Day 817: Before the Flood

I'm not a big fan of Before the Flood. It's not an awful story, nor is it particularly bad. It's just that it's not Under the Lake. And, for whatever reason, that really annoys me.

Under the Lake isn't an excellent episode of Doctor Who, but it does do a lot of things that I like. I like the scientific bend to the story, where the focus is clearly on figuring out the situation rather than just fighting monsters. I also like the setting, which feels very atmospheric and cinematic (as I mentioned yesterday), and I love the way in which the story develops itself, building up a strong amount of tension as each character is killed, one by one. It reminds me of episodes like The Waters of Mars or The Impossible Planet/The Satan Pit, where the story is allowed to start calm, but it slowly builds up the tension to a point of chaos and destruction, creating a memorable and thrilling experience. And Before the Flood doesn't really work with that, instead it decides to go off on a different direction.

So, whilst we do still have characters trapped on a sea base, this is inter-cut with other characters working in the past to find out what's happened and hopefully influence the events in the future. And it feels like we've lost that sense of rising tension and horror - instead of getting extended sequences where the ghosts work to reach their goal and the Doctor tries to stop them, we get an episode devoted to discussing a paradox that only plays a minor role in the overall story and just distracts from the main attraction, as well as a sudden love story sub-plot and a lengthy scene where the Doctor chats with the villain, making it seem all the less imposing as they talk.

But those are just minor quibbles compared with my big problem, which is that the story goes out of its way to remove any tension from the episode. Within the first ten minutes, we get a list of people and it's easily implied that said list is the list of people who are going to die, in order. So when we realise that O'Donnell's name is on the list, we realise that she's definitely going to die when she's hiding from the Fisher King. And when we hear that Clara's name is next on the list, we know that either no-one else is going to die, or all the ghosts are going to come back to life because Clara can't die because she's going to be in the next couple of episodes. So scenes like Cass being stalked by a ghost have no meaning, because we know that she will live - the story has dictated it so. It's odd, because I know that Moffat has got a personal vendetta against people who spoil stories and yet here's an episode written that he had a direct hand in crafting where it spoils half of the story halfway through.

Still, I can't hate Before the Flood, because it does give us one of the best renditions of the Doctor Who theme ever: