Flatline

Dear Gary—

Flatline is a decent enough adventure; a semi-entertaining way to spend some 45 minutes. But decent enough and semi-entertaining doesn’t cut it anymore. Doctor Who used to be able to carry the weight of mediocre and even bad episodes. Not anymore. There are just too many of them piling up. The strength of Peter Capaldi and Jenna Coleman combined with amusing bits and witty dialogue can’t continue to cover for the preponderance of defects.

And it does not help that the Doctor stubbornly refuses to leave Earth. The landscape is beginning to get monotonous, and the dull surroundings of our current story do nothing to alleviate this. The guest cast also doesn’t do much in the way of adding any spark to the proceedings. Altogether these elements are as two dimensional as our villains of the hour. A little thing like placing the action on an alien planet would go a long way; but alas we continue in this rut of Doctor Who’s making.

As we also continue in Doctor Who’s rut of sacrificing adventure for arcs and agendas. This story is obviously set up to showcase Clara as a Doctor substitute. It has a promising enough start. The TARDIS is shrinking. There are all kinds of tensions and dangers and catastrophes that could be mined with such a development. Except it is treated simply as a joke.

The TARDIS has shrunk and the Doctor is curious. Not concerned, just curious. He finds it “impressive.” Clara merely finds it “annoying.” She’s home, after all. Not exactly where she would like to be, which would be in her London apartment. Instead she finds herself in Bristol. “Yes, I get it,” she tells the Doctor upon discovering the tiny TARDIS, “you’re excited.” But Clara isn’t even the least bit interested. “When can I go home,” she demands. She can take a train or a taxi or rent a car or call a friend for a ride. She isn’t anywhere close to being marooned yet she stamps her foot and insists on the TARDIS taking her exactly where she wants when she wants regardless of the serious flaw that this magical blue box has developed and with no regard to the Doctor’s predicament.

The Doctor sends Clara out to look for answers while he squeezes himself back into the TARDIS, apparently indifferent to any risks this might entail. Clara immediately gets distracted by an unknown memorial and a gang of guys doing community service cleaning up some peculiar graffiti. There is no urgency to any of this, and when Clara wanders back to find the TARDIS shrunk even more, rendering it impossible for the Doctor to escape, she laughs. “Oh my god, that is so adorable,” she proclaims. Any sense of tension the audience might feel upon discovering this startling state of affairs is deflated. The TARDIS is in no danger; the Doctor is in no danger. This is a whimsical turn for Clara’s and our amusement.

Clara picks the adorable toy TARDIS up and deposits it in her purse and rubs her hands in delight now that she is on her own to play the Doctor. Well, not alone since the Doctor is in her ear telling her what to do, but she can put up a good front. And she has the Doctor’s magic sonic which he can fit through the tiny door as well as his magical sledgehammer.

There is a fleeting moment of panic when the tiny TARDIS lands on a rail line with a train headed straight for it, but that too is played for laughs with the hilarious Adam’s Family escape plan.

Contrast the comedy with the gritty aspect of the setting and the horrific nature of the monsters. Learning that the murals in the victim’s apartments are actually residual elements of the victims—their skin and nervous systems to be exact—flattened for experimental purposes and left behind in some grim display is horrifying. And realizing that the memorial graffiti of lost loved ones on the tunnel wall are actually those same loved ones, again flattened and saved, is ghastly; and watching as they come to life is terrifying.

But all of this is terror for terror’s sake. The monsters are merely that. Monsters. No context; no explanation; no motivation. The Doctor comes right out and says this: “I don’t know whether you are here to invade, infiltrate or just replace us,” he says. And then he adds, “I don’t suppose it really matters now.” The script is acknowledging that it has no idea what these monsters are or what they want or even if they are good, bad, or indifferent; and it doesn’t really care. Why bother with the details, the script says; we have a cool monster with cool special effects, what else do you want?

Monsters, plot, adventure—none of it matters except insofar as they advance the season’s agenda.

And so we have the Doctor throwing up his hands and stating: “You are monsters. That is the role you seemed determined to play. So it seems I must play mine.” Sweep aside any attempt at understanding. The only purpose of these monsters is to define the Doctor: “The man that stops the monsters.” And to provide a sufficient menace so long as it is needed and then a quick exit when no longer required with no thought as to who these monsters were, what they wanted, where they came from, or if they will ever return.  (The Doctor’s veiled warning of “this plane is protected” doesn’t seem like it is much of a deterrence and brings to mind the Tenth Doctor’s, “it is defended” speech from The Christmas Invasion and the Eleventh’s “is this world protected” from The Eleventh Hour.)

They are a made up and throw away monster with not even any consistency within the span of this one story. Some victims are flattened in a lineup, some have only remnants flattened in their homes. Sometimes the monsters undulate through the floor to their victims, sometimes they unglue themselves from the wall and follow in cartoonish form, and sometimes they swoop down from the ceiling with lightening speed and giant hand to scoop up an unwary person.

It’s rather amusing, when I think of it, that they concentrate their efforts on this one band of community service workers. But then, there are no other people who seem to inhabit this city. Doctor Who apparently skimped on the extra budget for this episode. Even the train turns out to be empty save for the driver.

Then we have Clara. Still blatantly lying to both the Doctor and Danny. “Goodness had nothing to do with it,” the Doctor tells her when she pesters him for a compliment regarding her Doctor impersonation. Goodness hasn’t much to do with Clara at all, and I’m wondering even more why the Doctor wants her around. Full of self-importance, she barrels her way through the episode disregarding the people around her. She has some good instincts and great ideas that get them through (or those that survive at any rate), but the Doctor is correct, “goodness had nothing to do with it.”

There is one telling scene in particular that catches my notice. Rigsy, who has been following Clara around like a puppy-dog wagging his tail, points out a work of art in the tunnel. “It’s one of mine,” he proudly tells her. “Do you like it?” Without even glancing at it Clara dismisses him with, “Yeah, not bad,” before continuing on her one track course of action. To be fair, they are being chased by monsters; but poor Rigsy.

“A lot of people died and maybe the wrong people survived,” the Doctor says after his exchange with Fenton. (Brings to mind Mr. Copper’s comment regarding Rickston Slade in Voyage of the Damned.) Fenton’s comparison to a forest fire—“The objective is to save the great trees, not the brushwood”—is remarkably similar to Clara’s “on balance” perspective.

I can’t tell if the show is deliberately undermining her character or not. The Doctor’s “goodness had nothing to do with it” is calculated, but to what purpose?

I’m finding much of the machinations of this season to be muddled. Clara played Doctor for a day and she was “exceptional.” Did she learn anything, however? Her main goal afterwards is to be praised for her performance. She wants the Doctor to give her an ‘A.’ The grade is the thing, not the lesson learned. If there is any lesson to be learned. The teacher doesn’t appear to be a very good student. So what are we as the audience to take away from this? All I take away is a growing dislike of Clara that the charm of Jenna Coleman can’t always overcome.

Finally we have Missy peering into her crystal ball and proclaiming, “Clara; my Clara. I have chosen well.” So perhaps the show is deliberately undermining the character. But I’m finding, Gary, that I don’t much care.