September 14: "Revolution of the Daleks"
It starts by explicitly pitching itself as a sequel to the last New Year's special, "Resolution", by asking one basic-but-potentially overlooked question that we were left with last time: what happened to the Dalek shell that was left behind in GCHQ? Here we see that was due to be sent into storage but was intercepted on the way by nefarious forces determined to exploit its potential. Well, I say "nefarious", but in fact it's Jack Robertson, the American businessman from "Arachnids in the UK", who's decided to repurpose the shell (with some clandestine assistance from members of the government) and mass-produce it for use as security drones, complete with a presentation of a role-play protest that looks (presumably unintentionally, given the filming timeline) an awful lot like a 2020 Black Lives Matter protest, with people wearing masks and squaring up against a line of riot police. It's actually a touch jarring, not so much because it's Doctor Who reflecting the times but because that doesn't happen in later scenes the way you might expect (no one at customs is masked up, for instance). It lends the protest scene a certain frisson that the rest of the episode is lacking.
And while Robertson is building his security drones, Ryan, Graham, and Yaz are still waiting for the Doctor to turn up, after the events of "The Timeless Children". It's been ten months since they've returned to Earth in a TARDIS from Gallifrey, and while it seems as though Ryan and Graham have started to face up to the possibility that the Doctor isn't coming back ("The Doc, you know, she went to do something she knew might kill her," Ryan tells Yaz; "we've just got to assume she didn't make it"), Yaz is still determined to try to help the Doctor, spending lots of time inside their TARDIS trying to figure out to how use it to rescue her. But there's a more immediate issue: footage of Robertson with his Dalek copies have leaked out online, and so Ryan and Graham are determined to do what the Doctor would do and stop Robertson. The publicity material leading up to the premiere of "Revolution of the Daleks" made it seem as if a large part of it would involve the Doctor's friends stepping up to stop the Daleks without her help, so it's honestly a bit of shame that they don't really follow through on that promise. I would have liked a lot more of the TARDIS fam trying to stop Robertson before the Doctor shows up, but that's not what we get: the three companions confront Robertson, who has no idea what the word "Dalek" means, and while they're planning what to do next the Doctor arrives. It's a bit disappointing, in part because there's something more interesting about the companions having to step up and try to do what the Doctor would do, instead of just having the Doctor appear to do Doctor-y things.
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| The Doctor and Jack learn that the Daleks are on Earth. ("Revolution of the Daleks") ©BBC |
Well, no, that's not fair; to his credit, Chibnall does take a couple moments to discuss the fallout of this, both in a conversation between Yaz and Jack and one between Ryan and the Doctor. The one between Yaz and Jack is probably the more successful of the two, because Jack can relate to Yaz's pain and sadness: "When I was with the Doctor, I saw more than I could have ever dreamed. And then... we lost each other. I didn't know what happened to him. If he was alive or if I was ever going to see him again. Hard way to live. Being with the Doctor, you don't get to choose when it stops. Whether you leave her or... she leaves you." It's a good conversation, and John Barrowman and Mandip Gill both take full advantage of the opportunity. The conversation between Ryan and the Doctor in the TARDIS, however, isn't quite as satisfying -- not because of Tosin Cole or Jodie Whittaker, but because the Doctor's focus feels a touch off. It seems she's still hung up on the Master's revelations in "The Timeless Children" that there are whole parts of her life that she doesn't remember, but for her it's been decades, so it seems slightly surprising that she's still mulling over this. I think part of the tension here is that it had seemed she had made some peace with that at the end of "The Timeless Children", yet here it feels like she's back to square one. Which is reasonable, I suppose, but not quite in keeping with how we think of the Doctor, someone who always seems to look forward, not back. It's a bit more introspective than we've seen before, and it also seems inconsistent with the Doctor's attitude during the rest of the episode. (It also doesn't help that the Doctor's declaration that she knows now who she is -- "I'm the one who stops the Daleks" -- is similar to the one to the Master in "The Timeless Children" about how "You've given me a gift. Of myself. You think that could destroy me? You think that makes me lesser? It makes me more. I contain multitudes more than I ever thought or knew.")
