September 23, 2023: "The Power of the Doctor"

While trying to stop a hijacking by CyberMasters, the Doctor, Yaz, and Dan become involved in an elaborate plot of the Master's involving multiple time zones, old friends, old enemies, and a very large source of energy.  The Master is ready to take over not just the Earth, but the Doctor herself...

And so here we are at the end of not only Jodie Whittaker's time as the Doctor, but also Chris Chibnall's time as showrunner.  And if that weren't enough, this is also ostensibly marking the BBC's Centenary (although, other than airing five days after the actual date and providing some cameos from earlier Doctors and companions, this has essentially nothing to do with those celebrations -- there are no plot points involving the BBC or 1922, for instance).  It's also the longest episode of the 21st-century run to date (and only a couple minutes shorter than record-holder The Five Doctors).  So there's a lot going on.  Do they pull it off?  Well...

It's been a trend for the stories made in this block of episodes (beginning with Flux, if you've forgotten) to be overstuffed and overcomplicated more often than not, and "The Power of the Doctor" continues that trend.  We jump from location to location, across multiple planets and time zones, with a huge number of plot threads to try to keep track of.  In other circumstances that might be OK, but there's just so much going on, and not enough explanations to clearly link it all together, that what we get is a frequently muddled mess.

One of the major examples of this is the Master.  I'm delighted to see Sacha Dhawan back as the Master, and it feels appropriate for the thirteenth Doctor to bow out while opposing the Master, but because Chibnall seems interested in including as many ideas as he can, the end result is a scheme that seems overly complicated even by the Master's standards.  Near as I can gather (and I've had to watch this multiple times to even figure this much out), the Master wants to take over the Doctor's body, so he enlists the help of his CyberMasters (who are back with no explanation after seemingly being all destroyed at the end of "The Timeless Children" -- guess Ko Sharmus died for nothing?) to create a giant power plant planet in order to induce a forced regeneration.  Then he also gets the Daleks involved 106 years later so that they can capture the Doctor for him, in exchange for which they get to exterminate humanity via volcanoes.  All this so he can, er, cosplay as a Doctor mashup.

The Master in the Doctor's body surveys the chaos he's caused.
("The Power of the Doctor") ©BBC

This is even stranger when you think about it, because "The Timeless Children" established that the Master hated the idea of there being a bit of Doctor in him so much that he was willing to wipe out the Time Lords.  Yet here he seems to desperately want to become the Doctor.  Now admittedly this is partly to ruin the Doctor's name, but perhaps not entirely: there's a moment later on where the Master seems to not want to be the Master ("Don't let me go back to being me") that suggests something more is going on.  But if the alternative to being the Master is being the Doctor, it's a bit surprising that the Master of "The Timeless Children" would be OK with that.  (Unless the Master was lying about some of that there; I'm still not convinced the Master isn't also a Timeless Child, so to speak.) 

But even setting larger character motivations aside, what is the Master playing at here?  He seems to be hanging out as Rasputin in 1916 Russia for fun, and while it makes a certain sense for the Master to be Rasputin, there doesn't seem to be any intrinsic reason for it.  Did he just really want to have a dance party to Boney M?  And what's going on with all the seismologists?  Is the Master concerned they might discover the Daleks?  Or is he just trying to drop clues for the Doctor while he gets himself arrested by UNIT?  It seems like a lot of effort just to capture the Doctor.  (Not to mention involving the Daleks, which you'd think would be just asking for trouble.  Well, except for the fact that they seem pretty much incidental here.)

And it feels like Chibnall missed a trick by making Sacha Dhawan play the Master in the Doctor's body, and not having Jodie Whittaker doing it instead.  Imagine if it had been Whittaker playing the Master at this point, and Yaz sees the person she loves doing unspeaking acts.  It would give Whittaker a chance to flex her acting muscles and make a much larger impact.  But as it is, it just looks like the Master dressed up as the Doctor and just claimed the war he started was done by her, as if people wouldn't just think, "Well that's just the Master".

Now, the Master's entire plan is probably the most obvious issue, but there are others.  It's probably because there are too many characters involved, but the way Dan Lewis leaves is really odd.  He doesn't even make it to the 13-minute mark before he decides he's had enough scrapes with death, thank you, he'd like to go home now.  It makes sense from a character point-of-view, but dramatically it's awkward, like trying to tidy up a loose end before getting to the heart of the story.  So farewell to John Bishop, who was one of the best things about series 13.  Frankly, Dan deserved better.

But similarly, because this is the end of the thirteenth Doctor's era, it does seem like Chibnall is trying to stuff as much stuff in as he can, with varying degrees of success.  It's great seeing Kate Stewart and UNIT back, but in some ways it just feels like an excuse for the Master to do more Bond villainy, this time à la Skyfall, with being captured and brought inside headquarters part of his elaborate plan.  Then there's the return of Ashad (or rather, his clone, according to a quick line from the Master), even though he doesn't get anything specific to do.  Vinder is here because... he was present before, I guess, even though it doesn't make sense why he's there in 1916 in the first place.  (Something to do with the wormhole they mention offhand, I'm guessing, but it's not explicit.)  At least the cameo from the (holographic) Fugitive Doctor makes sense.

Kate, Ace, Tegan, Yaz, and the Doctor inside UNIT HQ. ("The Power of
the Doctor") ©BBC

It's not all bad, fortunately.  One of the best things about "The Power of the Doctor" is the way it brings back both Tegan and Ace, and it's interesting to see how they've grown and changed since we last saw them.  Tegan seems rather aggrieved that the Doctor hasn't come back to see her since 1984, and while she seems to have done her best to live a life helping people it hasn't all gone smoothly.  "I have spent the past thirty years living like a nomad," she tells Kate Stewart.  "I have done land mines, coups, I have been hijacked, and I've nearly drowned trying to help people.  I've seen off two husbands, and somewhere out there is an adopted son who hasn't called me for six weeks."  Ace seems more calm and collected and with less of a chip on her shoulder than Tegan has, even while we get a sense that she and the Doctor parted on less than ideal terms.  "Didn't the Doctor ditch you?" the Master taunts her.  "No?  Little fallout with your Machiavellian maestro?"  But despite that, Ace seems more at peace with things and is still the Ace we remember.  And it's lovely how she immediately accepts this new Doctor, calling her "Professor".  But for both Ace and Tegan, it's cool to see them still risking their lives and being heroic, while still recognizably the same characters as before.

