Another double-bill, another base-under-siege, and another episode with non-corporeal beings of a victorian bent. Series 9 of Doctor Who is kicking off with my favorite things. It is not opposite day today, you say? Oh well, back to hating another story that makes me want to curl up into a ball and die of boredom. I think we can all agree that due to my well-established exhaustion of the dark and moody Doctor we’re firmly embedded with now, I was never going to like a story that is 90% the color brown. No one could be less excited about the color brown, aside from that time I caused a plumbing accident at the chocolate factory.

“Under the Lake” and “Before the Flood,” written by the sometimes wonderful Toby Whithouse, aren’t inherently bad episodes. They are just a dull double bill that doesn’t give a sense of adventure, at all. I’m sure we’ve all been trapped at the bottom of the ocean in Caithness 100-years in the future fighting the Fisher King with a bootstrap paradox. In the second episode of the story, this is all done with Peter talking down the barrel directly to you and holding your hand to explain just how clever he is, without actually being clever. He’s that teacher going through the motions, wanting you to understand but knowing it has to be dumbed down as far as possible.

As I said, it is not a bad story but one done with all the pieces in place as we’ve seen a hundred times before. Call me infantile if you like, but I would have preferred an episode that was a bit more punchy and had a better sense of pacing, making it feel like we’re being dragged through hallways. Instead, the characterization and plot stumble along like the concentrated electromagnetic fields displaying the image of the recently dead on the march to kill some crew-mates. Peter’s Doctor is a particular thorn in my side, with his half “I don’t care about anyone, I have no feelings” attitude that suddenly changes to “I have to save Clara! My bessie mate.”

It is the episode with the cue cards, the ones where Peter dryly murmurs his lines about feeling sorry for the recently bereaved and any offense he’s caused. It comes off like Malcolm Tucker not actually feeling sorry for punching Glenn, which is very un-Doctor-like. This is the bit of Peter’s Doctor I really hate, and I had the same problem with David’s 10th Doctor as well. He’s a fan so he’s trying to bring all the weight he possibly can to a man that doesn’t feel like the Doctor at times. I don’t even think the episode was carried by him either, I’m struggling to find an episode where he is the sole person that makes an episode what it is.

Sophie Stone was the person I was most interested in, playing Cass and commanding officer (or whatever) after. Of course, the Black guy died within minutes of the beginning and she’s one of the few good points of the story. I’m sure you’ll have noticed this fairly recently as more and more disabled people are in prominent roles on TV and film. She makes a scene interesting not only because of who she is, but also due to the surrounding aspects for her to live in that world. Watch any deaf actor and the person signing for them, it makes any and every scene more dynamic than, say, Ryan gormlessly expositing nonsense for two minutes while standing stock still.

Not only that but in the scene towards the end of the story, with Cass and ghostly Moran both walking down the hallway as one is stalking the other, it’s simple but effective. She is unable to hear the fire axe he’s dragging along the floor until she does something simple. She puts her hand to the ground and can feel it. I’m sure someone understood the references to Beethoven and the deafness, and of course, it was said that he would later use vibrations as the main tool to compose his later works. I like that as a great connection, not only the deafness but also to explain the bootstrap paradox and linking the two ideas.

As much as I’ll praise that knowledge, I won’t be praising the understanding of what a faraday cage is and what an anechoic chamber is. Repeatedly throughout the episode, there is a room filled with sound muffling foam which you often see in recording studios. It is referred to as a faraday cage, which it is not. The room itself wouldn’t be a faraday cage, visually it doesn’t look like one, and if we go by what is said specifically, it also doesn’t entirely work as a faraday cage either. The reason the “ghosts” don’t walk about in the simulated day is that the electromagnetic wavelengths are out of sync.

It is a nerd’s point, a very anal-retentive one, but a point that should be made nonetheless. The room looks like a semi-anechoic chamber, or in plain English, a semi non-reflective room. My point is kind of backed up with its use to absorb non-ionizing RF radiation. In fact, the room itself is described as being used in the event of radiation leaks in the event of a meltdown. Why am I explaining all of this? An anechoic chamber isn’t built to protect you, a human, from the outside. In fact, it can often be damaging to us for a sustained period of time. 

We know this from TV and the improvement in recording equipment, but if something sounds too quiet, we feel uncomfortable. This is why when two people are in a room, you both want to talk to fill in the gap. Now, humans can only hear to 0dBA, but anechoic chambers by design can often fall below this. If you are in such a room for more than an hour, it can push you into madness. While a large amount of sound is simply sustained vibration at a specific frequency, it requires reflections to hit your ear, and an anechoic chamber is by definition a non-reflective space. Ok, question number 2, why am I going into such detail explaining this?

