For the first time in a long, long time, I turned an episode of Who off, until I can get my courage back up.
As soon as she sprouted wings, I turned it off.
So you mean the very end of the episode?
I quite enjoyed this episode. Kevin McNally elevated it considerably.
Nope. When… um… The dark-haired girl - Gloria or Dorothy or whatever - went to the mirror.
Then you really wouldn’t like the “she” that sprouted wings and turned into a Weeping Angel at the end of the episode. (Hint: her name rhymes with “The Groctor.”)
No! Not The Proctor!
Your supposition is accurate. I can’t believe they sold out to that 60-second social media provider, and had them incorporate the Tok-tor into the series.
It just Tik’s me off.
Things I am liking about Flux thus far:
- The star-crossed lovers
- John Bishop’s Dan
- Kevin McNally, because as already noted he’s always good value
- Some of the special effects
Things I am not liking about Flux thus far:
- The ongoing drive to ascribe weird powers to Weeping Angels
- The gratuitous return of Daleks and Cybermen
- The aliens in camp luchador masks
- The incoherent nonsense of the plot (“Anything that holds an angel’s image holds an angel. I know - let’s set up CCTV!”)
- Pretty much everything else
Eh, I think I’m easier to please than most of you. I’ve been enjoying this season quite a bit. Absolutely loved the episode with the Sontarans and Mary Seacole.
Jodie Whitaker is really hitting her stride as the Doctor, even as the script requires her to be frantic and confounded much of the time. I’ll be sorry to see her go, honestly.
Sure, the story here is even more wibbly-wobbly than usual, but that doesn’t worry me. You don’t watch Doctor Who for the scientific accuracy, and you can’t think too hard about the logic. It’s a fun ride, the Angels are suitably creepy and menacing, and (for now at least) I’m trusting that the season will have a satisfying conclusion.
Got to say I agree with you. I’ve been enjoying this a LOT more than the past few MOTW structured seasons. It might be I just prefer long turn story telling, but I think Flux is pretty fun. 🤷
OB
ETA: oh, except for the comedy Indian…
The comedy Indian made me think of some side characters in the Life of Brian, I thought it was a nice hommage/parody. And I have a feeling he may still have a role to play. We’ll see.
For the rest of the Flux I admit being quite confused. Only one episode left, wonder if they will even try to close all the plotlines they have left dangling.
I’m enjoying this season more overall. I’m hoping for a good conclusion.
I like fewer companions and thought Yas was doing well on her own.
I do like Kevin McNally as well.
I also like the lovers storyline.
I agree it’s a hot mess of a storyline.
I think that every time angels show up since the first one, they become less special.
I don’t like the timeless child storyline at all.
Daleks are a battletank, shown to take out squads of cybermen, which can take out squads of beings fighting them. A single Dalek is scary. Two or three are terrifying. More than that, doesn’t matter, really and they don’t even compute anymore. Again, one tank is scary but the tenth tank doesn’t really mean much anymore.
Again, I like it better, I like a single story over a season. I’m only sorry Jodie won’t have a season with RTD.
This isn’t working for me.
I don’t mind the idea of a single story over the season. (I think I prefer single story arc with the occasional one off to this or collection of single episodes, but this is fine.) But I don’t like this story so there’s very little for me.
While I understand that they needed to do something to explain why the Doctor has more than 12 regenerations, I hate pretty much everything about the timeless child idea and I keep hoping they’ll find a way to say it’s all a lie. I really didn’t need it to be the crux of the season.
I don’t think it’s structured well. There’s one hour (give or take) left and they’re just bringing in Stewart and Osgood and a few other late in game revelations, plus they need to do several major resolutions, many of which involve space and/or time travel and there isn’t enough airtime to conclude them satisfactorily. I don’t trust that I’ll look and think “oh, wow” at the end when it all comes together, but rather “the fuck was that?” when it doesn’t.
I do like having a longer story arc. I just don’t like this one.
And so it ends in a cacophony of gobbledegook, which I can’t say I followed very much of, but seemed like it did tie all the loose ends up.
