In which the Doctor and Clara are summoned to the home of Rigsy - the young graffiti artist who had helped them battle the Boneless in Bristol. He now lives in London with his fiancée and child. He has lost his memories of the last 24 hours, and has discovered a strange tattoo on the back of his neck. It is a set of numbers which change - some sort of countdown...
His phone is broken, and when the Doctor scans him he discovers that he has been in contact with some alien technology. Alarmingly, when the tattoo reaches zero, he will die.
Studying some maps to try to jog his memory of where he might have been, Clara recalls the concept of "trap streets". Map-makers would add small non-existent streets to their work, which would flag up copyists. The Doctor tells them both that such streets exist in reality - hidden pockets of alien life here on Earth.
They finally track down the street to an alleyway in the City, protected by a misdirection circuit. On entering it they are confronted by two men - Rump and Kabel, who are really disguised aliens. They recognise Rigsy and are antagonistic towards him. The Doctor is surprised to discover that the street's overseer is Me - the woman formerly known as Ashildr. She acts as mayor of the street, pledged to protect the various aliens who live here as refugees. She explains that Rigsy visited the street the previous day and murdered one of its inhabitants - a woman named Anah. She was a member of the Janus race, who have two faces. Their females can see the past with one face, and the future with the other, and many races enslave and exploit them. She is survived by her son, Anahson.
Rigsy's tattoo is a Chronolock - the form of punishment employed in the street. When the countdown reaches zero, a Quantum Shade - which resembles a raven - attacks and kills those marked.
They witness the execution of a man accused of stealing supplies. As his tattoo reaches zero he tries to run but the Raven flies into his body and he dies. It is Me who controls the Shade, via a tattoo on her own body.
Me allows the Doctor and Clara some time to investigate the death of Anah and so clear Rigsy. They start by talking to Anahson - and discover that he is really a girl. She was posing as a boy to avoid exploitation.
So convinced of the Doctor's ability to resolve the mystery, and believing that it will circumvent the Quantum Shade if the Chronolock is held by an innocent party, Clara agrees to transfer it to herself. The Doctor is unaware of this decision.
The Doctor discovers that Anah's body is being held in a stasis field, and realises that she is not actually dead.
Me appears and tells the Doctor that the field can only be turned off using the TARDIS key. He must deposit it in a machine, but the device grips his arm and places a clamp around his wrist. This is a teleport device. He realises that the "trap street" was well named. It has all been a trap to ensnare him.
Me has been forced to co-operate with the High Council of Time Lords, who are determined to obtain the Doctor's Confession Dial - prepared when he thought he was going to die facing Davros. A legend on Gallifrey tells of a creature known as "The Hybrid" which will destroy Time Lord civilisation. The High Council believe the Doctor has information about it, and have therefore colluded with Me to capture him.
Me agrees to remove the Chronolock from Rigsy, only to be told about the swap he made with Clara. She is horrified by this. She does not have the power to cancel the Shade now that it is connected to another person.
The Doctor is forced to witness Clara's death as the Raven is unleashed and flies into her body.
He warns Me that she should never cross his path ever again as he hands over the Dial, then submits to be teleported away.
Rigsy is free to leave.
Later, he turns the abandoned TARDIS into a form of shrine to Clara...
Face The Raven was written by Sarah Dollard, and was first broadcast on Saturday 21st November, 2015. Dollard had previously contributed scripts to gene TV shows Primeval and Merlin, as well as the soap Neighbours in her native Australia.
It sees the return of the character Rigsy, from the previous season's Flatline, and Me (from this year's The Girl Who Died and The Woman Who Lived), as well as the apparent demise of companion Clara Oswald.
However, many fans were aware that Jenna Coleman was featuring in the series finale, so it looked as though this was yet another of Steven Moffat's false deaths of companions. This proved to be the case, and it is certainly the very worst instance of it. A beautiful ending to this story is utterly trashed by Moffat within the space of a fortnight in the abomination that is Hell Bent.
