Doctor Who: Before the Flood (9x04)

Unfortunately, this episode wasn't as good as the first part. Part of my disappointment is coming from my very high expectations - I should remember never to get my hopes up. It wasn't awful by any means - it was actually still very good. But it didn't have the polished excellence of the first half. Let's talk about some of the problems.

Cons:

Convoluted plot resolution. Last week's episode stuck with a very simple premise, with enough mystery and intrigue to keep it interesting, without weird details overwhelming the narrative. This week, things got very twisty very quickly. I was particularly annoyed by the time-loop that the Doctor got stuck in, and the reveal that the ghost of the Doctor was actually a projection that the Doctor set up himself. I don't know... sometimes I wish the Doctor didn't have such brilliant plans all the time. It gets dull.

In this half of the episode, we learned that the four remaining guest characters are all love interests. Cass, the Deaf woman, and her interpreter are apparently in love, and the other guy had feelings for the other girl (O'Donnell), before she was tragically killed. Was that really necessary? I don't mind a little romance, but I was actually enjoying the strong bonds between these characters as bonds of friendship. I just thought it was a little annoying and too convenient to pair everybody up like that.

The Fisher King is a great idea for a villain in theory, but his design was rather silly, and his evil plan didn't really make sense. That's part of the larger complaint about a convoluted resolution. I didn't enjoy the scene between the Doctor and the Fisher King, mostly because I never felt any real sense of danger. It's one of the flaws of more recent seasons of Doctor Who. The Doctor is just so brilliant at everything that you never for one second get pulled in to the danger of the moment. You always know he'll be fine.

Pros:

There was one thing about the convoluted plot that I really enjoyed - the bootstrap paradox. I love it when shows about time travel acknowledge the inherent logical fallacies in the practice. It's sort of weird that this is the episode where we got a lot of details about it, since I know for a fact that this same paradox has occurred in several other notable episodes, many of them Moffat-era or even Moffat-written, like "Blink" from Season Three. But even if the presence of these topics in the episode didn't make a whole lot of sense, I still enjoyed hearing them. Essentially, the Doctor explains to the audience that the bootstrap paradox occurs when somebody's actions in time traveling actually cause the thing they were doing in the first place. For example - an admirer of Beethoven travels back in time to meet him, only to discover that Beethoven doesn't exist. So... he decides to become Beethoven himself, by copying out the music. But who wrote the music in the first place? Who composed Beethoven's Fifth?

In this episode, the Doctor gets the idea to send a hologram of his ghost into the future because he sees the ghost for himself. But then when did he get that idea in the first place? There's no logical answer! I also appreciate the fact that the Doctor genuinely believed he was going to die. He was scared, but resigned to that fact. He wasn't going to try and cheat death. That is... until he believed the ghost version of himself was warning of Clara's death. Then, he broke all the rules to save her. That's very sweet - and it's even sweeter when you realize that the Doctor had his "ghost" say Clara's name because he knew that would be the one thing to get him to act. The Doctor knows Clara is his weakness.

While I was annoyed at all the romance subplots, I did still enjoy these individual characters. O'Donnell was probably the highlight this week, as she talks calmly with the Doctor about all his past adventures, referencing Rose, Martha, and Amy (but not Donna for some reason!). However, once the Doctor walks away, O'Donnell jumps up and down in child-like glee, saying "it's bigger on the inside!" over and over. That was cute. I like the idea of a human trying to comport herself with dignity when faced with the Doctor. To O'Donnell, the Doctor was something of a myth, and to come face-to-face with the reality must have been remarkable. I also continue to love Cass. Her angry signing was awesome - when Clara lets her interpreter go out to get her cell phone back from the ghosts, Cass is not happy. Clara remarks that she doesn't need an interpreter to understand Cass' vitriol.

I guess that's where I'll end things. Like I said, this wasn't the really strong episode I was hoping for, but it was still good, and the story overall, as represented by last week and this one, was better than average.

8/10