WHO REVIEW: FLUX Chapter Six - The Vanquishers

Well that's the end of Flux, Doctor Who's first season-long serial since the eighties. After six very busy, sometimes confusing episodes, generally highly entertaining episodes, how did that all hang together?

I wasn't wrong. Chibnall didn't manage to tie everything up by the end of part six. There's still a lot of unanswered questions and hanging threads, and that's not necessarily a problem - we still have three specials left to cover the Thirteenth Doctor's final days, and doubtless much of this will be revisited. Still, there are some painfully dissatisfying elements that niggled at the back of my mind throughout.

Let's start with the good stuff, though. This is a belter of an episode for the Sontarans, more so even that part two, giving the ludicrous space goblins a chance to really stand up to the big league monsters. They're still the butt of jokes - Dan Starkey's chocoholic soldier being a very silly diversion - but they work as a serious threat. For once they're the terrifying military force they're always claiming to be. Murdering the entire Lupari people, barring Karvanista, hunting them down on their own ships and killing them one-by-one, winning through sheer force of numbers - that's the Sontaran threat we've heard of all these years. 

The Doctor's peculiar journey throughout, wrestling with the promise of her lost memories, while she is split into three facets who work together and apart to save the universe - excellent stuff. Yes, it's highly derivative of "Journey's End," which had the Doctor and his duplicate save the multiverse together, but it's not a take-for-take rip-off and that was twelve years ago now. In fact, at times it looks like it's riffing on The Three Doctors, and that was in 1972. Whittaker is on fire snapping and flirting with herself - she's had to spend far too much of her time as Doctor talking to herself, but this makes it into a game. That's not to say she doesn't have serious moments as well, and her eventual reunion and confrontation with Yaz is well worth waiting for.

On the subject of reunions, Bel and Vinder's discovery of each other is a lovely moment. Jacob Anderson is great when he gets solid material, and Thaddea Graham is magnetically watchable in all her scenes. Their storyline seems only tangentially connected to the main Flux plot, but watching the events sweep others up in their path is a solid line for the serial to take. In any case, it seems highly likely they'll be back before the end of 2022. Equally impressive is Nadia Albina as Diane, who finally gets to make a contribution to the plot, even if it's not entirely clear why her character is given such unique treatment by the Ravagers. Still, she's a badass, and we could do worse than having her on side the next time aliens come invading. It's a shame we're unlikely to see Kevin McNally back as Professor Jericho, who would have made a fun recurring character in 20th century settings had he survive, but at least Claire gets a resolution of sorts to her story. We still don't get a full rounding off of the Angels storyline, but not everything has to be crossed off.

Yaz gets to be genuinely awesome as well, showing that she always had the potential to be a brilliant lead character once anyone bothered to actually write her that way. Dan fares less well, and I'm not entirely convinced he's essential to keep on as an ongoing companion, but Bishop remains a fun presence. It's good to see Joseph Williamson get some closure to his story, and he's rather more polite now he's in the presence of ladies. There's no explanation given for the doorways through space/time, but again, that might be something else that will be followed up later. Or maybe not. Either way, while being known forever as the "Mad Mole of Edge Hill" is pretty cool, he's hardly "too important to history" to risk, although if he was killed before he'd finished the tunnels they were all standing in that would a tricky paradox to deal with along with everything else.

Other characters fare less well. Kate Sewart is entirely unnecessary, doing nothing much to contribute to the plot. She's just ort of there, seemingly only to give her an opportunity to meet the current Doctor. Craig Parkinson remains icily cool as the Grand Serpent, but there isn't any clear reason for him to be allied with the Sontarans and he seems superfluous. Still, he gets some excellent moments, particularly his complete dismissal of Vinder whom he doesn't even seem to remember - a mere footnote in his life of power-grabbing and murder. His comeuppance is fairly satisfying, but he's likely being kept alive for a return appearance, which should make his story mean more. Assuming he's not another iteration of the Master, that is. He did turn into a body-snatching snake once, after all.