There's also something glorious about the little cameos of old Doctors, as the current Doctor stands on the brink of regeneration.  It starts with David Bradley once more portraying the first Doctor before moving to Colin Baker, then Peter Davison, then Paul McGann (Paul McGann!), and finally Sylvester McCoy.  (Therefore meaning every surviving Doctor has now appeared in the 21st-century version.)  Each Doctor gets a little bit of screentime and some fun character moments, such as Paul McGann refusing to appear in the same robes that the others are wearing.  "I don't do robes," he says.  "...I am a manifestation of our consciousness.  I can wear what I like."  It's also genuinely lovely to see Peter Davison interact with Tegan again, and Sylvester McCoy with Ace.  The scene with Tegan provides her some closure, which is sweet.  "You think you left and I never thought of you again," the holographic Doctor tells her.  "I never forget any of you.  I remember everything."  "Yeah?" Tegan challenges him.  "Well, what am I thinking, seeing all these Cybermen?"  "Adric," he replies, after a pause.  It's a quick scene, but it's a really good one.  Similarly, the scene between Ace and the holo-Doctor is also handled well, filling it a little bit of detail about what happened after Survival.  "I was only ever trying to teach you good habits, Ace," the seventh Doctor says.  "Obviously, I failed."  "You never failed me, Professor," Ace replies.  "You made me the person I am today.  I'm sorry we fell out.  I'm sorry I judged you.  I didn't understand the burden you carried."  It's nice to see Sophie Aldred and Sylvester McCoy back together again, even for a brief moment.

The companion cameos are great too.  The first one is perhaps the best just because it's so unexpected: Ace running into Graham while exploring a volcano, as Graham continues to investigate strange things and help out, like he and Ryan were going to at the end of "Revolution of the Daleks".  Bradley Walsh has lost none of his charm: "I can't get the hang of this," he says to Ace after unsuccessfully trying to use psychic paper on her.  The two of them have great chemistry and so it's fun to watch their interplay.  And then the fact that Graham organizes a companion support group at the end so that they can talk to each other about their experiences with the Doctor leads to some fun cameos from Katy Manning as Jo Jones, Bonnie Langford as Mel (guess Sabalom Glitz took her back home at some point), and William Russell as Ian, back on the show after over 57 years (which, incidentally, set a Guinness World Record for longest gap between appearances of a character on TV). "Sorry, did you say 'her'?" he asks.  It's a great moment, bringing back these nods to the past, without overdoing it or making it incomprehensible for casual viewers.

But to be honest, while these moments are welcome, there just aren't enough of them.  And they're not all perfect; the major glaring flaw in this regard is the way this story seems to more or less ignore the burgeoning relationship between Yaz and the Doctor.  This is the one story where you can really start to see what the Doctor sees in Yaz, as she acts to bring the Doctor back from her forced regeneration and handles flying the TARDIS, making a fine showing of herself.  So the fact that this story treats them as mates at best is a bit frustrating, especially after the end of "Legend of the Sea Devils".  It's a bit disappointing how Chibnall brought the characters to the edge of a resolution in the previous story and then backed away from it here.

Jodie Whittaker regenerates into...David Tennant? ("The Power of the
Doctor") ©BBC

So in many ways, "The Power of the Doctor" encapsulates the best and worst moments of the Chibnall era.  He excels at characterization and character interplay but falls down a bit when it comes to plotting and Epicness.  If Steven Moffat tended to plot things so tightly they would nearly break, Chibnall is the opposite, more interested in throwing a bunch of ideas together without exploring the ramifications of any of it.  This means that when he tries to go big, the result can be messy.  There's so much in "The Power of the Doctor" that seems to be there because Chibnall thinks it would be fun or cool without trying to determine how or why these things are present, and so the final result suffers.  And when you have a show that's spent the majority of its 59 years training people to think about what they're seeing and why things work the ways they do, this uneven mishmash can be disappointing.  In general it's nice to look at (well, mostly -- there are, oddly, a couple continuity issues and things that don't work the way I'm guessing director Jamie Magnus Stone wanted them to, such as the first look at Rasputin that accidentally reveals it's the Master, or a shot of the battered Dalek that isn't at all battered).  The characters are fun to watch, and seeing them move through this story is genuinely enjoyable.  It's just the story itself where things fall down.  And unfortunately, the plot is such a big part of this episode that the final result is a disappointment for all but perhaps the least demanding viewers.

But yes, time's up for the thirteenth Doctor.  After sending Yaz away for some reason ("I think I need to do this next bit alone"), she goes to watch one final sunrise and gets a little farewell speech that's mercifully less overwritten than what Peter Capaldi got.  "That's the only sad thing," she says.  "I want to know what happens next.  Right, then.  Doctor whoever-I'm-about-to-be: tag, you're it."  And then we get a rather stylish regeneration as the camera pulls back (and this time they're not destroying a TARDIS interior!), before, surprisingly, David Tennant reappears -- and not Ncuti Gatwa, who had been announced as the next Doctor.  "I know these teeth," he says (in a line that was apparently written by Tennant himself).  And yes, the Doctor's outfit regenerates as well: ostensibly because incoming showrunner Russell T Davies (back again!) didn't want to provide fuel for bigots with David Tennant wearing women's clothing (not that this was an issue earlier in the episode when Sacha Dhawan did it...), but part of me wonders if it's also because it had happened way back in 1966, with Hartnell into Troughton.

And so that's the end of Jodie Whittaker's time as the Doctor.  It's interesting; while she's a trailblazing Doctor just by virtue of the fact of being the first woman Doctor, she doesn't seem like that big a departure from the other Doctors.  It's proof, if nothing else, that anyone really can play the Doctor.  The thirteenth Doctor was characterized by a joy for life and adventure, and Whittaker brought a real energy and liveliness to the part that made that joy shine through.  As a Doctor, Whittaker more than easily proved her worth.  If there's any caveat to be had, it's perhaps similar to that for Colin Baker, where the stories didn't always give her the best material to work with.  Jodie Whittaker is at her best whizzing around, fixing things and discovering new worlds.  If only she'd had more opportunities for that and less for exposition to be directed at her that she had to stand there and react to.

But this is also the end of Chris Chibnall's tenure as showrunner, and, as I noted above, it was a tenure marked by ups and downs.  Chibnall's biggest strengths are characterization and small-scale stories, and it's in these moments that his time shines.  Series 11 in particular is marked by a number of these stories, and so it may be the strongest of his three series.  It's only when he tries to mimic, either consciously or unconsciously, the larger-scale stakes of his two immediate predecessors that things start to go wrong.  Sometimes it seems like this is just because he hasn't taken the time to properly emphasize important details, such that they get lost in a sea of noise.  But in any event, it does mean that there are moments during his time that fall flat.  In many ways, then, his real successes were behind the camera, with conscious efforts to diversify the cast and crew of the show.  All that said, for right now I'm generally positive about the thirteenth Doctor's era, because there are more hits than misses.  There are so many positive things about Chibnall's time on the show, from casting to location filming to some really exceptional stories, but I think the additions to the Mythos of the show overshadow all the things that Chibnall unequivocally did right.  But, more than Davies or Moffat, Chibnall's time as showrunner might be the hardest to judge right now.  He took some big narrative swings that, right now, don't seem like they've really paid off.  But it will be interesting to see how those moves are treated in the next 5, 10, or 20 years.  Will they become part of the bedrock of the show, or will they be quietly ignored?  And how will fandom treat this era now that it's over?  It will be curious to see.

