Doctor Who: Season 9 Episode 4 Liveblog

Doctor Who: Season 9 Episode 4: Before the Flood

By the Tripwire LiveBlog Team

Sorry Clara, I feel quite unwell…

Ok, so when we left our heroes last week they were all dead except The Doctor – oh, sorry that was the week before. Last week it was The Doctor who was dead… or so his ghost seemed to indicate. Hey, maybe he’s what’s in the suspended animation box/trunk thingy? Spooky…

We will apparently meet chipmunky (or moley, if you prefer) Prentis (Paul Kaye – Thoros in Game of Thrones) before he died and the Fisher King, screams by Corey Taylor from Slipknot and voice by Peter Serafinowicz (Denarian Saal in Guardians of the Galaxy). The Doctor will die (again!). Joy is unconfined! Onwards….

20.25

Doctor is self-mythologising a little bit, talking about himself in the third person and talks a little bit about the bootstrap paradox (Google it, he says) and Beethoven. He plays the guitar a little more, to show us he’s cool and hip. It’s still a Yamaha SG Samurai, and I still want one. But he’s pushed the value through the roof. Cue guitary version of theme.

20.30

Cut to some sort of Russian truckstop, where O’Donnell is dropping hints about Dr Who lore. The Doctor wanders off,  O’Donnell jumps up and down with Bennett about how the Tardis is bigger on the inside. Turns out the town is a fake Russian town built in Scotland, made to train people for the cold war.

They find the spooky ship, there’s a corpse inside along with an extremely irritating alien. The dead guy is the Fisher King, they brought him to Earth to bury him, because the Earth is shitty and they didn’t like him. There are no spooky ghost making machines inside the ship, so WHOOO SENT THE SIGNAL???

Odds are the bloody Doctor did it.

20.35

Back in the future the Doctor ghost is saying some gibberish. Clara Prentiss Saxon Daleks Jellybabies Something Something. Past Doctor calls from the future, finds out he’s dead. Drama ensues. Clara goes all ‘DON’T DIE ON ME‘. Doctor goes all ‘I CAN’T CHANGE THE FUTURE OR THE WORLD WILL BREAK’. Sad music plays.

Back to the past again, Chipmunk alien finds the Fisher King is missing, has scratched symbols on the wall. Spooky shadow looms. Gasp!

20.40

Ghost Doctor busts through the window. Everyone gasps and stands back. For some reason, they let him do the 26 button presses needed to open the door and let all the other ghosties out. Past Doctor asks to be put on the phone with Ghost Doctor. Talks about how great he is. Ghost Doctor stops talking, then starts again, says ‘the chamber will open tonight’.

Which seems a little late, given that he already opened the chamber. Hey, it must be another chamber!

Doctor (past not ghost) wants to be kept apprised of what Doctor (ghost not past) gets up to.

Back in the past O’Donnell continues a running joke that I forgot to mention earlier about her dangling people out the window by the foot. Possibly the part was originally written for Suge Knight. Before he ran those people over.

They find the ship empty (i.e., sans corpse), cue spooky noises, everyone runs about, there’s a laser noise offscreen (the universal sign for character death in Doctor Who)  and O’Donnell is dead, cue brief tragedy.

20.45

Turns out that list of things the Ghost Doctor was saying that I didn’t listen to was the list of people in which order they’d die. Bennett gets all mad about how the Doctor knew that already and didn’t do anything to save O’Donnell. RIP.

But the Doctor, being all righteous, says he’s not trying to save himself, only Clara (???). In the future, Ghost O’Donnell is nicking the time-iPhone.

Cut back to the Doctor, again being all self-righteous, says he’s saving the future and nobody can stop him. The Tardis stops him. RIP.

20.50

Doctor and Bennett get dumped back into the past. ‘No, we can’t do everything right again because of TIME!’ The Doctor says.

In the future, a nutty scheme is concocted about how only people who saw the symbols can get all shat up by the ghosts. Guy who didn’t see the symbols is shoved into the corridor. Base commander lady asks if travelling with the Doctor has made Clara be such a shit with risking people’s lives, then does some stiff sign-language cusses at her.

Doctor is going to face the Fisher King alone. Fisher King talks about how his ghosts will make more ghosts, and how those ghosts will summon a space armada (somehow) to wake him up. Which confuses me a little, cause he seems to already be awake.

20.55

In the future again, and no-symbols man is getting sniffed up by ghosts in a scene reminiscent of a clumsy visual metaphor from an early 2000s nu-metal video. They leave him, though, he grabs the phone, THEN THE DOORS CLOSE!! WOOOOooOOOoooOOO.

Not the Fisher King, but the guy who does his screams!

In the past, the Fisher King is talking about enslaving Earth. He moves slowly into the light, and SURPRIIISE he’s one of the aliens from Independence Day. He babbles a bit about Timelords being bastards, and leans in and does some beetley-mouth stuff.

In the future, Clara and base commander lady have decided to leave the safe safety room, and go into the danger tunnel. Which seems a poor plan if you ask me. To paraphrase a great song, ‘Don’t give up, you’ve got the symbols in you!’. You only get what you give, and you’re giving the ghosts some more ghosts to make.

Fisher King is going on about how the Doctor will be a strong beacon ghost.  But he’s special, so he’ll never give up, even as a ghost!

Doctor is getting hella salty about how the Fisher King is bending the rules of life and death, so he’s gonna bend the rules of Time right back!

21.00

Base Commander Lady is being chased by a noisy ghost, but she’s deaf so she doesn’t know! But then she bends down and feels the vibrations in the floor, so she does know. Crisis averted. Credit where it’s due, a pretty effective scene.

The Doctor winds up the Fisher King by saying he rubbed out the symbols. Fisher King really does not like this and storms off to look for himself.

Actual Fisher King – accept no substitute

Surprise, idiot! The Doctor  lied! The symbols are still there, but a power cell is not. And that power cell is rigged to blow the dam!

Fisher King gets washed away, to his great chagrin, and in the future the casket is popping open. Will it be the Fisher King?

Nope, it’s the damn Doctor. Just as we guessed at the head of this LiveBlog!!

21.05

He explains his amazing plan. The Doctor ghost was a hologram all along. Shame he didn’t program in any useful phrases, like “Don’t split up”. Bennett tricks Lunn into confessing his love for the base commander via sign language interpretation. They kiss, ha-ha!

We return to the bootstrap paradox (Google it), this time talking about how he only made the ghost hologram cause he’d seen the future ghost hologram, dun dun duuun! He reverse-engineered the narrative. So who originally had the ideas? Wow!, as Clara says…

So, in all fairness, actually one of the best stories in Doctor Who for a considerable amount of time. Plenty of tiresome smarmy in-jokes, but a good solid story, with, for a change, a real understanding of some of the issues around time travel underpinning it. Hopefully next week’s episode, featuring Cyber Vikings, will be more risible so we have something funny to say about it. Not that we actively seek to mock. Oh, wait….

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