Before the Flood (TV story)

 was the fourth episode of the ninth series of Doctor Who produced by BBC Wales.

Synopsis
A twisted survival plan is pieced together by an alien warlord called the Fisher King. The universe will feel the consequence. Can these events be stopped? Can the Doctor ensure the future's coming and do the impossible?

Plot
The Doctor explains the bootstrap paradox: a hypothetical time traveler decides to go back in time to meet Beethoven, whose music he admires. However, he discovers that Beethoven never actually existed. The time traveler then decides to publish Beethoven's music himself, essentially 'becoming' Beethoven. But, the Doctor asks, how did the music first originate, then? "Who composed Beethoven's Fifth?". The Doctor arrives with Bennett and O'Donnell at the Army base in 1980, before it was flooded, on the day the spaceship landed. They encounter the Tivolian Prentis, still alive at this point, and find that the writing has not yet been scratched into the wall. Prentis reveals that the spaceship is actually a hearse carrying a deceased conqueror called The Fisher King. Back in the future at the underwater base, Clara, Cass and Lunn realise that the Doctor's ghost is uttering a list of their names instead of coordinates. When the Doctor contacts Clara and is informed about his ghost, he is badly shaken by this certain knowledge of his future. Clara forcefully encourages him to try to change events, but the Doctor argues that he cannot and ultimately accepts the eventuality that he must die to keep events in motion. He tries to get information from his ghost, but instead it unlocks the Faraday cage, releasing the other ghosts. Back in 1980, the Fisher King is revealed to be alive, writing the words on the ship's wall and killing Prentis before fleeing.

O'Donnell, Bennett and the Doctor run, but they get separated and O'Donnell is killed by the Fisher King. Bennett chastises the Doctor for allowing O'Donnell to die after the Doctor reveals that the list of names his ghost was repeating was the order in which the crew members will die. Since Clara will be next, the Doctor tells Bennett that he is attempting to save Clara, not himself. He tries to return to the future to achieve this, but the TARDIS won't let him leave - the Doctor is locked in his timestream - and instead goes half an hour back in time. The Doctor and Bennett observe the earlier events, unable to interact or interfere. O'Donnell's ghost appears in the future and steals Clara's phone, her only means of contacting the Doctor. Clara realises that, as Cass refused to allow Lunn into the ship, he never saw the writing on the wall. Therefore, the message is not encoded in his brain, and the ghosts won't attack him. Lunn leaves the cage and locates the phone, but the ghosts trap and lock him inside the main room. When Lunn fails to return, Clara agrees to accompany Cass to search for him.

Leaving Bennett in the TARDIS, the Doctor confronts the Fisher King. The creature reveals that the ghosts he's created will signal his people to send an armada to conquer Earth. It also taunts the Doctor's unwillingness to alter the future, but the Doctor chastises it for violating the souls of those it killed simply for its own ends. The Doctor then tells the Fisher King that he's erased the writing from the spaceship's wall, meaning no-one in the future will discover the message. The Fisher King races back to the ship only to discover the writing still there. He realises the Doctor tricked him and has used one of the power cells (shown as missing in the earlier episode) to destroy the dam wall, flooding the town and killing the Fisher King. The TARDIS' security protocol activates with Bennett still inside, but the Doctor's whereabouts remain unknown as the town floods.

After narrowly avoiding being killed by Moran's ghost, Clara and Cass regroup with Lunn in the hangar. As they arrive, the stasis chamber opens and the Doctor climbs out. The Fisher King is then heard roaring and the ghosts follow the sound, only to be trapped again inside the Faraday cage with the Doctor's ghost, revealed to be a hologram the Doctor controlled using his sonic glasses from the stasis chamber.

The Doctor informs the survivors that UNIT will come to cut the Faraway cage from the base with the ghosts inside, and he erases the memory of the writing from everyone's minds. After Clara comforts Bennett over O'Donnell's death, he convinces Lunn and Cass to admit their love for each other. The Doctor and Clara leave in the TARDIS. The Doctor tells Clara that the order the people would die in was entirely fictional, but he placed Clara's name second to motivate him to action. Clara asks the Doctor how he knew what to make his ghost's hologram say. He informs her that he only knew what he had to do because he found out through her telling him what it was already saying from the future -- a bootstrap paradox.

Cast

 * The Doctor - Peter Capaldi
 * Clara - Jenna Coleman
 * Moran - Colin McFarlane
 * Cass - Sophie Stone
 * Lunn - Zaqi Ismail
 * O'Donnell - Morven Christie
 * Bennett - Arsher Ali
 * Pritchard - Steven Robertson
 * Albar Prentis - Paul Kaye
 * Fisher King - Neil Fingleton
 * Voice of Fisher King - Peter Serafinowicz
 * Roar of Fisher King - Corey Taylor

Organisations

 * The Doctor says that the Faraday cage will be extracted and taken by UNIT into space, where the ghosts will eventually disappear without the electromagnetic field of the Earth to sustain them.

Story notes

 * This episode adds an electric guitar counter-melody to the title theme, played by Capaldi himself, tying off of the Doctor playing Beethoven's Fifth Symphony on his electric guitar at the end of the cold opening.

Ratings
4.38 million

Filming locations
to be added

Production errors
to be added

Continuity

 * The guitar amplifier at the start of the episode features the Magpie Electricals logo. (TV: The Idiot's Lantern)
 * Upon learning from the Doctor that they have travelled back in time to 1980, O'Donnell notes that it is pre-Harold Saxon (TV: The Sound of Drums / Last of the Time Lords) as well as "pre-the Moon exploding and a giant bat coming out." (TV: Kill the Moon)
 * When O'Donnell notes that Bennett is throwing up, the Doctor says that time travel does that sometimes. (TV: The Caretaker) O'Donnell doubts that Rose, Martha and Amy did so on their first trips. (TV: The End of the World, The Shakespeare Code, The Beast Below)
 * When meeting Albar Prentis, the Doctor notes that he has met Tivolians before and that he isn't "a fan." (TV: The God Complex)
 * The current masters of Tivoli who have sent Prentis to Earth to bury the Fisher King are the Arcateenians. (TV: Greeks Bearing Gifts, Invasion of the Bane)
 * The Doctor says "I've had a good innings" when he prepares to meet his potential end. The Sixth Doctor said this right before regenerating in two differing accounts, AUDIO: The Brink of Death and PROSE: Spiral Scratch.
 * The Doctor repeats the phrase "tick-tock" while contemplating his apparent death. During his previous incarnation's life, the Peg Dolls' nursery rhyme also used the phrase for the same purpose (TV: Night Terrors, The Wedding of River Song).
 * The Doctor calls his current regeneration as a "clerical error", referring to the fact that it is in fact the first of a new regeneration cycle, given to him by the Time Lords. (TV: The Time of the Doctor)
 * The Doctor states that Earth is under his protection. (TV: The Christmas Invasion, The Eleventh Hour)
 * The Eleventh Doctor also encountered a bootstrap paradox in the form of a Time Lord hypercube. (AUDIO: The Time Machine)

DVD releases
to be added

Blu-ray releases
to be added