2nd Opinion, Take 1 “Survivors of the Flux” – Flux Rounds Rapid

Gustaff Behr’s take on the fifth episode of Series 13.

Congratulations, Chris Chibnall!

And ‘no’ I’m not being facetious. It takes a great deal of skill to squeeze six hours out of a four-hour story. So kudos for that. If I’m being honest, I am partly glad this series is only six episodes long. And the thought of it ending next week is both relaxing and grating. Relaxing because I don’t want to type this, and grating because we all know what’s coming.

But that’s next week. This week we have several story threads bouncing all over the place with little to no logic woven between them. We have the Doctor and Tecteun; we have Bel and discount-Chewbacca; we get to see what Yaz, Dan and Jericho get up to; explore the origins of UNIT with the Grand Serpent; AND spend a few minutes with Vinder. With an hour on the clock, you’d think Chibnall could manage to tie these things together.

What we get is a hodgepodge of short scenes that jump up and down all over the place. This episode would’ve worked much better had it adopted the style of “Fragments” from Torchwood’s second season. Juggling so many subplots means the episode often feels disjointed and hard to follow.

The subplot with Yaz, Dan and Jericho only exists to give them something to do this episode, and it takes up a lot of the runtime. They are globe-trotting in search of details of an “attack” which is coming, instead of…trying to find a way back to their own time. Why do we have to sit through twenty minutes of them trying to work out something they ready know: 31 October 2021? That’s when the Flux shows up. It happened like a few days ago. It’s hardly forgettable. True, the actual date given is 5 December 2021, but that just means the Flux story takes place over a week. The episode wastes the idea of Yaz, Dan and Jericho being stuck in the past completely. Other sci-fi shows have done this kind of episode better. Legends of Tomorrow, Agents of SHIELD–heck The Umbrella Academy did an entire season last year. How does being stranded in the past for three years affect these people?

It doesn’t.

We don’t have time to explore the psychological effects that such a radical event would have on our heroes. In fact, if you hadn’t shown me the date onscreen, I would have thought we were continuing on from right where we left off last episode. This could have been the perfect opportunity to develop Yaz and Dan. Instead, we get to see them paint a message, on the behest of someone they don’t even know, to someone they can’t be sure has time travel capabilities when they should just message the Doctor, whom they know does have time travel capabilities. Worse than that, this episode would have you believe that this graffiti stays on Earth, undisturbed near one of the Seven Wonders of the World, unnoticed, for 120 years, until the person it’s meant for just so happens to pick it up!

It’s going to be one of those episodes, isn’t it?

The subplot with Grand Serpent is equally dumb, but more than that, it’s unnecessary and throws dirt in the face of what has come before. Grand Serpent needs to be in charge for “some reason” and helps create UNIT, so he time travels and kills multiple people over several decades instead of just using time travel in 2021 to bribe/infiltrate/eliminate/hypnotize or blackmail the necessary high ranking people in office. But the episode insists on muddying the waters by claiming that the Doctor’s TARDIS has been a few doors down the hall from where the Third Doctor spent most of his life working desperately to restore it, and the Brigadier never mentioned they had a spare? Are you kidding me?! You expect me to believe not one person in the entire United Nations INTELLIGENCE Taskforce ever brought this up or mentioned it in passing, or that the Doctor AND the Master both didn’t pick up on it either? Was the Script Editor on the loo when this was written?

Some people have mentioned that UNIT being in possession of the Doctor’s TARDIS isn’t new territory. These people probably just read The Fires of Vulcan Wikia and left it at that. Here’s why that event is completely different to what happened here. For one thing, UNIT unearthed the Doctor’s TARDIS that time in 1980 in Pompeii and immediately informed the Fifth Doctor. Secondly, they uncovered it at a point in time when the Doctor had left Earth and UNIT behind, no longer needed to repair his TARDIS and knew that the Third Doctor would be pardoned eventually.

What started out as a pet-peeve, but has quickly turned into a big issue, is the ridiculously easy way the cliffhangers are resolved this season. I mean you end with the Doctor being changed into an actual Weeping Angel and hit Control + Z twenty seconds later? Forget Flux, this season should’ve been called “How to Get Away with Wasting Potential”. The Doctor as a Weeping Angel, being let loose on her companions, forced to fight against this new lust to consume time energy and restraining herself from hurting her friends while her companions must find a way to survive her hunt and restore her to normal. That is a three-parter right there! “The Doctor’s Hunt”, “Escape from the Doctor”, “The Doctor Attacks”, “The Attack on Yaz” – the titles write themselves! Instead, being turned into the deadliest assassin in the known universe is treated like just taking a taxi to the next set piece. Insert curse word here.

Fine. Moving on. Let’s discuss that confrontation with Tecteun. How rubbish is she? I mean seriously. I can’t even write a paragraph explaining how dumb her character is, so let’s bullet point this:

Tecteun:

• Has over a billion years of knowledge and experience.
• Has spent eons hiding herself and the Division away from the Doctor.
• Wiped 99% of the Doctor’s memory to prevent her from interfering in her plans.
• Hides between universes to ensure the Doctor can’t find her and stop the Flux.

Also Tecteun:

• Leaves the Doctor unguarded and unrestrained.
• Willingly brings the Doctor to the one place in all of space and time where she is in a position to stop the Flux.
• Gleefully exposits all the information she has spent eons hiding from the Doctor to the Doctor.
• Leaves the Doctor’s memories, which she does not want the Doctor to recover, on a shelf in plain view with no security.

I think that about sums it up. God speed if you can ignore this enough to score it high marks. I mean there is switching your brain off to enjoy something, and then there is NEEDING to switch your brain off to enjoy something. And this isn’t just a nitpick, this is a major plot point for the story. Tecteun would have won if she just did nothing. Literally, if she did not order the Doctor be brought to her, the latter would never have been able to find her and the Flux would have succeeded. I have to take a page from Chris Chibnall’s book and underline this because it is that foolish: Tecteun wants to use the Flux to destroy the universe because the Doctor keeps interfering, so she willingly brings the Doctor to the super-secret space station, so she can interfere!

Folks, I’ve had enough of this Fluxing story arc. I am both grateful it’s over next week and fearful because we still have another three episodes of Chris Chibnall left after. All I can say is this is the most expensive fan fiction ever written. Shame it isn’t even good fan fiction.

Oh, you want good fan fiction? Go look up Big Finish. They have Script Editors too.