If the day is simulated, so is the night. It is explicitly mentioned that the surviving crew at the start of the episode have spent three nights in the “Faraday cage.” Six people in a small dimly lit anechoic chamber for hours on end is unlikely. Even if the night is only a few hours long, it would be difficult to function with the mental stability on display, never mind sleeping in such a small space. Yet through all of this, there is one tiny get-out-of-jail-free card and it is the fact a large number of anechoic chambers are, in fact, encased in a faraday cage. However, again, it isn’t the room itself.

It is the whole stalactites and stalagmites thing all over again. An anechoic chamber keeps things in while a faraday cage keeps things out. One is typically used for testing electromagnetic waves, as the other blocks out electromagnetic fields such as you’d want to protect you from electromagnetic radiation during an MRI scan. So the answer to your actual question of who cares? Me, because these are the details that matter to the plot when we’re defining that the “ghosts” aren’t actually ghosts but just projections using electromagnetic waves. I hand-waved most of my science lessons there to get to the point, but the fundamentals are there.

Ok, back to the non-nit-picky annoyances, why did this have to be a two-parter? Did Steven run out of time re-writing constantly, telling Whithouse to go on a bit longer to fill in the number of episodes? Series 9 is like this all the way through, with four-ish double-bills in a twelve-episode series. There was the last one, this one, “The Zygon Invasion” and “The Zygon Inversion,” with “Heaven Sent” and “Hell Bent” being a two-parter since the former is a backdoor pilot (of sorts) to the finale. I could even see “Face the Raven,” being seen as the pilot for the triple-bill as it does have the “to be continued” closing it.

It could also back up my idea that “Under the Lake” and “Before the Flood” could be paced a little better, chopping out a good portion of the length to accommodate a more fun adventure. I think if it was shorter I wouldn’t be so… I don’t want to say annoyed but definitely displeased by the “who cares about resolving this” of the bootstrap paradox dilemma. If the Doctor saved the day, and the Doctor is the one setting up the piece to save the day, who told him to do it? Cue Peter looking to the barrel again, metaphorically giving a shrug followed by a cut to the title.

In a quicker episode, one that was more frivolous and bouncing around, I could see letting that hang. Addressing it as an issue without actually getting to the point and instead literally shrugging it off and hoping the connections will make sense in “Hell Bent” just doesn’t sit well with me. I didn’t just spend 85 minutes watching this for nothing. I want something that is at least a bit clever or entertaining. Clara-Who isn’t entertaining, no matter how much Peter hands out fists full of verbal abuse. The “There is only room for one me” line should be found on the other end of a double-barrel shotgun in pieces.

The Fisher King is a bit crap. I swear on the life of some week-old lemons in my fridge, that costume design is in every artist’s portfolio with the usual staples. The thing is, he’s not scary or interesting via direction either. He’s supposed to be the big bad wolf (no, not that again), but he turns out to be little more than a thing in the way, with the actual wolf in this metaphor being the problem to solve. This returns us to the bootstrap paradox and how the puzzle pieces fall together, despite being chewed along the edges by a toddler.

Once again I’m left returning to my usual phrase. It isn’t actually bad, it just isn’t interesting to me like it could have been. With a quicker episode, I’d shrug off my complaints about the lack of vibrancy, stock pacing, a crap monster, my nonsense about the definition of a faraday cage, and a collection of other things. However, it is having to sit with them and having to endure them for the length of the episode. That right there is the problem. Of course, it all comes down to personal preference, but when you are describing something as enduring, it is hard to say you had fun or you feel good about the episode.

That’s what I want from Doctor Who, a story that makes me walk away and say: “that was fun and I feel good about us.” Peter’s entire run as the Doctor has those moments. It has glints of that frivolity and cheer about it, but it is not the standard. In fact, it is often the minority to everything else going on. “Under the Lake” & “Before the Flood” is well-acted and well-directed (well enough) but some of the elements left the story exhausting at times. It was tiring simply because I wanted it to be over with not long after it had begun.

To simply put it, Peter, you are supposed to have two hearts, use one of them. Show that you actually care for once in your very long lifespan at this point. Also, if you want to go back to doing drugs with Craig Ferguson and playing punk-rock, you’ve got a time machine, do that in your spare time. Can we have one episode in this series that isn’t desaturated to high heavens? As I said before, there are moments, but generally it is not an impressive, fun, or carefree episode.

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Doctor Who "Under the Lake" & "Before the Flood"

6.5

Score

6.5/10

Pros

• Sophie Stone's fun, interesting, and intense performance.
• A few interesting ideas.

Cons

• YAY, another base base-under-siege story!
• Where is some vibrancy?
• Going through the motions in an elongated episode.
• That's not a faraday cage.
• Default crap design and pay-off for the Fisher King.