It's in the overarching plot with Swarm and Azure that things really fall flat. While they look pretty striking, there's not been much to the Ravagers throughout, and their plotline just doesn't hang together. Sure, they want revenge, and apparently they're trying to wage a war on space in the name of time, but it's all just words. None of it really seems to mean anything.  Having the Doctor face a vengeful enemy from a time in her life she doesn't remember is a solid idea, but it needs proper attention, and it's lost in all the other goings on. When we finally discover that Time is a some kind of living entity, we're left with even more questions and no sign of any answers. This isn't a first for Doctor Who - the New Adventures had Time as a godlike figure who played a significant role on occasion - but here it's just one too many revelations thrown at the screen.

Finally, we have to address the Doctor's actions in this episode. The Sontarans, in their ruthlessness, plan to use the Daleks and Cybermen to absorb the Flux, wiping them out in the process. Aside from a complete misunderstanding of how antimatter works - something of a Doctor Who tradition, and more than a little Crisis on Infinite Earths - it's a brilliant play on the ruthless warriors' part. The Daleks and Cybermen seem a little gullible to fall for it, but doubtless they were planning on betraying the Sontarans themselves. It's evidence for how monstrous the Sontarans are - and yet the Doctor, instead of trying to save the Daleks and Cybermen, instead uses the Flux to wipe out both race and the Sontarans as well. It's premeditatedly ruthless by even the Doctor's standards. I'm all for the Doctor being a terrifying bastard, but it sits poorly with the idea that her Fugitive incarnation represents a darker side to her. Why, because she works for a dodgy organisation and carries a gun? Did she just wipe out three whole species? 

It leaves the Whoniverse in an unclear and precarious state. I hardly think the Daleks, Cybermen or Sontarans are actually extinct - this is, at my count, the seventh time the Daleks have been conclusively wiped out, and they're not even pretending it's going to last, since they're back in four weeks. However, the universe is still apparently sitting at 90% wiped out, with nothing but Earth and a handful of devastated worlds left. No mention is made of this at all, and the Doctor and co. leave for adventures without considering there's nowhere left to explore. Surely they've got to follow some of this up?

 

WHO REVIEW: FLUX Chapter Five - Survivors of the Flux

 

It's the penultimate part of a six-parter, traditionally the time when all the questions got answered and we settled down for an action-packed finale. This isn't the classic series though, and Flux is very unlike a traditional Doctor Who six-parter. Each episode has had a distinct feel and new content, keeping things as fresh as in any of the always varied modern series while still building towards a single narrative finale.

At least, that's what we're expected. Given that “Survivors of the Flux” continued to drop new revelations on us even as it was answering earlier questions, it's by no means certain that this will all tie up by the end of episode six, “The Vanquishers.” There is, after all, a new episode to come less than a month later, plus two further specials as we continue in 2022. It's a bit of a mug's game reviewing serialised stories episode-by-episode, and half of my questions and ideas will be rendered nonsensical by the time the story finishes, but one thing I am confident in saying: this won't all be over next week.

“Survivors of the Flux” doesn't hang together as well as the previous couple of episodes, and has a distinct feeling of being a bit rushed. The impession I get is that this was originally several episode, but the continued shortening of the season due to COVID restrictions and changing plans at the BBC meant that a lot of storylines got squashed together here. However, Chibnall pulls it off, giving us a rather baffling but highly enjoyable episode. Doctor Who, as I have said many a time, rarely makes sense, and the trick is getting away with it until after the episode has finished. This instalment manages that, keeping everything moving and ratcheting up the intrigue and excitement so that there's no time to go “hang on...” until you've settled down to beddy-byes later that evening.

The adventures of Yaz, Dan and Jericho could happily have stretched to a six-part serial in themselves. A tenner says we get a short story collection on this by the middle of next year. Yaz has now settled down to her status of leader of the team, a substitute Doctor leading two middle-aged white blokes around and generally being rather awesome. Having her pick up her spirits and resolve by replaying the Doctor's message in times of stress is a nice touch. In the end, though, their mission, to discover the vital information of the Earth's impending doom, seems to be forgotten halfway through. Instead, they switch to trying to let Karvanista – still 117 years in the future for them – their location. Why they've suddenly become determined to get off the Earth by any means necessary isn't clear, nor how they expect to go about it, as even the dog-faced space pilot readily notes that he doesn't have a time machine so can't pick them up. No doubt this will be explained away in part six. However, you have to wonder just how the trio financed their way around the world on their myriad adventures, given that none of them had any resources to call on in the 1900s.