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| The Death Squad Daleks confront the last of Robertson's Daleks. ("Revolution of the Daleks") ©BBC |
And as we come to the end of the episode, we get a bit of a chance to breathe as we say a couple goodbyes. Ryan has decided he wants to stay on Earth: "Me mates need me. And I know this sounds stupid, but... I feel like my planet needs me," he says. It's honestly nice to see a companion making the decision to leave the Doctor behind, since it's something we haven't seen for a while (not since Martha Jones back in 2007, in fact), and it's touching how Graham wants to keep travelling with the Doctor but wants to see his grandson grow up even more: "I don't want to miss out on you, you know, and being here without you ain't going to be the same." It feels right for the two of them to leave on their own terms (and it means they don't get an unhappy ending), and the suggestion that they're going to carry on the fight without the Doctor ("Some weird stuff going on in a village in Finland," Ryan says. "Troll invasion, so the locals are saying." "And you know there's a quarry in Korea that's shut down because the workers are reporting they saw gravel creatures come to life," Graham replies) is perfect. It's bittersweet to see them go, because Tosin Cole has been great, particularly in showing us how Ryan has developed and changed for the better as a result of his time with the Doctor, while Bradley Walsh has been undeniably one of the best things about the thirteenth Doctor's era to date, but at least their characters got to leave on their own terms.
So ultimately there's not really anything wrong with "Revolution of the Daleks". In some ways this is designed more for a general audience than the usual Doctor Who audience, and so it's setting out to do Doctor Who-style things in a way that the public wants: the Doctor fighting loads of Daleks. I just wish they'd been a bit more daring or ambitious with this, either by keeping the companions separated from the Doctor for longer or by causing the new strain of Daleks to be something of a force for good, perhaps (thus leading to an actual revolution of the Daleks: as it is it's not clear what the title's actually referring to). In essence, "Revolution of the Daleks" boils down to Doctor Who-by-numbers: it's well made Who-by-numbers, but it's still a show that's currently playing things a bit safe. This is a solid episode, but I wish it had been a bit less risk-averse.
And that wraps it up for this year's Doctor Who: I hope to see you in 2022, when I'll cover Jodie Whittaker's final series as the thirteenth Doctor...
September 15, 2022: "Chapter One: The Halloween Apocalypse"
(Flux episode 1)
Consequently, what that means is that this first episode, "Chapter One: The Halloween Apocalypse" (to give the full on-screen title), is deliberately setting up lots of plot points and teasers for future installments. This is very much a "Part One" in feel; don't expect much of anything in the way of explanations or even clear connective tissue, as we get a number of scenes detached from the episode's plot (such as the digging of tunnels under 1820 Liverpool -- a real event, it should be noted), in a way that sometimes seems calculated to get the audience to come back the following week. That's presumably why we get short scenes with the TARDIS going wrong, as well as appearances unconnected from the rest of the story of a Weeping Angel, Sontarans, Game of Thrones's Jacob Anderson, and seemingly-important-but-not-yet-explained geode-skull villains. The episode's final moments (where we see each of these characters for a brief moment) just reinforce that sense of "tune in next time".
Of course, that means that it's a bit tough to judge "The Halloween Apocalypse" on its own merits, given that it's so obviously setup for things later on. Still, there are definitely some standout elements here, and one of the best is John Bishop as Liverpudlian Dan Lewis. Dan has a resilient, cheerful optimism about him, even while we get the sense that he's struggling financially, and it's hard not to get caught up in that optimism. His rapport with Diane in the museum is nice, and honestly Bishop does an excellent job of making Dan relatable and fun without becoming a caricature, as could have easily happened in the wrong hands -- this is a character that Chibnall literally has giving unpaid guided tours of the Museum of Liverpool due to his love of the city, so you can see how this could have easily tipped into parody, but Bishop skillfully walks that line. And the ways he tries to seem unfazed by things and even one-upping others ("I had a mate who had one of these," Dan comments after entering the TARDIS for the first time. "I think his was a bit bigger, actually") make for great fun, while his gentle sparring with Yaz, who dishes it out in equal amounts ("Pro tip, Dan Lewis," she tells Dan, after he mutters a disparaging comment about Sheffield, "don't diss the designated rescuer") is a promising sign of things to come. And while it would have been nice to get more interactions between just the Doctor and Yaz, given how Yaz often felt sidelined in the previous two series (and how much rapport the two of them exhibit here in the scenes they do share -- it's clear Yaz has leveled up her companion skills since we last saw her), it's clear that Dan will fit in just fine.
