doctor Who 2015 04 - Before the Flood

I really did enjoy this, in fact it was probably the best nu who in many a day. Was it me but there were elements of Tom Baker in one part where Capaldi, on walking down the steps of the alien craft has one of those self effacing sarcastic retorts. Very Who, in fact best so far. Superb.

This two parter was alright. I'm not a huge fan of ghost stories, but I liked the bootstrap paradox. I wonder who the Minister of War is. Maybe he's friends with the Lord of War.

The Fisher King costume has got to be one of the best that NuWho has put out, I was very impressed by it on first viewing. There's this eerie sense that creature is one of power, similar to Pyramids of Mars when the Doctor and Sutekh are in the same room together. The story itself is one of two halves -- one very solid, the other severely lacking. There's this really nice sense of atmosphere building for Under the Lake, I rather like that the story centres around the concept of mnemonic progression and the causal loop, but it all seems to disintegrate once we get to Before the Flood.

You can feel the story grinding gears, trying to do what it did in its first half all over again without the benefit of a claustrophobic environment or a sense of growing mystery behind it. We should have switched across from the base-under-siege to a setting populated by characters from the outpost who are unaware they're in a situation that is rapidly spiralling out of control. I also really, really didn't like how the Doctor referred to his current regeneration as a "clerical error". I get what he means, but that to me is like him saying "I'm not the Doctor," to Davros. The character is undermined in such a way that I start to see only the actor, not the role he's playing. It's strangely immersion breaking.

It's one of those really peculiar situations like The Twin Dilemma or Heaven Sent / Hell Bent, I enjoy half of it a lot.