The news that Series 9 would be mostly made up of two part stories was met positively by many Doctor Who fans who remember and love the shock of a good cliffhanger. However, the risk with two part stories is that the second part will fail to live up to the promise of the first part. This is exactly what happens in Before the Flood.
Where the story left off, it had just split off into two different threads. The Doctor, Bennett and O'Donnell traveled back in time to a fake Soviet village to find out what is causing ghosts in the future. Back in the future, Clara, Cass and Lunn are trapped in the Drum with the ghost, including the new ghost Doctor. Ultimately neither of these threads proved particularly interesting.
The journey into the past led to the Doctor, Bennett and O['Donnell encountering the still living Tivolian, known as Prentis. This reviewer was excited to see Paul Kaye making an appearance in Doctor Who but like many a guest star he is ultimately wasted in a minor role. Prentis is just a comic relief character with none of the darker side that Gibbis had in the God Complex. There's no expansion of the Tivolian race here. Prentis is in this story simply to remind the Doctor that the ship is a space hearse before he is killed by the story's villain: the Fisher King.
The Fisher King, it transpires was creating the ghost signal in order to launch an invasion while it survives inside the stasis pod. It's a pretty anticlimactic reveal. The name suggests Arthurian legend but the creature itself is bog standard. It showed promise early on, when it ruthlessly kileld Prentis and O'Donnell and the costume looked great when it was hidden in shadow in interior locations. Unfortunately the monster has to go outside, and we get an embarrassing scene of the monster waddling out of the building since the actor clearly finds it difficult to walk in the suit. It's like those Ice Warrior in the original series all over again. The Fisher King also turns out to be one of the most easily defeated of the Doctor's foes. The Doctor tricks it into checking the signal in the spaceship before nipping into the stasis pod and exploding the dam to flood the village. It all felt too easy.
The story wasn't particularly compelling back in the Drum either. Clara, Cass and Lunn proved helpful in translating the ghost Doctor's words but then they just had to hide in the Faraday cage with the phone outside to contact the Doctor. When the phone is nicked by the ghosts the trio risk their lives to get the phone back. This turns out to be a waste of time since they ultimately don't need it again after all. When Rose helped a base crew in The Satan Pit she contributed to the destruction of the mind of the devil creature while the Doctor dealt with the body. Here, Clara's team felt almost peripheral to the plot.
The Doctor ultimately returns to the drum in the stasis capsule, as pretty every sci-fi savvy viewer already guessed. It also transpires that the Doctor's ghost is simply another hologram which is used to trap the remaining ghosts in the Faraday Cage.
The episode is, as the Doctor reveals at the beginning of the episode, a bootstrap paradox. Steven Moffat's done this kind of thing before as a one second joke, like the Doctor stealing Amelia's drink from the past to to give to the thirsty future version in The Big Bang. Here, in the pre-titles sequence, the Doctor explains it like the viewers are totally new to the concept. The paradox even work anyway. After O'Donnell is killed her ghost appears at the base. But the nature of a paradox loop means the ghost should have been there from the beginning, just as Prentis' ghost was.
The supporting characters were not given much in the way of further development. O'Donnell was the standout character of last week's episode so it is irritating that she is killed fairly early on. We find out that she and Bennett were secretly in love. The only hint of that in Under the Lake was when O'Donnell thumped Bennett the shoulder. Here it feels pointless. Bennett gets to stand up to the Doctor.
Bennett's other role is to force Lunn to admit to Cass that he loves her. Yet again, we have a relationship which feels tacked on. Cass was certainly shown to care about Lunn, but this could just be a deaf person caring for her interpretor, or close friends. It feels like the easy route to go down. Individually Cass gets a nice moment when she evades the ghost Moran's axe attack but Lunn remains with no distinct personality.
Jenna Coleman was good as Clara but her one task was to get the phone to call the Doctor, something they didn't even have to do in the end. Her only other role was to comfort Bennett for losing a loved one. It's difficult to see how advice could be useful to Bennett since he can't gallivant around the stars as she does. However, it does indicate that Clara is hollow inside. Without Danny she has lost her anchor to Earth and the consequences of this will hopefully be explored later in this series.
Peter Capaldi's portrayal of the Doctor was one of the few highlights of this tale. He continues to balance the silliness of playing a guitar with the grim determination when he realises that he must save Clara.
The set design is pretty decent. The Soviet village was well realised, even though the soviet link was ultimately pointless to anything. The episode had a cold and stark feel which set it apart. The guitar version of the Doctor Who theme was good and I hope it becomes a regular.
I wanted to like this episode, but watching Before the Flood is ultimately a hollow experience. Paper thin characters in an underdeveloped plot. It's not a patch on The God Complex. I would go as far as to say that this one of the few genuine clunkers in the Peter Capaldi era of the show.
5/10
No comments:
Post a Comment