Before the Flood (Doctor Who)

Plot

The episode opens with the Doctor explaining the bootstrap paradox to the audience: a hypothetical time traveller decides to go back in time to meet Beethoven, whose music he admires. However, he discovers that Beethoven never actually existed. The time traveller then decides to publish Beethoven's music himself, essentially 'becoming' Beethoven. But, the Doctor asks, how did the music first originate, then? "Who really composed Beethoven's Fifth?"

The episode then continues from the events of "Under the Lake." The Doctor arrives with Bennett and O'Donnell at the army base in 1980, before it was flooded, on the day the spaceship landed. They encounter the Tivolian Prentis, still alive at this point, and find that the writing has not yet been carved into the wall. Prentis reveals that the spaceship is actually a hearse carrying a deceased conqueror called The Fisher King. Back in the future at the underwater base, Clara, Cass and Lunn realise that the Doctor's ghost is uttering a list of their names instead of coordinates. When the Doctor contacts Clara and is informed about his ghost, he is badly shaken by this certain knowledge of his future. Clara forcefully encourages him to try to change events, but the Doctor argues that he cannot and ultimately accepts the eventuality that he must die to keep events in motion. He tries to get information from his ghost, but instead it unlocks the Faraday cage, releasing the other ghosts. Back in 1980, the Fisher King is revealed to be alive, writing the words on the ship's wall, killing Prentis, and dragging the stasis chamber away before hunting down the Doctor's group.

O'Donnell, Bennett and the Doctor run, but they get separated and O'Donnell is killed by the Fisher King. Bennett chastises the Doctor for allowing O'Donnell to die after the Doctor reveals that the list of names his ghost was repeating was the order in which the crew members will die. Since Clara will be next, the Doctor tells Bennett that he is attempting to save Clara, not himself. He tries to return to the future to achieve this, but the TARDIS won't let him leave – the Doctor is locked inside his own timestream – and instead goes half an hour back in time. The Doctor and Bennett observe the earlier events, unable to interact or interfere. O'Donnell's ghost appears in the future and steals Clara's phone, her only means of contacting the Doctor. Clara realises that, as Cass refused to allow Lunn into the ship, he never saw the writing on the wall. Therefore, the message is not encoded in his brain, and the ghosts won't attack him. Lunn leaves the cage and locates the phone, but the ghosts trap and lock him inside the main room. When Lunn fails to return, Clara agrees to accompany Cass to search for him.

Leaving Bennett in the TARDIS, the Doctor confronts the Fisher King. The creature reveals that the ghosts he's created will signal his people to send an armada to conquer Earth. The Fisher King also taunts the Doctor's unwillingness to alter the future, but the Doctor chastises him for violating the souls of those who died simply for his own ends. The Doctor then tells the Fisher King he's erased the writing from the ship's wall, so no-one will die. The Fisher King goes back to the ship, only to find the writing still there. He realises the Doctor tricked him and has used one of the ship's power cells (shown as missing in the earlier episode) to destroy the dam wall, inundating the town with the Fisher King caught in the torrent. The TARDIS' security protocol activates with Bennett still inside, but the Doctor's whereabouts remain unknown as the town floods.

After narrowly avoiding being killed by Moran's ghost, Clara and Cass regroup with Lunn in the hangar. As they arrive, the stasis chamber opens and the Doctor climbs out. The Fisher King is then heard roaring and the ghosts follow the sound, only to be trapped again inside the Faraday cage with the Doctor's ghost, revealed to be a hologram the Doctor controlled using his sonic glasses from inside the stasis chamber.

The Doctor informs the survivors that UNIT will come to cut the Faraday cage from the base with the ghosts inside, and he erases the memory of the writing from everyone's minds. After being comforted by Clara over O'Donnell's death, Bennett convinces Lunn and Cass to admit their love for each other. The Doctor and Clara leave in the TARDIS. The Doctor tells Clara that the order the people would die after O'Donnell was entirely random, but placing Clara's name next gave him incentive to act. Clara asks the Doctor how he knew what to make his ghost's hologram say. He informs her that he only knew what he had to do because he found out through her telling him what it was already saying from the future and again asks the question: "Who composed Beethoven's Fifth?" – a bootstrap paradox.

