‘Doctor Who’ Season 9 Episode 4 review: 'Before the Flood'

Your Only Connect style question this week, fellow Whovians, is this: What do Christmas, The Proms, BBC’s Children in Need and the short film before the cinematic showing of ‘Day of the Doctor’ all have in common?

Yes, absolutely, they’re all times when it’s acceptable to wear a fez in public. But you only get points if you said they’re all times when The Doctor can break the Fourth Wall without it feeling really weird.

It was a festive novelty 49 years ago when Bill Hartnell raised a glass to us in ‘The Feast of Stephen’. It was a cheeky wink between you and the screen when Tom Baker did his ‘Even the sonic screwdriver won’t get me out of this one!’ bit in ‘The Invasion of Time’. But the pre-titles sequence for ‘Before the Flood’ is so jarring as to be a novelty too far.

Suddenly the concluding part of Toby Whithouse’s story seems to have become self-aware – like a 1980s robot hit by lightning – right down to the (admittedly awesome) guitar track played over the titles.

Before you’ve even had chance to Google ‘The Bootstrap Paradox’, the episode picks up where we left off last week, and the pre-titles sequence feels alienating, as well as alienated from everything else.

Even if you like The Doctor Skype-ing you through your screen, what comes after such a bold open is disappointing. ‘Under the Lake’ set up a simple but effective threat. All ‘Before the Flood’ needed to be was a simple but effective conclusion. Instead its ambition becomes its Achilles Heel.

And before you start yelling, yes, of course Doctor Who should be ambitious. Its best episodes are ambitious. But they are also coherent and gripping in a way ‘Before the Flood’ doesn’t manage.

Split between a well-designed past and future, the episode begins to bleed momentum; the plot becoming a selection of moments you remember for liking or disliking rather than being an engrossing story.

There are plenty of things to like, chief among them being a scene which plays to Toby Whithouse’s horror fodder strengths, as Moran’s ghost scrapes an axe along the floor behind Cass. It’s a stand-out bit of tension, just as the ‘Minister of War’ is a standout bit of fan teasing.

Proceedings might hold together better in shadow of an adequate big-bad, but The Fisher King is as disappointing as Paul Kaye’s pervy Prentiss is uncomfortably oleaginous.

The Fisher King is a mountainous lurch of costume and prosthetics that’ll one day look terrific when you’re having a selfie with him at the Doctor Who Experience in Cardiff. On screen he’s little more than a big stompy techno-prawn, impotent as his mythical namesake.

Peter Serafinowicz gives him adequate vocal life, but the creature itself is such an ambitious heap that it has no physicality. As novel as it is to see a villain’s plan in reverse, there’s just not enough villain here to make much of a threat. His roar (performed by Slipknot’s Corey Taylor) is the only thing about him that impresses.

The Fisher King proves easy to defeat (big body, tiny brain). The real enemy proves to be a rushed and messy final five minutes, as Bennet’s sudden love for O’Donnell springs up only to then be smothered, and The Doctor floods the base and our brains with exposition about a slightly artificially intelligent hologram.

Toby Whithouse has essentially pulled the same trick on us as he did on the ghosts last week to lure them into the Faraday cage, and as a viewer it’s annoying to be played like that. Especially when it requires a jargon-heavy and unwieldy explanation afterwards.

‘Before the Flood’ has plenty of ideas (not all of them original for long-time viewers) and a Moffat-like level of ambition that reaches far beyond what you’d expect after watching ‘Under the Lake’.

It’s bold, bizarre and it’s flawed, but it does reinforce the pleasing fact that this season of Doctor Who is not content to rest on any laurels.