Doctor Who: Series 9, Episode 4 – “Before the Flood” (2015)

For my money, “Before the Flood” doesn’t conclude this story as well as “Under the Lake” began it, which is disappointing.  It’s still fine, and I enjoy it, but after the fantastic promise of part one, part two lets it down a bit.

This episode finds our heroes separated by time and circumstance.  While Clara remains on the underwater base with half of the crew, braving the ghosts and trying to work out the newest clues they’ve been given, the Doctor is back in time with the other half.  He’s gone back to before any of this happened, hoping that if he can understand how it came about in the past, he’ll know how to stop it in the present.  Lots of timey-wimeyness going on here, along with plenty of debate on the should- or should-not-ness of trying to change the future.

The supporting cast remains great.  I continue to love Cass, the Deaf commanding officer; she’s tough, smart, and brave, and she fights hard for the people she cares about.  I also really like O’Donnell, former intelligence and self-confessed Doctor fan.  She drops in some delightful continuity mentions (the whole episode has oodles of new Who continuity porn – for some reason, name-dropping the Arcateenians, who’ve actually only appeared on Torchwood and The Sarah Jane Adventures, made me smile the most,) and she may have the most loveably-accurate TARDIS geek-out moment I’ve ever seen. 

Beyond that, the atmosphere is creepy, and the Fisher King, the story’s Big Bad, is freaky.  He’s awesome and terrible, and the Doctor’s confrontation with him is probably the best scene in the episode.  After last season, which often felt so stingy about letting Twelve be a hero and do stuff, they’re really making up for it this year.  He shines so much when he goes one-on-one with the bad guys, and the Fisher King is an excellent opponent for him to face.  And as a bonus, we’re given a little face time with someone from Tivoli, the most invaded planet in the galaxy.  I loved all the Tivoli jokes in “The God Complex,” and they’re almost as fun here.

On the downside, the episode relies heavily on a number of overused new Who plot devices, including more than one that got significant play in the season’s opening story, ie The One Right Before This One.  For the sake of spoilers, I won’t get into which tropes are brought forward yet again, but I’m getting tired of at least a few of them, and especially after “The Magician’s Apprentice” / “The Witch’s Familiar,” it was way too soon to bring them back.

Even more unfortunately, after three weeks of having basically no qualms about Clara, she has something of a relapse this episode.  It’s really just one scene that bugs me in the way that her writing last season bugged me, and it’s fairly mild compared to a lot of series-8 Clara complaints, but I was hoping we were past all that now.  Suffice it to say, there’s something serious going on with the Doctor, and it feels to me like Clara mostly views it for how it’s going to affect her, with little concern for Doctor himself.  And just in general, it’s not a strong showing for her, and she doesn’t get to do all that much.  (Come to think of it, her contributions to “The Witch’s Familiar” are pretty minimal as well – so far this season, she’s the most effective in “The Magician’s Apprentice,” in which the Doctor is absent for nearly half the episode.  I’m really starting the question if the show knows how to write both the Doctor and Clara as capable at the same time, or if it thinks they have to take turns.)