This is only the second story that Jamie Matheson has written for Doctor Who and he's already given us another winner. Flatline is a nice contrast to his previous work, as a contemporary Earth story where dimensional troubles cause the Doctor to become trapped in a miniaturised Tardis and two dimensional creatures start to break into our world.
The idea of two dimensional monsters absorbing three dimensional people is nice new idea for Doctor Who, and leads to some pretty creepy imagery such as a human face screaming in the walls and a human nervous system. And you think that's bad, it gets worse when the people emerge from the walls. The aliens or 'Boneless' as the Doctor names them, are delightfully strange and never give away enough information to become too mundane. The gurgling voice when they are reading out a community worker's number is pretty creepy. A successful scary monster then.
People who moan when Clara gets a bit of attention must have been having hissy fit when she got to assume the role of the Doctor in his absence. The scenes where she explores the area with young graffiti artist Riggsy as her companion certainly point towards the fact that that having a woman as the Doctor wouldn't make much difference to the role of the character.
Riggsy was a fairly likeable companion character. He was compassionate enough when he thought that Clara was one of the people grieving and intelligent enough to work out the locked room mystery. I was glad that his supposed self sacrifice didn't happen. I hate when characters get wasted that way.
The Doctor may be on the sidelines in this adventure, but he's still a constant presence throughout as he guides Clara and the other humans to the solution. He gets more humorous moments this time with the "2Dis" and his little victory dance when he thinks he's saved the Tardis. What makes Capaldi's Doctor funny is we're often laughing at him not with him. He also gets the big hero moment at the end as he names the monsters before dispatching them.
The only other significant castmember is Christopher Fairbank as Fenton. He's generally the bad egg of the team, bigoted and annoying. Like Rickson Slade in Voyage of the Damned, he's the survivor you don't want. The others are really just there to get killed.
The story has a very straightforward narrative, with people dodging monsters while the Doctor figures out a solution. It is, nevertheless, extremely well done. The solution that Clara works out to solve the problem of the shrunken Tardis is pretty nifty and the Doctor using the extradimensional nature of the Tardis against the three dimensional nature of the Boneless.
We get another obligatory Missy cameo at the end, but this one is slightly more interesting. What could she be preparing Clara for? I don't think it's too wild a guess to say that she's the woman in the shop, but what is her purpose? We'll find out in two week's time.
There are only two flaw that I can pick at with this episode. One is that the Tardis default setting looks like a Time Lord communication device rather than the model we saw in The Name of the Doctor. The only other flaw, which is nitpicking slightly, is the continuity of Peter Capaldi's hair length. This might have been an issue with filming.
Out of the two stories Mathieson's has written for Doctor Who this year I think I prefer Mummy on the Orient Express. That had a slightly more intense emotional arc for its central characters and a more memorable supporting cast. Having said that, Flatline is still a very good story and is definately one of my favourite stories of series 8. I would be more than happy for Jamie Matheson to come back to write next year.
9/10
Next: London is overrun with trees, a wolf and a tiger, Danny and children. I really have no idea what to make of this one but it certainly looks interesting.
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