A mysterious force known as the Flux is extending across space and time, threatening vast areas of the universe with total annihilation. The Doctor, still reeling from revelations on Gallifrey, is called in to help stop the threat before it is too late.
The twelfth series of the revitalised Doctor Who was a mixed bag, with several very solid episodes alternating with some outright terrible ones, and the season finale being an attempt to restore the mystery to the Doctor's origins, but coming across as a dull overload of exposition instead. With half of the fanbase apparently fuming over this, showrunner Chris Chibnall chose to come out punching with both a third series under his watch and a series of specials designed to see out his (and Jodie Whittaker's) era.
For only the third time in the show's history, after Season 16 in 1978 (The Key to Time) and Season 23 in 1986 (The Trial of a Time Lord), it was decided to have the whole season telling one story, given the overall title Flux. The Doctor would have to face multiple ongoing threats linked together by an over-arcing story. This would be complicated by the loss of companions Graham and Ryan from the season before, so a new companion (comedian John Bishop as Dan) would need to come in, alongside a sizeable recurring cast of characters extending across the whole season.
Chibnall's task was eased - if that is the right word - by the global COVID pandemic, which reduced the number of episodes to just six, making pacing and structure a lot easier than the normal ten. However, a Christmas special and two additional specials airing the year after would extend the season to something approaching a more normal length.
Things get off to a barmy start in The Halloween Apocalypse as the dog-headed Karvanista, of the Lupari species, arrives on Earth and kidnaps Liverpool tradesman Dan Lewis (Bishop). The Doctor and Yaz rescue Dan but discover that the Lupari are coming to Earth not to conquer it but to protect it from a massive space/time distortion known as the Flux. The situation is complicated by an enigmatic creature known as Swarm escaping from a prison where he's been held for millennia, a mysterious woman known as Claire accosting the Doctor before running afoul of the Weeping Angels, and a space adventurer called Vinder who flees the Flux only to run into the Sontarans.
All of this makes for a very busy opener, but a very fun one, with shrinking houses and more plot twists and villains then you can shake a sonic screwdriver at. After the dour and depressing Timeless Children, this is a fun, almost bouncy episode that has no pretensions other than setting up a whole load of guns and firing them off to see what happens. The sheer business of the episode keeps Chibnall's eternal nemesis, stodgy pacing, at bay.
War of the Sontarans keeps things flowing by immediately pitting the Doctor and her companions against the Sontarans in two different time periods, with the Doctor teaming up with Mary Seacole to fight the Sontarans in the Crimean War whilst Dan confronts them in contemporary Liverpool. In a side-plot, Yaz meets up with Vinder and both run afoul of Swarm and his sister, Azure. This is another very solid episode, restoring a sense of real menace and threat to the Sontarans whom had previously been reduced to comic relief. There's also an outstanding turn by Sam Spruell and Rochenda Sandall as the Ravager siblings, Swarm and Azure, who have presence and outstanding prosthetics to become two of the most intimidating Doctor Who enemies we've seen for some time. Also a nod to Jacob Anderson (Game of Thrones) for a fun turn as effective semi-companion Vinder, and Sara Powell as Mary Seacole.
Chibnall can't quite keep the quality up, though, and Once, Upon Time disappoints slightly as we get extended, illusory flashbacks for the characters. Craig Parkinson delivers a splendid performance as the villainous Grand Serpent and Thaddea Graham is appealing as Bel, who is on a mission so urgent that armies of Daleks and Cybermen cannot stop her, but the episode lacks the dynamism of the first two. Still, solid.
Village of the Angels returns to form with a great, Pertwee-esque story of the Doctor, Yaz and Dan trapped in an English village with a bunch of Weeping Angels. Annabel Scholey and Kevin McNally give great performances as the time-displaced Claire and Professor Jericho, a Doctor Who character so traditional (well-meaning, slightly bumbling, awed by the Doctor's knowledge and determined to help) he might as well have beamed in from the set of The Daemons. Probably the season highlight, aided by a killer twist ending.
Survivors of the Flux unfortunately sees Chibnall having to do something he has always struggled with, starting to deliver a satisfying finale. The revelation of the Flux's origins is disappointing, and the scale of what we are told is happening (large parts of the universe being destroyed) clashes with what we see (a few Dalek, Cyberman, Lupari and Sontarans impacted, and maybe four or five planets). Barbara Flynn gives a solid performance as the originator of the Flux, but she vanishes from the story a bit too abruptly and before we get too many solid answers about what's going on. The episode is mostly saved by a subplot in which the Grand Serpent orchestrates a time-skipping plan to weaken UNIT, but runs afoul of Kate Stewart (the always-splendid Jemma Redgrave), but otherwise is a bit of a sloppy mess.