Bel and Vinder's story continues on in the background, reconnecting with the grand narrative towards the episode's conclusion. While I'm certain we'll see the star-crossed lovers reunited, I'm not sure just how they're going to fully integrate them back into the story. Bel hasn't met the Doctor at all and Vinder remained an outsider even as he was pulled into events with Yaz and the Doctor. I'm not sure how they'll get their resolution with the little time we have left, which leaves me wondering if they'll stick around as new companions after this serial ends. I still have a worrying suspicion about Bel's baby's eventual identity, but I'm not going to voice it here since I'll either be made to look a fool or, worse, proven right.

An unexpected turn of events comes as the Grand Serpent returns – itself not a surprise, but the manner is a sudden twist. Seemingly a contemporary, albeit alien, character in 2021, he appears in the 1950s at what is revealed to be the early days of UNIT, allying himself with Robert Bathurst's posh army type and then murdering him rather unpleasantly. (“Your career's finished Todhunter, you big lig!” we shouted as he died, because once you've been in Red Dwarf you are forever tarred with the smeg brush.) A lot of questions a raised here. Presumably the Serpent does have a time machine, rather than merely being very long lived, given that he is apparently here in the past after he was a galactic ruler in the present. The history of UNIT seen here doesn't quite fit in with what we've seen on screen over the years, and the valiant attempt to tie in the events of The War Machines only complicates matters further. All these little asides, and that vocal cameo by the Brigadier himself, are lovely, but don't actually add up to anything coherent, but then, UNIT dating has always been a notorious mess. If anything, making it worse seems rather in keeping. It's nice to see Jemma Redgrave back as Kate Stewart, as well, after an absence of six years. It helps tie everything together into one big, long adventure. As fun as it is to see Kate hoarsely taking down Prentis, aka Mr G. Serpent, you wonder why a military officer in charge of an alien-fighting group doesn't have, I don't know, some kind of gun that might be useful against him? When they dissect the body afterwards and find it made out of snakes she's sure to be backed up.

The assassin sent after Yaz's team sports a serpent tattoo, which naturally suggests he is linked to the Grand Serpent, but I can't help but note the similarity to the Third Doctor's tattoo seen immediately after he arrived on Earth, post-regeneration. In reality it was Jon Pertwee's own navy tattoo, but no shortage of fan theories have arisen. Could the Doctor have been linked to the Grand Serpent in that mysterious period between The War Games and Spearhead from Space? Then we have Steve Oram's increasingly bizarre performance as the eccentric Joseph Williamson, with Team Yaz finally catching up with him and his network of tunnels that lead to doorways through space and time. With everything tying together in unpredictable ways and nods to the past everywhere, it's tempting to try to link everything together, no matter how unlikely.

Meanwhile, outside the universe, the Doctor hatches from her stone prison and faces down the mysterious lady in the hat, who turns out to be Tecteun, the universe's nastiest foster mother. Having the mysterious mastermind turn out to be, essentially, the Doctor's mum is a bit of a let down but quite an obvious move, and there was bound to be a confrontation with her eventually. While Whittaker is impressive in these scenes, they fell a little flat to me. Tecteun's motivation was all over the place. To begin with, we learn the Division – or just Division now, it seems – are destroying the entire universe because the Doctor has interfered with it too much and it's the only way to be rid of her and start from scratch. This seems, even given the Doctor's inflated status over the years, to be insanely over-the-top. There must be something more behind it. Then Tecteun tries to bribe the Doctor into joining forces with her in the next universe by promising her her memories back, which goes against the Division's entire stated motive.

This is all fairly baffling, and unfortunately shows up how difficult it is to accept the Division as the all-powerful force they're made out to be. Retconning in something like this is always going to show up some logistical flaws – just look at trying to fit UNIT into the programme's complicated history – but by making the Division the secret power behind pretty much everything, it's hard to accept they're really what they say they are. I can accept that they had operatives all over the Time War, for instance, or that the CIA were really a front for them, but you have to ask where they were when Rassilon, Davros or sundry others were trying to destroy the entire multiverse. Events which were only stopped by the hated Doctor, of course.

