Ok, so we’ve had two good episodes of
Doctor Who in a row. That being a notable thing shows how far the
show has fallen in quality over the last few years. We’ve had two
episodes that have shown both a brilliant understanding of character
and plot structure. Now before I sound like I’m in love with Jamie
Mathieson I need to point out something. Mathieson is a good writer
but what makes his scripts good is his understanding of basic
storytelling logic and rules. If these rules had been applied to the
other episodes of this series, they could all have been as good.
These last two episodes have been objectively better written than the
others of this series, they work where the others didn’t.
In ‘Flatline’ the Tardis is being
attacked by two dimension creatures. With The Doctor trapped inside
the Tardis, it’s up to Clara to fight the creatures and save the
world. So I like ‘Flatline’ a fair bit, that much is obvious.
What I really like about the episode is how fresh it feels.
‘Flatline’ is filled with new and exciting ideas, ideas that
still feel entirely part of the long running show. The ‘Boneless’,
the 2D/3D creatures are fascinating in both concept and design. We
don’t know why they are there, or what they want but they work
despite this. They’re definitely the best new creature added to the
show since the Weeping Angels and much more can be done with the
concept of them in future episodes.
The scenes with the shrinking Tardis
are also very interesting, as is the introduction of the ship’s
‘Siege Mode’. Adding new enemies and mythos to a long running
show like ‘Doctor Who’ is difficult. It is particularly difficult
when most of the writers seem to be adapting uninspired fan fiction
they wrote when they were kids. Most of the visuals effects used to
create these new situations were amazing. Some of them, such as the
giant hand and the train were not so great. I appreciate that the
shot with the train would have been very difficult and expensive to
shoot for real but I suspect that a Hornby train miniature would have
looked a lot better than the shitty media student CGI we were given.
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| A still image can't do justice to how bad this looked moving. |
Under Mathieson we have characters in
‘Doctor Who’ again. The Doctor has faults, he is a fully realised
individual who can make mistakes. Clara has also been a lot better
written in the last two weeks also, giving Jenna Coleman a chance to
show what she can do. Although if she delivers any more lines as
atrociously as she did “I’m the one chance you’ve got for
staying alive, that’s who I am!” maybe that’s not a good thing.
We as an audience needed to believe that she had authority over the
group she was protecting; it was a vital moment in the script. They group only followed her because the script made them, that is an issue.
Generally speaking however, Coleman as Clara was pretty good in this
episode, or at least better than she has been since possibly her turn
in ‘Asylum of the Daleks’.
Peter Capaldi yet again gave a
fantastic performance. His fear for himself and the Tardis was
completely believable, as was his fascination and excitement over
those putting them at risk. His final speech, where he named The
Boneless was amazing and showed in just a few sentences that he has
an innate understanding of the character he’s portraying.
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| Hans Holbein's creepy skull face in 'The Ambassadors' 1533 |
The real strength of ‘Flatline’ is
the intelligence of the writing. Any episode of ‘Doctor Who’ that
references an optical illusion from a 16th century painting in the opening moments is smart. We are given every element
needed to determine the final conclusion of the episode but they are
given to us in such a way as to make it interesting. Possibly this
episode has a few too many interesting ideas for the running time but
I’m refusing to criticise it for that, not when the overall show
seems to generally have no ideas, or it does but they involve space
eggs. I hope Jaime Mathieson will be back to write future episodes,
but given how bad he’s making the others look; I’m not holding
out much hope.
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