Doctor Who's Flatline: Cool monsters, yes, but utterly limp subplots

Gavin says:

There’s something eerie about Bristol - at least in the world of Jamie Mathieson, author of last week’s Mummy on the Orient Express.

Mathieson’s previous writing gig was on Being Human – a dark comedy-cum-drama about a vampire, a werewolf and a ghost sharing a house like 20-somethings, also set in Bristol. It was a transient and empty setting on the fringes of a city given an edgy and decaying feel.

So it was in the Bristol of Mathieson that the Doctor and Clara materialised in Flatline; the sun’s shining but something just wasn’t right.

In classic Mathieson style, our pair land on the margins of town: a remote railway line, near a housing estate where Clara stumbles upon a community service gang of ASBOs - unwanted and misunderstood by society – forced into service removing graffiti from concrete underpasses under the eye of a cruel and cynical boss named Fenton.

The story: Locals have been going missing and nobody seems too troubled trying to find them in this twilight world.

It turns out aliens from another – flat – dimension have arrived and are living in the walls and floors, assimilating people. The Doctor, Clara and the ASBOs hook up to try to figure out the mystery up to the point where the aliens crack 3D and assume the forms of those they took. Then Flatline turns into a zombie film with aliens snarling and lumbering through darkened tunnels, casting long and hideous shadows while pursuing of our band of humans.

The 3D aliens are sort-of menacing, like some twisted, badly Photoshopped images. Flatline is edgy and urban, thanks to its setting. In an inspired touch, those graffiti images were of the missing and in a nod to real life, their images were in the same style as Banksy.

Flatline also gets down to the action – no emotional drama of Clara versus the Doctor or triangle with Mr Pink. In fact, Clara steps up – the stabilisers are definitely off.

The Doctor’s stuck in a comically shrinking TARDIS, its dimensional energy being drained by the flat aliens.

He’s reduced to peeking his face or a hand out, Mr Bean-like, through the shrunken TARDIS’s doors. The micro TARDIS is stuffed in Clara’s handbag.

Clara is once again trapped and cut off – first in a railway shed, then a disused railway tunnel and finally a railway office lit dimly by a lamp from the 1930s and stuffed with rolled-up posters and tunnel blueprints. Only this time, Clara thinks more like the Doctor – on her feet, unemotional - to return the energy to the TARDIS and bring back the Doctor to wreak fearful vengeance upon the aliens.

“Rule number 1 of the Doctor: Use your enemies’ power against them,” she mutters.

Clara is back and where she should be in Flatline: a powerful assistant, not the dizzy, weak, in-love girl torn between two lovers (one actual, one platonic). Firmly in control, she even lampoons the Doctor’s planet-sized ego and patronises his tiny little TARDIS.

But is she too powerful? Something is afoot, suggested as Flatline closes and Bristol’s survivors wander off one-by-one having thanked Clara.

Clara pushes the Doctor to admit that she did good in the town.

“You were an exceptional Doctor, Clara, goodness has nothing to do with it,” the Doctor finally says, implying something and leaving Clara – and us – a little confused.

The last scene cuts to the enigmatic Missy watching Clara from some kind of tablet. “Clara, my Clara, I have chosen well,” Missy says wistfully.

Does Clara have a secret and a destiny? Does the Doctor know them? Or does he suspect Clara is channelling some Force-like power that – in the wrong hands – could be turned to the dark side? We’ve had such Doctor Who assistant story arcs before; Amy Pond’s first chosen and then impregnated by a shadowy female figure.

Let’s hope this one develops into something more.