Written by Sarah Dollard
Series 9 of
Doctor Who has been an outstanding collection of stories, probably the most
consistently high-quality run of stories in New Who to date. The Davros epic double
seems like such a long time ago now, but go back and watch it again and marvel
at the power and the confidence involved in launching a series with a story
like that. The Fisher King double was a brilliant example of the base under
siege, done with a modernity of pace and not one creepy adversary but two. The
Ashildr ‘two-parter’ divides fans, but then these days, to be fair, what
doesn’t? My call on it would be that it was a half and half affair, with the
Viking half saved from simple comedy by the impact of the action on the Doctor,
and the second half was rather lightweight. Then came the Zygons – oh my word,
the Zygons, bringing a Classic alien species right up to date, while delivering
a parable of war, and that speech. The Sandmen had some serious potential, but
seemed to be an idea squandered by stylistic production choices.
And now
there’s Face The Raven.
There are
many metrics you can use to choose the ‘best’ episode of a series. Ballsiness,
satire, scares, real life lessons etc. On one metric or another, most episodes
this series could be judged ‘the best.’
Sarah
Dollard takes a really good one with Face The Raven – Sheer, imaginative
intensity and freshness. Yes, yes, there’s the whole Diagon Alley thing, and
yes, look, there’s part three of the Ashildr story, but in terms of how you get
into the story, how it progresses and builds, and how it pays off its premise,
Face The Raven is a story that you’ll watch, and rewatch, and rewatch again,
unashamedly because it delivers all the way along the line.
Tattoos
that count down – oh hell yes, it takes a really imaginative mind to come up
with that. Tattoos that move might be thought of by almost anyone worth their
scriptwriting salt, but to turn a moving tattoo into a threat, a sentence and a
countdown takes an impressive amount of inspiration. The process by which our
heroes found the Trap Street
Clara’s
choice to take the chronolock from Riggsy was perfectly judged for her
character – courageous, kind, madly impulsive, and thinking she has a handle on
everything in the universe, including the fallout of the Doctor’s reaction.
The idea of
the Janus and her ‘death’ being nothing but a trap to get the Doctor to come
and do as he’s told made perfect sense the moment it was revealed – again,
Dollard building her plot with both imaginative flair and reason. And the
ending goes through all the stages of grief that we need as fans to say our
goodbyes to Clara. She took the chronolock from Riggsy thinking it was the kind
thing to do, and it was, it was the Clara thing to do. But she always expected
to be able to have it removed. When the universe turns out to be harder and
more inescapable than she imagined though, ultimately, it’s Clara who’s the
brave one. She’s known the Doctor longer than most companions, and she knows
what losing her will do to him, so Clara follows the Danny Pink path and turns
to face the raven, having heard the Doctor threaten to tear the universe apart
and bring it down on Ashildr’s head, and having made him promise not to become
a monster, not to take retribution for her death. Clara’s parting speech is
almost the answer to the Doctor’s speech in The Zygon Inversion – where he
demands that people not go to war, not fire that first shot because they don’t
know who will scream and burn, she demands of him that when she’s dead, when
things have escalated and he is hurt and screaming behind his eyes and wanting
to hit everyone and everything and especially those who made him feel that
impossible loss, the loss he’d change the universe to avoid…that he do nothing.
That he be the Doctor, not the monster she knows he could become. Clara’s is
the voice of the victim, speaking to the bereaved. Don’t kill in my name. Take
the pain for me, don’t push that pain back on others, don’t make others feel
the way you feel – not in my name.
And with
that, Clara Oswald, the Impossible Girl goes to face her raven, the death she
took to save an innocent and his family.
The Doctor
promising Ashildr that the universe is very small when he’s angry with her is
proof that the monster is still inside him, and that for all Clara’s orders to
him, the rage and the pain will drive him to be at least a little of the
monster the Time Lord is capable of before Series 9 is done. The reaction is a
natural one – pain drives us all to the most appalling actions. But the
Doctor’s only hope after Clara has faced her raven is that her example – her
kindness and her bravery – stand a chance of bringing him back from the brink
he will face before our Doctor is lost forever. The Impossible Girl was created
to save the Doctor, by any means possible. It’s down to her, in the way she
faced her death and the order she gave him not to retaliate for it, to save him
one last time.
