Doctor WhoGoes Hunting for Answers, and Only Begets Frustrating Questions

With just six episode this time of year , Doctor Who has had to contend with abit more bedlam than usualwhen labour about the proverbial Bromus secalinus objet d’art of its fundamental mysteries . Who are Swarm and Azure ? What is the Flux ? Who , what , why , and how are naval division ? But as its penultimate sequence cracks open some of those mysteries , Flux finds us inquire a much more grim motion : why should we care ?

time of year 13 ’s “ survivor of the Flux ” deal a job that has come up again and again — after “ The Halloween Apocalypse ” cast aside so many unlike characters andplot threads to chaseat us , the meter has come up to actually chase them . The need to do so to rest the groundwork for the season close next week , however , means that pretty much every lingering plot episode five ghost feels like we ’re not given well-nigh enough time and impulsion to really be enthrone in those threads as they act out . Beneath the haphazard flit about , “ Survivors ” advert itself on three major plot thread : the Doctorkidnapped by Division , come up out the administration ’s purpose ; Yaz , Dan , and Jericho stuck in the early 1900s trying to figure out a terror to Earth ; and then , perhaps most befuddling of all , the getting even of Craig Parkinson ’s Grand Serpent , who is suddenly on Earth and going on a timey - wimey decades - long misstep falsify UNIT from the dark to start the planet up for invasion . All three plots on their own could have get an episode — and arguably , all three of them in all probability should have — but because ofthe time constraintsand inauspicious outcome around Flux ’s initiation , we get a three - for - one deal that hand us the bones of the far more interesting plot these mind could ’ve been .

Let ’s start with the least narratively meaty of the threads . After Jericho , Yaz , and Dan spend a few age traveling the world trying to be a much less efficient interpretation of squad TARDIS sans - TARDIS ( or Doctor for that matter , but Yaz does a pretty solid task of following in the Doctor ’s footsteps as the rock of the social unit ) , we finally learn why Steve Oram ’s 19th - C industrialist Joseph Williamson has been running about maunder that he has no idea what ’s going on for five installment . Turns out , his famous Liverpudlian burrow system has , somehow , carry off to produce a organisation of room access linking Williamson to different points in time , letting him see glimpses of the catastrophe facing Earth . We do n’t get to learn much beyond that right now , which means Yaz , Dan , and Jericho trek their elbow room across the planet felt like a lot of unneeded solidification - ups to such a reveal , but it was at least worth getting to observe Yaz deal with her feelings of being snub off from the Doctor .

The Doctor gets answers… but does she really want them?

The Doctor gets answers… but does she really want them?Photo: BBC

Meanwhile , the Grand Serpent ’s here also flitting about through prison term on Earth ! retrieve the Grand Serpent ? That guy who showed up in Vinder ’s memories in “ Once , Upon Time , ” ostensibly incredibly far from Earth or being concerned in it and entirely unrelated ? Well , that be damn , now he ’s space - worming his way of life into the line of descent story of UNIT … for reason . Well , as we find out eventually after he ’s assassinated his way through the geezerhood and the echelon of the system in what feel like a Riffian on Hydra ’s percolation of SHIELD in the MCU ( just with a real serpent this sentence ! ) , the reason is ostensibly to launch the earth up to Sontaran invasion . The aliens are still quite disquieted at the Doctor beget them shove off the satellite during their Crimean War gamesearlier this season .

But once again , we ’re chip in so fiddling time to empower in this part of the story . We get what amounts to three interpretation of the same sequence across three different catamenia , as the Grand Serpent reveals he ’s up to no good and uses his invisible snake friend to monstrously kill off anyone at UNIT who discovers he ’s foreign ( except the returning Kate Lethbridge - Stewart , who ’s smart enough to defend herself and offend a toss - phone the 2d something fishy ’s go on ) . There ’s no geographic expedition as to why the Grand Serpent is doing this , or how this even links to his preceding relationship with Vinder . Not to mention the endgame of it all simply being to bring the Sontarans back for rotund two feels quite empty in the here and now , and just like the bow with Yaz , Dan , and Jericho , a distraction from what should ’ve been the real core of the episode .

That is , of course , what the Doctor is getting up to . For as frustratingly brief her part in “ Survivors ” feels , it ’s the densest of the three main thread . We learn that the Doctor ’s date to Division does n’t just take her to the heart of the occult governance , hidden within the gap between a multiversal existence , but to a reckoning with her very origins . It reverse out that not only is Division a Time Lord creation , it ’s the product of the closest thing the Doctor has to a mother : Tecteun ( now wager by Barbara Flynn ) , the Gallifreyan who found her as a timeless minor and reverse - mastermind re-formation to translate Gallifrey ’s native population into the Time Lords . Away from the mussiness of “ Division ’s use ” and “ The Time Lords did it , ” all of this is fascinating and lead to a brainy , infuriated performance from Whittaker .

