Category: Doctor Who

Timestamp: Series Thirteen and Thirteenth Doctor Summary

Michael FalknerLeave a comment

Timestamp - Series Thirteen Thirteenth Doctor Summary

Jodie Whittaker’s final series was consistent but frustrating.

This batch of episodes encapsulated much of this era of Doctor Who, which struck me as more of a classic era tone with enhanced special effects. The budgets were lower relative to the rest of the revival era, and the stories tended to be more self-contained and pulpy. In Flux, a serialized event akin to the classic years, we even saw some classic-style monsters that looked more like latex and plaster than we’re used to.

Unfortunately, the budget constraints also led to convoluted writing. The Flux serial was announced in early 2021 with eight episodes, but we ended up with six parts instead. The other two became specials accompanying the feature-length finale. This reduction was attributed to the COVID-19 pandemic, but it’s also no secret that Doctor Who was in danger of being cancelled again. Viewership didn’t stick around during the writing troubles and the obvious shift in production values. In short, the Doctor was in trouble.

Flux started well enough, but with convoluted plot threads and jumpy stories in the back half, it fell flat. This should have been a home run for Jodie Whittaker’s farewell tour, but it was bogged down by its weight. The three specials picked up some of the slack with clearer plots, back-to-basics characterization, and exciting adventures, but Flux was frustrating and confusing when all was said and done.

Overall, Series Thirteen comes in with a solid 4.0 score, buoyed by the specials and Village of the Angels. That ties with the classic Twelfth Season and Series Ten, and places this set in a tie for sixteenth among the forty-one seasons (so far) in the scope of the Timestamps Project. Despite my frustrations, that’s still good company. It’s also right in the middle between the other two series in the Whittaker era, which speaks to consistency of quality.

For what it’s worth, I did enjoy the rewatch, though this is not a set that I’d sit down and mainline if I had a day off.

Flux – Chapter One: The Halloween Apocalypse – 4
Flux – Chapter Two: War of the Sontarans – 5
Flux – Chapter Three: Once, Upon Time – 4
Flux – Chapter Four: Village of the Angels – 4
Flux – Chapter Five: Survivors of the Flux – 4
Flux – Chapter Six: The Vanquishers – 3
Eve of the Daleks – 2
Legend of the Sea Devils – 4
The Power of the Doctor – 4

Series Ten Average Rating: 4.0/5

Thirteenth Doctor Publicity

Following tradition…

The First Doctor was a wise grandfather, the Second a sly jester, the Third a secret agent scientist, the Fourth an inquisitive idealist, the Fifth an honorable humanitarian, the Sixth a squandered cynic, the Seventh a curious schemer, the Eighth a classical romantic, the Ninth a hopeful healing veteran, the Tenth a bargaining humanitarian, the Eleventh an irascible runner, the Twelfth a principled warrior…

…and the Thirteenth Doctor is an excitable explorer.

She was the embodiment of acceptance of the post-Time War traumas in the early days, but she ended up falling into similar dour moods after the Timeless Child revelation. That comes coupled with the destruction of Gallifrey by the Master, literally dismantling everything her predecessors accomplished as the essence of her people was poured into one of their greatest enemies.

The trauma derailed her recovery.

This Doctor was intentionally distant and emotionally aloof, preferring fun and excitement over being cuddly. There were a lot of adventures taking place off-screen but alluded to by the companions. She was also considerate of the pain of leaving her companions behind, a character trait that prevented her from getting too close to Yaz. She cared in her own way.

I like the Thirteenth Doctor a lot, but I unlike previous incarnations, I feel that her score places her appropriately in the ranks. I loved her spirit and her embodiment of what it means to be the Doctor, and I will miss her. I just wish that her time had been better treated. She had so much more potential and so many more stories to tell.

