Doctor WhoMade a Mess of Itself Again, But This Time With Purpose

Stop me if you ’ve hear this before , but last nighttime ’s medico Who wasa bit of a hole . Plotlines appear and vanishing thick and fast , mystery upon mystery story , question fired as quickly as they were leave behind unreciprocated — and the show ’s quickly guide out of time to prove it can pick upwhat it ’s putting down . But here ’s a kink : this time that raft form of worked .

It really is kind of noteworthy in so truncated a season as Flux is , how starkly some of Doctor Who ’s most tried and true trick can become apparent . If “ Once , Upon Time ” was more than one episode or a whole season away from something like “ The Halloween Apocalypse ” their similarities might not make for so inviting a line . Or at the least , perhaps what was so thwarting about one and much less frustrating about the other would feel laborious to discern . Yet , here we are ; two episodes on from a smörgåsbord of plot of land hooks shell at you with an overload of spectacle , Doctor Who exact our poor boy to the time - rich planet of Atropos to do much the same . Doctor , Yaz , Dan , and new acquaintance Vinder are displume aside , not so much by physical length , but a secular one , as we see a little bit about what brought them all here in the first spot .

So yes , one thing that “ Once ” does borrow from Flux ’s premiere is that messy feel , as we trip the light fantastic toe between the unlike pouch of time our hero are fling into , but also back and off between an entirely fresh screw thread with the mysterious Bel ( Thaddea Graham ) , a subsister of the Flux who ’s running across what ’s left of the universe to find her genuine love . Arguably , it ’s made even more confusing than “ Halloween Apocalypse ” at prison term as showrunner Chris Chibnallgoes all Steven Moffat on us . He ’s not just playing with different timelines and detail in our graphic symbol ’ personal histories , but throw out our champion into the bodies of their past selves and others as we flit between them . Is this Yaz “ our ” Yaz , or is she flung into Vinder ’s store ? Is the Doctor the Doctor , or a preceding self , as we see whenJo Martin ’s Fugitive Doctormakes a special appearance ? A lot is going on , both obtuse and yet not heavy enough at clock time to really give us an intimation of whether or not we ’ve learned enough about the Flux , Swarm , and Azure , and their veridical plans .

The Doctor, but not as you know them…

The Doctor, but not as you know them…Image: BBC

Then what does make “ Once , Upon Time ” and its twisty - turny , and very much timey - wimey , mess of story loops feel like more of a succeeder than the time of year 13 premiere ? Well , for a start , at least the vast majority of yarn here build to a singular purpose . After the Doctor opens the Time Storm to avoid having cloud make Yaz and Vinder vessels for the Mouri ’s dominance of time itself — I trust you ’re keeping a notepad of all the Proper Nouns this season , because you ’ll ask it — most of the sequence , as surface - level “ uncanny ” it is , is actually relatively simple . The Doctor want to reunite her friends after buying enough time for the Mouri to send more vessels to Atropos and along the way , we learn something about both her newfangled Quaker and the Doctor of the Church themselves . It ’s a simple core that “ Halloween Apocalypse ” lack as it layered newfangled narrative threads and explosions on top of each other , and no matter how muddle “ Once , Upon Time ” get with its metre - squirm shenanigans , it provides a center for the episode to keep come back to .

Plus , learning about these characters is actually what works , even if at long last what we know of the wider arc of the serial publication is still left wide open . Sure , we cognise Swarm and Azure are work for a higher exponent beyond them ( I trust you ’re ready for three week of speculating if the Mysterious Old Woman is the Rani , the Valeyard , a newfangled Master , or somehow all three ) , and their battle against the Doctor has happened before , so long ago it was inher “ Fugitive ” daytime . But we do n’t really know as to why they ’ve fought on such a ordered series that billions of beings have been affected by their fight yet , outside of a nebulose philosophical battle between Space and Time itself . It ’s noble-minded stakes , at the least , but tempered with something much more personal . suffer to get wind about Vinder ’s backstory — to the item where we kind of lie with more about him than we love about Dan now — give a human context of use to both the devastation of the Flux itself and offer further grain to his grapheme . And perhaps , more importantly , we get to see another growing side of Whittaker ’s Doctor .

Undercut throughout her usual hero - saving tariff throughout “ Once , Upon Time ” is an element of the thirteenth Doctor only occasionally glimpsed in the last time of year : a hungriness for knowledge that take her to some vindictive , harsh plaza . It ’s not just that the Doctor wants to know what ’s run low on with Swarm and Azure so she can stop them , or live what ’s going on with the issue of the Time Storm so she can save her Quaker . She ’s desperate to know because it bond into the past she was refuse by the Time Lords themselves — and for all theDoctor told the Master last seasonthat she was release by know that there is more to their past than they had previously known , “ Once ” makes it explicitly clear how much that actually deeply frustrates this incarnation . That frustration manifests in turn as she becomes once againcold and commandingto her friends , vindictive in her desire tostop her foe , and gaining a recklessness that jeopardize to not just endanger them , but her very ego — perhaps laying the groundwork for a heavy price to bepaid down the line .

Image: BBC

And so finally , midway in , Doctor Who : Flux has some interesting meat on its os . Whether or not that nitty-gritty will make for a satisfying repast by the end of the series still remains to be come across . But in finally providing a circumstance for its stake — and giving the Doctor a place in the fight more than just the fact that the Doctor fights sorry guys — maybe , just maybe , Flux has find the focus it ’s been miss so far . Sometimes there really is a method to the timey - wimey rage .

Assorted Musings:

Oh , it was lovely to see Jo Martin back , no matter how briefly ! Hopefully , her connection to all this mean we can get a few long appearances from her before the end of all this .

As if there was n’t already enough run low on in this episode , it felt almost unneeded to have Bel expend much of her screw thread throughout this installment being harangued by familiar threats in both the Daleks ( … unconvincingly CGI’d in as float pepperpots , as no one want to trundle a Dalek across a wood ) and the Cybermen . Still , if this is how you force your “ let ’s have an old monster show up ! ” indulgence into a time of year where it ’d be really bizarre to shoehorn either of them in , this is the way of life to do it .

matte a turn weird that this was the episode to give the thirteenth Doctor a wardrobe rise , but hey , we ’ll takea new coating when we can get it .

Image: BBC

Image: BBC

We ’ll have to see establish how the menace of the Angel toy into the Time Storm here , but it really does feel like “ Village of the Angels ” has the electric potential to be another “ warfare of the Sontarans ” in that ’d be a siloed - off “ standalone ” in this ocean of narrative connections — all the more thwarting after an episode like this . Fingers track that ’s not the case !

Wondering where our RSS provender went ? You canpick the new up one here .

Chris ChibnallEighth DoctorFictionSci - FiTelevisionTime LordsTwelfth Doctor

Image: BBC