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It had to happen some time: this is the first
Capaldi story I dislike. In fairness, part one is genuinely solid and fun even
if it doesn’t reinvent the wheel, and lacks a spark of genius: part two is
where things really fall apart. Usually, when I write these things, I don’t
overly dwell on the review aspects, and instead try to break down the themes
and character development (which I intend to do here), but as this one seems,
if not a fan favourite, at least rather popular, I feel I need to take the time
to justify my dislike of it.
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That said, let’s start with some genuine good:
the Doctor and Clara’s character development. The through line for the season
that these episodes continue to develop is genuinely interesting. The Doctor’s
“duty of care”, another phrase he echoes from Clara in “Kill the Moon”, comes
up for the first time here, and his protectiveness towards Clara drives his
actions in part two as he determines to change time to save Clara, even if he’s
doomed to die, the motivation at the heart of the bootstrap paradox that drives
“Before the Flood”. Also significant are the parallels in Clara’s
protectiveness of the Doctor: in a rare turn for this season, the Doctor’s life
is the one threatened in the cliffhanger, not Clara’s. Here, we see Clara
demanding the Doctor break the rules of time to save himself, saying “Die with
whoever comes next, you do not leave me”: a hint that she feels just as
responsible for the Doctor as he does for her, and that “letting” him die would
be a failure on her part. Also significant is her asking Lunn to risk his life
to get her phone on the unconfirmed (though correct) belief the ghosts won’t
hurt him: it’s a plot point that has a frustrating lack of impact on the story,
but ably demonstrates more of Clara’s development, and increasingly utilitarian
approach to her adventures.
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Also solid is Part One of the story: “Under the
Lake” is genuinely fun, good set up, nice set pieces, terrific acting,
especially from Capaldi, who enlivens the average material superbly here: it’s
Base under siege, and isn’t doing anything challenging with that form, but the
standards of the form are done well here.
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But things falter in part two, largely due to
the deeply frustrating pattern of setting up new idea that sounds interesting,
then write it out before the story it does anything with the idea.
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For example, “Before the Flood” has the
excellent idea of going back and meeting ghosts before they were killed. What
do we get of this? Literally one scene that repeats the initial joke of a
character from the God Complex that had more depth than Prentiss. Then he’s
killed off. And there is something to be said for the critique that the
Tivolians are really a rather victim blaming “Happy Slave” archetype: they’re
certainly a step backwards from the Ood in that regard.
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We also have a story set in a Cold War village,
and an invocation of Arthurian Myth in the Fisher King’s name, ideas that are
ripe with potential for thematic exploration. But the story does nothing with
these things: the Fisher King is just an empty villain, with the mythic links
in his name not being explored at all. The same can be said for the use of the
cold War village, instead of going to the effort of linking the story’s themes
and ideas to the setting, it’s just a convenient excuse to have an empty
village. “Before the Flood” lacks conviction, and becomes defined by a series
of empty signifiers.
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For another example of
the story’s lack of conviction, take the scene where the Doctor and Bennett try
to go back in time: there are no complications to the plot, no attempt to push
the drama or play with the use of time travel. When you have characters in the
same scene as their past selves, there is so much drama you can get out that
kind of sequence. Take “Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban”, particularly
where Harry and Hermione rescue Buckbeak. They have to do so while evading the
ministry of magic and their past selves, and in doing so become part of events,
while acknowledging the fact that they can’t catch Wormtail and change the
events they are already a part of. There’s dramatic tension coming from all
kinds of places. By contrast, the Doctor and Bennett watch the events we have
already seen, and bicker about trying to change the past: nowhere near as much
tension. And the character work that comes from the argument is incredibly
generic: Bennett stares at O'Donnell sadly and we get some of the most
stereotypical fridging angst imaginable, as the camera dwells on her looking
happy and tragically beautiful. In terms of philosophy, we get that line about
how time travel makes you really see ghosts, which isn't actually saying
anything - it's just a sci fi concept commenting on another sci fi concept.
When Hide made the same point ("we're all ghosts to you"), it did so
to highlight the divide between the Doctor's alien perspective and Clara's
human perspective. And it came up with the idea of relating the idea of
haunting to the feelings we keep hidden with Emma and the Professor. All this
story's doing is saying - "Look! They're real ghosts! There's no sci-fi
explanation this time!" But that doesn't change the fact that
"Hide", for all its flaws, is a better Ghost story with more to say.
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Fridging: I think Whovian Feminism breaks down
why this is frustrating better than me, so I’ll leave it to her: (http://whovianfeminism.tumblr.com/post/131827581387/whovian-feminism-reviews-under-the-lakebefore).
But I’d like to point out that the sequence is also terrible storytelling, with
O Donnell splitting up from the Doctor and Bennett for no clear reason so that
one of she can be tragically killed. Plus, I’m left wondering why the Fisher
King didn’t continue to pursue the Doctor and Bennett. Contrived death scenes
are not satisfying death scenes. Factor in the heteronormativity of O’Donnell
and Bennett and Lunn and Cass being romantically paired off*, and the episode
ends up disappointing in its gender politics, in spite of good things, such as
the excellent portrayal of Cass.
* Seriously, hardly anyone bats an eyelid
at the sudden declaration Lunn and Cass are in love with one another, but any
same sex relationship depicted on television is inevitably met with accusations
of tokenism, or being “shoehorned in to the story”. Criticisms of media are
rarely as harsh on straight romances that are genuinely shoehorned into
stories.
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While we’re on the subject of disappointing use
of the diversity the show is mostly successfully demonstrating now, this is
also a story that managed to do “Black man dies first” completely unironically:
it’s clearly just an accident of pushing for diversity with colour blind casting,
but it still has unfortunate implications in a script that has a few of them.
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O’Donnell’s messily written fridging leads me to
the other crassly stupid sequence, in which Cass’s deafness apparently gives
her super touch vision: the visuals feel like they’d make more sense for a
blind person, and there are other, less clunky ways to communicate that she
felt the vibrations of the axe. The direction doesn’t help: you’re left
wondering what happened to Cass’s peripheral vision, or why she didn’t turn
around for half a second to see the ghost.
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Pausing in my rant overall, Cass is the best
original thing about this story, so credit where it is due. She’s a genuinely
well written deaf character (the aforementioned scene, which is more bad
storytelling than actually offensive, notwithstanding), with her disability
contributing to her characterisation, and her ability to lip read actually
being useful to the plot, while not defining her character, and is refreshingly
portrayed by a deaf actress. Good work by Toby Whithouse, the casting team, and
the excellent Sophie Stone there.
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And the final thing that’s worth critiquing, and
that nicely encapsulate “Before the Flood’s problems, is the use of the Bootstrap
Paradox. The episode seems to suggest the Bootstrap paradox is inherently
clever and worthwhile, and feels the need to give the audience two explanations
of what’s going on, which is incredibly patronizing, especially when the
bootstrap paradox is one of the most common storytelling tricks in the Moffat
Era, and as a result, it just seems to want to draw attention to itself, and
make out that it’s more unique than it is, while using a trick that has been
part of the success of some of New Who’s most loved stories. It’s being used
for contradictory reasons that are ultimately lacking in depth.
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There is good in here, but mostly in the Doctor
and Clara’s material, which becomes really strong in the light of their arc in
series nine. As a pair of episodes telling a Doctor Who story, these two are a
solid traditional episode followed by an apparently more experimental, but
ultimately lacking in depth second, that wants to be more than it is, which
just doesn’t cut it for me.
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