I think it clear that you could separate all the different stories we saw into individual self-contained episodes, and Chibnall just decided, short season that it was, to then mix together to have them concurrent as a gimmick. But I liked that, and I think it was handled well enough, even if it needed a conceit of three Doctors in separate simultaneous places to make it work.
There will be a New Year’s Special in a couple of weeks, a Groundhog Day-esque Dalek episode. Then 2022 will have two more specials after that, at I think Easter then August-ish, where she will regenerate.
Just as well as the last season of Game of Thrones
So that happened. And to their credit, they mostly wrapped things up. It took a triple genocide* and the destruction of most of the universe, but it is wrapped up.
I think I just didn’t connect to Chibnall’s writing at all. I can think of little moments from 11 & 12 (9 & 10, but especially 11 & 12) where I’ll go back and watch just that scene (or the whole episode to get to that scene) because it was a great scene. I can’t think of a single one of those with this doctor.
*(the genocide obviously won’t stick. but it was done)
I gotta say, I found that really grating. Especially in an episode featuring a line about how ‘life must win’, or something like that. Seems to me, the Doctor-y thing to do would’ve been to try and save them all, but no, here, she just chucks the Sontarans into the Flux, as well, without so much as a second thought.
In the end, I think I never really quite understood the nature and motivation of the villains (Swarm and Azura (?)), and the threat behind the Flux. So, they wanted to destroy… space… so that time can be unleashed? What does that even mean? I also think I’m forgetting some bit of exposition at the Division’s outside-of-the-universe headquarters. Why was it they felt the universe had to be destroyed, again? And, I mean, basically, at the end, pretty much the whole universe but Earth had been devastated by the Flux, right?
I was just thinking exactly this.
So they did manage to wrap the story up in a way that made… as much sense as possible, I suppose. But I was left wondering who these two really were, where they came from, how they have so much power, and exactly why they’re doing what they’re doing. I think there was a small bit of exposition for Swarm at the very beginning, but not really enough to carry the character all the way through the season.
And at the end, the entity that took the form of Swarm and then the Doctor? Was that supposed to be… time itself? As a sentient being? Huh?
I still think it was all a really fun ride, and there were a lot of good parts. And it was all wildly imaginative. There was just a bit lost in translation between the imagining and the finished product, I think. Chibnall maybe bit off a little more than he could chew.
Wasn’t the destruction somehow un-done by the Flux getting sucked up into the Passenger (is that what it was called?)? I dunno. This whole story was so wibbly-wobbly and timey-wimey that it was hard to keep up. Perhaps we’ll see some of the aftermath in subsequent episodes. At least I hope they don’t just move on like this never happened. Seems like the sort of thing that would stick with you.
I was also very confused by the ending.
What was the motivation of the bad guys?
Were all Daleks/Cyberman/Sontarans wiped out? Or was there a reset?
Has the Doctor really reached a point of wiping them out rather than not?
What was a Traveler? What was the purpose? Did they really have infinite mass when not even the TARDIS does?
Time is an entity? Is Space an entity? Were these secretly the Guardians?
Other comments.
Chibnell is the worst runner for me which is really sad. Nothing in his run has stood out or been something I loved. Since that’s all Jodie got, that makes me even more sad, since his inability to do much with the franchise is also with her.
All of the big bad guys have time travel. The Flux wasn’t mentioned to be happening across Time, just space at a particular time. So, why wouldn’t they have traveled back in time to avoid it?
I did like the Doctor apologizing to Yaz. I don’t know if they left the door open for Dan but imo a better ending for him would have been to drop him off to make his meeting. (Yes, yes, wibbley, wobbley, but I can accept it for an ending like that.) Then he can always come back after that.
I get that things are supposed to be bigger and bigger to up the stakes. That can’t stay or it just gets ridiculous. We just had a multiverse at stake. How can you go bigger? So, go back to solid stories and build from there. Seriously, not only did the big three bad guys get wiped out but also the Karvinistas. (Is that the dog species’ name?) Why didn’t the Doctor help there?
There were some fun parts but overall disappointing to me.