I was really grateful when Doctor Who series 13, also called Flux, arrived in the post last week. I needed cheering up, and this series managed to do it. Consequently, I'm inclined to be positive. This is, in my view, the best Doctor Who series with Chris Chibnall as show runner and Jodie Whittaker as the Doctor – in spite of the fact that the Master didn't show up, as I had expected he would. It was gripping, the villains were (most of the time) intriguing, the good guys were easy to root for, and though the high-concept geeky stuff didn't always pay off, it kept Chibnall from producing lacklustre episodes with simplistic political messaging (though he was close once – I'll get back to that). There simply wasn't time for that kind of nonsense when there were alien baddies everywhere and the odds were sky-high.
At the same time, Doctor Who: Flux is flawed. I was a bit worried in the first episode when a lot of different storylines started off at once, and though most of it made sense by the end, there were a number of loose threads and plot holes left. There's no denying the series (which was planned to be longer but had to cut down on episodes because of covid) was over-stuffed. In a way, Chibnall bit off more than he could chew, but I enjoyed seeing him try to get the giant morsel down.
It's easy to expect a show runner to get better and better as time goes by, but it's not always as simple as that. An author or script-writer tends to have certain strengths and weaknesses that are more or less constant. Chibnall will never be the new Moffat. Moffat's high-concept ideas often had holes in them too, but he carried it off (mostly) with brilliant writing. Chibnall's writing isn't terrible (except when he gets political), but it doesn't have the same wow factor as Moffat's. This means, when an explanation for strange goings-on is not forthcoming, I'm less inclined to be forgiving (having said that, I still haven't forgiven Moffat for not explaining how Gallifrey made it back into our universe and for the hybrid cop-out).
So what are the strengths and weaknesses of this series, which are echoed in the Chibnall era overall?
Strength: good villain handling Chibnall's new villains in series eleven were infamously weak, but he tends to handle recurring Who villains like the Master and the Daleks well. This time around, we get new villains I really enjoyed in the form of the Ravagers (a different name would have been better, seeing as the Ninth Doctor fought another alien threat with the exact same name in a Big Finish adventure, but that's a quibble). It's a pity they are tied up with the Doctor's Timeless Child past and involved in some complicated "Space versus Time" conflict that makes no sense, but I very much liked their style. The male, Swarm, is delightfully cutting and superior, and his sister Azure gets a kick out of destruction and genuinely can't understand why the Doctor feels so differently. They are powerful and intelligent, just as villains should be. It has been remarked on that their wildly different punishments for past crimes are never explained, but it allows both of them to enter the plot in an effective manner (ah, the high-security prisoner who's more in control than he should be – a classic).
As for recurring villains, the Sontarans, who were mostly played for laughs during the Moffat era, were reintroduced as a serious threat – they really are very good at making war. The grand plan they have at the end of the series is actually excellent. Props to Chibs for coming up with that one. The Weeping Angels, too, were well handled, though their inclusion felt a little unnecessary.
Weakness: Scoring simple points We didn't get too much of that in this series, as previously mentioned, but there was the second episode "War of the Sontarans". The Sontarans were fine, but the characterisation of the humans was less impressive. We are at the time of the Crimean War. The Doctor and her gang meet Mary Seacole, the British-Jamaican nurse and owner of the "British hotel", and a clueless-seeming General.
You can guess exactly what happens next. Naturally, Mary Seacole does everything right, and the Doctor is constantly delighted with her. Not once do they clash. The all-English, white, male General on the other hand messes everything up, leading to a massacre of his men, has to ask the women for help, and then on top of everything else blows up the Sontaran ships when – gasp – they are retreating. (One of these days, someone should tell the Doctor that attacking a retreating enemy can actually be a sound military strategy, especially when it's Sontarans who never really give up. War is not a cricket match.) Characters who are only there to make a point are mostly badly written, and the General is a case in point. Mary Seacole would have been more interesting, too, if she hadn't always been such a paragon and the Doctor's best bud, but at least Sara Powell gives a spirited performance as the newly popular nurse.
Strength: likeable companions Yes, compared to the companion greats during the Russell T Davies era the Thirteenth Doctor's crew are sketchily drawn, but they're nice sketches. Yasmin aka Yaz, who has been there since the beginning of the Thirteenth Doctor's time, is the most developed as this point. She is something of a mix between Clara and Martha – wanting to be the Doctor and (I think) secretly smitten with the Doctor too – but it works and can be touching. Mandip Gill is given more to do here than in previous series and gives it her all. New companion Dan is more of a comic-relief Graham surrogate, but he works well off Yaz. The scenes where he, Yaz and a professor of Psychology called Eustacius Jericho are stuck in the beginning of the Twentieth century and trying to get back to the present day are among my favourite ones: the trio make a very engaging team of historical adventurers. Among other Doctor allies we have Vinder, exiled from his home planet for standing up to an autocrat, and his gutsy girlfriend Bel, who is trying to get back to him after they're separated by his exile (and the universe potentially ending). Commentators have pointed out that they could be taken out of the story without much changing, and I guess that's true – but they're so sweet.
Weakness: too many plots (and inflexibility) There are plots that could be lifted out of the series wholesale, which would have left more time to answer some pertinent questions, such as did most of the universe actually end or not? I understand that covid left the story arch more cramped than it was supposed to be, but Chibnall should have considered solving the problem by ditching some characters and concepts. There is, for instance, the Grand Serpent, the dictator Vinder falls foul of, who's played with slimy aplomb by Graig Parkinson but who adds precisely nothing to the plot and is a pretty generic bad guy. The whole "Space versus Time" concept and the personification of Time at the end (I've seen it more effectively done in a Prince Valiant comic) could also have been removed. Not to mention...
Weakness: The Timeless Child debacle Chibnall managed the feat of stubbornly making sure his idea of the Timeless Child remained canon, while not making anything interesting with it. We meet Tecteun, who confirms that yes, the Doctor was the Timeless Child and worked for the Division, who are responsible for the potentially universe-ending Flux. But then Tecteun dies by the hand of the Ravagers. The Doctor gets hold of her forgotten memories from her Timeless Child days, but never accesses them, and in the end decides to store them away without taking a peek. (I have to admit, the visual representation of the Doctor's forgotten memories as an Impossible House was cool.) And we are still not given the answer to quite basic questions, such as: if the Fugitive Doctor is a Timeless Child version of the Doctor, why does she already call herself the Doctor and travel in a police-box-shaped Tardis? At this point, Chibnall holding on to the Doctor's Timeless Child past comes across as sheer contrariness. Future show runners can ignore it, but not erase it. At least, that's what he thinks.
So I know that I ended with one more weakness than strength, but I did like this series, honest. And I fully expect to see the Master in one of the specials later on.