Series Scores
Series 8 – 3.9
Series 9 – 4.1
Series 10 – 4.0

Thirteenth Doctor’s Weighted Average Rating: 4.00

Ranking (by score)
1 – Eighth (4.50)
2 – Tenth (4.34)
3 – Ninth (4.30)
4 – Eleventh (4.17)
5 – Third (4.00)
6 – Thirteenth (4.00)
7 – Twelfth (3.87)
8 – Second (3.67)
9 – Fourth (3.67)
10 – Seventh (3.54)
11 – First (3.41)
12 – Fifth (3.20)
13 – Sixth (2.73)
N/A – War (No score)
N/A – Fugitive (No score)

Ranking (by character)
1 – Tenth Doctor
2 – Second Doctor
3 – Ninth Doctor
4 – Eighth Doctor
5 – Third Doctor
6 – Fourth Doctor
7 – Thirteenth Doctor
8 – Fugitive Doctor
9 – Twelfth Doctor
10 – War Doctor
11 – Eleventh Doctor
12 – Seventh Doctor
13 – First Doctor
14 – Fifth Doctor
15 – Sixth Doctor

As I’ve mentioned before (and before, and before, and…), the top ten spaces on the character ranking are really, really, really close. I’m always tempted to simply rank them all as a first-place tie, but I find the real challenge to be actually thinking it through and placing them.

So, here we are: The Timestamps Project has effectively caught up with the continuing story of Doctor Who. To keep the spirit of this project alive, I’m taking a short break. First, this will allow the Sixtieth Anniversary and Series Fourteen (Season One) stories some time to breathe. Second, it will allow me some time to focus on other things.

No doubt, the Timestamps Project will return. After all, we have the return of David Tennant and the debut of Ncuti Gatwa to talk about, and my initial impression of those stories was that they were fun.

UP NEXT – Doctor Who: The Star Beastcc-break

The Timestamps Project is an adventure through the televised universe of Doctor Who, story by story, from the beginning of the franchise. For more reviews like this one, please visit the project’s page at Creative Criticality.

Timestamp #311: The Power of the Doctor

Michael Falkner1 Comment

Timestamp 311 - Power of the Doctor

Regeneration, degeneration, and regeneration again.

The Cybermen attack a cosmic bullet train and Team TARDIS responds to the distress call. The train’s guards apparently kill the intruders, but these are the CyberMasters so they regenerate. The Doctor, Yaz, and Dan board the train using a metal ladder but the Cybermen send a team to the roof to counter them. The Doctor deactivates the magnetic field holding the Cybermen to the roof and they fly into the depths of space. Dan takes a blaster bolt to his spacesuit’s helmet but survives once the team enters the train.

The Cybermen are searching for cargo on the train. While Dan slows the train and Yaz tends to the wounded, the Doctor confronts the CyberMasters. They find the cargo is a young child and the CyberMasters escape with him.

Wait, are we trafficking people now?

In Siberia, 1916, a messenger arrives at Father Grigori Rasputin’s home with an urgent request. Tsarevich Alexei has taken ill and Rasputin has been summoned to the Winter Palace.

In London, 2022, Ace studies an empty wall in an art gallery. The curator insists that the missing painting has been taken for restoration, but Ace is not convinced. She calls Tegan, who is in Romania looking for missing seismologists, and notes that fifteen famous paintings have gone missing. Tegan is further confused by a Russian stacking doll containing a tiny Cyberman and a note from the Doctor.

Tegan hasn’t heard from the Doctor in four decades. Ace hasn’t heard from them in three decades.

The TARDIS arrives at the former site of Dan’s house in the modern day, and Dan announces that he’s leaving the TARDIS after his brush with death. The Doctor understands as she and Yaz say farewell. The Doctor returns to the TARDIS and receives a message from a renegade Dalek offering information about a plot to end humanity and a promise to help destroy the Dalek race. Yaz returns as the TARDIS locates the child from the train, leading them to 1916.

There is also an extra planet in the solar system.

St. Petersburg, 1916: Rasputin confers with Tsarina Alexandra about her son’s hemophilia and the appearance of a second moon. Rasputin is really the Master; he hypnotizes the tsarina and Tsar Nicholas II, convincing the family to leave so the Master can control the palace.

