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TARDIS Guide

Overview

First aired

Sunday, November 7, 2021

Written by

Chris Chibnall

Directed by

Jamie Magnus Stone

Runtime

59 minutes

Tropes (Potential Spoilers!)

War, Celebrity Historical

Story Arc (Potential Spoilers!)

Flux

Location (Potential Spoilers!)

Earth, England, Liverpool, Sebastopol, Temple of Atropos, Time

UK Viewers

5.13 million

Appreciation Index

77

Synopsis

Thrown back into the Crimean War, the Doctor finds the Light Division are about to enter senseless battle with... an army of Sontarans?

Yaz and Dan are pulled away from her, and each find their task will be restoring Time. The Sontarans are ready for eternal conquest, and in the Temple of Atropos, the enemy has arrived to take it all.

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1 review

This review contains spoilers!

A lot of people seem to like this episode but this is where Flux already lost me completely on first viewing.  Revisiting it, I can better understand what was going on and what they were going for.  It doesn't improve much for me because I know these plot threads have little to no actual pay-off either within this episode or by the end of Flux.  At least War of the Sontarans had some neat visuals being the Crimean War.  That's a neat idea with a lot of potential.  I would love one day to see Sontarans in other historical settings because that plays well with the warmongering ways of these aliens.

So that stuff was pretty well done but feels like a teeny-tiny part of the episode.  The Doctor gets the Sontarans to leave and that's that.  They appear to have only invaded during the Crimean War for the fun of it so the main feature of this episode feels barely touched on and very pointless.  No, instead we have to deal with Vinder, the purpose of whom I still am unclear on but whatever the case it is weak pay-off down the road that doesn't justify the screen time he gets.  We have whatever is going on with Mouri, and again, I don't think I could coherently explain what these beings added to the story other than them just being used for some cool visuals.  Flux does have some cool sights and sounds but without any meaningful story to accompany them so many of these episodes just feel like noise.  Joseph Williamson is digging some tunnels and I remember Flux eventually telling me the purpose of that but it clearly doesn't matter for the larger story.  I think it gave the Earth some protection against the Flux event?  Either way, it's yet another mystery box with absolutely nothing inside of it.  An empty way of allowing for more cryptic dialogue.

WILLIAMSON: Ah. Ah. All our fears made true. All is porous. All is broken. I must retrace. There's so much work to be done.

TRIANGLE: Time is evil, and it will seek its own.

DOCTOR: Stop. You don't have to do this. Tell me what you want.
SWARM: All in good time.

It's all just so... tiring.  Everyone is being vague or unclear because the story feels so thin.  For a six-part extravaganza, it's so very simple when you peel back all the bells and whistles.  Swarm and Azure are two bad guys who need the Mouri to get Time free.  Time is also bad - maybe? - but it doesn't really matter because Tecteun was behind it all.  She wants to unleash Flux to wipe out the universe, start over, and maybe teach the Doctor a lesson in some convoluted way.  So everything else - Dan and his dog buddy, the Sontarans, the Daleks, the Angels, the companions, whatever is going on with Williamson - they're basically irrevelant to the actual story.

Dan's actor John Bishop reminds me a lot of Jodie Whittaker.  Both seem supremely talented individuals who were routinely handed these scripts that gave them so desperately little to work with.  Neither of their characters, nor Yaz, do anything that really gets me to care more about them.  It came across to me as a wholly vacuous experience.  Devoid of thought or meaning.  To me, Flux just sucks.


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Statistics

AVG. Rating508 members
3.52 / 5

Trakt.tv

AVG. Rating782 votes
3.69 / 5

The Time Scales

AVG. Rating125 votes
3.75 / 5

Member Statistics

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Favourited

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Saved

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Skipped

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Quotes

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(Dan knocks out a Sontaran by hitting it in the back of the head with a wok)

DAN: How'd you like that, eh? Pan-fried Sontaran! Now I'm gonna... wok right out of here!

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Transcript Needs checking

[Battleground]

(The Cloister Bell tolls. The Doctor has a black and white vision of a crumbling house above dead trees.
She wakes up lying on desolate ground with the TARDIS parked nearby. There are barrels, bits of gun carriage and a dead horse here.)
DOCTOR: End of the universe. But we're still here. Wherever here is.
YASMIN: Doctor.
DOCTOR: Yaz. Is Dan with you?
DAN: I'm here. I just blacked out. Last thing I remember, we were on your TARDIS, that Flux thing was coming at us, and then...nothing.
YASMIN: Me too. I think. I was on the ground over there. We must've been thrown out.
DOCTOR: Must have been. Where are we?

(She goes over to a body in a red military jacket and scans it.)

DAN: Is she always like this?
YASMIN: Pretty much.
DOCTOR: If I had to call it, we're back on Earth, which meant the Lupari shield worked, but the TARDIS took a hit.
YASMIN: Looks like we're in the middle of a battlefield, which could mean...
MARY: Hey. Get away from him. Show me your hands. What did you take? Show me.
DAN: We didn't take anything. I know what goes on out here. Vultures emptying the pockets of the dead. What...? Who are you? Where you from?
DOCTOR: I'm the Doctor. This is Yaz. This is Dan. Nice to meet you. We were tracking for signs of life.
MARY: Sure. Doctor is a man's term.
DOCTOR: It's fluid.
MARY: Sentry patrol. All of them dead. It's too late for medical aid. But you're too close to the front to be with Mrs Nightingale. She won't come this close to Sebastopol. How long have you been here?
DOCTOR: Sebastopol. 1850s. Orientated. I know where we are. Crimean War, 1855, Ottoman Empire weakening, British soldiers fighting Russians.
MARY: What?
DAN: We're in the middle of the Crimean War?
DOCTOR: But that would make you Mary Seacole. Are you? You are, aren't you?
MARY: Mrs Seacole to you. Doctress to the fallen.
YASMIN: Everybody, shh, shh. Listen.
MARY: It's enemy soldiers. Back up, back up.
DOCTOR: Go.

(Taking cover.)


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