Still, on its own terms, the Division is an intriguing and powerful threat, albeit one that has seemingly sown its own destruction in the form of Swarm and Azure. We're still in the dark on their exact motive, beyond good, old-fashioned revenge. A war between Time and Space sounds cool, but it doesn't really mean anything. We shall see though. Events are coming to a head, and it looks like next week everyone will be involved.

One final thought: it's quite right that the Doctor would refuse to accept her memories and the safety of the Earth in payment for allowing the universe to end, and that she'd vow to save the universe and get her past back, thank you very much. Does the Doctor really want that past back, though? While the Fugitive Doctor hasn't been portrayed as significantly nastier than their familiar incarnations, there have been hints at something far worse, especially considering they apparently worked for the Division for centuries. Are they just memories in the fobwatch, or, as in previous uses of the chameleon arch, is there an entire identity and biology in there that will overwrite and destroy the Doctor's existing persona? Does Chibnall have the guts to wipe out the universe and the Doctor's identity and start again? Probably not, but it does leave the Doctor with an interesting dilemma.

WHO REVIEW: FLUX Chapter Four - Village of the Angels

Doctor Who: Flux is improving week on week, with the twisty and interesting “Once, Upon Time” followed by a gripping episode that combines the best of time-hopping weirdness with good, old-fashioned spookiness. The Weeping Angels are, of course, one of the most popular and inventive monsters ever featured in Doctor Who, and there's still little enough of them that their inclusion here is exciting in the way that the return of the Daleks and Cybermen aren't. Even the Sontarans, while it was a treat to have them feature properly for the first time in ages, aren't as clever or unique a concept as the Angels. Interviews with the cast suggest a palpable excitement in having them appear. There hasn't been a full-on Angels episode since “The Angels Take Manhattan” in 2012, and since then their more minor appearances in “The Time of the Doctor” and Class have been throwaway. Big Finish have been using them plenty, of course, because Big Finish don't get the rights to the concept and not do it to death, and there's been a positive response to the mobile game The Lonely Assassins. Still, “Village of the Angels” feels special, not only because the Weeping Angels are such a brilliant monster but also because the episode is straightforwardly high quality in a way we haven't really seen lately.

Given that the Angels are the quintessential Moffat era monster, it's unsurprising that the episode has a very Moffat-y feel, more so even than last week's, with an almost storybook vibe to the creepy village with its old-fashioned inhabitants. After from the exemplary “Blink,” though, the Angels never quite worked as well even with Moffat writing, their simple but ingenious central concept being added to until it became diluted and overcomplicated. Here, though, everything builds more naturally. It's assumed that, if you're watching this, you've probably at least seen “Blink” on iPlayer and probably know the basics from the previous years, with a few reminders that you mustn't blink and that “the image of an Angel becomes an Angel” dropped in for good measure. Now that the excessive abilities introduced in “The Time of Angels” are fully established it's easier to just get one with it and have them come for the Doctor as a truly relentless threat.

Without wanting to be too harsh, this episode feels like a first draft than a lot of this era's stories. Maxine Alderton's clearly a real talent and while we don't know how much of this is hers and how much is Chibnall's they clearly make for a good team. I loved “Once, Upon Time” but there were still persistent issues such as the clumsy exposition and the sometimes weak characterisation of the Doctor. These are cleaned up here, with Dan's role as exposition engine lampshaded and the Doctor being a proactive force while also allowing her to be terrified and wrong-footed by the Angel's attack. Last week I felt that Whittaker was better when playing the Fugitive Doctor than her normal incarnation, as it was simply stronger material, but here she gets to be a verison of her Doctor that really works.

Yaz gets to actually be a police officer, bringing skills and an approach that other characters simply wouldn't try, in her attempt to track down the missing girl Peggy. It's a bit obvious that, when a mysterious old lady starts wandering around muttering about these things happening again, they're going to be revealed as the same person after a time jump, but it's still effectively told and played. The guest cast are uniformly good, but plaudits especially to Annabel Scholey as Claire. I'm still not going to be surprised if she's revealed to be an iteration of Clara, but right now she's plenty interesting enough as a forthright and capable woman who happens to be a powerful psychic and is stuck living more than fifty years in her own past. There's enough promise in that for a whole series in itself. Kevin McNally is almost as good as Professor Jericho, a delightfully old-fashioned sort of character who absolutely fits with the haunted village vibe.