The Vanquishers resolves the Flux storyline semi-satisfyingly, with a complex, multi-front conflict which literally sees the Doctor split in three to lead different plans to defeat the Ravagers, the Sontarans and some Daleks and Cybermen for good measure. The finale is somewhat nonsensical - the Ravagers go out with an extreme whimper after five episodes of being genuinely threatening - but there's a certain "gleeful romp" feeling to events that's somewhat infectious.
Overall, the Flux experiment is successful. Losing four episodes from its length stopped it becoming interminable and annoying, but also resulted in some episodes feeling rushed and a bit overstuffed. The weight of events is undersold (a large chunk of the universe is destroyed and never comes up again, though this has happened before, in Logopolis), and the apparent annihilation of the Daleks is a bit undercut by the next episode confirming that loads of Daleks survived, but this is Chibnall's strongest continuous run of episodes.
This continues into the 2022 New Year's Special, Eve of the Daleks, in which the Doctor and her companions and two people are trapped in a storage facility by a repeating time loop and a Dalek. The only way to start the loop again is to embrace being exterminated. This is one of Chibnall's best single scripts, with an ingenious premise and excellent performances by guest stars Aisling Bea and Adjani Salmon. It's an episode that makes the most of a limited number of sets and actors and constantly finds ways to refresh the premise and become more compelling as it goes along, with one of the better uses of the Daleks since their return in 2005.
Unfortunately, Chibnall's strongest run on the show comes to a screeching halt with Legend of the Sea Devils. Both the Flux season and Eve of the Daleks were clearly compromised by COVID filming restrictions but found clever ways around them. Legend of the Sea Devils does not. The episode features a ton of painful greenscreen work and some very poorly-staged fight scenes and action beats. This may be the worst-directed episode of Doctor Who since its return in 2005, with basic beat-to-beat continuity being a total mess. The guest cast (Marlow Chan-Reeves, Crystal Yu, Craige Els, Arthur Lee and David K.S. Tse) give good performances, and the script has a ton of really great ideas, but awful direction, and some poor dialogue constantly sap any sense of momentum from the episode. It's very annoying because the idea of the Sea Devils returning and fighting Chinese pirates with the Doctor getting involved is an original and fun one.
The Power of the Doctor sees the Thirteenth Doctor out in style with a truly epic storyline involving the Master at his gleeful, plate-spinning best (Sacha Dhawan gets some joyously great lines here), teaming up with both the Daleks and Cybermen in a crazy plan to force the Doctor to regenerate into a clone of the Master. UNIT gets involved, having brought in former companions Tegan (Janet Fielding) and Ace (Sophie Aldred) to help out. In fact, The Power of the Doctor becomes the most Classic Who-friendly episode of all time, with cameo appearances of all of the surviving classic Doctors (bar Tom Baker) thanks to visions, and multiple companions appearing as part of a self-help group for ex-companions. This risks self-indulgence, but by also keeping the focus on Thirteen and her relationships with Yaz and this diabolically satisfying version of the Master (whose turn as Rasputin is genuinely, gloriously unhinged), it also does what it needs to do in delivering a satisfying send-off for Jodie Whittaker's Doctor.
As the overall season goes, this is easily (****) Chibnall and Whittaker's best, with only Legend of the Sea Devils being really poor. There's a sense of fun here that was largely missing from their other two seasons and minimising the Timeless Child stuff but not completely ignoring it feels like the best solution. There's a lot of fanservice here, but it's usually done to enhance the current storylines rather than distract from them. There are some weaknesses - Yaz's characterisation remains rather thin, despite Mandip Gill being a very good actress, and bringing Vinder back to Power of the Doctor to not do much risks making the episode overstuffed - but these are minor compared to the issues in the prior two seasons.
The uptick in quality - and certainly what happens next - may actually make you ponder if it might have been better for Chibnall to have stayed on for another season or so. But I can't blame for the BBC rushing to get Russell T. Davies and David Tennant back on board.
- 13.1: The Halloween Apocalypse (****)
- 13.2: War of the Sontarans (****)
- 13.3: Once, Upon Time (***½)
- 13.4: Village of the Angels (****½)
- 13.5: Survivors of the Flux (***)
- 13.6: The Vanquishers (***½)
- 13X1: Eve of the Daleks (****½)
- 13X2: Legend of the Sea Devils (**)
- 13X3: The Power of the Doctor (****½)
1 comment:
Excellent take on a bit of a muddled season
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