Doctor Who: Flatline

PinJenna Coleman in “Doctor Who,” on BBCAmerica

“I was The Doctor today, and I was good.”

“You were an exceptional Doctor, Clara. Goodness had nothing to do with it. “

What makes The Doctor The Doctor? Is it the TARDIS?  The advanced intellect? The near-immortality? The innate understanding of time and space in a way almost entirely unique to himself? The two hearts? The moral code? The answer, up until now, has always been “Yes,” to the sum of these questions.  This is essentially what has been implied and sometimes outright stated throughout the entire 50-year history of the character; that the universe is lucky to have this intelligent, heroic, moral creature of enormous power willing to constantly go to bat for it. It’s the Superman model of heroic figure. It’s a trope that’s served the character well and also works a bit on a meta level, because it could be argued that the fictional character of The Doctor is pretty much Great Britain’s Superman. This implied take on the character was only ramped up when Who was relaunched in 2005, with showrunner Russell T Davies adding a “Last Son of Gallifrey” aspect to his backstory, and many writers since giving him a “I am the defender of Earth” speech at least once a season, not unlike the one he gave this episode.

What we’re getting now with the Twelfth Doctor is something so surprising (not to mention surprisingly well executed) that it’s taken us this long to finally accept that it’s all being done purposefully. We have been dancing around the idea that this season was diving deep on the emotional and psychological aspects of being The Doctor’s companion. We didn’t quite believe it was as deliberate as we’d hoped, simply because the modern run of the show (and, risking fan outcry, we’d argue the entire run, going back 50 years) has never done this kind of work or explored these themes so deeply and comprehensively. Even after last week’s admission from Clara that she had an addiction, we weren’t sure the creators really knew what they were doing or whether they were just tossing out concepts that sounded cool but weren’t going to be fully explored. Sue us. We still have the scars from the River Song story.

We all went into this season wondering if Capaldi could actually pull off being the Doctor, didn’t we?  Because he was so off-model for the modern version of the character and because he was saddled with a companion who’d been ill-defined from the get-go and who seemed, on the surface, like a parody of the typical Doctor Who companion; the pretty, plucky English Rose of a girl, there was a nagging doubt that the whole thing wouldn’t work, since it was built on some shaky foundations (i.e., Season 7 as a whole).

What no one expected was a thorough examination of what it means to be the Doctor, by injecting the audience’s doubts about the character directly into his companion, thereby defining her while at the same time redefining him. The entire season has been an answer to a question and – THANK GOD – it’s not a silly, self-satisfied, ultimately nonsensical question like “Doctor Who?” No, the question is far more universal than that: “Am I a good man?” But here’s the thing. We don’t think the Doctor was asking that question for his own benefit, he was asking it for Clara’s. It’s not “Am I a good man,” it’s “Clara, do you still think I’m a good man now that I’m no longer your pseudo-boyfriend?” And because Clara is the most clear audience surrogate we’ve ever gotten as a companion, it’s really a question that Moffat & Co. are posing to the audience. Will you still love The Doctor, even when he’s less lovable? Do you understand what The Doctor really is?

All of the stories this season have been structured around that one question, making it, in our opinion, one of, if not THE most ambitious seasons of Doctor Who ever. The Doctor is not just some cute, manic weirdo in sand shoes or a fez. He’s not just a good guy who saves people and goes on fun adventures. This has been the take of the past several seasons, but not anymore. The Doctor, as Clara is coming to understand, is a person who cultivates an enormous ego so he can jump into any situation and lead (some) people to safety by convincing them he’s smarter than everyone in the room. He’s a person who lets people die in order to save other people and can’t allow himself the luxury of feeling bad about it. And he’s a liar. Oh, is he ever a liar. The biggest liar in the universe. And he has to be, because it’s the only way he can save as many people as he can. And most important of all, he’s a small child, scared of the dark, who wants to make sure no one else is ever hurt by the things found there. He’s not Superman. He’s Batman.

Twelve is the first Doctor to operate past his expected lifespan of twelve regenerations. He’s the first Doctor to feel like he’s living on borrowed time – because he quite literally is. To put Twelve in context, you have to remember that the manic, youthful, childlike Eleven was a man who thought his life was at its endpoint. Why did Twelve regenerate into this, his oldest face? Because Eleven thought he was going to die an old man. Why is Twelve so rude, cranky and dismissive of humans, and especially of soldiers? Because he fought a war, knowing he was going to die – and then didn’t. He’s got classic survivor’s guilt and it’s made him a darker person. But, we’re finding now, his fundamental nature can’t be changed, no matter how much the surface trappings may. Is he a good man? Yes, but only in the way a near-immortal genius pledged to saving people from the dark can be. We found it a little odd that The Doctor gave one of those very Ten- and Eleven- like speeches about defending the earth out of left field. But then we remembered that both Ten and Eleven gave their “It is defended” speeches on their very first days, in their very first adventures. Why did the Doctor wait until now to give his? Was it because he finally felt like The Doctor? Or was it because Clara finally understands what that means?

Clara’s starting to see the bigger picture and how it’s affecting her. The Doctor wasn’t even bothered to find out she’d been lying to him. If anything, it was part of the lesson he was trying to teach her about what it means to be him. Rule One: The Doctor lies. And now she’s as good at it as he ever was. But if she’s starting to understand and accept the whys of the Doctor, does it mean she should accept the influence he has on her? It’s one thing to lie to people in danger in order to save as many as you can. It’s another thing to lie to your boyfriend about what you’re doing when he’s not around. You can only be The Doctor if you’re living The Doctor’s life. Trying to integrate the Doctor’s methods into your own life is only going to serve to either destroy it or change it beyond recognition. There’s a reason Rose and Martha became soldiers, Donna got a lobotomy and Amy and Rory had to be essentially banished from their lives. They traveled too long and they couldn’t hold back the effects from their own lives anymore. It remains to be seen how tragic Clara’s exit from the TARDIS is going to be, but we’re not optimistic, considering the lessons she’s learned.

Onto more real-world matters. This was a fun, if slightly rambling episode with one of the best new Who monsters since the Weeping Angels. The Boneless, those shambling digital zombies, made for a fantastic visual, as well as refreshingly evil monsters with no shades of grey to them. The shrinking TARDIS was a surprisingly effective visual, capped off by a “Thing from the Addams Family” joke that was so on-point we wonder if the visual didn’t come first with the story built up around it later. We’re really enjoying the lower-key nature of the stories this season. All of time and space is not threatened every week. It all feels very localized and personal (and tends to make Ten and Eleven look bombastic and attention-seeking in comparison). We still can’t make head or tail of Missy and her big plans, but we got confirmation this week that Clara is part of them. She’s being groomed for something. The question is, who’s doing the grooming? Missy or the Doctor? He always has a plan, so we wonder how much he knows about Missy and whether all this work he’s been doing on Clara all season has been to prepare her for whatever’s coming. He’s turning her into a soldier to fight a very specific battle, it seems, which makes us wonder if she’s really going to make it out of this adventure alive.

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