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Oct 22, 2014 By Cody Ray Shafer

[Spoiler Alert: If you haven’t seen the latest episode of Doctor Who, then read no further.]

This season has been so surprisingly good so far, and honestly “Flatline” didn’t exactly disappoint, but I don’t think it will be a standout episode either. Which is unfortunate, because the elements that make up the episode are equal parts novel and surreal, even for Doctor Who, but the end result was just a little flat. No pun intended.

The Doctor and Clara find themselves in Bristol, far from their intended destination, and what’s more, the TARDIS is a little smaller than it should be. The Doctor assumes there’s been a drain on dimensional energy, and as soon as he can test his theory the TARDIS shrinks to an even more comical size. Clara is left outside, and forced to carry the little blue box around while The Doctor transmits instructions to her through a small earpiece. Clara finds that a mysterious race of aliens that don’t exist in three dimensions is abducting humans and flattening them. The Doctor attempts communication at first, but the aliens quickly make it known they have no interest in peace and The Doctor is forced to give them an ultimatum.

The story does pick up where “Mummy On the Orient Express” abruptly left off with The Doctor and Clara’s relationship, with the latter trying to, unsuccessfully, brush aside her lie about Danny. Where the episode takes an unexpected but welcome turn is by forcing Clara to view their situation from The Doctor’s perspective for once, and get a glimpse of the choices he has to make. That’s the emotional crux of the episode, but we don’t get much of an insight into what Clara actually makes of the whole thing, aside from a giddy pat on the back. The Doctor’s reaction is much more somber, as he clarified Clara’s actions with his cryptic “goodness had nothing to with it,” placing a big bold question mark at the end of Clara’s brief tenure as Doctor Oswald.

For once, the monsters were completely original and moved the plot forward. They were a terrifying homage to Edwin Abbot’s Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions, which is a rich source of science fiction to draw from. I tend to find the monsters on Doctor Who to be the most contrived parts of each episode, but that wasn’t the case this week. Granted, they ended up not offering much in terms of character or motive besides typical monster type behavior, which is usually my main complaint with the monsters on the show in general, and I can’t imagine it would work to bring them back again.

There should be more examples of Doctor Who reaching into more cerebral elements of science fiction, a move that is increasingly rare during Moffat’s tenure. There’s a fine line, however, between the kind of whimsical stories Doctor Who is known for and the tedious technobabble of Star Trek, but I think “Flatline” showed what The Doctor could do with some of the more fantastic ideas about dimensions, or quantum mechanics, or whatever. In the future, though, it would be nice to see something more than just a half-hearted reference that turns into another sequence of mindlessly bloodthirsty aliens that The Doctor attempts to reason with before scaring off.

Which reminds me, this is the first time we really see Capaldi in the kind of warrior confrontation that his predecessor was known for. It felt a little weak, but perhaps because he delivers the character with such an intensity that his angry face didn’t seem like much of a change—compared to Matt Smith’s charming cool suddenly blown to great effect. Capaldi’s performance in this episode was outstanding nonetheless.

As for the Missy tag at the end? She apparently has an interest in Clara, but as I’ve said before, I’m not trying too hard to work anything out. The brief moment was the most revelatory of all of Missy’s scenes so far, giving us a connection to the main arc finally. There’s still no explanation, but there’s only a few more weeks until we (presumably) find out. (www.bbcamerica.com/doctor-who/)

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