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Saturday 10 October 2015

Doctor Who 9.4 "Before the Flood" Review

                                                Image result for doctor who before the flood review
The Doctor (Peter Capaldi) walks us through the TARDIS talking about Beethoven and how someone comes along and gets him to sign his name to all his sheet music, who then goes on to use it and he becomes Beethoven.  He talks about the Bootstrap Paradox (see below) and to "go ahead and Google it."   (Which presumably we all did and will do.)  Then playing Beethoven's Fifth on his electric guitar.

Clara (Jenna Coleman) is on the base with Lunn (Zaqi Ismail) and Cass (Sophie Stone) as they watch the Doctor still outside.  Lunn asks if Clara's been in these situations before and he doesn't know what he should say to her.  What would she say.  She tells him that everything's going to be all right and the Doctor will come back for her.  He asks if she believes that and she does.  Cass works out the Doctor outside is saying their names, Moran, Pritchard, Prentis, O'Donnell, Clara .

Back in time in the village, the Doctor says they're back in Scotland in the '80's and a Soviet training camp, as he licks his finger and holds it in the wind to tell them that.  O'Donnell (Morven Christie) used to be in Military Intelligence and she was fired for dangling a colleague out the window.  He asks how you do that.  They head to the spaceship which is already there and it holds a DB, the Doctor explains the ship is a hearse.  The message is already on the wall too.  Prentis (Paul Kaye) approaches and he hands them out his cards.  He's from another planet but he's found his way here to use the entire planet.  The Doctor throwing his card away like last ep.  He doesn't need a card, as he says later on to Bennett, he's "a dead man walking."  Watch out for O'Donell look away when there's aloud thumping sound, for later.  When they return to the TARDIS and he converses with Clara via her phone. She tells him he's here and that he's saying something different. She then shows the Doctor to the Doctor (which is what I said, couldn't she have used the phone camera before.)  The Doctor notices his sleeve is torn at the shoulder.

He wants to talk with the doctor and she places the phone on the cabinet.  The Doctor looks at him after he's let the ghost out of the Faraday cage.  The Doctor remarking how it's nice to speak with someone like him.  Clara asks if he can go back in time and change the future but it will cause other things to change.  The Doctor tells them to head to the cage but she won't be able to use the phone, so she should leave it outside and watch for his contacting her.

They head  back to the ship after the conversation, but O'Donnell doesn't want to stay behind as he asks her to and also Bennett (Arsher Ali) does too, cos he's protecting her.  If you hadn't already realized it, he's got feelings for her.  She tells the Doctor she's not staying cos that's what got her fired from the base. When they get to the ship, they find the Fisher King (Neil Fingleton) gone and then hear loud thumping.  They need to get back to the TARDIS now.  I now they always leave the TARDIS in one place after they land, but why don't they use it to get around more often, even if it's short distances. Guess the Doctor would say, where's the fun in that.  They split up and O'Donnell hides and the Doctor and Bennett run into a room.  He puts a chair up against the door and the Doctor looks at him strangely.  The Fisher King walks past them and then the walking sound stops.  O'Donnell comes out of her hiding place and stands with her back to the camera.  Obviously he's going to come out behind her.  The Doctor and Bennett get to her, but it's too late.  Bennett confronts him saying he knew this would happen and this was just his experiment.  He knows the order of the names and he asks who's next.  That would be Clara.   Benetta saying he's going to save her now but he couldn't save O'Donnell.  He let her die.

Heading back to the TARDIS they leave but the TARDIS doesn't go anywhere.  Coming out the Doctor finds they're still here and then hears them outside by the other TARDIS, there's two of them.  Which means they've only gone back in time half an hour.  Bennett wants to warn O'Donnell but he tells him they can't and they need to stay out of sight.  Even Prentis is alive and they return to the scene where they met him before.   They hide behind some bins and Bennett thinks Prentss should know about his death.  The Doctor pulls Bennett back and stops him from going, as they fall behind the bins.  When they reemerge, the Doctor has a torn shoulder in his sleeve.  The Doctor says they don't have a right to warn him.   Bennett tells him he's going to save Clara now, which the Doctor will do, he's not saving himself, cos he's already a dead man walking.

The Doctor heads into a building where there's the statis pod and also the Fisher King.  How did he know where to look?  The pod is beginning the countdown to open.  He tells him how he's a Time Lord and they showed their teeth and began killing, except for the Doctor, he can see their deaths and he wanted to change things.  The Doctor tells him they can't go back in time cos of the ripple effect and change things.  Any little thing could have a huge ramification.  The Fisher King is stealing their souls and turning them into ghosts.  He replies it's to get his armada here and fight.  The Doctor tells him he's not guilty of using time but of destroying people and their souls.  Using them as electromagnetic pathways.  The statis pod opens and the Doctor appears in the TARDIS mentioning a safety protocol, before the TARDIS leaves and heads to the base.

