Flatline Test | The Series (2005-)

Answer: Bristol

As usual, the Doctor is taking Clara back home after another of their adventures. On this occasion, he's got her back at the "same time, same place...ish" because the TARDIS is picking up some strange readings. Clara then notices the doors to the TARDIS are a lot smaller than they normally are.

They go outside to see the TARDIS has shrunk. While the Doctor seems more concerned with the size of the box, Clara spots a sign that has "Bristol" written on it and gets annoyed that they're 120 miles away from where they should be.

Answer: Rigsy

Clara decides to take a look around the area for signs of possible alien threat while the Doctor comes to terms with his small spaceship. While she inspects a mural on the wall of an underpass, Rigsy comes over and apologises for the other people he's with shouting to Clara.

He's on community service for graffitiing. He points out, amongst the paintings of people with their backs to them (facing inwards, as it were), his aunt, Carina, who died. Later, after Clara finds the even tinier TARDIS, she returns with the sonic screwdriver and psychic paper and begins scanning the environment. Rigsy comes over again and the two properly introduce themselves, with Clara (poking fun at her Time Lord companion) calling herself "the Doctor... Doctor Oswald".

Answer: Cracked earth in a desert

Rigsy takes Clara to a flat cordoned off with police tape so she can have a look around. On the wall is what appears to be a view of cracked earth from above, like you'd find in a desert. Rigsy and Clara find nothing of significance in the flat, but after Clara takes the TARDIS out of her handbag and puts it on a shelf, a sudden energy drain on the TARDIS prompts them to leave in a hurry.

Answer: MI5

Rigsy and Clara arrive at another flat to find a police officer, PC Forrest. Clara uses the psychic paper to get her inside, claiming that MI5 has taken an interest in this case. Forrest receives a call and goes into the next room while Clara and Rigsy bash away at the walls with a sledgehammer (following the Doctor's theory that "they're in the walls" as he recalls solutions to locked room mysteries).

Unfortunately, Forrest gets sucked into the floor by an unknown menace. Clara and Rigsy quickly rush to help and find she's completely disappeared.

The Doctor spots a mural on the wall and correctly identifies it as Forrest's nervous system. He then realises the desert mural on the wall of the previous flat is, in fact, a "microscopic blow-up of human skin". Thinking quickly, the Doctor works out that the threat they're dealing with is "trying to understand three dimensions".

Answer: Hope

With another victim taken by the 2D menace, this time happening in plain sight of Clara and her community service allies, the group seeks refuge inside a goods shed. The Doctor suggests to Clara that, sooner or later, a natural leader of the group will emerge and that needs to be her. Taking what she's learned and observed while travelling with the Doctor, Clara begins to take charge.

When the Doctor asks what she's going to do, she says she'll "lie to them, give them hope, tell them they're all going to be fine" because that's what he does. Slightly taken aback, the Doctor agrees and says that "people with hope tend to run faster".

Answer: 22

Clara broadcasts a signal from the TARDIS through the speakers in the shed in an attempt to communicate with them. The Doctor translates the response. The first reply is "55", which relates to the number on the jacket of one of the other community service people who was taken by the creatures.

The second reply is "22", which belongs to the jacket worn by George, one of the surviving group. They look at George and he seems fine, but when Clara looks again from a slightly different angle, she sees he has been turned into 2D.

The creatures have managed to get inside, and the remaining survivors escape into the train tunnels below.

Answer: The Addams Family

Fenton tries to yank the TARDIS out of Clara's handbag but he drops it and it falls down into the depths of the tunnels. Damaged from the impact and lacking energy, the Doctor is unable to get the TARDIS out of the way of an oncoming train. Clara suggests he moves the TARDIS "like the Addams Family". Sticking his hand outside the doors, he gets the ship upright and, mimicking Thing from the aforementioned programme, uses his hand to drag the TARDIS off the track and out of harm's way.

Answer: Siege mode

Unfortunately, the Doctor drags the TARDIS to a sloped section of the ground and gravity topples it back over onto the train track. With no time to get it out of the way again, the Doctor quickly pulls a lever underneath the console just before impact occurs and Clara's audio feed goes to static. Unable to communicate with her, the Doctor speaks aloud and says he has put the TARDIS into siege mode: nothing gets in but nothing can get out.

It also doesn't have enough power left to get out of siege mode. Clara later finds the TARDIS lying on the tracks, resembling a metallic cube with Gallifreyan symbols on each side.

Answer: A door

Without the Doctor to help her, Clara comes up with a plan to help restore the power to the TARDIS and save the Doctor. Rigsy uses his graffiti skills to paint a convincing door on the back of a poster, which the group then stick to a wall in the train tunnels.

When the creatures come along, they think that the group have escaped through the door and turned it into 2D. The creatures fire their energy into the door handle on the painting, not realising that it is just penetrating the wall and on the other side, the cuboid TARDIS is receiving the energy and coming out of siege mode.

It finally returns to full size and blasts the 2D creatures into oblivion (but not before the Doctor names them the Boneless).

Answer: Goodness

Having saved the day and helped vanquish the Boneless, Clara wants the Doctor to say that she was "a good Doctor", but he knows that she was just copying what she's seen him do and wasn't necessarily thinking as he would. He replies with, "You were an exceptional Doctor. Goodness had nothing to do with it." This seems to suggest that, no matter the choices he makes, there aren't different degrees of the Doctor.

He does what he has to do.