DOCTOR WHO s13: e5: FLUX: SURVIVORS OF THE FLUX

 

DOCTOR WHO s13: e5: FLUX: SURVIVORS OF THE FLUX

 

“How did he do that? Don’t you see?”

“No.”

“No.”

 

Before I start what others have already called a mess and horrid, I must preface this with the fact that I feel as if a six part story would have been a great idea HOWEVER, these feel more like a season was planned as usual, with six separate stories and then the show runner or whoever decided to go with one six part story so the show runner or another whoever or the same whoever, decided to just smash them altogether. It feels slap dash, messy, and ill plotted at best and at worst: a mess. It feels as if a story was interrupted with another story, rather than one long story. I’m not even sure a six part story can work for the new series or rather for New Series Fans, who are used to aliens in the past, aliens in the future, aliens in the present, UNIT, Master returns, Daleks!, Cyber Returns, Gallifrey DEAD and UnDead! And illogical, boring Doctor centered stories. Angels! Zygons! Marriage! River. You get the idea. The smaller stories, even those with aliens instead of EARTH SHATTERING UNIVERSE DESTROYING ALIEN ALIENS, don’t seem to be on the minds of the show runner or the fans or the writers. Everything has to  be epic. To be fair, I feel every DW story, from the start, good or bad WAS epic but that includes small stories like UNDERWORLD, THE AWAKENING, THE SMUGGLERS, THE HIGHLANDERS, and more. Can DW ever do monster less stories on tv (or anywhere else for that matter?) ever again? It’s doubtful. The universes destroying plots are over done and over used now. The show might be past its expiration date. I love RTD but even I doubt his ability to make DW viable in 2023 with such a mess as it has been since he left…and it has been, despite some successes here and there. It’s been largely inconsistent, at best, silly, boring, and incoherent as worst. Episodes like ROSA, THE DOCTOR’S WIFE, MUMMY ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS, DEMONS OF PUNJAB, and a few others are few and far between. More often we get episodes that make us feel cheated and at least two Doctors who were so badly written (and sorry, sometimes acted) who just never seemed like THE Doctor (11 and 12 TBH).

 

Shows like LEGACIES, OUTLANDER, A DISCOVERY OF WITCHES, EXPANSE, and others are leaving DW in the dirt as for storytelling, world building, historical settings and adventures, and character development and just plain old entertainment value. They often rock, are often experimenting with story telling and usually with good results, and being different from what they were before, for better or worse and they hold interest. Even show that I don’t follow any longer like THE WALKING DEAD franchise are trying new things and surviving and doing things are different and the GAME OF THRONES spinoffs and prequels look set to do the same. DOCTOR WHO on the other hand thinks reviving UNIT and old monsters, gimmicks, and jokes, and trying to ape other things is the way to go. Maybe DW and its universes need a TOTAL revamp in approach rather than in look, style, and purpose. A DOCTOR WHO that looks good but is storywise more like those shows is what is needed. It CAN be done and the Old Tropes of the show can be used but not redefined. The entire canvass is there for something like a 30 part story if it is done right (Gallifrey as the focus and focal point but not the main setting all the time might be well used as would be the rich history of the show). Above all the show needs pace and I don’t mean just running around, it needs a sense of urgency, of purpose, of someone can care about. Fans complain about Rose (I always suspect a person’s taste when they complain about Rose and say they like Amy better) but truth is I CARED deeply about what happened to her, her family, and her boyfriend. Ditto Martha, Jack (I’m so so sorry about ALL of TORCHWOOD on V), Adam (yes, him, too), Donna, and all the people connected to them. I also cared about Bill and found Nardole funny at times in season ten (and only in season ten).

 

The show lacks that in characters now. Dan and all the other companions since Moffat left, have been written well and the actors try real hard. I loved the companions in season 11 but it wasn’t kept up: Yaz, Ryan and Graham were great. Season 12 was so badly written and so opposite season 11, I was bemused and wondered what the F happened! Nothing was interesting there. It was almost a non season. Cliché, annoying, change for changes sake, things returning for no reason other than to repeat what was done before (Gallifrey is gone again), and a terrible Master.

 

Okay now onto this mess…

 

Here goes…

 

Watching a horrid season 6 (CLOSING TIME), a brilliant KINDA, and this proves something…not sure what but of the three, KINDA comes out smelling like a rose in paradise! See what I did there? It was small scale, Earth wasn’t in danger, the universe wasn’t in danger, we care about Tegan, Todd, Panna, Adric, the Doctor and the strangeness all around them. It didn’t cheat. It didn’t gimmick. It wasn’t loose. The Doctor didn’t parade around like he or she was the BOMB. Here, the writer tries to make the 13^th Doctor OH, SO BAD ASS as she chides the angels, and knocks on them and rails against them. Anyone sick of ANY Doctor in the new series yelling at the enemies and being nasty and posturing to them? This didn’t happen often in season 11 where the evolved 13^th Doctor tried first to listen, reason, take the POV of the enemy, and explain calmly what was going to happen. There was little “I’m THE DOCTOR! AND I’M STRONGER THAN YOU! I WILL KILL YOU IF YOU TOUCH THIS PLANET ! It is protected, Sheads!”  I loathe that now. At first, with Chris and David, it worked. With the goofball Matt it just felt wrong and was badly acted and executed. With Capaldi it just as wrong as almost everything else going on around him. And after a great season 11 and a totally pacifist Doctor, having 13 act this way just feels…embarrassing .