There are still logical flaws in the Angels concept, such as no one taking the obvious route of at least trying to take turns blinking. The visual of people being crumbled to dust if they contact an Angel a second time is chilling, although I suspect it contradicts what we've seen in previous stories (I'll have to go back and rewatch to be certain). I love the concept of a premonition of an Angel constituting an image, thereby rooting itself in Claire's mind, although by this logic anyone who's ever seen an Angel woould have one living in their head as a memory. It's easy enough to voerlook this though when there are so many striking concepts so well put across, including the uplifted village plucked out of space and the idea of a rogue Angel. The Doctor actually comes off rather badly, refusing to listen to such “a creature,” but the Doctor's more interesting when they're morally dubious and a bit of an arsehole.

The Division is becoming a far more interesting idea than it first appeared, where it was basically the Time Lords' CIA under a different name. Now it seems to be a much bigger, multi-species concern that employs a whole phalanx of Weeping Angels to maintain time. The Doctor's (apparently) accidental crossing of her own time stream in “Fugitive of the Judoon” seems to have linked her present to her past working for them, even before she went actively looking for information on them. It's always a bit tricky to apply logic to a time travel narrative like this, since past and future mean nothing to someone travelling across the whole of history on a whim, but there's generally been a impression that time active beings usually meet each other in the the correct relative order. Obviously this isn't always the case, but here it looks like the Doctor's interacting with her forgotten past has upset the chronology rather badly. The Judoon came for her and now the Division have come for her, and who knows, maybe even the Flux is a result of this.

We end with one of the best cliffhangers in recent memory, and whether it makes sense or not it's a fantastic image (as well as hinting towards the idea from The End of Time that Angels began as cursed Time Lords). We even get a mid-credits scene, MCU-style, following up on Bel's subplot. Thaddea Graham remains one of the best things in this series and is more than capable of maintaining her own storyline, but I am looking forward to Vinder catching up with her and their reconnecting with the main narrative.

Next week looks to be throwing even more elements in but hopefuully will begin to tie this all together. We've only two weeks left for this serial to be, if not resolved, at least satisfactorily climaxed.

WHO REVIEW: FLUX Chapter One - The Halloween Apocalypse

Well, that was pretty good. It's hard to say how well it holds together yet, as part one of a six-part serial, the first such structure for decades. (The last time Doctor Who did a six-parter was 1979's TheArmageddon Factor, unless you count Shada's animated redos, but this is more comparable in length to the 12-part epic The Daleks' Masterplan in 1965-6.) 

To be honest, the episode was a bit messy, but this isn't necessarily a bad thing. It jumped all over the place, setting up elements then dropping them to move onto something else, but that's the job of a first part. No one complained when Game of Thrones visited half a dozen different groups of characters per episode with seemingly nothing to do with each other then forgot about half of them for weeks at a time. The proof will be in the pudding, as it were, when we're six weeks in and see if it makes any sense.

"The Halloween Apocalypse" gives us a few firsts. It's the first time we've had a proper overall title for a season since the series came back (the only time other than 1986's The Trial of a Time Lord, and that didn't have episode titles). Beginning series thirteen, it's the first time the Doctor number and series number have matched (unless you're working in a continuous run of seasons since 1963, in which case its season 39, and that's three thirteens so it still seems to fit). It's the first time the series has done a Hallowe'en special, although "The Waters of Mars" certainly felt like one.

It's not as if the episode really feels particularly Halloweeny, really. Other than the reliably spooky Weeping Angels, who had a brief appearance, nothing in this episode is especially ghostly or ghoulish, but then again, it's Doctor Who, so we still have plenty of monsters. And so many monsters! Everyone's turned up, it seems, or will be soon if the trailers and rumours can be believed. Like the Ten/Thirteen team-up in games and comics, there's a temptation to be cynical here: get some popular monsters from the series' heyday back to win back a few viewers. But wasn't it ever thus? Did anyone moan when RTD revamped the Daleks, the Cybermen and the Master for his new vision of the series? Hell, in "Rose," he practically recreated elements of Spearhead from Space shot-for-shot. 

