What You Thought of Before the Flood: Reaktion Roundup

Is Clara Dressing for The Part of The... Reviewed: Doctor Who – The Complete H...

What You Thought of Before the Flood: Reaktion Roundup

David Power is a writer at Kasterborous Doctor Who News and Reviews - All the latest Doctor Who news and reviews with our weekly podKast, features and interviews, and a long-running forum.

It’s finally time to see what you all thought of the conclusion to Toby Whithouse’s murky madness. First off, the poll results!

Dam, that was great! 42.52% (145 votes)

Top-quality Who! 27.57% (94 votes)

Not quite as good as Under the Lake 20.53% (70 votes)

Big let down 7.92% (27 votes)

Switched off 1.46% (5 votes)

You guys seemed to be pretty into that episode. Personally I enjoyed it, but I do have some qualms with certain things. But first the good. It feels absolutely right that the Twelfth Doctor has become one of the three Doctors to completely break the fourth wall on televised Who. This incarnation is 100% rebel Time Lord after all.

Visually this episode was rock solid. The town of Краснодар (pronounced “krasnodar”) was striking, and gave the episode it’s own personality quite different than what we’re normally used to in Who. The Fisher King was also a major triumph for the both the design team and Millennium FX. A genuinely intimidating monster that feels like an actual threat to our group. Small thing though, I really felt that the blaster was unnecessary. I feel like they could’ve combined his left hand and the blaster to turn his entire arm into a sort of claw-like weapon that would’ve benefitted the almost crustacean look of the King.

Besides the design I unfortunately feel like the Fisher King fell a bit flat for me. The Fisher King’s voice, while acted well by Peter Serafinowicz, didn’t really match the Fisher King I had built up in my head. Having the hyped up Fisher King be another of the Doctor Who baddies who loudly stomps around and says “Time Lord” menacingly was pretty disappointing if I’m honest. Also the ending seemed rushed to me. Only in looking stuff up for this Reaktion am I learning that apparently the King’s plan was to turn people into ghost transmitters so he could lead his people to him, which completely flew over my head. Maybe I was just unlucky and missed the key line of dialogue.

Thankfully the ratings improved considerably for this episode, with the overnight viewings increasing from 3.74 million for Under the Lake to 4.38 million for Before the Flood. Overall figures also improved from 5.63 million to 6.05 million. It got an Appreciation Index score of 83, one less than Under the Lake.

So, what did you K readers think?