{"id":533,"date":"2014-10-21T11:00:00","date_gmt":"2014-10-21T11:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ninecats.org\/margaret\/blog\/2014\/10\/21\/doctor-who-flatline\/"},"modified":"2014-10-21T11:00:00","modified_gmt":"2014-10-21T11:00:00","slug":"doctor-who-flatline","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ninecats.org\/margaret\/blog\/2014\/10\/21\/doctor-who-flatline\/","title":{"rendered":"Doctor Who: Flatline"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Another good episode.  And as always around this point of the season I&#8217;m running out of things to say above the spoiler cut &#8230;<\/p>\n<p>SPOILERS AHEAD! <span class=\"spoiler-header\">Hover mouse over text to read, or read on entry page:<\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"spoiler\">I liked the monsters, particularly the gradual ramping up of their abilities as the reconnaissance missions gave them results and taught them about 3 dimensions. And the whole &#8220;they&#8217;re in the walls&#8221; thing was creepy, and well done &#8211; you twig to the floor thing just before the characters do.  Although I&#8217;m not quite sure why they&#8217;d want to invade\/kill people other than &#8220;because&#8221;, but I guess that&#8217;s a time honoured Doctor Who baddy rationale.  And I liked the way their tech? powers? were used to accidentally mess with the TARDIS&#8217;s external dimensions &#8211; I&#8217;m not sure that&#8217;s been done before in the series.  I do tend to like it when the TARDIS&#8217;s abilities and attributes are used for more than just a glorified taxi service in the story.<\/p>\n<p>The tiny TARDIS in the handbag, with the Doctor&#8217;s hand handing out gadgets and tools as she needed them was pretty funny, too \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n<p>Clara&#8217;s been learning well from the Doctor about how to take charge of a situation and project confidence in her &#8220;plan&#8221; whilst she makes it up as she goes along. And I liked that she does step up to the challenge, and she does well &#8211; she keeps most people alive after all.  As with last week though I think we get hints that she&#8217;s not necessarily learning the <i>right<\/i> things from her association with the Doctor.  This isn&#8217;t entirely a companion that&#8217;s becoming her best possible self due to the Doctor&#8217;s influence is it?  She&#8217;s getting the arrogance and the external shell of pragmatism, but it&#8217;s not clear that she&#8217;s continuing to care on the inside.  Just a bit <i>too<\/i> cavalier about the deaths she couldn&#8217;t prevent, just a bit <i>too<\/i> quick to lie and manipulate.  Mind you, she&#8217;s not very good at lying when it isn&#8217;t a life or death situation &#8211; witness how quickly she&#8217;s caught out by both Danny and the Doctor for the lie at the end of last episode.  I had assumed the storyline there was to be Clara+Danny4eva, but I&#8217;m not so sure any more &#8211; I find it hard to see how she can salvage the relationship from here.  Unless Danny is as stupid as she treats him as, of course &#8230; which would be a shame.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m also reconsidering where the Missy plot-line is going, too.  That scene at the end where she talks about having chosen Clara well is intriguing.  And does, I think, make it obvious that she&#8217;s the lady who gave Clara the TARDIS phone number way back in the first episode with this Clara.  Only 3 episodes left in the season so I guess we get to find out what it&#8217;s all about soon!  Hopefully it&#8217;ll be a bit less nonsensical than previous Moffat season finales &#8211; it&#8217;s definitely done with a lighter touch throughout this time round.<\/p><\/div>\n<div class=\"navi\"><a href=\"http:\/\/ninecats.org\/margaret\/blog\/2014\/10\/14\/doctor-who-mummy-orient-express\">&lt; Previous Episode<\/a> | <a href=\"http:\/\/ninecats.org\/margaret\/blog\/2014\/10\/28\/doctor-who-forest-night\">Next Episode &gt;<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Another good episode. And as always around this point of the season I&#8217;m running out of things to say above the spoiler cut &#8230; SPOILERS AHEAD! Hover mouse over text to read, or read on entry page: I liked the monsters, particularly the gradual ramping up of their abilities as the reconnaissance missions gave them &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/ninecats.org\/margaret\/blog\/2014\/10\/21\/doctor-who-flatline\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Doctor Who: Flatline&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[13,14],"class_list":["post-533","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-doctor-who","tag-television-fiction"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ninecats.org\/margaret\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/533","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ninecats.org\/margaret\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ninecats.org\/margaret\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ninecats.org\/margaret\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ninecats.org\/margaret\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=533"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ninecats.org\/margaret\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/533\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ninecats.org\/margaret\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=533"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ninecats.org\/margaret\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=533"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ninecats.org\/margaret\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=533"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}