One fan’s heartache is another’s drunken after-party. That is how I choose to view Face The Raven.
Surprisingly enough, Clara’s demise last week has had the unusual
effect of satisfying both ends of the spectrum of her fanbase. Loyal
Clara lovers wept as the impossible girl came in on a leaf and left with
a raven in a gut wrenching scene, while Clara doubters, dislikers and
angry villagers also managed to enjoy the episode by way of the
particular method in which she left the series. Or rather the events
that led up to it.
The Good
While I find that every episode Peter Capaldi and Jenna Coleman are in they give exceptional performances, I feel as though Face The Raven
deserves special mention. Peter’s rage combined with Jenna’s compassion
make for fierce team. Regardless of your personal feelings toward
either Clara Oswald or the Twelfth Doctor, watching the two characters
go from enthusiastic adventures eager to clear an innocent man’s name to
broken and angry by the end of the episode has to invoke some sort of
response, whether it be anguish or joy. Face The Raven serves as the most emotionally charged episode of Series 9 with only two episodes left that can challenge it. Though Face The Raven has set the bar high.
Deciding to explore the mythos of trap streets, an obscure piece of
arcane knowledge and deciding to turn it into an episode feels very much
up Doctor Who’s alley (pardon the pun). This idea isn’t given too much
focus in the episode though, but it certainly opens up dozens of
possible, future storylines. Trap streets don’t necessarily have to
house refugees. Imagine what great hiding places they can be for
criminals and extraterrestrial threats.
"Die bitch! Die!"
Clara’s
demise and the fact that it mostly leans towards stupid as opposed to a
heroic sacrifice sits well with this author. Clara has already had the
heroic sacrifice. She’s already left the Doctor, she’s been left behind,
died, but out of all her predecessors, I don’t believe a companion has
once met their demise as a result of a foolish decision of their own
volition. This adds both originality to Clara’s end (which was getting
trickier to do given she’s already had more exits than Rory’s had fake
deaths), as well as inventing a new way in which future companions may
meet their end.
The concept of a death sentence tattoo on the back of the neck is
actually quite ingenious when you think about it. It serves as a
constant reminder of your transgressions, gives enough paranoia fuel as
you have to ask others to keep you up to date on how much time you have
left (at the same time letting them know you’ve committed a crime) and
if you ever feel like you’re being watched, chances are you probably are
as people are most likely staring at the back of your neck and judging
you from afar.
The Doctor’s Time Lord Victorious streak is rarely seen to The Waters of Mars degree or in this case, Face the Raven’s,
but there can be no doubt that whenever we see glimpses of that dark
Doctor emerge, whatever scene we’re in is guaranteed to be one of the
episode’s highlights. The Metacrisis Doctor showed what a vengeful
Doctor looked like while the Dream Lord showcased the sadistic Doctor.
Watching Peter’s Doctor go out of his way to threaten Ashildr and not
care about who gets hurt in the crossfire stands as the most powerful
scene of the episode in my opinion. Indeed, Ashildr’s continued presence
on the Doctor’s favourite planet has to lead to a future episode in
which these two forces go after each other, whether it’s the Doctor
ignoring Clara (my hopes) or Ashildr taking pre-emptive action against
possible future attacks.
The Bad
“People can change.”
“Doesn’t make the bad things you did go away.” – Jessica Jones
Ashildr proves that after almost a thousand years she is still just a
petulant child. She is over-confident and condescending towards those
she has the upper hand against, but quickly regresses into a panicky,
apologetic child when things go awry. She’s like a child scared of
getting in trouble with her parents after making her younger sibling
cry. This is the second time that she has put the lives of others at
risk and foolishly made ill-advised deals with parties that she knew
very little about.
And despite the punishment for every crime in Trap Street being death
– even theft – nobody bothers punishing Ashildr for either a)
physically assaulting another resident or b) conspiring to commit a
crime by getting someone else to do the assault in her place. She seems
to be above the law in that she can do anything, good or bad and will
not be punished. Coupled with her
pity-me-whenever-things-don’t-go-my-way-I-didn’t-see-it-coming attitude,
it comes across as extremely jarring.
"I've alwys wanted a tattoo."
And
while I believe taking on the Chronolock is incredibly brave of Clara,
the fact that she took it on so quickly and so early on when there was
no reason to does contain a couple of logic problems since Clara is
supposed to be intelligent. From the moment the scene played out, I
spotted the “can’t pass it back” plot twist. There are two kinds of
risks. Necessary and unnecessary. A necessary risk is doing something
dangerous or reckless without there being another course of action
available. Unnecessary risks are doing the exact same, but while there
are still other courses of action open to you. By deciding to take the
Chronolock while there was still so much time left on the clock without a
better explanation, Clara’s decision seems stupid and unnecessary.
Face the Raven is also extremely plot convenient,
essentially setting things up in such a manner to make sure Clara dies.
Take her confidence for example, Clara is “over-confident”, but a truly
overconfident person wouldn’t even need to take on the Chronolock
because they are so sure they’ll win that they wouldn’t even need to
risk it. So in this sense, Clara’s overconfidence is above “let me take
the tattoo, we’ll save the day later”, but below “I don’t even need to
take it off you because we’re so good we don’t even have to risk”. In
other words, Clara’s overconfidence is just convenient enough for the
plot. Conveniently, the Raven can find you across all of time and space
so time travel is out of the question. So why does it need contracts to
kill people? And despite not caring about which soul it takes, the Raven
still manages to care enough to be put off when the tattoo has been
passed without being informed first. Ashildr didn’t foresee someone
taking over the Chronolock from someone else, despite the fact that the
couple earlier in the episode spoke about it. How convenient that
Ashildr doesn’t bother telling the TARDIS trio that she can’t remove the
Chronolock if they try to pass it on to someone else?
And yet, all the Clara negatives above are tiny nitpicks which do not
bother me too much (she is dead after all), but may a casual viewer.
The Nerdy
This week featured a bunch of in-universe callbacks and references to past episodes, but most of them are easily recognisable.
The Doctor says “Remember 82” whilst looking for the Trap Streets. 1982 was the year Earthshock was broadcast, the last Doctor Who story to have a companion killed off.
The Trap Street looks a lot like Diagon Alley from the Harry Potter franchise.
One of the alien posters in the Trap Street is written in Aurebesh.
Aurebesh is a language in the Star Wars franchise. The text reads
“Delorean” and there’s a picture of a flux capacitor from the Back to the Future movies underneath it.
And would it surprise you all to know that if Doctor Who was a legal
programme, then Ashildr would be guilty of Clara’s murder? It’s called
Dolus Eventualis:
“Intent in the form of dolus eventualis or legal intention, is present when the perpetrator objectively foresees the possibility of his/her act causing death and persists regardless of the consequences, suffices to find someone guilty of murder.”
While Ashildr mentioned not foreseeing Clara taking Rigsy’s place,
she was aware that death would be guaranteed if Rigsy passed the curse
onto someone else. Regardless of this possibility of death existing, she
still cast the death curse. Which means unless she is above the law, we
won’t see Ashildr again because her soul now belongs to the Raven as
well.
Tomorrow is unique for a number of reasons. Doctor Who steps way
outside its normal comfort zone by not only giving us the first solo
Doctor adventure since The Deadly Assassin, but also removing all other characters (sans the Veil) and labelling Heaven Sent
a fifty-minute Capaldi monologue. As far as experimental episodes go,
this one sounds as though it’s been hyped to planetary proportions, but
will this be the Blink of the Capaldi Era, or has Doctor Who bit off more than it can chew this time?
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