But now, as always, it's time to look forward, to the new fourteenth Doctor, who somehow has the same face as the tenth Doctor.  How could that be?  We'll have to wait for the 60th anniversary specials to find out...

September 22: "Legend of the Sea Devils"

Promotional photo for "Legend of the Sea Devils" (from SpoilerTV)
©BBC

At the end of "Eve of the Daleks", the Doctor expressed an interest in learning what happened to the lost treasure of the Flor de la Mar, a (real) Portuguese ship that sank off the coast of Sumatra in 1511.  And so here we follow up on that -- except instead of arriving in 1511 Sumatra, the TARDIS has been dragged off course to 1807 China, where the pirate queen Madam Ching (also a real figure from history, perhaps more appropriately known as Zheng Yi Sao, but we'll call her Madam Ching because that's what the credits call her) has just unwittingly released an "ocean demon" from its stone captivity...

When Chris Chibnall's final year on the show was being planned, they initially settled on a total of eight episodes: the six episodes of Flux and two specials.  However, at one point BBC One asked for an additional episode to form part of the BBC's Centenary celebration in late 2022.  Now I don't know for certain, but I'm willing to bet this is that extra episode.  That's partly because this episode isn't concerned with either cleaning up after Flux or foreshadowing the end of the thirteenth Doctor's time, but instead is content to be something of an uncomplicated adventure.

One of the downsides of that, however, is that because this has been made during COVID, it's a curiously empty-feeling tale.  You sort of expect a pirate adventure to be full of, well, pirates, but we only get a very small handful here: Madam Ching is the only true (human) pirate, while the villager Ying Ki and the captain-out-of-time Ji-Hun also do some pirate-like things.  And, other than the Doctor, Yaz, and Dan, that's it.  They try to explain it away with some stuff about how Ching's crew has been captured and is being held ransom for the treasure of the Flor de la Mar, but they don't really get away with it.  They made the limited cast a virtue in "Eve of the Daleks", but they try to push it too far here.  Which is not to say that the actors we do get aren't worthwhile: Marlowe Chan-Reeves is rather sweet as Ying Ki, while Arthur Lee gets to be noble and decent as Ji-Hun -- and of course, Crystal Yu does a good job as Madam Ching, searching out the treasure that she believes Ji-Hun claimed before he too underwent a mysterious disappearance.  The people we get are great; you just wish there had been a way to include more people, even just as background artists.

Of course, that's also because they've chosen to have a bunch of Sea Devils in as well.  And unlike the Silurians in series 5 and later, these are proper Sea Devils, with the heads looking more or less the same as they did in The Sea Devils and Warriors of the Deep.  (Reportedly, they in fact had a cast of one of the original heads that they used for their design.)  They look fabulous, and being dressed in more pirate-y outfits (as opposed to the string vests in The Sea Devils or the, er, samurai outfits of Warriors of the Deep) doesn't change that at all.  There are a couple minor niggles (they've tried to make the faces more mobile, but they still don't quite pull off the impression that the Sea Devils are talking, while someone's concerned we won't recognize which Sea Devil is talking -- even though only one of them ever speaks -- so they've put a necklace around the Chief Sea Devil's neck that flashes like Dalek dome lights (or the Silurians' third eye in Warriors of the Deep) whenever it says something), but overall it's a nicely faithful design without being in any way risible.  It's a little strange, however, how Chris Chibnall and co-writer Ella Road have given them characteristics like the ability to teleport in a cloud of green smoke or to leap hundreds of feet in the air (with less than ideal CG -- but then, somewhat surprisingly, there are a number of somewhat ropey CG shots in this episode; is this a side-effect of the COVID restrictions, perhaps?).  Presumably it's a technique to save narrative time, to not have to worry about how the Chief Sea Devil (Craige Els, by the way, back after having played Karvanista in Flux) gets from place to place, but it still feels odd, especially since no one comments on it; they just accept it like it's a natural part of being a Sea Devil.  And if we're pointing out oddities, the way the Sea Devils keep calling the humans "land crawlers", while their ultimate goal, of causing the Earth to be flooded and once again "aqua", either forgets that their ostensible cousins the Silurians also lived on land or suggests that the Sea Devils aren't on as friendly terms with the Silurians as we've been led to believe.

Yaz and the Doctor look for the wreck of the Flor de la Mar on the
seabed. ("Legend of the Sea Devils") ©BBC

Still, in terms of story there's nothing terribly wrong here, other than the usual occasional "just go with it" moment that seems to characterize a lot of Chibnall-era Who.  They even fit in a bit of time to develop that "Yaz has feelings for the Doctor" storyline from last episode, with the added wrinkle that maybe the Doctor reciprocates those feelings.  "You know what I said earlier about not being a bad date?" the Doctor says to Yaz, referencing an earlier line.  "Well, dates are not something I really do, you know.  I mean, I used to.  Have done.  And if I was going to, believe me, it'd be with you.  I think you're one of the greatest people I've ever known."  It's a nice line of dialogue, but the problem is that it's difficult to believe, primarily because, as I've frequently noted, they haven't developed Yaz's character enough.  Whether you liked it or you didn't, you could at least see what they were getting at with the Doctor and Rose's relationship, but this version just rings hollow.  Yaz up to this point hasn't distinguished herself from any of the other companions, at least as far as we've seen, and so it's not clear what makes Yaz any different from, say, Ryan, or Bill, or Nardole.  And to be clear, this has nothing to do with Mandip Gill, who's been excellent as Yaz; this is the fault of the writing, which hasn't made enough of an effort to actually show us how Yaz stands out.  It's as if Chibnall assumed that simply stating it was enough, without doing the work to have it play out on screen.  I'm not upset that they're going down this road, but I do wish they'd let us actually see what the Doctor sees in Yaz.  Not that this story's going anywhere anyway; the thirteenth Doctor only has one episode left, after all, while Gill has also made it clear she's also leaving, so it's not like this will be explored under Ncuti Gatwa's Doctor.  So there's also a sense that this just being introduced for the sake of doing something, rather than because there's a clear purpose behind it.

I've discussed this rather at length because it's one of the meatier things to engage with in this story.  The rest of the tale consists of a bunch of running around and worrying about technobabble-y problems.  That's not the worst of sins; sometimes you just want a straightforward romp, and like I said, there's nothing really wrong with "Legend of the Sea Devils".  It's just that there's not a whole lot here to wow you either.  This is another one of those pleasantly average, vaguely forgettable stories the show occasionally turns out, and if this had been in the middle of a series I don't know that anyone would be that put out by it.  But because it was an Easter special, and one of only three new episodes this year, it's a bit more frustrating that this wasn't a bit more ambitious.  In many ways this just feels like marking time before the end of Thirteen, and while that may be the result of circumstance, it's still a disappointing place to find the series right before the thirteenth Doctor's final adventure.

