Spoilers Survivors of the Flux grade and discussion thread

[Orac Zen]

Err...yeah. Last week was coherent and made sense; this ep was back to being all over the place. Quite literally in the case of Yaz and co. How nice that they were able to flit so easily around the planet in 1904, but at the same time they were probably the best bits of the episode.

The other decent bit was further confirmation that Jodie Whittaker has been wasted on the vast majority of the material she's had to work with during her tenure. What she can do with such material is incredibly impressive.

Hopefully it'll come together in due course, but I'm becoming less and less enthused with the Timeless Child stuff (which doesn't make me a "hater" ). Throw in Davies' return and this may well be it for me where new Who is concerned. Such is life.

 

[Starkers]

Given the NYE special relates to ELF storage (groan) it seems unlikely this will be Flux related, it feels holiday related, and Flux has been branded as a six episode run so to get to the end of episode 6 and then say, "Nah it's not over, kids" seems unlikely. No, there might be a few things left dangling, but IMO The Flux ends next week.

Someone has to work out how much of this six parter has just been exposition!

Don't get me wrong, it's probably been more enjoyable than the rest of the Chibnall era, and certainly shows what Whittaker can do (when she gets the material) but it does feel like most of it has been exposition/set up.

 

[StarMan]

I really think the episode could've used another subplot or two.

Have been watching but haven't commented till now. Yep, great episode last week. This one was a hot mess with a bunch of subplots and characters I simply haven't given a hoot about.

Previous hot mess Stolen Earth worked because it was populated with characters we were already familiar/invested in.

@CaptainWacky yeah at first I thought "is the dog in 1904 as well?" re: the message around the Great Wall.

Yeah... almost over.

 

[Starkers]

Also why write a message by the Great Wall? Is this linked to the fallacy that the great wall is visible from space? Was it a patch of land Yaz somehow knew wouldn't be touched until 2021? Was it just nonsense?

Could be!

 

[Tomalak]

I thought the Timeless Child scenes were the least interesting part of the episode, but I really don't mind it. The Doctor being abused by a shady organisation and then cast out with their mind wiped is pretty consistent with the Hartnell Doctor being an exile and not really knowing how to work the TARDIS. It also fits with Troughton's abject fear in The War Games, Pertwee's exile and further Time Lord missions etc.

I don't particularly need to know it, but I like this more than the Cartmel Master Plan stuff.

The rest of the episode was just great fun, especially all the scenes with Edwardian Yaz, Dan and Jericho. I'd like to have seen more of that. A spin-off in the works? Big Finish would bite yer hand off. The Grand Serpent was great too. He's doing a bit of a Harold Saxon but over a longer period. That could have been the season thread in itself.

There were a few bits left hanging from last week - village surrounded by space?!

Not as good as last week, but I'm still really enjoying this series.

 

[ThreeEdgedSword]

I really think the episode could've used another subplot or two.

And a ton more characters, particularly villains. And a kitchen sink.

Oh, oh, oh, and the Master!

Err...yeah. Last week was coherent and made sense; this ep was back to being all over the place. Quite literally in the case of Yaz and co. How nice that they were able to flit so easily around the planet in 1904, but at the same time they were probably the best bits of the episode.

Yeah, did they incidentally bring all their savings when they were zapped back?

The other decent bit was further confirmation that Jodie Whittaker has been wasted on the vast majority of the material she's had to work with during her tenure. What she can do with such material is incredibly impressive.

Indeed.

Hopefully it'll come together in due course, but I'm becoming less and less enthused with the Timeless Child stuff (which doesn't make me a "hater" ).

My main gripe with it is that what they're doing with it is just not very interesting. So, her (most likely) bio dad and mum were nice, decent, generic SciFi people. Cool, I guess?

I think I'm getting a better idea now what they mean by internationalisation, competing with Netflix, etc.

I'm a relatively new Whovian, don't know if I'll stick with it.

 

[Nightowl1701]

Was anybody else on the edge of their seat watching Kate face off against 'Prentis'? I know she's in the Centenary Special, but...for a mad moment there, I actually thought Chibnall had brought her and UNIT back just to kill her off and slam the door on the latter for good.

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

Yeah, did they incidentally bring all their savings when they were zapped back?

Yes, I wondered about that as well as how did they escape the village? Did the quantum extraction barrier just disappear? As long as history played out the same given their presence and at least one of them remembered the results of some sporting events from 1901-04, perhaps they could make money by placing bets on those events? They might also have been able to make money by selling ideas for inventions to Thomas Edison.

 

[Starkers]

Was anybody else on the edge of their seat watching Kate face off against 'Prentis'? I know she's in the Centenary Special, but...for a mad moment there, I actually thought Chibnall had brought her and UNIT back just to kill her off and slam the door on the latter for good.

