Doctor Who: Face the Raven
(1 episode, s09e10, 2015)
Doctor Clara has consequences.
The Doctor and Clara return from an amazing adventure when they get a phone call from Rigsy. He has found a mysterious tattoo on his neck and it’s counting down. The travelers arrive at his home and meet his fiancée and his newborn daughter. Rigsy doesn’t remember getting the tattoo and he’s lost the last day or so due to a dose of Retcon. When the Doctor scans him, he discovers that Rigsy has been in contact with aliens.
He’ll also die when the countdown reaches zero.
Rigsy demands that the Doctor do what he does best, so the Doctor decides to save the man. He takes the TARDIS to the heart of London and uses the Great British Library’s maps to find the alien enclave. When that doesn’t turn up anything, he takes the TARDIS into the sky to scan the city with the sonic sunglasses. The spots where Clara’s eyes couldn’t focus indicate a perception filter or misdirection circuit hiding the “trap street”.
The team works together to locate the enclave. When the TARDIS finishes the analysis of Rigsy’s phone, he remembers what happened the night before. He found a dead body and several alien witnesses. They discover the enclave’s entrance and go inside, but are soon trapped. They discover that this is a refugee camp headed by Lady Me. The former Ashildr is also in charge of the quantum shade that has infected Rigsy, effectively a death sentence for a crime that Rigsy supposedly committed.
Me places Clara under her personal protection as she takes the team deeper into the street. The camp is teeming with aliens who believe Rigsy is a murderer. Me tells the Doctor that many of his enemies are also on the street, making it the most dangerous place in the universe. The misdirection circuit is driven by glowing worm-like creatures in the streetlamps. Me has also ordered the street to be a violence-free sanctuary.
Rigsy has been convicted of the murder of Anah, a two-faced Janus woman. While the community believes Rigsy to be guilty, the Doctor and Clara know that he was lured to the scene. Their discussion is interrupted by a man who stole medical rations, and even though his actions were noble, Me still considers him to be guilty. The man’s timer expires and he is executed by the quantum shade which takes the form of a raven and can find its target at any place and time.
Me does have the power to rescind the sentence. She tells the Doctor that he needs to convince the refugees that Rigsy is innocent. Clara also discovers that the victim can give the sentence to someone else as long as they consent. Since Clara is under Me’s personal protection, she assumes that she can avoid the raven, so she offers to take Rigsy’s burden.
Clara and the Doctor canvas the street and discover that Rigsy tried to call the Doctor when he realized that he was in the enclave. The Doctor believes that Me was trying to lure him to the trap street. Clara interviews Anahson, the daughter of Anah who has been posing as a boy to shield her ability to see the past and future in someone. Using her ability, she tells them that Me concocted a mystery to bring the Doctor to the enclave.
The Doctor notes that Anah’s body is being kept in a stasis chamber. Even more important, Anah is still alive. The stasis chamber is locked by the TARDIS key, but when the Doctor attempts to unlock the chamber, his wrist is ensnared by a teleportation bracelet. Me enters the room and confesses that her task was to deliver the Doctor and keep the key so that he couldn’t be tracked. She’s also supposed to take his confession dial.
Things get really complicated when Me tries to remove the quantum shade from Rigsy. Since it was transferred to Clara, the terms of the contract between Me and the quantum shade were changed. Clara’s fate cannot be altered by the Doctor, but he threatens to destroy the refugee camp if Me doesn’t fix it.
Clara begs him to stop and takes responsibility for her decision. She wants their last moment to be a kind one. She realizes that she’s been taking reckless risks since Danny Pink died, and while the Doctor expresses guilt over her fate, Clara tells him that she needs to face her own fate. She makes the Doctor promise that he’ll face what comes next as a doctor instead of a warrior. He needs to heal himself, not insult her memory, and not take revenge for her death.
With a hug and a goodbye, she walks into the street and faces the raven. After Clara’s body collapses to the ground, the Doctor is teleported away to points unknown as Me expresses her sorrow and apologizes to the Time Lord.
Later on, Rigsy puts the final touches on his latest work. The abandoned TARDIS now stands as a memorial to Clara Oswald.
The Doctor lost. These types of stories don’t happen often, but they do make up a significant chunk of the franchise’s history and often have a strong emotional message behind them. This time around, Clara saved Rigsy but the Doctor lost Clara because his companion tried to become him. Her recklessness has been building since Danny Pink was killed, and while I’m glad that her behavior has had consequences, it further cements my opinion that she should have permanently left the TARDIS in Last Christmas.
The Doctor has some consequences as well. He didn’t see Clara’s descent into risky behavior because he relied on her to show a human face to those around him. He also was responsible for the birth of Me from the resurrection of Ashildr. He has as much blame as anyone for Clara’s death.
All of that said, the concepts of a trap street and the actual trapping of the Doctor were pretty neat to see. The conflict with the Doctor not being the smartest person in the room was tense and driving. I enjoyed seeing all the pieces come together even if it meant watching everyone lose in the end.
On the design side, that burgundy Crombie coat looks amazing. I’m also a huge fan of the Back to the Future/Star Wars Easter egg where a flux capacitor poster contains the word “Delorean” in the Aurebesh script. Someone really had fun with that.
I also got a nice kick out of the “Remember 82” moment. What does it mean? Well, Clara is the first ongoing, long-term companion to permanently die on screen since Adric’s planet quaking demise in Earthshock, which was first broadcast in 1982. And, yes, I hear you saying already that the Ponds died in their final appearance, but they died off-screen and in the relative past. Adric was the last companion before now to die on screen while traveling with the Doctor.
Rating: 4/5 – “Would you care for a jelly baby?”
UP NEXT – Doctor Who: Heaven Sent and Doctor Who: Hell Bent
The Timestamps Project is an adventure through the televised universe of Doctor Who, story by story, from the beginning of the franchise. For more reviews like this one, please visit the project’s page at Creative Criticality.