 

Sorry but having seen fan fic and other spinoffs with the angels vs the Doctor or even the Doctor working WITH the angels, this comes off as worse than all of them. This is how NOT to do a Doctor confronts the Angels…at all. It’s boring and almost embarrassing.

 

“You’re a very smug statue.” Really?  Is this camp now?

 

Next we’re in an INDIANA JONES thing though minus the tension, action, good plot contrivances, and a reason for being there that we might be privy to. Jericho impresses but Yaz’s know it all attitude smacks of bad writing, bad characterization, and a NEW ADVENTURES tone and not one of the good ones.

 

The Angels let the Doctor go to …an Ood and the Division?

 

I like that the companions have been in this decade for three years almost but…nothing is done with that. In fact, what about a story where the companions are stuck with Lewis and Clark? Think : adventure, exploration, history, discoveries, scope and smaller scale than universe death.

 

As if I remember or care where Prentis came from, we’re not entering yet another plot thread….that’s just as boring. We’ve seen and heard the start of TORCHWOOD in the past and now we’re building the start of UNIT with an old bloke who tells the secrets to Prentis. Do we know who the old bloke is? Do I care?

 

The stuff with Jericho, Yaz and Dan on the ship feels as if it were written for Ryan and Graham instead of Jericho and Dan.

 

As if all that is not bad enough the old lady explains Division and….it’s boring too. Faction Paradox anyone? It’s a group from Gallifrey that, ho hum, interferes.

 

OH and the TIME WAR…I mean THE FLUX has created a need for Earth to be shielded from it AND for Earth to be the target of displaced creatures (The Doctor calls them creatures) to invade to find a new place to live. ALL of this is so very boring. How many clichés and old hat ideas can be put into one story?

 

Did I just see a dead Tribble? A dead or part of a dead CRITTER?

 

Did Bell give Vinder the teleport band?

 

The writer doesn’t seem to like Bell’s mission so has the Dog Guys take her to their ship formations because she’s in one of their ships.

 

Vinder, instead of Bell, finds the missing.

 

Another bore: Division is so wary of the Doctor, they created the Flux to stop the Doctor. Sound like Moffat’s Silence nonsense? Yup. Gosh, does Chibnall, at this point, have a single thought for a story that’s his own?

 

Prentis uses a snake thing from him to kill the old bloke in the boring UNIT sub plot where we get a snippet of sound to indicate there is a new Corporal…Lethbridge Stewart. And…I don’t care. About any of this. Does ANYONE find any of this exciting? I’d be interested, no, really, in finding out why.

 

This whole thing with the “woman who the Doctor came to call mother” is an emotional bore and in fact, I feel nothing over it. The Doctor was taken as a female child, “rescued” and given the life he/she was given by this old woman, who seems cold as ice to be honest. The Doc feels she was robbed of a life. The woman feels she gave the Doctor the journey of her lifetime. Can the writing get any worse?

 

THEN the woman goes the Davros route and accuses the Doctor of using her companions…her experiments. This argument goes on and on….

 

…

 

Vinder is seemingly incinerated but he seems to have teleported to find Di, who has scores to settle. Again, I ask, what is with the writing? Did someone take STAR WARS, STAR TREK and DOCTOR WHO NEW ADVENTURES novels and smush them together?

 

The astounding “comedy” of Nepal is embarrassingly bad farce. It’s like a bad AIRPORT, POLICE SQUAD, POLICE ACADEMY movie. What are they doing? No, what is Chibs doing? Gosh.

 

I was so bored, I don’t even know what it is they’re trying to do or what each scene is trying to convey.

 

Oh a big message to the dog guy. Sort of like River’s or Amy’s or Rory’s message to the Doctor or the Doctor’s to Sally. We’ve seen all of this before. How many times are we going to see things we’ve already seen?

 

There was a snake on the “waiter” who attacked Yaz, Dan, and Jericho on the ship. Who was he? A Mara? Another girl who seems to do Prentis’s bidding, arming weapons to aim at Earth’s surface (?) has a snake tattoo, too.

 

Prentis fulfills another horrible death scene quota just because it’s DW. He kills a fat bloke who seems to like him but antagonizes him. Why are these blokes always alone with Prentis so no one notices him murdering them? Sigh.

 

SO…while the trio of companions are on yet another mission and this time find it: Joseph Williamson who found …or thinks he’s found out info to help them find out who or what is threatening the universe and how to stop it. Sigh.

 

Next dragged out cliché: the Doc’s memories on a fob watch.

 

Okay, now Chibnall is just taking the piss. He wants this to be boring. He revives the most boring character in the DW universe…in any universe…Kate! Sigh.

 

She acts like such a bad ass but then has to call the other ridiculous UNIT operative, Osgood and has to go dark when her house blows up. Prentis. If this resembles the X FILES, it is, only not as intriguing or as good.

 

OH look aliens are attacking the Earth again! Oh no! I’m surprised! No, wait, I’m not. It’s the Sontarans again. Sigh.

 

Then Swarm shows up and kills the old lady and moves at the Doctor. GREAT CLIFFHANGER! Know why? Because it puts me out of this misery.

 

AWFUL. AWFUL. AWFUL.