The TARDIS materializes on the mysterious moon, revealing it to be a Cyber-converted planet. They spot another TARDIS in the distance, but it is corrupted, tethered to the planet, and is connected to the missing child. That child is really a Qurunx, a rare sentient energy being disguised as something that someone would want to protect. When Cybermen arrive, the Doctor and Yaz barely escape into the TARDIS before being summoned by Kate Stewart.

They fly to UNIT HQ and learn about the missing scientists and paintings. The Doctor is reunited with Ace and Tegan, and while Ace approves of the new face, Tegan holds a grudge. The team finds that each of the paintings has been defaced with the Master’s Rasputin face. The team also receives a message from the Master that he’s holding a conference in Naples, so the Doctor leaves with Yaz after touching each of her former companions. The touches are literally shocking.

The Naples conference reveals that the Master has killed the seismologists. His disguises and dealings are grandstanding to attract the Doctor’s attention. Today is the day that the Doctor is erased from existence forever. Despite the threat/promise, UNIT soldiers arrest the Master and force him into the TARDIS to be held under armed guard.

Adding a complication, Vinder arrives on the Cyber-planet in search of the Qurunx. Unfortunately, the wormhole destroys his ship and strands him on the planet.

The Master is taken to a high-security bunker. En route, he taunts Kate, Tegan, and Ace. Meanwhile, the Doctor takes off to find the renegade Dalek. Yaz expresses her frustration at being kept in the dark, but the Doctor admits she doesn’t understand how everything connects. The Doctor also taps Yaz with the same static effect.

The TARDIS arrives inside a volcano in Bolivia and the Doctor meets with the Dalek. Meanwhile, Yaz discovers a much larger group of Daleks operating heavy drilling machinery.

Ace and Tegan watch a CCTV feed of the Master’s cell, but he addresses them, revealing that he sent the miniature Cyberman and the note from the Doctor. The doll returns to normal size and disgorges several Cybermen and Ashad (mysteriously returned to life). Tegan and Ace take cover with firearms, but the gold bullets prove ineffective. The Cybermen have leveled up.

UNIT is under siege from the Cybermen. The Master is set free.

The Doctor is ambushed by the Daleks. The traitor was set up and the Doctor is forced into the traitor’s casing. Yaz rushes to the TARDIS and tries to pilot it as the Doctor is teleported to 1916. There, the Master gloats about the Master’s Dalek Plan, in which he plans to force her to regenerate using Gallifreyan technology meshed with the Cyber-planet’s power. He taunts her by dancing to Boney M’s Rasputin while the plan is set in motion.

Vinder contacts the TARDIS with his special communicator just as the Master opens a channel to taunt Yaz. Yaz locks on to the signal and lands in the Winter Palace, but she’s too late. The Master has regenerated into the Doctor, clothes and all. The Master-Doctor compels Yaz to follow as his companion while he steals the TARDIS.

Kate, Tegan, and Ace gear up to defend the building. Kate initiates a lockdown while Ace and Tegan run for the roof with parachutes. Ace also digs out her classic bomber jacket and metal bat. Ace escapes but Tegan refuses to jump and remains behind in the locked building.

As the Master-Doctor fights for control of the TARDIS, he outlines his plan to erupt every volcano at once, destroying humanity while turning the planet into a foundry for Cybermen and Daleks. Meanwhile, he will travel the universe and tarnish the name of the Doctor throughout time and space. He starts by ending a civil war by destroying both combatants, all the while clad in a distorted amalgam outfit of the Fourth, Fifth, Seventh, Tenth, and Thirteenth Doctor’s trademark clothes. Yaz pushes him out of the TARDIS and dematerializes, so the Master-Doctor awaits her return with a tune on the Second Doctor‘s recorder.