Yeah I genuinely thought he was going to kill her off (I would not have been a happy bunny)

Yes, I wondered about that as well as how did they escape the village? Did the quantum extraction barrier just disappear? As long as history played out the same given their presence and at least one of them remembered the results of some sporting events from 1901-04, perhaps they could make money by placing bets on those events? They might also have been able to make money by selling ideas for inventions to Thomas Edison.

Well their finances weren't infinite, or else Dan wouldn't have had to keep playing stowaway! But yeah, where did they get their funds from? Just a throwaway line would have been nice.

 

[Photoman15]

I want to say that I really liked the whole angel episode. This was okay. I did like the small bits of the Serpent coming in and the reflections of the past. It was nice to see that. The rest of the thing - the child, the woman who found her, and the missing watch with the Doctor's memories - was half done. I guess, I'm not really getting 'Division' or anything related to that whole thing. In the earlier seasons of Doctor Who there was UNIT and at least there were some gestures to give the illusion that UNIT was a thing. Division is, for me, not really well constructed as a fictional device in the show (?). Maybe more stuff about the Division (or 'Division') in the earlier parts with a longer span of time would have made me care more about it.

They made it clear that it's "Division". And every time I hear it, I think Nikita (Maggie Q version).

 

[Csalem]

Minor point but the use of the Queen Mary ship kept throwing me off as it wasn't around until the 1930s.

Was nice to see some history of UNIT.

Question though about the Flux in general - is the Moon gone? Or the Sun? Or any of the other planets in our solar system?

Also, what happened last week when the village was being slowly surrounded by space and the village was getting smaller. Was that a temporary thing set up by the Angels to prevent people from leaving until they had all been zapped back in time?

 

[cultcross]

This one was a mess again like the first episode. Exposition dump after exposition dump, at least half the plots I have no idea how they connect, and that annoying thing where it introduces people with a flourish like I should know who they are, but only some of them seem to actually be people I should know. The Doctor herself did nothing at all except listen to people talk, and the amount you can get done in one year with 1904 travel speeds is amazing. I really don't get how the dog alien saw that message.

A multiverse... sigh, of course there is.

 

[Guy Gardener]

1. Jack and Torchwood was around in 1904.

2. U.N.I.T. Had a working T.A.R.D.I.S. the whole time 3 was exiled on Earth.

 

[David cgc]

So UNIT was running in 1958 and that is when The War Machines happened... and the brig was a member then and a corporal?

huh? I know we like to debate the UNIT timeline but that's a whole other level...

Writing a subplot celebrating the importance and legacy of a piece of Doctor Who lore, while also exploiting his position as showrunner to conclusively win a pointless and obscure continuity debate... yet not realizing the difference between a Corporal and a Colonel.

And the payoff of this decades-spanning conspiracy is that the Sontarans are back... after, like, two episodes. It is not an epic surprise to see Doctor Who's distant-third-tier joke of a monster are still in the serial that hasn't ended yet.

There, that's it. That's the Chibnall era in a nutshell. Shallow opinions, strongly held.

 

[Tomalak]

2. U.N.I.T. Had a working T.A.R.D.I.S. the whole time 3 was exiled on Earth.

But isn't that Jodie's TARDIS? Presumably she's going to come and get it before the Third Doctor gets there.

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

Writing a subplot celebrating the importance and legacy of a piece of Doctor Who lore, while also exploiting his position as showrunner to conclusively win a pointless and obscure continuity debate... yet not realizing the difference between a Corporal and a Colonel.

There, that's it. That's the Chibnall era in a nutshell. Shallow opinions, strongly held.

Someone gave a five-year old the keys to the kingdom.

 

[ThreeEdgedSword]

Council of Geeks tries to be positive...

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[Mr. Adventure]

I don't care for the Timeless Child nonsense so for me while I've enjoyed parts of the journey when it gets to the destination I feel cold.

We have RTD coming in but before his announcement I was hoping for someone who didn't come from a background of being a big fanboy of the classic series and didn't feel the need to put their own personal mark on the history of the show.

I agree that it really does seem like a fever dream that a child might have. However, people seem to think it's perhaps Chibnall's best work.

I think those thoughts are mutually exclusive.

 

[Captain Shaw]

Claire.

Is she in 1901?

 

[captainkirk]

Yeah, did they incidentally bring all their savings when they were zapped back?

I feel that problem could have been lessened if their whole adventure didn't take place in 1904. The way it's depicted makes it seem like they spent three years doing nothing and then a frenetic couple of weeks on their Indiana Jones adventure.