Faithful readers will remember that I found Season 12 a step up from the deeply disappointing Season 11. Not great, but with some good parts. After that I am pretty sure (based on the Wikipedia synopsis seeming sort of familiar) that I watched Revolution of the Daleks, and I definitely made a start on Season 13 (Flux), watching two episodes before I drifted away.
After that, half a dozen specials were broadcast (I missed them all) and then The New Guy debuted. I was slightly excited about this, but having a completionist streak, I wouldn’t let myself watch Ncuti Gatwa’s episodes until I’d caught up with the end of Jodie Whittaker. And that is why, dear reader, I sat down this evening to have another stab at Flux, the six-episode story that encompasses all six episodes of Season 13. I know, I know.
Did I like it? Reader, I did not.
First, the opening. The Doctor and Yaz in an inescapable trap, about to be killed in three different ways for some reason. When the hazards are piled up like this (dropped into acid lava, shot by robot drones, the planet’s about to explode), it doesn’t make things more exciting — it just takes away any sense of credibility; and with it, any real sense of jeopardy. How can Chris Chibnall (for it is he) not understand this?
Anyway, with one bound, the Doctor and Yaz are free, and we’re free to get started on the actual episode (pausing only for the curiously bloodless current version of the once-iconic theme music). And that main story, when we get to it, is all about … well, I couldn’t tell you.
What I can tell you is the ingredients of the main story. In roughly the order they appear, they are:
- A dog-like alien called Carvinista
- Victorian industrialists supervising a mine that is digging for something we’re not told about
- John Bishop’s character and his not-girlfriend Di
- An imprisoned alien (who Wikipedia tells me is called Swarm) and his captors
- A couple living in an isolated house in the Arctic Circle
- A woman called Claire from the Doctor’s future
- New doors spontaneously appearing in the TARDIS
- A Weeping Angel for some reason
- Observation Post Rose and its inhabitant, whose name escapes me for the moment
- Something called The Division, which I still have no idea about
- The eponymous Flux, which Carvinista tells us about
- Sontarans for some reason
- The Doctor’s alleged history with the Big Bad, which she doesn’t remember
- The Big Bad’s sister who summons Di into a deserted house for some reason