Story 251: Flatline

In which the Doctor finds that something strange is happening to the TARDIS...

Clara is still travelling with the Doctor, despite having told Danny that she has stopped seeing him. They are on their way back to London when the ship materialises off course at a different location. It has landed in Bristol, and Clara is due to meet with Danny for lunch in London. They notice that the doors have shrunk, and when they emerge they discover that the whole TARDIS has been reduced in size. The Doctor can't take her home until they have got to the bottom of this dimensional issue. He goes back inside, whilst Clara has a look around the area. In a railway underpass she finds a strange mural, of people standing with their faces to the wall. Next to it is a shrine which has been set up to various missing people. 

A small group of men are working nearby, carrying out community service. One of these is a young man named Rigsy, who was arrested for his graffiti art. The overseer is a man named Fenton, who takes sadistic delight in having Rigsy paint over his own artworks.

Rigsy tells Clara about the disappearances, and of this strange mural which has appeared. She calls the Doctor to update him but when she goes back to where the TARDIS landed she finds it is now only a few inches tall, with the Doctor trapped inside. He gives her the psychic paper and sonic screwdriver and lets her know that she will have to be "the Doctor" and investigate what is happening here on his behalf. Clara puts the ship in her handbag. She asks Rigsy to take her to the scene of the last disappearance - a nearby flat. There is a weird mural on the wall, which looks like a dried up lake bed.

When Rigsy wants to leave, the Doctor recognises the need to secure his local knowledge, so they let him know about the TARDIS. They use the psychic paper to gain access to another flat, given entry by WPC Forrest. The police officer is attacked, sucked down into the carpet after seeing something slide across the walls. Another strange mural appears, composed of red lines in a branch pattern. The Doctor realises that this is the WPC's nervous system. The earlier mural was a close-up view of the victim's skin. Something is reducing people and other objects to two dimensions, presumably taking them apart to investigate them.

The TARDIS is attacked again , reducing further in size. The Doctor guesses that they are facing creatures who come from a 2-D universe, who are trying to work out the 3-D world. Odd sounds have been heard, and the Doctor thinks that the creatures may be trying to communicate.

Clara and Rigsy are attacked at the flat, spotting the floor and walls come alive and slide towards them. They take refuge in a hanging chair - just as Danny calls Clara. She and Rigsy swing the chair so that it breaks free and flies out of the window - leaving Danny baffled as to what is going on.

Close by is an railway engineering depot. The community service workers have gathered here after the figures in the mural in the underpass came to life. As the Doctor tries to work out how to communicate with the creatures, he uses mathematics which should be universal. The response is a number, just as one of the workers is attacked and reduced to a flattened image. His uniform number was the one which the creatures gave. They were stating who they were going to kill next.

More of the workers are attacked and transformed into 2-D versions of themselves. Everyone is forced into the nearby rail tunnels. The creatures can also make objects turn two dimensional. The TARDIS is dropped and is almost run over by a train. It continues to shrink and enters "siege mode", assuming the form of a small silver cube covered in Gallifreyan symbols. Rigsy attempts to sacrifice himself by crashing a train into the creatures. Clara has the controls rigged to work remotely, but it only gets reduced to 2-D as well. 

If the creatures can turn objects into 2-D, Clara guesses that they may also be able to reverse the process. Rigsy paints a fake doorway which the creatures try to adapt. Behind is the TARDIS. The process causes it to grow to normal size again. The Doctor emerges. Furious that the creatures have ignored their efforts to communicate and act in a friendly manner, he denounces them as monsters - and he is the man who stops the monsters. Naming them the Boneless, he has them thrown back to their own dimension, with a warning never to come back to this realm.

The Doctor congratulates Clara on her performance as "the Doctor" today, as she rejects a call from Danny.

Elsewhere, the unknown woman who has been welcoming people to the promised land has been observing them. She agrees that Clara has been a good choice...

Flatline was written by Jamie Mathieson, and was first broadcast on Saturday 18th October, 2014.

Although broadcast second, this was his first written submission for the series - the other being the previous week's Mummy on the Orient Express.

Mathieson had wanted to write for the series since its revival. He wrote the sci-fi movie Frequently Asked Questions About Time Travel, and joined the writing team on Being Human after meeting Toby Whithouse. An earlier attempt to impress Steven Moffat had failed when he came up with a great concept, but failed to include a monster for the Doctor to fight. he managed to get a second meeting, where he had a few ideas. The one Moffat went with was the notion of a 2-D monster which wrapped itself around people in order to become 3-D - the starting premise for Flatline.

A couple of children's books provided inspiration, such as Flat Stanley (1964). Sapphire & Steele was another inspiration.

The images on the walls of flats where people had disappeared derived from the elongated skull in Holbein's The Ambassadors painting in the National Gallery - the skull only evident when seen from an oblique angle.

It was relatively late in the day that this episode became the Doctor-lite story, as Capaldi was needed to play a more prominent role in Mathieson's other story, and that did not have a lot of Clara in it. As such, the Doctor is confined to the TARDIS so that Capaldi only needs to appear on location at the beginning and the end. To cover this, Clara gets to become the Doctor for the duration of the story, investigating on his behalf. She therefore needs a companion of her own - which is where Rigsy comes in.

He is played by Joivan Wade. he had appeared with Catherine Tate and David Walliams in the comedy series Big School. More recently he has featured as Victor Stone / Cyborg in DC's Legends of Tomorrow and Doom Patrol.

Fenton is played by Christopher Fairbank, who generally portrays villainous characters, but was probably best known for his regualr role on Auf Wiedersehen Pet. 

PC Forrest is Jessica Hayles, and another of the community service workers is Matt Bardock, playing Al. He was just coming to the end of a seven year stretch on medical soap Casualty.

Samuel Anderson once again cameos as Danny, seen only at the other end of Clara's phone. Another cameo is Michelle Gomez as Missy. There is a hint that she may have been responsible for bringing the Doctor and Clara together in the first place.

One of the highlights of the story is the miniature TARDIS, and the way that the Doctor still manages to remain part of the action despite its reduced state. We see his face looking out of the tiny doors, or his hand emerging like Thing from The Addams Family.

Overall, another of the stronger stories for this series, with some lovely VFX and an unusual new monster. Peter Capaldi gets his defining moment when he challenges the Boneless in the tunnel - the man who stops the monsters.

Things you might like to know:

• One of the inspirations for this story was a Road Runner cartoon - especially the image of a flat painting of a tunnel entrance which the Road Runner could run into, whilst Wile E Coyote would slam into rock. Other times, trucks or trains would emerge from the supposedly painted tunnel to squash the hapless coyote.
• There is a very noticeable continuity error in the length of the Doctor's hair - unless it is also being affected by the dimensional instability...
• The train has the service number of A113. This is an animators in-joke, used on a lot of CGI or 2-D cartoon films and shows. A113 is the number of a classroom at the California Institute of the Arts. Tim Burton was one of those who studied there. It has featured in The Simpsons, South Park, and Family Guy amongst many, many others.
• The location used for the railway sidings is Barry Island in South Wales. This area was previously seen in The Empty Child / The Doctor Dances, and had once been right next to the site of the holiday camp used in Delta and the Bannermen.
• The TARDIS has been reduced in size on a number of occasions - including Planet of Giants, Carnival of Monsters and Logopolis.
• 2006's Fear Her had previously shown people being reduced to 2-D, and 2-D objects becoming 3-D.