Let's talk about "companion-lite" and "Doctor-lite" a little, in the sense of Doctor Who. Throughout multiple series of the new show, we've had this dichotomy of episodes near the tail end of it all. Two back-to-back episodes; one in which the companion takes a backseat role (or hardly appears at all) and one in which the Doctor does the same. Sometimes both companion and Doctor bow out of the narrative, like in Love And Monsters or Blink. Other times, the companion's left behind and the Doctor does his own thing, as seen in episodes such as Midnight. For my money, the most interesting of these are the Doctor-lites. Episodes where the focus is on the companion, without the help of a magic spaceman. You get really interesting stuff, like Turn Left from the fourth season of the new series. Flatline is a Doctor-lite, and it might just be the best of the Doctor-lites.We're in Bristol this week, and the TARDIS has a problem. Something's sucking dimensional power from it, causing the outside police box portion of the ship to shrink. The show's been no stranger to mucking around with the dimensional transcendence of the TARDIS, and this occurance has the Doctor stumped. He stays behind while Clara goes to investigate the local area to find the disturbance, and while she's gone the TARDIS shrinks even more, becoming handheld. The Doctor can't get out, so he hands Clara his psychic paper and sonic screwdriver and sends her to it. The show has just become Clara Who. Sure, there's still the Doctor in her ear giving her advice and thinking out loud and all that... but Clara is out there, taking charge and being the Doctor. What foul monster from the depths of space will Clara Who face this week? Daleks? Sontarans? Cybermen? No. Something far scarier.
This week's scary monster is damn well one of the scariest we've had on the show, just from the sheer concept and how they play out. Whatever they are, they exist outside our universe somehow in 2 dimensions. What we see are their attempts to get in, via us. They study humanity by pulling them into their world. This kills the people, leaving only crude drawings on the wall of whatever they were examining. A pattern of human skin. The central nervous system. Again, they play by rules that you can't avoid; don't touch the walls or floor, or they get you. What sells them are two important things, though. First and foremost, the imagery is terrifying. People getting sucked down into the floor and becoming drawings, for one... but then the things learn enough to exist in three-dimensional space, leading to some truly effective visual effects. (One of which made my jaw drop from how spooky it was!) The second? We never really learn much about them. Oh, sure, we have the Doctor technobabbling about them learning and how their powers work and all that, but we don't know anything beyond his theorizing. We're in Listen territory again, with intense ambiguity as to what these things want. Good. We need more of that in Doctor Who. These monsters are a cosmic horror, and I like it like that.
The monsters are great, and Clara Who is a wonderful show to be watching for a week. Capaldi is on the sidelines this time, locked inside his own TARDIS and forced to figure out the plot as Clara lives it in real time. He does a good job at it, and even gets a defining moment at the end; one of those moments that screams "I am the Doctor". Oddly enough, the only real objection to this one is Clara. Not the Clara Who stuff, that's brilliant... but the other side of her character. Last week we saw her flip-flop on that whole "one last hurrah" thing and go back to travelling with the Doctor again. Without telling Danny about it, mind. Enough time has passed that she has her old haircut back, and here she is. Lying again. Directly lying to Danny on the phone, lying to the Doctor about lying to Danny. Just straight-up lying. It's unfortunate to see my new favorite companion behaving in such a flawed way. Even the Doctor, the abrasive new Doctor, manages to get in a line or two about how this is Not Good. Adding to that, we've got another Missy appearance in this episode. More cackling about mysteries that will be endlessly speculated about online until the finale in two weeks. Lovely. Well, lying aside this is still a fantastic episode. Definitely in the top three for this season. It's terrifying, gives the companion agency and makes her super-competent, and has some great Doctor moments. Amazing, considering that the writer of this one wrote last week's episode as well... and those scripts were his first two contributions to the show! You get a gold star, Jamie Mathieson. Spot-on.Next week: Forests! Wolves! Tigers! Danny! Schoolchildren! I don't know what this is but we'll see!
AND NOW WHAT I THINK... NOW
(Spoiler warning for the later episodes and whatnot below. You've been warned.)
Oh, Flatline is marvelous. Simply marvelous. Absolutely in my top three of S8 episodes, right there with Listen and Mummy. Wouldn't you know it, we even get a clear shot of Clara looking into a mirror in this one. For longer than half a second! Great, the theme is back for reals! More to it is that Clara transcends here. She becomes the mirror of the Doctor, for all it's worth. She says that Rule One of being the Doctor is using the monsters against themselves, but that's a lie. Just like so many of the other things she says and does in this episode. Rule One has always been "The Doctor lies." Doctor Who lies, and since Clara Who has transcended and become his mirror over 8 episodes, she lies as well. That was my objection in the past writeup, but it was less an objection and more of a lament. I adore Clara, and S8 Clara is a fantastic companion. To see her darkening as a result of her becoming a mirror of the Doctor disheartened me greatly. At least I know that gets resolved sort of when we get to dream crabs and Santa Claus, but right here and now it broke my heart.
Now let's plant another flag and probably make someone very angry. Clara Who is a great thing, and I kinda think people getting mad at it are a little silly? I mean, it's not 1972 anymore, guys. We can have a companion who does things besides ask the Doctor questions so he can exposit the plot, and scream real loud at the monster of the month. Even the classic series had a handful of rad lady companions who kicked ass and took no shit from nobody. (See: Leela, Ace.) There ain't nothin wrong with Clara taking charge and sitting in for the Doctor in this episode, and in three episodes' time Steven Moffat actually trolls these people. No wonder people don't like him. Besides, the whole point of this one is that there's a cost to this, a collapse. Not of narrative, but of character. Clara becoming the mirror of the Doctor is a bad thing because she's becoming a chronic liar to the people she cares about; both Danny and the Doctor. It's a guilty pleasure of an episode; it's great to see a proactive Clara taking charge and figuring out how to save the day, just like the Doctor would, but it comes at the cost of her morality. Note the sly callback at the end to Into The Dalek. Clara was a good Doctor, but she's not a good Doctor. As if we needed it cemented further, we get a Missy teaser that adds nothing other than her cackling about how Clara was a good choice on her part. The villain of the piece is applauding Clara for falling into darkness, as well she should. Well, actually, I pulled a Clara Who and lied as well. It adds something to the series mystery, although I didn't notice it at the time. Check it out.
That door behind her. It's the 3W logo, and shaped like the eyes of a Cyberman. There's an explicit reveal of this in Dark Water that finally clued me in to what was going on, but here we have the exact same thing, not spelled out for us, sitting in the background and I missed it. Not only that, but I was surprised at the Cybermen being involved in the finale, as I recall. (Watch the original Next Time preview prove me wrong with past me going "OOH CYBERMEN".) This would imply that nobody else I know or read about caught this one and yelled about it. Or I didn't see it. 'Cause the Internet had to have twigged on this during the broadcast, or at the worst, on first rewatch. How did this escape me? I don't know, but well done. And well done with this episode, as well. It gives us Clara taking charge and being Doctorlike, with all the downfalls and bad things associated with it. Its monsters are goddamn terrifying, and like I said, it's Listen with less ambiguity about the things being real. They're real, and we don't know what they are but they want us dead. Incredible. As is that shot of the guy being dragged off by the monster hand, which, like the 3W door there, you can see in the background but don't notice until it grabs the guy and jumpscares you. Goddamn. Amazing.
Next time: Oof. This is going to be a rough one.
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