But once again that brings us to the end of this year's set of reviews and reflections on the past year's episodes.  I hope you'll join me here on September 23, 2023, for a discussion of the finale of Jodie Whittaker's time as the Doctor.  "The Power of the Doctor" awaits...

September 21: "Eve of the Daleks"

In the wake of the Flux event, the Doctor decides to head to the beaches of San Munrohvar, where she, Yaz, and Dan can relax while the TARDIS repairs itself after the breakdown of time caused it to go all screwy.  Only they don't arrive on a beach, but in a storage facility in Manchester, where they're caught in a time loop.  The Daleks are determined to exterminate the Doctor, and they don't care how many times it takes...

So now we've arrived at the first of the final three Jodie Whittaker specials, with this one airing less than a month after "The Vanquishers".  And if Flux ended up being something of an overstuffed and overcomplicated mess, "Eve of the Daleks" shows what Chris Chibnall can do when he's not striving to be Epic.  In contrast to the universe- and time-zone-hopping antics of Flux, "Eve of the Daleks" is focused on a single location, a small cast, and an easily understandable premise, and the result is a breath of fresh air.

It doesn't hurt that the guest cast are generally likable.  Aisling Bea is a bit prickly as Sarah, but she doesn't go too far in that direction, instead striking a good balance between being annoyed and exasperated and being caring, even if she tries to shove that caring side down.  Sarah is a character that could have easily become insufferable, but Bea lets the walls down a few times in a way that makes her relatable and thus easier to sympathize with.  Adjani Salmon also does a good job as Nick, someone who's awkward but clearly has a big heart, even if he also has a bit of an inability to properly let go (as his storage unit makes clear).  And the chemistry between Sarah and Nick is also good, feeling appropriate without being too cutesy or antagonistic overall.

The Doctor and company are exterminated for the third time. ("Eve
of the Daleks") ©BBC

But the main hook of "Eve of the Daleks" is the time loop plot (or Groundhog Day, as Dan puts it), which allows us to see our heroes actually get exterminated, without any lasting consequences.  It also lets the Daleks win temporarily, while also letting us see the Doctor and friends learn from the previous iterations of the time loop.  This means we get mad scrambling, trying out new strategies, and drama as people get annoyed with each other because of these crazy circumstances.  ("Yeah, 'cos it's not my fault, is it?" Sarah yells at Yaz at one point.  "It's hers.  And there's no point us all sticking together if we keep on dying multiple times.")  Plus it's fun to watch the Daleks adapting as well, often rendering the Doctor's plans moot (such as when they knock out the power in the building).  And it also gives us a lovely moment where Dan decides to sacrifice himself to buy the Doctor some more time ("If I manage to stay alive, I'll see you up there.  If not, I'll see you in the next loop.  So there'd better be a next loop"), which then leads to a great scene with Dan treating a Dalek like it works in the building. "What kind of a welcome is that, eh?  I'll report you to your manager!" he exclaims, after the Dalek attempts to exterminate him.  And the fact that this is a time loop story means that they can do things like this without having to worry about engineering increasingly implausible escapes: just kill them and move on to the next iteration.

One of the other good things about "Eve of the Daleks" is that they actually take a bit of time to introduce some character growth too.  You can kinda sorta see it in Flux, but here is the moment where we really learn that Yaz has strong feelings for the Doctor.  Admittedly, this could still go wrong -- after all, we've been down this road before with Martha -- but it's at least something.  And honestly, what makes it work for me in this episode isn't Yaz's feelings, but the way Dan quietly susses them out.  The scene between him and Yaz is quite touching, while also working in some characterization for both Yaz and Dan: "I don't know what to do, Dan," Yaz says.  "I've never told anyone.  Not even myself."  "Just tell her," Dan replies.  "... Look, I took way too long to tell somebody that I liked them and then... the universe ended and everything got messy.  I wouldn't want that to happen to you, Sheffield."  But what's equally great is when Dan does the same thing with the Doctor: "She likes you," he tells her.  "I like her, too," the Doctor says brightly.  "No, I mean... she likes you," Dan replies.  "I don't understand what you're saying, Dan," the Doctor answers.  "I think you do.  But for some reason you pretend to me, and to her, that you don't," Dan says, a bit harshly.  As I said, I'm not fully sold on this potential relationship -- we'll have to see what they do with it -- but I'm definitely enjoying watching Dan nudge both of them along.

Is "Eve of the Daleks" perfect?  No.  It occasionally feels a touch padded (some of the exploration of Jeff's stuff, for instance), while -- much like Chibnall's very first Doctor Who episode, "42" -- the amount of time we're told they have left versus the amount of time they actually spend in a given loop doesn't bear close scrutiny (that last time through the loop especially).  But these are minor complaints.  After the excess of Flux, it's good to have a clear, focused, well-written episode again, with a clear indication of what Chibnall can do with the proper discipline.  "Eve of the Daleks" is one of the highlights of this block of stories, and possibly of the thirteenth Doctor's entire era.

September 20: "Chapter Six: The Vanquishers"

(Flux episode 6)

And so it all comes down to this.  At the end of the last episode, Swarm and Azure had found their way to Division via the Doctor and something called a psycho-temporal bridge, where they ended up killing Tecteun and seizing control of Division, while Prentis made a deal with the Sontarans to let them invade Earth.  This is what Flux has been building toward, and to their credit, they almost pull it off.

It helps that, after having been more or less helpless in the last episode, here the Doctor gets to be proactive again, rushing around trying to save the day at the last minute.  And in fact, due to some technobabble, she ends up split into three distinct selves, each in a different area of space but working together, with one back in Division, one with Karvanista and Bel aboard a Lupari vessel, and one reunited with Yaz, Dan, Jericho, and Kate Stewart in the Williamson Tunnels.  It's really sweet in this last version, how she gives Yaz a great big hug, while Dan praises Yaz to the Doctor: "She was amazing.  She is amazing," he tells the Doctor. "Don't go soppy on me now, Scouse," Yaz replies.  It's a nice acknowledgement of what they've been through without being too maudlin.