Back at the base, O'Donnell appears and she walks towards them.  Then spots the phone and takes it. Er, how'd she pick it up then, assuming the phone isn't metal but plastic, even if it has metallic components, we saw last ep, they had to specifically touch the metal part.  Clara then tells them that Lunn can get the phone back cos he didn't see the message in the ship and it's not imprinted in his synaptic brainwaves.  That's why Pritchard didn't kill him.  (As I said in the last ep review.)
He leaves and Cass wants to go and search for him.  Clara convinces her it will be okay but then says if they're going they're going together.

Lunn encounters the others and they stare at him but he's able to walk past them back to the other room, where he find the phone, but gets locked in.  As Clara and Cass try to find him, they get separated and Clara slaps  her head saying she's a fool.  Moran comes after Cass with an axe (with a wooden handle, he's not exactly holding the metal part of it) and drags it along the floor making an awful lot of noise.  She doesn't hear it, but then puts her hand to the floor and feels the vibrations. Moran strikes with the axe, but she makes a run for it.  SO if Clara was next, how come MOran came after Cass before anyone could get Clara.   Meeting up with Clara they get Lunn out and then they head for he cage when the ghosts return.  They enter the room with the statis pod which is about to open.

The Fisher King heads back to the ship after the Doctor convinced him that there's no message on the wall.  He goes inside and sees that the message is still there and he's been tricked.  He lied, of course he did, which is what I said.  Love saying that line, "I'm the Doctor and I lie."  Becoming eponymous with Doctor Eleven (at least for me it was.)  Opening up the box with the power cells inside, one is missing.  (Now we know where the missing power cell went last ep and why no one could find it, the Doctor already took it for flooding the village this ep.)  This one the Doctor's placed outside and is aimed towards the dam, which breaks and water runs out, drowning the Fisher King.  The statis pod opens and the Doctor emerges from it wearing his shades. The ghosts hear the Fisher King calling and they walk to the cage where they're locked in.

There, see the Doctor was just a hologram as I mentioned last ep.  If they could have one for Clara of course they could have one for him.  The giveaway here, or the clue was the Doctor's torn coat. which means he tore it in the future and then came back with this plan of his.  UNIT will leave the cage in outerspace where it can't interfere with the earth's magnetic field and the ghosts will eventually fade. The Doctor uses the sonic , er, shades to wipe the message from their memories.  He'll do Bennett's later as he looks at O'Donnell in the cage.  Clara tells him not to give up and to go on and live.  As she's done after Danny.  There are endless possibilities in the galaxy.  Bennett tells Lunn to give Cass a message saying how much Lunn loves her.  To tell her before it's too late, which he does and she kisses him.

The Doctor says that they all will die one day and then explains about Beethoven and how he wrote all that music and was Beethoven.  So he went back in time and set all the events in motion, with the missing power cell, the message in the ship and lying to the Fisher King, as well as the hologram and being in the statis pod.  But he couldn't save anyone else who was already dead, even if he knew they were going to die.
Though it wasn't hard to guess (as in last week's ep that the Doctor was a hologram.  It was just a way for the Doctor to communicate between Clara and also for him to fool the Fisher King and stop the signals.  The Fisher King was voiced by Peter Serafinowicz and Corey Taylor did the scream.

He refers to the Bootstrap Paradox and if you knew what that meant beforehand (or even not) you'd know just what the Doctor was up to.  The Bootstrap Paradox being a way for someone to go back in time to begin an event in the past, which eventually causes something to happen in the future.  This is what he meant when he said he went back in time and took Beethoven's manuscripts.  Since in the past he discovers Beethoven wouldn't write music.  So the Doctor copied his music and then later in time he listens to his music and decides he wants to go back in time and meet the composer.  Who (no pun) then wrote the Fifth Symphony?  The Doctor or Beethoven?

The Bootstrap Paradox was based on a book by Robert Heinlen, called By His Bootstraps. In which a writer goes back in time and writes a book by copying each line of it.  He then finds he was the actual author of it.  But did he really write it?

Anyway, O'Donnell mentions Harold Saxon and then also the Minister of War which makes the Doctor all ears and we wonder why?  Anyway as he tells Bennett Clara is next in line and that's why he has to save her, above all.  Bennett adding that's why he'll change history and help her. It's like that's some sort of foreshadowing to something that may happen to Clara later on, it did sound that way.  Also the Fisher King is the one who has not only meddled in time, but more seriously he has played with matters of life and death.  Then there's the FisherKking telling the Doctor he is "one man lost in time."  A reference to Gallifrey and its re-emergence perhaps.  But he is a time traveller anyway,  Once again we had more messing around with the timey wimey.  So much for the Doctor telling Clara and the Fisher King that he can't alter time and what's happened as it could lead to a massive alteration somewhere.

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