What made this doubly annoying was the fact that fans had grown really sick and tired of Clara as a character by this time, and this was the third perfectly good opportunity to have her depart which was then wasted. (She really ought to have gone at the end of Death in Heaven, and there was another good exit point in Last Christmas).
We see a number of Doctor Who monsters represented. This includes Ood and Cybermen, as above, as well as Silurians, Sontarans and Ice Warriors. A pair of police officers who escort Me are really disguised Judoon.
Some of these are very crudely realised, with badly superimposed heads on bodies (see below).
New creatures include the two-faced Janus and a humanoid species known as Habrians. The character Rump looks a bit like Wolverine, whilst his friend Kabel is a reptilian Lugal-Irra-Kush.
The lighting in the street comes from creatures called Lurkworms. As well as providing lighting, they are responsible for the humanoid appearance of the various alien refugees.
Me states that the trap street is a better way of housing refugees than the UNIT-Zygon resettlement agreement, referencing this series' two part Zygon story. The Doctor later threatens to bring Zygons down on the street, along with Daleks and Cybermen, when furious with Me at Clara's fate.
The guest cast is headed by the two returnees - Maisie Williams as Me, who is actually credited as Ashildr, and Joivan Wade as Rigsy.
Rump is Simon Paisley Day. As plain Simon Day he had appeared in The End of the World as Platform One's blue-faced Steward. He added the 'Paisley' to prevent confusion with the Simon Day of The Fast Show fame. Kabel is Simon Manyonda.
Credited as "Chronolock guy" is Robin Soans. He had previously appeared in The Keeper of Traken as Consul Luvik. He's the man who gets killed by the Raven just after the Doctor, Clara and Rigsy arrive in the street.
Letitia Wright plays Anahson. She has gone on to join the MCU, playing Shuri in Black Panther and its forthcoming sequel, as well as in the final two Avengers movies. In December 2020 she promoted a video which was anti-vaxxer, expressed doubts about climate change, and was transphobic. This had been made by her church leader. It has been claimed that she still holds anti-vaxxer views, which she is denying.
Things you might like to know:
- Trap streets have been known about for a while. In 2005 the general public were made aware of them in a BBC programme about the history of the iconic London A-Z - a series called The Map Man. It told of how cartographers added small made-up streets (usually tiny cul-de-sacs) to catch out copyright violators. The example seen in the programme was of a real street but one that had been renamed (after a member of the A-Z publishing team). Outside of urban areas, some maps include false information such as the elevation of hills to flag up copyists. In the US, trap streets can't actually be protected by copyright - as you can't copyright something which technically does not exist.
- Of those badly realised residents of the trap street, the Ice Warrior is taken from Cold War - an image of Skaldak without his helmet, whilst the Sontaran is clearly Christopher Ryan's General Staal from The Sontaran Stratagem / The Poison Sky.
- Rigsy's memory loss is said to be the result of Retcon - the amnesia-inducing drug first introduced in Torchwood.
- In the end credits the plural of Ood is given as "Oods", whereas it is generally accepted that "Ood" is both singlar and plural.
- Capaldi's costume (burgundy jacket) in this episode was actually first seen in a DWM comic strip - the 1970's set The Highgate Horror. (In this, Clara wears Jo Grant's ensemble from The Three Doctors).
- Technically Clara does actually die in this story. When brought back she hails from a moment in time between her final heartbeats. The last companion to be killed in the series - and stay dead - was Adric. This is referenced when the Doctor cryptically says "Remember 82" to a boy playing hopscotch - 1982 being the year Earthshock was screened.
- The final scene of Rigsy and the graffiti'd TARDIS was shown after the end credits - the first time that a post credits scene had ever been used on the programme.
- The painted TARDIS prop was not the regular one used in the series, as it could be seen separately at the BBC studios in Cardiff, as I saw on a set tour in March 2016 (below top). It was later on display in the Doctor Who Experience in September 2017 (below bottom).
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