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