Under The Lake/Before The Flood: Rank - 278

   Under The Lake/Before The Flood

(Series 9, Dr 12 with Clara, 3-10/10/2015, showrunner: Steven Moffat, writer: Toby Whithouse, director: Daniel O'Hara)  

Rank: 278

In which the Doctor spends 20,000 leagues under the sea and for all we know (the time isn't specified) 20,000 years sleeping in a box...

We're now in the section of the list where not a lot goes wrong, but not enough really goes right. This 2 parter is one of the more boring and undeveloped DW episodes out there - a real surprise as Toby Whithouse is one of the best writers out there, his series 'Being Human' being about the only thing to compare to modern DW in terms of characters, drama, comedy and storylines. If that series has a problem its that its sometimes stuffed with too much; here though not a lot happens. For 100 minutes. It feels as if everything has been stretched out not because this story has enough to say for two parts but because the most memorable thing about it is the cliffhanger. Now its a fabulous cliffhanger: there's yet another base crew under siege, this one underwater in the year 2119, where the Humans are slowly being turned by aliens into ghosts mouthing incomprehensible words. Only in the cliffhanger the person mouthing them is the Dr, leaving Clara trapped a century from home! Fabulous and the inventive way out of the cliffhanger (that it's all part of a plan neither we nor Clara have been let into) doesn't let it down the way some 2-parters do. However the key word there is slowly: this is an invasion by stealth where things happen by slow twists. Alas the supporting characters aren't interesting enough for us to get to know, never mind care for when they get bumped off. The Dr is, for a good third of the story, off doing his own thing. That just leaves us with Clara, whose having a bit of an off-day all round to be honest. How odd that everybody is suddenly so 'wet'. Or perhaps it's just the setting?

Positives + The resolution, which basically has the Dr lying down for a long rest, is a very clever and Who-ey solution to the plot.

Negatives - The baddy this week is The Fisher King, a monster from folklore who should be perfect for DW and he almost is. In the folk tales he's a King charged withguarding The Holy Grail; here he's the skeletal remains of an alien army leaving coded glyphs to lure humanity to their doom. Both costume and performance are pretty darn good. Unfortunately though he's another of those supreme beings who show their powers by huffing and puffing and re-acting, rather than actually doing anything. The back story for why he does what he does is garbled to say the least. We should be terrified, but in practice he's too dull to be scary. Also, the prologue to part 2 where the Dr witters on about Beethoven is very irritating.