By the time this episode was over, I was left wondering if Toby Whithouse should have trusted the audience a little more.  The bit about the bootstrap paradox and Beethoven was a clever little bit, but it also telegraphed the hell out of the ending of the episode.  And while being given the key to the lock doesn’t necessarily make opening it any less exciting, in this case it meant that the audience was left to watch the inevitable play out over the hour. 

Granted, this particular plot device is nothing new.  Remember Bad Wolf?  But the difference is that the writers don’t usually beat you over the head with the concept right before employing it.  “Before the Flood” was quickly rendered, despite the fun of the opening, into something of a vanity project (“Look at how clever I can be!”).  And that took a bit of the shine off the episode for me.


It’s not like the series has to jump through hoops to prove that the time travel paradoxes work or anything; there has been enough dodgy writing over the last half-century to allow for a lot of grace in that area.  Also, there is such a thing as hanging too obvious a lampshade on narrative shenanigans.  And in a way, that’s what happened here: the bootstrap paradox is often a bit of a cheat, so by pointing that out and making it sound ponderous, the whole thing seems wonderfully complex.  

Which is not to say that the episode was a total loss by any means.  Semi-clever time travel stories are still semi-clever, and when The Doctor lies, things get interesting.  After all, The Doctor lying is not just a River Song meme of years past, but also a reminder that he plays by his own rules and only holds the moral high ground over The Master by virtue of “the greater good”.  (Wouldn’t it be interesting to get a story where the Doctor/Master dynamic is inverted in some fashion?  Just a thought.)


I find myself really enjoying Twelve this season, far more than Capaldi’s first go-round, and I say that having liked Capaldi as The Doctor pretty much from the start.  More so, I find it interesting that Clara is becoming a little more reckless about consequences as well, which suggests she’s been with The Doctor for a while and her moral compass is swinging a bit as a result.  I hope this is a plot point, because sooner or later, that has to come back to bite her.





At the very least, this should also have an effect on The Doctor, and this may already be showing itself.  Clara’s role, like that of most Companions, is to be both the experiential character for the audience and the balancing factor for The Doctor himself.  What happens when the companion starts acting more like The Doctor instead of the other way around?  And how does that play into the ongoing question of whether or not The Doctor is a “good man”?