The three versions of the Doctor psychically communicate with
each other. ("The Vanquishers") ©BBC

And one of the nice things about "The Vanquishers" is that now that they're no longer trying to incorporate tons of exposition, they can finally get on with things while only dealing typical amounts of exposition (such as the Sontaran plot to wipe out the Daleks and Cybermen, or the explanation of the purpose of the Williamson Tunnels).  We now know what the stakes actually are, and so we can follow along without too much trouble.  And it's exciting to watch three versions of the Doctor doing all the things they need to do, such as smuggling multiple people into the Sontaran ship to gain information so that they can then stop them.  It's good to see the Doctor actually doing something for a change, instead of just constantly being on the back foot and reacting to events: this proactive approach is much more engaging.  It's also a nice way to get the Doctor to interact with all the disparate groups without letting things get too crowded, as well as a chance to see some multi-Doctor interactions -- and note how this Doctor seems very pleased at meeting herself.  "I've got such a crush on her!" one of them remarks, after she's freed from being interrogated by the Grand Serpent.  An interrogation scene which lets us see just how good Jodie Whittaker can be, by the way; here she's doing her usual rambling-fast thing, but there's an edge here that's not often present.  It's one of the best scenes in the episode, honestly.

There are other moments of fun too.  Learning that the Sontaran weakness is sweets is ridiculous, but it's also rather in character for what we know about them (or at least, based on what we've seen from Strax).  The reuniting of Bel and Vinder is a very sweet, well-earned moment.  And seeing Kate Stewart back in action and standing up to the Grand Serpent ("I knew you were skulking down here," he says to her.  "And yet in your arrogance, you came alone," she replies coolly) is fantastic.

Azure, Swarm, and the Doctor meet Time (in the form of Swarm)
outside the Temple of Atropos. ("The Vanquishers") ©BBC

It's not perfect, of course.  I'm still a little upset that Jericho died, since he was such a great character -- although they did at least give one brief moment of Yaz saddened by his death (remember, he was basically her companion for the past three years) before it's off to the next bit of universe-saving business.  And it's a little odd how we're told that the Sontarans have killed all the Lupari save Karvanista despite never seeing any evidence of them even starting to attack or board the Lupari ships.  (This might be a result of having to cut stuff for time, admittedly; there's another very obvious edit when the Doctor is talking to Passenger, for instance.)  And the resolution is rather strange; the Sontarans' plan is to lure the Daleks and the Cybermen to where the final Flux event will occur and have them absorb the force of it while they stay behind the Lupari shields, which the Doctor adjusts by moving the Lupari ships behind the Sontarans, such that the Sontarans will also be absorbed by the Flux.  This feels like a surprisingly callous move for the thirteenth Doctor, especially given she was berating Lieutenant-General Logan about blowing up the Sontarans four episodes ago.  And also, somewhat surprisingly, the initial Flux event isn't rolled back in any way, so therefore the universe is still in tatters with lots of refugees and destroyed planets and stars and such.  (And again, why was this never mentioned in any prior story?  You might argue that it's because it hadn't happened until this story, but Doctor Who up to this point tends to assume that the events of the Doctor and others are already part of history, not rewriting it, so it's not clear why this would be any different.)  I'm also not sure I understand what's going on with this idea of Time as a physical being in conflict with Space, and that the Temple of Atropos somehow imprisoned Time.  (Well, actually, that's a very New Adventures-esque story beat, so I'm not actually as bothered by it as I perhaps should be.  They still don't explain it very well though.)  Still, it does let them more or less wrap up the Ravager arc, while Time puts the Doctor back together after providing some now-standard "time's running out" end-of-Doctor warnings, so that's all right, I suppose.  One does kind of wish they'd given them more to do though, instead of generally just standing around acting threatening -- there's not much impetus to stop their evil plan once they're inside Division, for instance.  Oh, and this is a minor detail, but it's weird that this is set in 2021 and yet no one inside the Museum of Liverpool is wearing a mask.  (I can understand that Chibnall isn't particularly interested in having COVID show up in Doctor Who, but it still feels off.)

So as I said, they almost get away with it.  On its own, "The Vanquishers" does a lot right, such that it's a very enjoyable watch.  It's got action and heart and loads of great confrontations, and if you were just watching this I think you'd have a good time, even if you might not be following everything closely.  As far as individual episodes go, this is one of the better ones of series 13.  And honestly, as a wrap up to Flux in general, "The Vanquishers" does a decent job.  By the end we finally have some idea of what's been going on, and it holds together well enough that aren't that many gaping plot holes afterwards.

The larger issue is that I'm not sure Flux itself is that much of a success.  I mean, it's by no means the worst of Doctor Who, or even of the thirteenth Doctor's era.  The problem is that there's just far too much going on.  Episodes are overstuffed with incidents, while crucial details get short shrift in favor of irrelevant moments and situations: the Weeping Angels episode is the best of the bunch, but it's not clear what purpose the Angels really serve in terms of the actual Flux storyline.  It also doesn't help that there's little in the way of targeted explanation or emphasis.  Key details are thrown away amidst a sea of technobabble, such that it becomes difficult to work out what's important and what's incidental.  It's not a great sign that, a few days after "The Vanquishers" had aired, they felt compelled to release a 15-minute-long(!) video attempting to explain just what the hell was going on in Flux, complete with Chris Chibnall wearing an oddly JNT-esque Hawaiian shirt.  (The video is also available on the DVD/Blu-ray, if you're curious.)  I don't want to fault them for their ambition, and in some ways this feels a lot like the criticisms that series 6 received regarding its overarching plotline.  But it does feel like they tried to do too much at once, and the series suffered from a lack of focus as a result, as attention constantly shifted to new and different things.  And frustratingly, proper comprehension of Flux comes not from sitting down and thinking about and realizing what they were getting at (the way series 6 tended to be), but rather from paying close attention to what's being said at any one time while having some vague sense of what it is you're meant to be listening for.

There's also the related concern that it's still not clear how this served the Doctor's own character arc.  This whole thing started partly due to the Doctor trying to learn more about her missing past, but by the end, when she actually has the special Time Lord memory-containing fob watch in her hands, she chooses to hide it somewhere in the TARDIS.  Which might be getting at the idea that the Doctor is happier with who she is right now, but we've already been here, both at the end of "The Timeless Children" and the end of "Revolution of the Daleks".  Whether or not you're happy with this lost past storyline, this feels like here they're just spinning their wheels.

So I dunno.  Flux almost holds together if you take the time to pay attention to everything that's going on (or maybe watch a couple "Flux explained" videos on the internet), and the basic storyline isn't too bad, even if it's a touch abstract at times.  But because they've jumbled it up and overcomplicated things, it doesn't land the way they want it to.  This is a story that might have benefited from either a couple more episodes or a more judicious pruning of the story we got.  The fact that they put this out in the middle of COVID is a feat in itself.  I just wish Chris Chibnall had taken a bit more time to boil down the essence of Flux before they started putting it in front of a camera.

September 19: "Chapter Five: Survivors of the Flux"

(Flux episode 5)

After last episode's dramatic cliffhanger, we learn that the Doctor didn't really turn into a Weeping Angel; it's just something the Angels temporarily did for fun before they sent her off to Division.  Honestly, it's a pretty disappointing resolution to the cliffhanger.