Photo: BBC

The Doctor is given the chance to be vulnerable and rail against the living they could ’ve had if not for Tecteun ’s interference and experimentation ( interfere , it turns out , feels like it ’s more intrinsical to the very material of Time Lords than regeneration was ) in a way we ’ve only seen her do in moments of fundamental weakness across the preceding two seasons . Her anger at the life she could ’ve had makes the Doctor feel more human than she ever has been in some ways — thrust into a life of saving mortals , her people and her guardians feel unworthy , to offend them for what was have from her . It gives the Doctor ’s seeking for an identity and use to their valorousness a fascinating sharpness . Or it would … if this engagement between mother figure and abandoned girl were not cut short by Azure and Swarm evidence up to promptly sprinkle Tecteun .

The villainous pair pester the Doctor that her stolen , stored memories — lock inside the same variety of Chamaeleon - arch watch fob we see the Master ’s identity seal in all those years ago — will never render the full response someone like Tecteun could ’ve . It ’s frustrating , not just because of the stupor endpoint of that relationship , but because “ survivor ” has to keep cutting away from Tecteun and the Doctor to mark up the ease of its Bromus secalinus pieces for next week ’s finale . As viewers , we can not properly care that the Doctor ’s mother is killed off as quickly as she ’s reintroduced because it all happens so quickly . Plus , after we ’ve disregard back and forward between two other mystery togs all episode , the solution we ’re left with feel half - formed rather than truly revelatory it .

The running root throughout the three plots of the episode is frustration at nonplus these stories told so quickly and randomly in the set up to a lordly culmination that we ’re not nearly apply enough sentence to posture with them and sense empower . Yaz and Dan ’s arc and the Grand Serpent ’s alliance with the Sontarans perhaps brook the least here , as distinctly there ’s going to have to be more to the Williamson Tunnels next calendar week anyway . honestly , it ’s not the be - all and remainder - all if we do n’t finger quite so as invested in a Sontaran invasion because , well , it ’s a Sontaran encroachment . Potato the great unwashed will shoot laser guns , explosions will encounter , Earth will fight back , and it ’ll be all secure and playfulness in that classic Doctor Who alien attack manner .

Photo: BBC

Photo: BBC

That ’s fine . Dodgy shoehorning of the Serpent into all of it aside , we do n’t really need much more to be rouse by the prospect of some explosions . But their presence here in “ Survivors ” kept drawing away from what really should ’ve been the heart of the episode : the Doctor ’s reunion with Tecteun . “ The Timeless Children ” went so far in diving into the potential of the Doctor ’s retiring life , and the freedom that potentially brought to both the show and to the Doctor themselves . So tying Tecteun into Division ’s origins , and seeing so much of the conversations the Doctor has with her cut down to get by with its machinations and the Flux finger thwarting rather than satisfying . The same could be said for seemingly wiping Tecteun from the board exclusively , although , as ever , death is n’t always as certain on Doctor Who , so perhaps there ’s a chance that Swarm and Azure ’s disintegrating junk is less deadly than we ’ve been run to consider . But if this is the end of that thread beyond the possible restoration of the Doctor ’s memory , it feels like a huge missed chance .

And so , Doctor Who comes crashing into a finale with many , many pieces still left on the mesa . metre will tell if next hebdomad will make do to put a satisfying fore on what Flux has fix up , and how that pave the way for Jodie Whittaker ’s final hour as the thirteenth Doctor to get down onNew Year ’s sidereal day next year . But given how the season so far has really struggled in finding the time to focalise , maybe hoping we ’ll expiration Flux with a sense of lucidness has all the hope of Earth being capable to overpower a Sontaran invasion right now .

Assorted Musings

If I see another title card with a position and twelvemonth in Chibnall ’s time on Doctor Who in this next year , I ’ll … well actually I do n’t know . But it ’s come about too much and it does n’t give you any sensation of outside scale , it just feels cockamamie at this point .

Between Division and the Celestial Intervention Agency , the Time Lords were sucky enough to have multiple black ops manipulative organizations neglect all the linguistic rule they coiffure for themselves .

The coming back of Kate Stewart aside , the cute passing nod to the Brigadier ’s early UNIT days was quite endearing . And we got an Osgood reference ! mayhap we ’ll in reality get to see her next week now that Kate is patently leading humankind ’s resistance against the Sontarans according to the Next Time drone .

Photo: BBC

Photo: BBC

Perhaps the sole practiced thing about the Williamson tunnels arc here is that we get more time to grow Jericho into a quasi - companion for Yaz to steward in the physician ’s absence seizure — it was very fun . It would ’ve been nice to sit with him , Dan , and Yaz a bit more than them just globetrotting every scene , because as a trio they ’re a pretty solid unit of measurement . Being fling back to the turn of the twentieth century will do that to the great unwashed , I guess .

Poor Vinder getting atomize into a rider so well , and then instantly meet the one other somebody we in reality know is inside out of apparently 1000000000000 , Di . She seemingly has become very gun - glad in her time there but hopefully , her arrival means we ’ll get to find out some means or another to deliver people out of those thing next hebdomad . Otherwise , that would be a very unearthly and unfortunate conclusion to his arc this season .

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Photo: BBC