Review - Before The Flood

We travel back to 1980 to figure out what happened Before The Flood to create the homicidal ghosts from Under The Lake in what turns out to be a rather bland conclusion to this two-parter.

Season 9, Episode 4 - Before The Flood

After a cold open in which The Doctor explains the bootstrap paradox (he tells us to Google it), we pick up where last episode left off, with The Doctor, O'Donnell and Bennett appearing in the soon to be submerged town in 1980. The town has been done up to look like a part of the soviet republic, which, The Doctor explains, is because it's a training facility for the army at the height of the Cold War.

They soon discover the alien craft they had salvaged in the future, and The Doctor quickly identifies it as a kind of space hearse. Our top hatted Tivolian turns out to be the undertaker charged with burying a creature called The Fisher King in the traditional manner of taking him to a remote backwater (i.e. Earth). After a couple of truly cringeworthy S&M In-Who-Endos, the team figure out Prentis the undertaker knows nothing about the killer message, and The Doctor returns to the TARDIS to call Clara.

"I like being enslaved. Get it?"

After learning about the new ghost that's appeared outside the Drum, The Doctor admits that his fate is already sealed, but sets about trying to solve the problem before his time runs out. He tries to talk to his ghost, but it just accesses a control panel and lets the other ghosts out of the Faraday Cage. In the face of this, The Doctor instructs Clara and the others to hide in the cage but leave her phone outside so that the cage doesn't cut off contact.  

While The Doctor it trying to puzzle everything out, we discover The Fisher King has risen from the slab and has carved the message in the side of the hearse. He then kills Prentis, thereby starting the chain of events already witnessed in Under The Lake.

The Fisher King chases The Doctor and his group, and manages to kill O'Donnell. Bennett chastises The Doctor for not saving her, pointing out the coldness that has become characteristic of Twelve. They try to return to the future, but the TARDIS simply loops back half an hour. The Doctor has to physically restrain Bennett from interfering in past events and altering the future.

Meanwhile, in the future (does that make sense?) the newly arrived ghost of O'Donnell steals Clara's phone, forcing her to figure out how to safely leave the Faraday Cage. She realises that Lunn was spared by the ghosts once before, and that is most likely because he hadn't seen the message in the ship. Class isn't happy about it, but he leaves to retrieve the phone. When he fails to return, Clara agrees to go with Cass to find him, despite the danger. 

What danger?

The Doctor confronts The Fisher King, getting a bit of banter back and forth, before tricking it into thinking he'd erased its message. It rushes outside to check, only for The Doctor's ploy to be revealed when the overloading power core taken from the ship detonates, bringing the dam wall down and flooding the town. Presumably the Fisher King is killed in the flood.

As the ghosts close in on the survivors back in the future, the stasis pod opens, revealing it was The Doctor inside the whole time (which I had guessed would be the case last episode). The Doctor uses his ghost, which is actually a hologram, to trick the ghosts back into the Faraday Cage, and things wrap up nicely after that. The Doctor is even able to use his fantasmagorical new Sonic Sunglasses to erase the memory of the message from the minds of the survivors, in a delightful bit of Deus Ex Screwdriver. Or should that be Deus Ex Sunglasses?

Ultimately this is a rather disappointing end to what started off as a solid story. The pacing was really off, and it feels like a lot of nothing happens. Then just as the big bad shows up, he is completely wasted. Also, why is he called The Fisher King? There was absolutely no attempt at explaining that. Ordinarily I'm all for things being unexplained, but this was such a bizarre reference to leave hanging there that it just annoyed me.

We also see what could be the first obvious reference to a season arc, with mention made of "the Minister of War" as something The Doctor had yet to experience. I'd like to hope there will be other subtle references to the finale in previous episodes, but that they were so subtle I didn't pick up on them yet.

So, yeah. A disappointingly flat ending here. Definitely not a favourite.

6/10

Can we fix it?

I think the biggest fix that needs to be made here is just utilising the Fisher King himself more. A couple of off screen kills and a scene of dialogue with The Doctor just wasn't enough. The conversation between the two was great. I very much liked the King referring to the Timelords as "cowardly, vain curators who suddenly remembered they had teeth and became the most war-like race in the galaxy." But so much more could have been done with a physically menacing warrior alien.

I'd have liked to see more chases and close calls as he hunted the heroes down. Perhaps some of the banter we have in the one-on-one between The Doctor and the King could be thrown in here as he's trying to hunt them down.

By culling some of the slower scenes and beefing the tension of this bit up, the solution would have been all the more rewarding. It could also have been good to have Bennett be the one to set the charge by the dam wall, making him far less of a passenger in the final act, and perhaps giving him some sense of revenge for the lost O'Donnell.

Also, I would use a different name for The Fisher King. Unless the season arc turns out to have something to do with Arthurian Legend, it is totally out of place.