But then, in a way, that rather sums up "Survivors of the Flux".  This isn't an episode where much happens, to be frank.  Much of it involves the Doctor getting plot exposition dumped on her (in scenes reminiscent of the last time they did this, "The Timeless Children") while the other characters are maneuvered into the positions they need to be in for the final installment.  So Bel gets forcibly taken to Earth (since Karvanista remotely commandeers the ship to bring it to the rest of the Lupari craft), Vinder gets absorbed by Passenger (where he meets Diane -- remember Diane? -- who's also stuck inside Passenger), and Yaz, Dan, and Jericho make their way around the planet on a sort of wild goose chase before they finally get where they need to be: inside the Williamson tunnels beneath Liverpool.

Jericho, Dan, and Yaz in Nepal. ("Survivors of the Flux") ©BBC

Well, to be fair, the Yaz/Dan/Jericho storyline is probably the most enjoyable of the various strands running through this episode.  They've been in stuck in the past for 3 years now, but it doesn't appear that they're giving up on being reunited with the Doctor.  This means that we get to see them traveling all over the world in 1904, searching for the date in the future when Earth will become a battleground over which the survivors of the Flux will fight (a date they can know in 1904 due to something about the Flux sending ripples back through time -- at some point you have to just shrug and go along with it).  So they're raiding temples in Mexico, trying to get artifacts translated in Constantinople, and seeking advice from seers in Nepal, all in an effort to get the date they need.  It's definitely fun watching Yaz lead this team of misfits around, with some of the best moments in the episode coming from their interactions: the Indiana Jones-like entry into the Mexican pyramid being undercut by Dan and Jericho plummeting from the ceiling because they haven't properly worked out the pulley system's counterweights is delightful, and while the seer's antics are pretty dumb ("I'm teasing you!"), they're nevertheless amusingly dumb.  And honestly, I would love to see more of the three of them hanging out together -- they have such great chemistry.  It's just that their storyline doesn't feel like it really goes anywhere; they learn part of the date (December 5th -- guess what date the series 13 finale is going to air?), they get sidetracked by the Nepalese seer to "fetch your dog", only for Karvanista to note, upon seeing their message that they're trapped in 1904, that he doesn't have time travel technology (so that doesn't go anywhere), and then they only figure out where to go because they learn who the guy in the 19th-century outfit who keeps popping up actually is (Joseph Williamson), so that they know to go to Liverpool.  (Although that leads to another fun moment: "I'll go over," Dan says upon spotting Williamson in the tunnels.  "One Scouser to another."  "Hey, Dan," Yaz stops him.  "Are you from Liverpool?  Why have you never mentioned it?")  Most of their storyline oddly feels like padding -- a strange thing in a story that already feels like it has too much going on.  Plus there are the moments where they're being hunted down by agents of the Grand Serpent, which feels like a plot thread that doesn't end up going anywhere.

Prentis and General Farquhar in UNIT HQ. ("Survivors of the
Flux") ©BBC

Ah yes, the Grand Serpent.  The other major plot strand involves the Grand Serpent on Earth, infiltrating itself throughout the history of UNIT.  He's been involved from the idea of creating it in 1958, through to its final creation in 1967 (complete with a vocal cameo from Nicholas Courtney as "Corporal Lethbridge-Stewart"³⁰⁰ -- the actual line is taken from Terror of the Autons), to some political maneuverings through the '80s, which leads to its being shut down in 2017 (thus explaining why UNIT wasn't available in "Resolution").  And hooray, Kate Stewart's back!  We see how scheming the Grand Serpent (or Prentis, as he's called here) is, killing people by someone manifesting an alien snake inside their bodies, but that means it's even better when Kate stands up to him and is able to prevent his snake trick from working on her.  But since Prentis is apparently in charge of UNIT (even in 2021 -- I guess they just went underground rather than being completely disbanded), Kate has to go into hiding.  To be continued next time, presumably.

The Grand Serpent stuff is reasonably exciting to watch, but it does start to get really odd when you think about it.  So Prentis apparently has time travel technology (Kate even comments on it), for unexplained reasons, but that makes the timeline even harder to work out, since last we saw, he was in charge of whatever society Vinder and Bel come from, which seemed to be present day (well, minus 21,754 rotational reports -- which admittedly is nearly 60 years, if a rotational report on Observation Outpost Rose happens once every 24 hours.  You know what, maybe it's better not to think too hard about this aspect of it), and Vinder was clearly penalized for his attempt to go public about the Grand Serpent's machinations.  So why does this episode just assume that Prentis has been deposed?  ("There was a time, far, far away, when I used to have people and empires to do this for me.  They're all long gone now," Prentis says at one point.)  And why does Prentis have time travel tech?  The impression is that he's trying to turn UNIT into his own private black-ops outfit, presumably for the purpose of aiding the Sontarans next episode, but it's never clear why he needs time technology to do this, or why he's involved in this part of the story at all, honestly.  It feels overcomplicated and underexplained.

And then the Doctor's storyline, as I noted above, consists of the older woman from "Once, Upon Time" showing up, announcing that she's Tecteun, the Shobogan woman who first found the Doctor (as detailed in "The Timeless Children"), and then explaining the whole plot in a curiously uninvolving manner.  Basically, the Doctor once worked for Division, but then she left.  But she kept doing good things in the universe, and this apparently upset Division enough that they decided to get rid of the universe by creating the Flux and to start again in a new one.  This sounds like it should be a Huge Deal, full of import and drama.  The Doctor finally finds Division, and Tecteun is there!  And we learn about the Flux and what's going on!  And yet, it comes across like a vaguely bored lecture.  I don't know if this is a failing of the script, of the direction, or just a weird side-effect of the COVID filming restrictions, but the whole thing comes across as lackluster and low-energy.

So yeah.  "Survivors of the Flux" manages to be both complicated and rather uninvolving.  And that's a problem; this should be the moment where Flux finally comes together, leaving us excited for the finale, but instead it just feels like more disconnected narratives mixed with too much exposition and, paradoxically, not enough actual explanations.  There's still one episode to go, but at this point, it feels like Flux is going to end up being too ambitious for their own good.







