Doctor Who - 'Face the Raven'

Poster (c) Stuart Manning

“You think a Cyberman fears a merciful death? Peace on this street depends on one thing. To break it, in any way, is to face the raven.”

This review will contain some spoilers. There is just no way around it.

The Doctor and Clara are called back to Earth when their friend Rigsy acquires a tattoo that seems to be counting down. To save his life, they need to pierce through veil after veil of secrecy, infiltrate a street that doesn't exist, solve a murder that never happened and defy a death that can not be cheated.

And perhaps this time there will be no running, no last minute saves. Perhaps this time the Raven will have its due.

The Good

• I love the idea of Trap Streets; always have done, from Harry Potter to Neverwhere. This one was sort of like an alien version of London Below.
• It was a good twist that the trap was specifically intended not to harm anyone, and that the harm came instead from their attempts to defeat the perceived harm. That, more than Clara's recklessness, was the cause of the ultimate tragedy.
• Speaking of, props for accurate use of classical tragedy: Hubris, check; nemesis, check.
• There are good deaths and there are bad deaths. This episode was a good episode to die.
• Rigsy's memorial was a gorgeous touch.

The Bad

• The integration of Ashildr/Me is... less than stellar, utterly reversing much of her development from 'The Woman Who Lived'. The only real purpose to the Mayor being Me instead of someone largely unrelated is that Clara believes she can trust her.
• Why are there Judoon policing the Street? Earth is outside their jurisdiction, and besides; what do they do if law rests on Me and the Quantum Shade?
• How do you create a trap which is predicated on the need to use the TARDIS key to open a lock? Where do you copy the key from? And what if it's changed shape since you made your trap?
• The trap feels unnecessarily complex, as they always do. The Doctor is actually spectacularly easy to catch; just difficult as all get out to hold. This feels like an awful lot of work for the simple part of the scheme.

The Ugly

• The dragged out, repeated shots of the raven dissolving into Clara was just a bit too much, transforming pathos into bathos.

Straight-up gorgeous.

Theorising

Well, they have really gone to town in convincing us that Clara is actually, proper dead. I would not be surprised at this point if she wasn't, but I would be disappointed.

So, who has captured the Doctor? Honestly, I gots nothing. Old or new, classic or recurrent Moffat? Could be anyone, especially given the array of old monsters on display in the Street. Actually, part of me suspects from the teleport bracelet and the set that this is the encounter described by Missy in 'The Witch's Familiar', but that it won't play out quite as she told it.

It feels a little too soon for speculation about the new companion, but this would seem to rule out Me (who was already an outside bet due to filming commitments for Game of Thrones and the whole 'Data aging' problem.)

Top Quotes

• "If you want your extremities to stay attached stand absolutely still. If not, we can provide a small bag, you can take them home at the end."
• "Infinite lifespan, finite memory. It makes for an awkward social life."
• "I give myself a title for the same reason you do, Doctor. Something to live up to."
• "The Doctor is no longer here. You are stuck with me. And I will end you and everything you love."
• "You will not insult my memory, there will be no revenge. I will die, and no one else here or anywhere will suffer."
  "What about me?"
• “You’ll find that it’s a very small universe when I’m angry with you.”

The Verdict

'Face the Raven' is a very good stand-alone adventure, and a decent arc tie-in as well, especially for an episode that was apparently reworked to include those arc elements. The Quantum Shade is a bit of a gimmick to provide an inescapable death, but I can work with that. It's not like Who is a show that normally works without reliance on gimmickry.

As Companion departures go, it makes me far less angry than Donna and was less horrendously overblown than Rose. Perhaps this will be the Adric of our times.

Score - 8/10