Who composed Beethoven’s 5th anyway?
Warning: Full spoilers below.
Let’s just talk about the ending of “Before the Flood” right now because I can’t wait any longer, it thrilled me so. I’m referring to the last 30 seconds or so, where the Doctor breaks down the bootstrap paradox of it all for Clara. Her wow moment of realization as the Doctor says, “When did I first have those ideas, Clara?” followed by “Who composed Beethoven’s 5th?” followed by his looking down at the camera, at us, and just ever so slightly shrugging. Man, it gave me goosebumps!
Why did I find that so effective, both as an answer to an unanswerable riddle and as a character beat for both the Doctor and Clara? I’m not sure, because really it should be more frustrating than anything else. There is no explanation to how the Doctor saved the day here, and yet there’s also the perfect explanation in his “reverse engineering” of everything he knows is going to happen so that he can make those things happen. It’s a bit of a thing of beauty.
That final shrug also of course calls back to the start of the episode, when the Doctor broke the fourth wall to explain to us what a bootstrap paradox is, while using his old friend Beethoven — and his electric-guitar rendition of the 5th — as a what-if example. Who really composed Beethoven’s 5th indeed? It’s a risky move to have your main character talk to the audience, but it works perfectly here. It also drives home a point that has frequently been made on the show, which is to not worry too much about the time-travel details, because that’s not really what any of this is about anyway.
As the Doctor arrives in the past of 1980 with O’Donnell (Morven Christie) and Bennet (Arsher Ali), the two newbs react to their first TARDIS trip very differently (the former totally fan-girls out while the latter pukes). O’Donnell even drops some references for her fellow fans who are watching and listening closely at home. As this trio gets to the bottom of the mystery at the heart of this two-parter, the ghost alien from last week shows up here alive and oh-so-annoying. (And the Doctor has no time for him, getting “right to the point” so he can take the batteries out of whatever it is that’s causing the ghost problem.) Not so annoying is the Fisher King, as he’s called, the “dead” alien that the undertaker is transporting. He turns out to be kind of scary, although seeing him in the light of day near the end of the episode takes some of the mystery away from him.
Speaking of O’Donnell and Bennet, making this a two-parter I think gives the guest cast a little more weight and makes them more memorable. You actually feel bad when O’Donnell bites it, and you’re a bit moved when Bennet later stares at her ghostly visage but, perhaps moved by Clara’s words, inspires his comrades to not let their unspoken feeling for one another remain unspoken forever.
We also could see plainly that Clara is still hurting over the loss of Danny Pink and that, just maybe, the reason she is on the move constantly with the Doctor, TARDISing around creation, is because she’s running from something. Which, come to think of it, sounds just like the Doctor. I’m glad Danny was addressed, even if it was in a subtle way, because as I said last week a story about ghosts would seem the perfect place to touch upon him. But now we have the bigger question of how long Clara (or the Doctor) can keep running?
The Fisher King also taunts the Doctor about how he “slavishly” protects time and would rather die than change a word of the future. And by the episode’s end, the Doctor hasn’t done anything to prove him wrong about that. What if he couldn’t find a clever way out? What would he have done then?
Some notes:
- “It’s bigger on the inside! It’s bigger on the inside!”
- Don’t worry guys, I’m sure you’ll relearn how to drink liquids eventually.
- “The first proper alien and he’s an idiot.”
- The Doctor accepts that he must die when he sees his ghost self. He is committed to playing by the rules when it comes to the timestream. But Clara doesn’t want to face death again and even tells him that he owes her, he’s made himself essential to her, and “If you love me in any way you’ll come back.” Just the kick the Doctor needed to solve the riddle of this episode.
- Did the Doctor really let O’Donnell die in order to test his theory?
This is another strong episode for Doctor Who Season 9. The willingness of “Before the Flood” to play with the fourth wall and Peter Capaldi’s performance in those scenes really brought the whole — already good — package together.
