Who Review: Before the Flood

In the second part of this two-part story, the Doctor has traveled back in time to try to solve the mystery of the flood, and the souls of the dead transmitting messages across time. The Doctor, Bennett, and O’Donnell end up at a Scottish Army base in 1980, the village discovered by the underwater base in the future. The spaceship has just arrived, carrying the body of a warrior called The Fisher King. It seems the spaceship is a hearse. But this Fisher King is far from dead, as the undertaker, Prentis, soon discovers. Meanwhile, the ghost Doctor has a message for the crew of the underwater base. It’s a list of names–the names of those currently in the base, in the order in which they die. And Clara’s next…

SPOILER ALERT!! My comments may (and likely will) contain spoilers for those that haven’t seen the episode. If you want to stay spoiler-free, please watch the story before you continue reading!

Overall this was a good story, and a good resolution to last week’s episode. The idea of going back in time with the sole purpose of changing history has been done before, even though the Doctor himself often says he’s not supposed to do this. We’ve already referenced “Genesis of the Daleks” with the first two-parter. In that story, the Time Lords commission the Fourth Doctor to go back in time and destroy the Daleks at their inception. The Doctor and Romana get caught in a time loop in “Meglos,” and then you have Rose wreaking havoc on the world by saving her father’s life in “Father’s Day.” In this story, writer Toby Whithouse riffs on what’s called the “Bootstrap Paradox.” In this paradox, a time traveler goes back in time and ends up creating something that already exists in his present-day. The example the Doctor gives is of a time traveler who loves Beethoven and goes back to meet his hero, only to discover Beethoven never existed. So the time traveler publishes Beethoven’s music in the 18th century, attributes it to Beethoven, and hence creates the Beethoven whose music he loves. The question is: who actually composed “Beethoven’s” music?

In this story, the Doctor creates his own “ghost” image to relay a message from the past to Clara in the present-day. But the Doctor only knew what message to give the “ghost” because Clara told him what the “ghost” said. So who actually created the “ghost’s” message?

Thankfully, the whole plot didn’t hang on this (as far as I could tell), since that’s a pretty heavy idea to hang a family show on (remember the Charged Vacuum Emboitment from “Full Circle” and “Logopolis”?). I liked the idea that reading the writing on the ship wall turned people into potential carriers of the signal. Once those words got “inside” a person, that person could be killed and used to transmit the message, which the Fisher King intended to use to bring an armada to conquer the Earth. The fact that Lunn never read the message made him immune to the ghosts.

Another good twist was the fact that the present-day Doctor didn’t know that he had created his own “ghost” hologram, so for at least half the show, he was convinced he would die. This added greatly to the tension and drama.

I do have a few quibbles. The biggest is the “prolog” where the Doctor appears to break the “Fourth Wall” to explain the Boostrap Paradox. Couldn’t they have worked that in to the first episode, and find a place for the Doctor to explain it to Clara, or have Clara and the Doctor discuss it? I think it would have worked better as a piece of seemingly throw-away conversation. The Doctor shouldn’t be addressing the audience, though. Maybe we’re supposed to think he was talking to himself. But he wasn’t. And Capaldi didn’t play it like that. No more of that, please.

One way to test whether a monster costume works is to use it in an outdoor scene in broad daylight. It was daring of them to take the Fisher King into that environment, unfortunately I don’t think the costume stood up well. He looked like someone doing cosplay at a Star Trek convention in a really good costume. Something about it didn’t make me think, “woah, that’s an alien.”

Finally, and this is probably the biggest quibble: enough with the sonic sunglasses! Bring back the sonic screwdriver!! It’s always been the Doctor, the TARDIS, and the sonic screwdriver–well, at least ever since “Fury from the Deep” in 1968, and consistently since the Third Doctor in the 70s. Has the merchandise budget become so tight that they’re looking at recycling cheap sunglasses and calling them “sonic”? Give Peter his own screwdriver, people! There must be something going on with this in terms of this season’s story arc. Moff should know better.

What did you think of this episode, and this story?