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.