And while we're singling out things for praise, special mention must go to the really rather impressive makeup job on Craige Els as Karvanista, the dog-like Lupar that the Doctor's been tracking. It's really well done, with care going into making it look familiar-yet-slightly strange, with just enough motion to make it realistic. I also like how they've chosen to make Karvanista grumpy, acting as a counterpoint to the stereotype of dogs as eager and happy; Karvanista may be one of the Lupari, and thus explicitly described as "Man's best friend", but that doesn't mean he's thrilled about it. Although, it must be said, that's a little at odds with how the first half of the episode encourages us to treat Karvanista as an enemy -- but perhaps that's the point, to wrongfoot the audience by having the antagonist here ultimately be so, well, cute.
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| The Doctor, Yaz, and Dan look out at the edge of the solar system. ("The Halloween Apocalypse") ©BBC |
And as I said earlier, there are a number of other scenes designed explicitly as teasers for the future. Some of the Swarm stuff falls under that category (specifically the moments with his sister, Azure, before she realizes her true identity), along with a couple scenes involving Sontarans (who look fabulous, by the way -- but we'll discuss that in more detail next time) and an odd moment involving a woman named Claire who knows the Doctor but also seems to have some knowledge of the future -- and then gets sent away by a Weeping Angel. We'll have to wait for later to find out what's happening with some of them, but the scene that might be most relevant at the moment involves Jacob Anderson's character, Inston-Vee Vinder of Kasto-Winfer-Foxfell (or just Vinder), assigned to a remote observation outpost out in the galaxy when he observes a universe-ending event that we later learn is called the Flux. The Flux is an event that is travelling through the universe and disrupting every particle it comes into contact with ("Disobeying every law of Time and Space," the Doctor says of it), and Vinder is forced to abandon his post to escape its destructive force. But as with much of this episode, we'll have to wait and see how this pays off.
So, perhaps unsurprisingly, it's a bit difficult to judge "The Halloween Apocalypse" on its own merits, simply because it's so explicitly a setup episode. This is emphatically part 1 of 6, and so we'll have to wait to view the whole thing before we can really pass judgement. That's perhaps slightly worrying, if only because the past couple series (as well as the first two of Torchwood) have demonstrated that Chris Chibnall's skills are much better suited to smaller character pieces, while his efforts to go big and epic tend to fall flat. Still, as far as series or story openers go, we could do worse. It's got lots of energy and quick pacing, and while it might be a bit too frenetic to really sink in on first viewing, it does promise lots of exciting things for the rest of the story. Let's just hope Flux can deliver on that promise.
September 16: "Chapter Two: War of the Sontarans"
(Flux episode 2)
So we last saw the TARDIS about to be enveloped by the Flux and presumably destroyed. This episode opens with the Doctor, Yaz, and Dan lying in the ground in 1855 Crimea, with no real explanation as to how they survived ("The TARDIS took a hit" is about the closest thing we get). Then Yaz and Dan get whisked away with no real explanation beyond "the plot needs them to be in different locations" (this one at least gets half-a-fig-leaf with "A collision between Flux and vortex energy. You're falling through space and time," which isn't really an explanation but at least is something).
But here's the thing. Once the episode has finished manhandling its characters to where it needs them to go, "War of the Sontarans" settles down and becomes a pretty enjoyable time. Much like The Trial of a Time Lord before it, this season-long story looks like it's going to made up of smaller individual tales, connected by the overarching theme (the Doctor's trial in that case, the Flux in this one); this means that "War of the Sontarans", although it ties in with the Flux business, is basically self-contained. (It's not quite that simple, as we'll see later on, but that's basically the case.)
