Rate & Discuss: Before the Flood
On a remote Army outpost, a fearsome alien warlord – the Fisher King – sets in motion a twisted plan to ensure his own survival. The ripples will be felt around the universe. Is this chain of events inevitable? And can the Doctor do the unthinkable?
It’s Saturday night which can only mean one thing… You turned down another invitation to accompany your friends to a social gathering (whatever that is!) because it sadly would’ve clashed with the latest episode of Doctor Who. To quote the Face of Boe, you are not alone.
Let’s face it, though, aren’t you so glad that you did choose our beloved Time Lord over an attempt to salvage the shards of your ever diminishing social life? Not only does it prove that you well and truly have your priorities in check, but tonight’s episode turned out to be truly unmissable as the formidable Fisher King unravelled a terrible ploy to ensure his own survival which brought devastating consequences. This is Doctor Who we’re talking about!
After last week’s epic cliffhanger, the resolution was never going to be plain sailing for our honourable heroes and, to make matters even more intriguing, and if you hadn’t already guessed from the title, Before the Flood was set before Under the Lake as the mystery of the underwater ghosts was finally explained. Because timey-wimey. But what did you think of the episode? Was it a worthy conclusion to Toby Whithouse’s terrifying two-parter? Our discussion is officially open so let us know by voting, rating and commenting below…
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NOTE: This discussion will NOT be spoiler monitored so please do not read the comments if you haven’t seen Before the Flood. You have been warned!
Well, it’s been almost three days and I’m still not sure what I want to say about the second two parter of this Series, but I’ll give it a go anyway.
This two parter was clearly an attempt to be clever. It was fast paced, but in a different way to the first couple of episodes, and threw facts and questions at you in quick succession to challenge you to keep up without getting confused. As annoying as that can be, I could respect the intention if it hadn’t been for the fact that it didn’t really go anywhere.
For all the episode’s pace and challenging facts/questions, the Fisher King was never really a threat, because he died in the flood not long after he emerged from the hearse. It was more about his ship continuing to do his bidding long after he’d gone, so the alien itself didn’t have a great amount of point, which was the same problem Missy’s Cybermen had at the end of Series 8.
The point the Doctor at the end of the episode seemed interesting, but I’m not sure because I was confused, to be honest. I wasn’t really listening to his Beethoven story at the start of the first episode and two episodes and a week of time took place between the opening comments and the closing comments, so I would have forgotten them anyway. I really need to go back and see the start and ending comments to make sense of them.
So, that’s what I didn’t, but there were things I did like.
Firstly, although the 12th Doctor and his guitar are controversial, I really like that it affected the opening theme to Episode 4. I don’t really like the nails-on-a-chalkboard theme and adding a guitar to it greatly improved it, in my opinion, though the screeching was still there.
Secondly, I really liked the character of Cass. I liked that they wrote the character as deaf and then twice used this apparent disability to her advantage and the advantage of everyone on the station. The first was that she could lip read the words of the ghosts, without which no one would know what they were saying, and second when the ghost was going to kill her and she used the vibrations he was making to avoid his strike.
Mentioning the names of previous Revived Series companions was clearly a gimmick and yet, never an unwelcome one. It’s nice to see old companions remembered and also reminds you, even though we don’t need it, that he is still the 10th/11th Doctors inside. Different face, but he is still the man they knew.
Other than that, I don’t really have much to say about this two parter. It was what it was, but it wasn’t for me. It was trying to be too clever so it could laugh when you got confused, but whilst you were trying so hard to keep up, the story itself was actually quite lacking. If it had been told in one episode at a slower pace, it might have felt more substantial.
In the first episode of this two-part story (Under the Lake) much of the underwater base was flooded. In the second episode, it appeared to be completely dry, enabling people to run about the corridors freely. Was the person responsible for continuity asleep?