Where the Doctor meets the
Fisher King! No not the Robin Williams movie.
Well that was a little
better. Nice that while this year’s first two-parter had a slightly lesser
second episode, the second two-parter had a slightly better second episode. “Before
the Flood” still had some significant problems, the script being at times too
incoherent for its own good and there being a lack of any real stakes, but I
was entertained watching it, which is more than I can say for the last episode.
The Doctor and Clara are
separated with the survivors from the last episode. The Doctor has taken
O’Donnell and Bennett back to before the flood (I get it!) to 1980 in the
middle of the Soviet Union (though somewhere that’s pretty abandoned). They
meet Prentis the Tivolian doomed to become a Victorian ghost, who as it happens
is an undertaker for a great warrior called the Fisher King one of his species’
most recent conquerors (there are some good jokes at the expense of how
frequently his home plant is conquered). But the Fisher King awakens and the
Doctor in the knowledge that his ghost has appeared in the future decides to
confront him. Meanwhile in that future, Clara and her troupe try and stay alive
and get answers while she has to keep morale up and justify her and the Doctor’s
actions.
The episode had some good
stuff going for it right from the opening where the Doctor explains the
Bootstrap paradox using the analogy of going back in time and replacing
Beethoven. It’s always fascinating to have the Doctor explain paradoxes and ideas
especially when they’re as interesting as the Bootstrap paradox, and Capaldi
makes it really fun. It’s not the opening you’d expect and to be honest
connects very little to the rest of the episode until the final minutes. In
fact I wouldn’t be surprised if the closing bit between the Doctor and Clara
and the minor example of such an enigma we see in the episode were only added
as a minor connection to that opening. But we also got to see the Doctor on
guitar again! It’s cheap and kinda dumb like the sonic glasses but Capaldi
makes it feel awesome.
The Doctor being locked in
his own time-stream was interesting too as there’s always something cool in
seeing events we’ve already seen from another point of view. And both the
Doctor and Clara have their morality and conscience questioned, which as usual
brings up some valid points. When one character dies the other confronts the
Doctor about saving his own skin but not caring about others, and while the
Doctor dispels this, he does kind of brutally admit that he wants to save
Clara. Clara’s less able to answer these accusations levied primarily by the
deaf miner (how convenient the deaf person and the one guy who knows sign
language are together by the way?) which doesn’t help the fact our companion
hasn’t really contributed to anything this series. At the end she does give
some condoling words to one of the guys but it doesn’t feel genuine. We also
get the return of the ‘Doctor is going to die’ idea which doesn’t really work,
especially at this stage in the series, so it fails to offer real stakes. But
the actors deal with it as best they can and the episode does succeed in
getting you curious as to how the Doctor’s going to get around his presumably
foretold conclusion, even though in the end it’s underwhelming. The Doctor
faces this imminence with a subtle dread which is one of the things I like
about him. He brings a weight to it that the script can’t, and that’s pretty
impressive. Also his finding out about the ghost version of himself showing up
in the future does lead to a great line to Clara (“Why am I not trying to kill
you?” Yeah, why…?).
The
Fisher King is an intimidating antagonist, clearly modelled (maybe a little too
closely) after the Predator (Am I the only one curious about him returning in a
standoff episode with the Alien-monster
from “Last Christmas”). It’s Peter Serafinowicz’s voice that adds to the effect
though making the dialogue sound strong. And his back and forth with Peter
Capaldi is just exciting. Also exciting, setting the episode in Russia during
the last years of the Cold War. Less exciting, they didn’t take advantage of
it. I really felt the episode could have just been set in any time period and
any location, which shouldn’t be the case for Doctor Who. Aside from a couple Stalin and Lenin posters in the
background, the time and place was barely recognizable.
In
the end “Before the Flood” gave a better conclusion than “Under the Lake” set
up but I still think this was a mostly wasted two-parter. As separate episodes
they could have worked better, but just wound up being fairly generic and
unimpressive albeit with some good acting and ideas in spite of an unclear
script and uninteresting guest characters (oh yeah that sudden romance at the
end was really necessary!). But with these two episodes behind I’m still
intrigued. At one point there’s a reference to a “Minister of War” sometime
between the 1980s and the twenty-second century which the Doctor questions
before dismissing as something he’ll eventually find out about; clearly a
teaser for something to come this series (seeing as it was mentioned alongside
Harold Saxon I wonder if there’s a connection to Missy and her plan at the end
of “The Witch’s Familiar”). And next week we get Vikings and Maisie Williams!
Nothing not to like there…I hope!
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