Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
Cast: Peter Capaldi, Jenna Coleman, Jovian Wade, John Cummins, Christopher Fairbanks, Samuel Anderson, Rajendra Bajaj, Matt Bardock, Jessica Hayles, James Quinn.
Doctor Who is never better than when it brings the alarm and disquiet of a new enemy to the viewers’ minds. Like the Weeping Angels before them, the creatures who inhabit a world of 2D imagery is enough to make people stop and wonder what exactly the scientific world will be able to achieve post the ability to replicate 3D form. Growing human body parts is one thing, to steal that person’s identity by the means of subsuming them into an alien pattern of life is another.
Like the Weeping Angles, the viewer is unaware of what will happen right until the moment of delicious unquiet and the consequence for The Doctor, Clara and the Tardis are as worryingly tantilising as night in a locked cupboard with a very irate Dalek.
To bring two stories of such incredible depth and character in successive episodes is to praise the writer and Jamie Mathieson has shown in Flatline why Peter Capaldi’s Doctor is of the same quality that befell Tom Baker. Jamie Mathieson has found a way to crawl under the skin of the Doctor and find the black heart that festers away, the Doctor who is capable of bringing out the devious and calculating in his companions and in Clara Oswald perhaps he has the quickest learner of them all. The deviousness though is not of ill intent, there is no malice in the thought, however there is the question of survival and the instinct in which to save all who can be but at the cost of a small amount of innocence.
If Jamie Mathieson has defined in some way what Capaldi’s incarnation as the Doctor means then how he has taken Clara, who by far has been the most important companion to the Doctor in the last 50 years, and moulded her into a individual with so much charisma and arguably so much catastrophic potential attached to her is one of inspired attitude and integrity to Jenna Coleman’s portrayal as the girl who saved The Doctor time and time again. To witness her lie to The Doctor, to be a spectator as he verbally applauds the way she got one over on him is to perceive a great tragedy coming to all who reside in the blue battered box.
With Christopher Fairbanks giving his seemingly ever skilled delivery as the angry man with so many chips on his shoulders he could open a fast food chain and a wonderful performance by Jovian Wade as the kindly graffiti artist Rigsy, there was so much to enjoy in this particular episode, so many disturbing facets and strands competing for attention that it should be looked upon a mark for future episodes to come up with as fascinating a new enemy as Flatline managed.
The Doctor, once suspicious and intrigued by Clara now seems to be wary of her possible future and captivated by the potential for her feasible, if unknowingly, deception. These are great times for fans of Doctor Who as the darkness is blocking out more of the light available and how chillingly awesome this is.
Ian D. Hall