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| Mary Seacole outside her British Hotel. ("War of the Sontarans") ©BBC |
Actually, that's something of an ongoing issue with this episode (and honestly, the entirety of Flux, as we'll see). The information needed to properly understand what's happening is for the most part present in the episode, but it tends not to be given enough emphasis for the audience to easily pick up on it. So the Sontaran scheme is explained, but only if you're watching closely; similarly for the rather-intrusive scenes in the Temple of Atropos (so another way this story resembles The Trial of a Time Lord, with the "arc" scenes interrupting the story we're more interested in), where Yaz ends up (along with Vinder, somehow) and learns some stuff about the purpose of the Temple and how before it was created, "Time ran wild". It's present, but it's not emphasized in a way to make it more significant than any of the other vaguely technobabble-esque dialogue. I'm not sure if this is a directorial issue brought on by the pressures of COVID or if perhaps Chibnall and company had lived with the script so much that they didn't realize things weren't as clear to outsiders as they were to them, but either way it's a concern -- not a major one, but a concern nevertheless.
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| Skaak surveys the aftermath of the battle against the British. ("War of the Sontarans") ©BBC |
And we get to see Dan back home, aided by his parents as they sneak around past curfew in Sontaran-occupied Liverpool (it's been all of two days since Halloween, according to Dan's mum) and then being heroic by sneaking aboard a Sontaran vessel to figure out how to get rid of them. It's a lot of fun watching him knocking out Sontarans by hitting their probic vent with a wok, while he tries very hard to make a difference despite being out of his element. He makes it surprisingly far, in fact, allowing him to communicate with the Doctor, while Karvanista shows up to rescue him from a Sontaran squad once he finally is captured and then sends the ship they're in on a crash course with the other ships, thus causing a "temporal implosion" (just go with it) that gets rid of the Sontarans in Liverpool. It's also fun how he keeps trying to take credit for other people's plans, making himself more important than he otherwise would be. Which admittedly sounds insufferable, but John Bishop makes it work so that it never feels that way. And the way he pauses, after being officially invited aboard the TARDIS by the Doctor, before grinning and agreeing, is a great choice.
So "War of the Sontarans" is generally an enjoyable, well-told tale, one that can be appreciated even if you're not paying close attention to the details. But because this is still part of Flux, we end with the Doctor and Dan at the Temple of Atropos, where Swarm and Azure have been doing Evil Things. There's some stuff about how the Mouri (five women in robes) channel and direct time, and how the Flux has damaged the Mouri, that might hopefully make more sense next time. Oh, and it seems Swarm and Azure have the ability to speed up time, so that they can move really fast and turn people and objects to ash (at least, I assume that's what happening here). Bad luck for the Doctor, then, that Swarm has stuck Yaz and Vinder in the place of the two of the Mouri and is ready to send the full force of time through them...
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.
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| The Doctor talks with the Fugitive Doctor. ("Once, Upon Time") ©BBC |
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...
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.
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| A Weeping Angel attempts to emerge from Jericho's television. ("Village of the Angels") ©BBC |
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
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| Jericho, Peggy, Dan, and Yaz talk to the Doctor across the barrier while she's surrounded by Angels. ("Village of the Angels") ©BBC |
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.
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.
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| Jericho, Dan, and Yaz in Nepal. ("Survivors of the Flux") ©BBC |
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| 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.
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.
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| The three versions of the Doctor psychically communicate with each other. ("The Vanquishers") ©BBC |
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.
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| Azure, Swarm, and the Doctor meet Time (in the form of Swarm) outside the Temple of Atropos. ("The Vanquishers") ©BBC |
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.
Footnotes
298 Funny how we never heard of any of these old enemies from the "before" days until after the Doctor learned she was missing part of her memory. Maybe it'll turn out this whole thing is just a ruse, a subterfuge of the Master's, and she's in fact still trapped in the Matrix.
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?
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.