Before the Flood (Doctor Who)

Set in Scotland in 1980 and 2119, the episode is a "bootstrap paradox" where the alien time traveller the Twelfth Doctor (Peter Capaldi) prevents the invasion plot of an alien called the Fisher King (Neil Fingleton and Peter Serafinowicz) while also saving the life of his companion Clara (Jenna Coleman) in the future through the use of information the Doctor received that he would later send to himself.

The episode was watched by 6.05 million viewers and received positive reviews, who praised Capaldi’s performance, but criticised the utilisation of the Fisher King.

When the Doctor and Bennett try to return to the future to save Clara, the TARDIS sends them back half an hour.

The Fisher King confronts the Doctor, affirming that his glyphs and the ghosts he creates with them will send a signal that will draw an armada to enslave humanity.

Clara, Cass, and Lunn are cornered in the hangar bay, when the stasis chamber opens, revealing the Doctor, who had used it to survive the flood.

The Doctor had previously been shown playing such an instrument atop a tank in the ninth series opener, "The Magician's Apprentice".

[3] O'Donnell mentions prior companions Rose Tyler, Martha Jones, and Amy Pond, as well as Harold Saxon and events from "Kill the Moon".

[6] Other console room holograms have included the Emergency Program One ("The Parting of the Ways") and the "voice interface" with a holographic feature ("Let's Kill Hitler").

[7] During the episode's prologue, the Doctor mentions that he met the actual Ludwig van Beethoven – a "nice chap, very intense".

O'Donnell alludes to Neil Armstrong's famous line from the first Moon walk: "That's one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind".

The inclusion of an electric guitar was prompted by a joke from Twelfth Doctor actor Peter Capaldi, who performed the theme for the episode, as well as Beethoven's Symphony No.

The site's consensus reads "Doctor Who provides a satisfying conclusion to the previous installment's cliffhanger with "Before the Flood," a playful and exciting episode".

[23] Dan Martin of The Guardian praised Coleman's performance, believing her and Capaldi to be "surely now one of the most successful pairings in Doctor Who's history."

Overall, they found the episode to be "patchier than last week's, but I'm not grumbling about the strength of the two parter, I do still strongly feel that the move towards two-parters has been beneficial to Doctor Who series 9 thus far.