12.17: Before the Flood

In which we are hoping the clever, meta opening narration will stop the audience noticing that things don't quite make sense.

Broadcast: October 2015

Watched: March 2022

The same as part one, but more so. It’s progressive, but also weirdly trad – it’s loads of fun, doing good things with representation, and again is packed with ideas – the flooding of the town, the use of holograms, the Doctor in suspended animation...

But it isn’t really*about anything. The prologue about the Bootstrap Paradox is a case in point. It’s the same trick as The Witch’s Familiar, only instead of Missy telling an allegorical story to Clara, it’s the Doctor directly telling us (“This didn’t happen, by the way”). But it turns out it’s not really about anything except... no one decides what order the list of names should go in, it’s just a property of the paradox. 

As with the extermination in Magician’s, though, by having Clara next on the list the show is basically doing, “Clara might die this season, oooh, oooooh.” That said, the bit where she yells, “Not with me! Die with whoever comes after me, you do not leave me” is a great bit of characterisation.

It is creepy, in a way I can imagine lingering for those who saw it as kids: the sinister fake Russian village in Scotland, the close up on the ghosts’ blank eyes, the predestination stuff, *especially* the amazing sequence with a ghost following Cass with an axe she can’t hear. It’s terrifying and an amazing use of a disabled actress.

I do like the ending, where Bennett uses his pain over O’Donnell’s death to tell Lunn and Cass to stop fucking around. That’s lovely. It’s a good episode. Just, I dunno, it doesn’t quite feel finished. It’s good, it feels like it could easily have been better.

Other things:

• The Doctor has a Magpie Electricals amp, and then plays the theme tune on his electric guitar to take us into the opening credits. As with Clara’s eyes in the Death In Heaven credits, they’re mucking around with stuff because we’re 120 episodes in

• Bennett says he only just figured out that the list of names is the order of deaths... but that comes *after* he tries to talk O’Donnell into staying in the TARDIS. Presumably he suspects?

• Come to that, why exactly does O’Donnell’s ghost only appear *after* we see her die, when it all happened 139 years previously?

• “The Fisher King was voiced by Peter Serafinowicz, whilst his roar was provided by Corey Taylor, who’s better known as the lead singer of the metal band Slipknot.” Righto.

• The sonic sunglasses are still rubbish.

• To play the Tivolian, Paul Kaye basically just does a David Walliams impersonation.