Time and Relative Dimension

It's been a while since my last review was posted. Technically, I've only just posted my last review but I wanted to get that out of the way before I made this post, for fear of losing interest in writing again... As I write this, the penultimate episode of Series 9 has aired and without posting any spoilers it makes everything OK again, which is good because the next episode I am to review was pretty painful viewing. It's that pain that put me off writing before I even finished Before The Flood and it really put a downer on the series. The next episode after that felt slow and dull and I even dozed off for a minute or two! But don't worry, the Zygons would be returning after that and there was strength in those episodes, only they were a bit heavy on the drama and adult (grown up) feeling. That fits in with the show's later start times this year, but it isn't good for the show or its viewing figures. The Zygons were followed by a creepy single episode from Mark Gatiss that had audiences divided, an episode like none seen before which I really enjoyed. Then a second single episode story lead into the two part finale (which itself is really two single episodes tied together!)

So in review terms, I'm about to drop to the bottom of the Doctor Who scale, but I can do it with sight of the light at the end signalling the way forward to increasing greatness that ties everything together and gives the lesser moments a purpose. The Girl Who Died and The Woman Who Lived are two stand alone adventures that tie together and at first seemed to be nothing more, but they are in fact the beginning of something far more reaching than the tie between themselves...

Live Review: S9.E4 - Before The Flood

Steven Moffat has commented that the double episode stories in this series are not so much adventures told over two parts but more two part adventures. That is to say that while the second follows on from the first, the narrative and pace take a bit of a dog-leg and make a shift in gear. The first story saw episode one hanging off the mystery and setting the scene whereas episode two threw us into the action. This time, Under The Lake gave us a scary ghost story in a classic 'isolated base under siege' scenario that led to the ominous cliffhanger of the Doctor appearing as one of the ghosts then Before The Flood transposes the Doctor and three of the crew back in time to investigate the origins in the open space of the un-flooded village.

Before that however, the first new content for this episode does two, if not three things I didn't like. First of all, the Doctor is alone in the TARDIS and talking to himself... this is fine until you realise that he's not just talking to himself as he did in last year's Listen but he is talking to the audience and often directly into camera. Secondly, he is telling a story of a time traveller who wanted to meet Beethoven as if it really happened (presumably to him) but he states that it isn't a true story. Finally, he explains that the point of the story is to enlighten the viewers about the 'bootstrap paradox' saying "Google it." thus pointing at what is about to happen in the episode (why else talk about it?) and almost apologising for it, or at least warning the critics that the writers already know the potential pitfalls that they will moan about. It does however give Peter Capaldi an excuse to play his electric guitar again and Murry Gold an excuse to rock out the theme tune...

All that nonsense aside, the TARDIS has landed in what appears to be a bleak Russian town but which the Doctor soon points out is an abandoned Cold War training site in 1980... I say 'abandoned' because there is nobody there and the mysterious space ship they have come to investigate sticks out like a sore thumb! The Doctor explains that it is the hight of the Cold War and the military were being trained for combat on enemy soil... so should it really be so deserted? Is this a plot hole or was it a mistake to specify that it was 1980? Perhaps the town was only in occasional use on an ad hoc basis...

There's a little teaser snuck in to this establishing scene as well. O'Donnell reveals that she knows a fair bit about the Doctor, referring to Amy, Rose and Martha, because she is ex-military intelligence (she was demoted for dangling a colleague out of a window!) The little teaser comes as she registers the time they have arrived in, it's before Harold Saxon, the Minister of War, the Moon exploding and the big bat coming out of it... The Doctor picks up on "Minister Of War" because it's not one he's aware of but then stops her from explaining "I expect I'll find out soon enough." The question is, is this something being set up by Moffat for later in the series, or some time beyond? Or is it just a random idea dropped in by writer Toby Whithouse for anyone to pick up or not? Only time will tell, obviously.