Continuity

In the prologue, the Doctor performs Beethoven's Symphony No. 5 with his electric guitar. The Doctor had previously been shown playing such an instrument atop a tank in the ninth series opener, "The Magician's Apprentice".

The electric guitar amplifier seen in the Doctor's prologue has a plaque reading Magpie Electronics, a shop originally owned by Mr Magpie and visited by the Tenth Doctor and Rose Tyler in the episode "The Idiot's Lantern". The name often appears on electronic equipment throughout the series, such as Martha Jones' television in "The Sound of Drums", and a shop with the same name is seen in "The Beast Below".

O'Donnell mentions prior companions Rose Tyler, Martha Jones, and Amy Pond, as well as Harold Saxon and events from "Kill the Moon". She also mentions "the Minister of War", but the Doctor has no knowledge of this, surmising that this will be in his future.

The Tivolian race previously appeared in the episode "The God Complex". Prentis says they were liberated from the Fisher King's people by the "glorious Arcateenians”, only to be conquered by them in turn; the Arcateenians were first mentioned in the Torchwood episode "Greeks Bearing Gifts". Both episodes were written by Toby Whithouse.

The TARDIS' "Security Protocol 712" first appeared in "Blink". Other console room holograms have included the Emergency Program One ("The Parting of the Ways") and the "voice interface" with a holographic feature ("Let's Kill Hitler").

The Fisher King describes Time Lords as “cowardly, vain curators who suddenly remembered they had teeth and became the most war-like race in the galaxy,” referring to the Time Lords' passive role in earlier series and their subsequent participation in the Time War.

Outside references

During the episode's prologue, the Doctor mentions that he met the actual Ludwig van Beethoven – a "nice chap, very intense".

O'Donnell alludes to Neil Armstrong's famous line from the first moon walk: "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind". The Eleventh Doctor made use of Armstrong's line when he first defeated the Silence in "Day of the Moon".

The Tivolian mortician Prentis has business cards with the motto "May the remorse be with you." This is a pun on the Star Wars catchphrase "May The Force Be With You".

Production

Unusually, the opening theme was performed with an electric guitar for the episode. The inclusion of an electric guitar was prompted by a joke from Twelfth Doctor actor Peter Capaldi, who performed the theme for the episode, as well as Beethoven's Symphony No. 5 in the prologue. Capaldi played lead guitar in the 1980s punk band The Dreamboys, alongside Craig Ferguson.

Broadcast and reception

Doctor Who saw a considerable rise in the overnight ratings to 4.38 million (up from 3.74 million the previous week). The show had a 21.5% share of the available audience and little competition from the Rugby World Cup. Doctor Who came fourth for the day, ratings wise. It received an Appreciation Index score of 83. Overall, the episode had 6.05 million viewers after a week of timeshifting, a rise of 1.67 million on the overnight figure. The show came eighth on BBC1 for the week.

Critical reception

"Before the Flood" received positive reviews. The episode holds a 95% score on Rotten Tomatoes, the highest of the series, with an average score of 8.5. The site's consensus reads "Doctor Who provides a satisfying conclusion to the previous installment's cliffhanger with "Before the Flood," a playful and exciting episode".

IGN praised the episode, giving 9 out of 10 (Amazing). They praised the resolution to the episode particularly, as well as the performances of Capaldi and the guest cast. Dan Martin of The Guardian praised Coleman's performance believing her and Capaldi to be "surely now one of the most successful pairings in Doctor Who’s history." He praised the design of the Fisher King admitting that it actually scared him. Morgan Jeffrey of Digital Spy thought the episode was "scary and smart," and an improvement over the previous episode. But he was disappointed by the lack of screen time given to Paul Kaye's character Prentis and some of the crew members of the base. Overall he felt that the story was Whithouse's best since "School Reunion". Den of Geek gave the episode a positive review, praising Capaldi saying, "it just feels like he utterly belongs there...he's been on excellent, excellent form." However, they found the design and use of the Fisher King to be "not really very arresting, really. Disappointing, even." Overall, they found the episode to be "patchier than last week's, but I'm not grumbling about the strength of the two parter, I do still strongly feel that the move towards two parters has been beneficial to Doctor Who series 9 thus far."

However, Catherine Gee of The Daily Telegraph gave the episode 3 stars out of 5, arguing that the episode "needed more Fisher King."