Just the same, the tacked-on Hallowe'en element isn't really any different to the arbitrary Christmassy setting of "The Husbands of River Song" or the entirely pointless Easter egg scene in "Planet of the Dead." It's a hook, nothing more. It's, frankly, a poorer hook than "the universe is ending," as the Whoniverse encounters its own Crisis event that's wiping out planets everywhere. With that in mind, it seems justified that every monster is turning up. And hey, the Sontarans are back, looking like they did back in 1973. A direct update that remakes the classic look with modern methods and realism. More importantly, they're still funny, which is an important a part of what makes the Sontarans work as the clone armies and the probic vent.

I like John Bishop, and while he's hardly the greatest actor the show's ever hired, he's hardly the worst, and he does what he needs to: play the most Liverpudlian bloke in history and be jolly nice. It's interesting we've got an actually, genuinely poor person in the TARDIS, not another essentially middle-class companion. Dan (a fine name) is a decent sort in a shitty situation doing his best to help out and keep his chin up. 

I'm disappointed that we don't get more time with Jodie and Mandip running the show, though. An all-woman team in the TARDIS has never happened, so a Thirteen-Yaz team-up would be interesting to watch. The glimpse we get though, in the unapologetically silly opening, suggests they've been doing this for a while (there's the space for Big Finish's inevitable run of twelve boxed sets) between seasons. At last, Mandip gets to do something with her character, being proactive and impressive instead of just reacting and asking questions. Jodie seems more dynamic too, and I really feel we're missing out on not keeping the smaller TARDIS team for longer. Still, I like that Dan is the damsel in distress and that the two women have to come in and rescue him. 

As for the various new aliens... Karnavista is fun. I like that he's just an ordinary bloke doing a job he's not keen on but he's going to get it done, and the Doctor just keeps hassling him. The serious daffiness of an alien dog for every human dovetails into the reveal of the Flux, the infinity wave coming for the Earth. It's intriguing that Karnavista is, or was, part of the Division, which we'd assumed to be a purely Time Lord organisation.

As for our big bad... well, it's not Davros, in spite of every fan and his aunt's assumption because of the sunken eyes. Swarm (surely that name suggests a composite creature of some sort) is a gnarly skull-faced crystalline guy, apparently imprisoned by the Division donkeys ago. What do you want to bet the Doctor helped lock him up? Are we supposed to know who he is or where he's from? The first thing I thought was Eldrad, but that seems unlikely. Is Chibnall enough of a fan of the Eighth Doctor Adventures to link the Doctor back to the crystalline skeletons of the Council of Eight? Even more unlikely, but it would be hilarious.

Swarm gets out and goes on a little drive to Scandinavia, where he kills some guy who likes chillis and reverses the disguise of a human into his mate/sister/partner-in-crime, whatever, Azure. Swarm's intimidating enough, but the big reveal that the nice lady is actually another crystalline skeleton is a bit of a pointless twist. We don't care enough about her or her husband for it to mean anything, and we don't know enough about Swarm and Azure for the reveal to make an impact. When Ruth turned into the Doctor or O. was revealed as the Master, it was a shock, because the characters had been built up enough and the reveal meant something. This is just... stuff happening.

Claire's story is more intriguing. It's a pretty straightforward update of “Blink” so far, except that we're seeing it from the Doctor's perspective instead. We've a full-on Weeping Angels episode coming, so we'll find out some more then, but right now, it was an effective little tease. Is Claire perhaps being set up as the next companion? We've also the weirdness of Dan's crush Diane being abducted by Swarm and Azure with what seems like some vengeance in mind. This all suggests something much bigger underneath what we're seeing. Everyone has secrets this season, it seems. Is Dan just being cool when he jokes he has a mate with a TARDIS bigger than the Doctor's, or is he hinting at something?

“The Halloween Apocalypse” is, essentially, a string of set pieces introducing various characters and settings. Not much to say about Vinder yet except we know he's going to be a major character. We've still got the real-life mystery of the tunnels under Liverpool's Edge Hill, the promise of Mary Seacole next week and a Sontaran invasion in the offing. So far, it's largely style without substance, but that's OK for a opening episode. It's all flavour. We just have to see if the resolution backs it up.