³⁰⁰ So if this is 1967, how do we reconcile Lethbridge-Stewart as a corporal with everything else we know about UNIT history?  They mention "the whole thing at the Post Office Tower" (The War Machines), so we at least know that exists.  And we know Lethbridge-Stewart is a colonel by The Web of Fear (a story, it should be noted, that doesn't appear to have anything to do with UNIT (no one has UNIT patches on, for instance), but maybe we can let that slide -- the dialogue in The Invasion states that he was put in charge of UNIT after "the Yeti 'do", not that UNIT itself was formed in its wake).  But if The Web of Fear is roughly contemporary with its broadcast, that would put it at 1968.  Now, as you may recall, there's some evidence that The Web of Fear is actually roughly 1975, but this leads to all sorts of problems because Mawdryn Undead, a story in which the Brigadier is retired and teaching maths at Brendan, is explicitly 1977.  This is what led us to ultimately conclude that the bulk of the UNIT stories we see take place in the early 1970s.  The easiest way out of this might be to just assume that this scene is set slightly after The Web of Fear, and that General Farquhar misspoke when he called Lethbridge-Stewart a corporal, meaning "Colonel" instead.  And if nothing else, we can conclude that UNIT dating is still a headache, even over 50 years later.  Oh, and that Chris Chibnall is clearly a "late '70s" UNIT dating proponent.

September 18: "Chapter Four: Village of the Angels"

(Flux episode 4)

The Angel has the TARDIS, but the Doctor is able to expel it -- but not before the Angel takes them to its desired destination: an English village in 1967, where Claire Brown (the woman who met the Doctor and Yaz outside the TARDIS before a Weeping Angel attacked her back in "The Halloween Apocalypse") is now residing.  And it seems there's more than one Angel about...

"Village of the Angels" is the only episode this series where Chris Chibnall has a coauthor: Maxine Alderton, who also wrote "The Haunting of Villa Diodati" last series.  It might just be a coincidence, but it's also the case that this episode is the most focused one of series 13.  Part of that is because we spend so much time in the village of Medderton (admittedly, in two time periods, but still) instead of in various disparate locations: there are only three scenes that are set elsewhere, as we follow Bel (still looking for Vinder) exploring the planet Puzano and learning that Azure is using Passenger to entrap people for some currently-unknown nefarious purpose, and then, in a mid-credits scene (only the second one for the entire show, after series 8's "Death in Heaven"), we see Vinder following after Bel, looking for her.  And the fact that they actually made that a mid-credit scene might be significant, as if they knew including a Vinder scene in the main part of the episode would pull focus from the rest of it.

So instead we follow the Doctor, Yaz, and Dan as they quickly get caught up in events in the village: Yaz and Dan become involved in a search for a missing ten-year-old girl named Peggy, while the Doctor follows her sonic screwdriver to an experiment being run on Claire by Professor Eustacius Jericho, as played by Kevin McNally, returning to the show for the first time since 1984's The Twin Dilemma (where he played Lt. Hugo Lang).  Claire, it seems, is psychic, and so the Professor is recording her brainwaves.  And honestly, it's a bit disappointing, finding out Claire is psychic; the first part of Flux seemed to be suggesting that maybe Claire and the Doctor were meeting out of sequence, but instead it's just that Claire had a premonition, which is a bit less exciting.

A Weeping Angel attempts to emerge from Jericho's television.
("Village of the Angels") ©BBC

But that's a minor complaint.  The meat of the episode is really good, with the Doctor, Jericho, and Claire under siege from a group of Weeping Angels who are hunting Claire.  It seems a rogue Angel is hiding inside Claire's mind (since Claire had a premonition of the Angel, and the image of an Angel can become an Angel, even inside the mind -- honestly, that's a reasonably terrifying idea), and the other Angels have come to extract it.  This is because the rogue Angel was once a member of the Division, but, while that provides some motivation for the Angels in terms of the overall story, it's not necessary to properly understand that to enjoy the rest of the episode.  And to their credit, Chibnall and Alderton make good use of some of the other Weeping Angel tricks, with half-formed Angels sprouting from a drawing and a television, while Claire feels stone dust coming out of her eye, just like in "The Time of Angels".  It's suitably creepy and engaging, and it doesn't require the audience to have much in the way of prior knowledge to get what's going on.  In other words, this is probably the most accessible episode of this series.

But one of the nice things about "Village of the Angels" being part of a larger story is that they can play a longer game.  To wit, the storyline involving Dan and Yaz looking for Peggy results in them actually attacked by an Angel and sent back in time to 1901, where Peggy also ended up.  And because Flux isn't over yet, they can leave things with the two of them still stuck in 1901, instead of having to have the Doctor come rescue them by episode's end.  But not only that, this move also gives Yaz and Dan a chance to do some investigating on their own, as they find that the 1901 version of Medderton has been deserted (presumably the work of the Angels).  Really, the only complaint here is that they have to do a bit of clunky exposition where Peggy has had thoughts placed in her mind by the Weeping Angels, in order to explain what's going on with the village having been "quantum extracted", whatever that means.  (Something about taking the village out of time and space; maybe the "quantum" part means it's both extracted and not extracted?  Or maybe "quantum" is just the latest SF buzzword, like "cyber" once was.  Or "sonic", to use a particularly relevant example.)  But it's nice to see Yaz take charge -- since Dan seems to quickly defer to her -- in a situation where it doesn't come across as reckless (like it did in "Praxeus", to give an example).  Plus, we get to see Peggy's rather unpleasant uncle Gerald (Vincent Brimble, who's also a returning Who actor, having played Tarpok in Warriors of the Deep -- also from 1984, curiously enough) meet an unpleasant end when a Weeping Angel attacks him after having already been sent back to 1901.  "Nobody survives it twice," Peggy says.  It's a good way of increasing the threat of the Weeping Angels; now they can kill you for real, instead of just "kindly" by sending you back in time.²⁹⁹

Jericho, Peggy, Dan, and Yaz talk to the Doctor across the barrier while
she's surrounded by Angels. ("Village of the Angels") ©BBC

I also like how the episode wraps things up with the striking image of the two time zones separated by some sort of barrier, with one during the day and the other at night.  It's a cool look, and it allows some interaction that we otherwise wouldn't get, such as Peggy learning that the old woman who's been leaving warning notes around the village in 1967 is in fact Peggy herself, having taken the long way home.  It's always neat to be confronted by the actions of the Weeping Angels in such a direct way, and it does a good job of directly tying things together even more tightly.  There's also the fun moment where Yaz warns the Doctor at the barrier: "Don't come any closer!  We're stuck in 1901."  "Wait, we're what?" asks Jericho, who'd been caught earlier by a Weeping Angel.  "Maybe we should have broken that to you a little bit more gently," Dan says ruefully.  But the most shocking moment comes at the end, where we learn that the rogue Angel has in fact brokered a deal with the Weeping Angel extraction squad, to exchange its freedom for that of a bigger prize: the Doctor.  The image of the Doctor slowly turning to stone and covering her eyes as wings sprout from her back is definitely a striking one, and it leaves the audience wondering just how she can possibly get out of that.  It's compelling stuff.

So "Village of the Angels", by focusing mainly on the Weeping Angel storyline and not really on any of the other Flux plot threads that have been intruding throughout the story, becomes easily the standout tale of series 13.  It's focused, well-written, and clear, keeping the number of "wait, I don't understand what's happening or what the motivation is" moments to a minimum.  If only all of Flux could be as good as this.







