit! An unexpected appearance and every so slightly confusing for a moment! (incidentally, "Casualty" has now been running for 29 series, three more than Doctor Who's original run and without any years off air! Also, there have been 120 more episodes than all of Doctor Who to date!)
Finally, as I write this the day before the series finale begins (I'm an episode behind in my reviews) and the next review won't make any mention of Missy, I want to mention a theory that came to me this morning after re-watching Flatline yesterday... perhaps a little sleep induced theorising, but two possibilities for her identity came to mind. She talks here about choosing Clara, which for some reason reminded me of the Great Intelligence and how He/Dr Simeon was never convincingly beaten (scattered among the Doctor's Timeline, surely the same way Clara was) so perhaps there is some connection there. Alternatively, having seen the "Next Time" preview of the finale I believe Missy tells that Doctor that he knows who she is... leading me to imagine that she is some how the Master (Missy relating to Miss or Mistress, the female form of Master). Just an idea!
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