²⁹⁹ How this works in relation to the battery farm we see in "The Angels Take Manhattan" is left unclear.  Maybe if you wait long enough between Weeping Angel attacks, you can survive?

September 17: "Chapter Three: Once, Upon Time"

(Flux episode 3)

When we last saw our heroes, Swarm was about to send the full force of time through the Doctor's friends.  Here, we see the Doctor throw herself into one of the Mouri positions so that she takes the brunt of the time storm instead of Yaz, Dan, and Vinder (in a sequence where the timing doesn't really match what we saw at the end of last episode, but never mind), leading to her hiding them in their own timelines while she works out a plan.  This essentially lets Chibnall do a flashback episode, filling in some backstory for each of the characters.  It's a risky move, having us explore each of our main characters' timelines in such a disjointed way, and I'm not completely convinced they pull it off.

Perhaps the most engaging of these narrative threads is the one that actually involves a new character, a young woman named Bel who's been traveling the universe in the aftermath of the Flux, searching for someone.  Bel maintains a sense of hope and optimism, even as we see that the Flux has devastated the universe, with a handful of races (including Daleks, Cybermen, and Sontarans) fighting over the wreckage.  It gives us a real sense of the destruction left by the Flux event (which actually seems really extensive indeed -- the sort of thing you'd think the Doctor would have heard of, given it seems to have happened in 2021), with lots of shots of ruins and shattered planets.  And because Bel is fun to travel with, with both the hope and sense that she can handle herself (witness how she takes out a squad of Cybermen invading her ship), it makes us a lot more invested in this storyline, while the final reveal that it's Vinder she's looking for, and that she's pregnant with their child, feels well-earned.  (Although, hilariously, the camera pans down to Bel's stomach when this reveal occurs, in case we weren't sure where pregnancy happens.)  Bel is awesome, and I look forward to seeing more from her in the future.

The Doctor talks with the Fugitive Doctor. ("Once, Upon Time") ©BBC

The other really major narrative thread involves the Doctor, who is herself sent back into her own history -- only this is part of the history she'd forgotten, as it shows her as the Fugitive Doctor (hooray, Jo Martin is back!) storming the Temple of Atropos.  Because of the nature of the flashbacks, each person sees one of the other three taking the place of people who were really there, which means that we get the Doctor (dressed in a snazzy dark version of her coat that may or may not be her regular coat reversed inside out) partnered with who she sees as Yaz, Dan, and Vinder, entering the Temple of Atropos on the planet Time in order to stop the Ravagers (that's Swarm's people) from seizing control of the Division's "dirty little secret": a way to control time via the Temple and thus bring an end to the Dark Times (a line presumably meant for long-time fans to connect to the time of Rassilon, as mentioned in things like The Five Doctors).  It does serve somewhat as an explanation for what's going on in the present, with the return of Swarm and Azure, but again, the emphasis isn't really there, such that you have to be paying close attention to really understand what's going on.  But it's great to see the Fugitive Doctor back, and it's an interesting contrast to listen to how Jo Martin delivers lines versus Jodie Whittaker, with Martin having a more deliberate delivery.  Oh, and we learn that Karvanista was once a colleague of the Doctor's, showing up here as the character that Dan is representing.  Which means that it's actually really strange how Flux opens with Karvanista repeatedly attempting to murder the Doctor.  What must the Fugitive Doctor have been like, if Karvanista has no compunctions trying to kill the future version?  Or is the Division really that scary, that Karvanista would rather kill an old friend than be forced to reveal his knowledge?  Or, perhaps, is Chris Chibnall hoping we'll have forgotten that plot beat by this point in the story?  It's definitely odd when you stop to think about it.

There's also a moment where the Doctor gets pulled out of the time storm to be lectured by an older woman in a clear piece of foreshadowing.  "This universe is over, Doctor," she tells her.  "...Don't lecture me, Doctor.  Not when you should look to yourself.  The Flux wasn't an accident.  It wasn't a naturally occurring event.  It was made.  It was placed. ... Because of you."  That's also an engaging bit of plotting, even if we don't know what Awsok (as the credits name her) is getting at just yet.  There is a bit of sense of Chibnall moving pieces to where he needs them to be, but this is one case where they get away with it, just, due to the nature of the episode -- after all, what's one more slightly disconnected scene in an episode full of them?

The other three storylines are perhaps less compelling.  We get some sweet moments between Dan and Diane, where we learn a little bit more about Dan's past, but in some ways this storyline is there more to illustrate the fragmented nature of the time storm they're all caught in, with lots of (well-done) jump cuts and such (along with an encounter with Joseph Williamson, who's been enigmatically popping up in these episodes to remind you that plot thread remains unresolved).  Vinder's story is more interesting just because we learn more about who he is, being a decorated soldier who was assigned to be a guard of a leader called the Grand Serpent (Craig Parkinson, clearly relishing the chance to be sinister and superior) and then got reassigned to the outpost we saw him in at the start of Flux because he tried to stand up and do the right thing.  And it helps that Jacob Anderson is excellent as Vinder; his quiet "don't make me relive this bit", for instance, is really lovely.  Finally, Yaz is having troubles with her own timeline, as she finds herself in situations she hasn't been a part of (such as playing video games with her sister, who asserts, bizarrely, that "nobody calls them video games" -- is this true in Britain?  Because everyone here in the US calls them that), stalked by a Weeping Angel.  This bit seems more about setting up the next episode than anything else, so we sadly don't learn much about Yaz the way we do the other characters: a bit of a missed opportunity for a character who still hasn't been fleshed out as much as I'd like.

So when viewed as full narratives, each person's storyline is reasonably interesting.  The issue is that because they're all jumbled together (which, again, is likely a deliberate choice to illustrate the nature of the time storm), it can be difficult to properly follow what's happening, so we end up gravitating toward the ones that are more inherently interesting.  I'm still not completely certain, for instance, that I really understand what's happening in Yaz's part, and if there's more to it than just the Weeping Angel I don't know what it is.  They tried with this episode, and it's certainly more interesting than just a series of staid, self-contained flashbacks, but given the alienating nature of the approach, I'm not sure it really works.  Flux is already pretty dense and confusing without adding that into the mix; by the end we're halfway through this story, and it's not clear we really understand what Flux is about or why we should care, other than a general sense of impending doom.  Again, I don't want to fault them for taking a big swing here, but (to continue the baseball metaphor) "Once, Upon Time" is more an in-field single than the out-of-the-park home run they were presumably going for.  One wishes they would have provided just a little more explanation by this point in the story.

Still, they have three episodes remaining to bring it all home, so they still have time to pull this off.  And the next episode looks like it's full of Weeping Angels, so that should be fun.  Good cliffhanger, too, with a Weeping Angel emerging from Yaz's phone and taking control of the TARDIS...