The Thirteenth Doctor awakens on an endless rocky vista. Near a telegraph pole, she meets a figure in Gallifreyan robes who morphs between the First, Fifth, Sixth, Seventh, and Eighth Doctor‘s forms. The figure is the Guardian of the Edge, an overseer of the Edge of Existence where the Doctor passes upon regeneration. Since she hasn’t yet passed this milestone, the forced regeneration can be reversed, so she develops a plan.

Inside the TARDIS, Yaz encounters a holographic message from the Doctor. The shocking touches implanted emotional receptors in the companions so that this AI program could interact with them. Yaz outlines her plan to the AI, including rescuing Vinder. The hologram replies that they only have one chance to reverse the forced regeneration.

Tegan returns to Kate and explains that she needs to help stop the Cybermen. Kate reveals the only plan is to destroy the building and entomb the threat. Kate offers herself to the Cybermen with the promise of information, leaving Tegan to find the manual self-destruct activator.

Outside, Ace jumps off the building and is immediately shot at. Luckily, the TARDIS scoops her out of the sky. Ace approves of the new TARDIS and Yaz’s plan to drop her into the Bolivian volcano. Yaz retrieves the Master-Doctor and seemingly apologizes. Vinder hides nearby with his armed blaster.

As Tegan navigates UNIT HQ, her hologram activates as the Fifth Doctor. It wishes her good luck and promises that the Doctor never forgot her after she left the TARDIS. He offers her a “brave heart” and lets her continue her mission.

Inside the volcano, Ace meets the hologram as the Seventh Doctor. She’s ready to attack the Daleks with her new Nitro-999. The Doctor AI apologizes to Ace for how they parted ways. Ace is happy to make up with the Professor, who tells her that they’re more than good: “We’re ace!” She meets Graham O’Brien and the two hit it off immediately.

Ashad and the Cybermen find Kate hiding behind a laser shield. After a bit of stalling, she offers herself and her knowledge in exchange for the lives of her soldiers. The Cybermen accept. Meanwhile, Tegan descends an elevator shaft and is detected by Ashad.

The Master-Doctor returns to the Winter Palace and orders the Daleks to commence their plan. Volcanoes begin to erupt around the world, but Yaz distracts the Master-Doctor long enough to activate the AI. The Fugitive Doctor enters the room and traps the Cybermen in their own crossfire. Vinder and Yaz force the Master-Doctor into the regeneration chamber and harness the regeneration energy from the CyberMasters to degenerate the Time Lord.

The Thirteenth Doctor returns, astounded at her wardrobe and circumstances. She then gets to work. After changing clothes, she makes a plan for the volcanoes and the Cyber-planet. Meanwhile, Ace and Graham attack the Daleks and destroy the device with the Nitro-999. The Doctor arrives just in time to rescue her companions.

Ashad attempts to convert Kate into a Cyberman, but Tegan reverses the energy flow and disables the Cybermen. The two women sprint out of the building as it self-destructs, then join the Doctor the TARDIS as she pilots to the Cyber-planet. She quickly repairs Vinder’s ship and sends him home with love for the family. She then uses the TARDIS to jump-start the Master’s TARDIS, linking the two time capsules together so she can jump the Cyber-planet from 1916 to 2022. From there, she uses the power to freeze the erupting volcanoes into steel. With the planet saved, she frees the Qurunx and begins destroying the Cyber-planet.

The Rasputin form of the Master crawls from his pod and finds his way back to his TARDIS. As he dies after the trauma of forced degeneration, he shoots the Doctor with the Qurunx’s power. She is mortally wounded, but Yaz rushes to save her as the planet crumbles. The extended family gathers around as the Doctor passes out.

When the Doctor wakes up, she finds that Yaz has dropped everyone off in Croydon. The Cloister Bell rings and Doctor begins her regeneration. Despite wanting more time, she offers Yaz one final trip. They later eat ice cream while watching the Earth from the roof of the TARDIS. The Doctor eulogizes about the time they spent together because it was special. Instead of saying goodbye, the Doctor takes Yaz home and they share one last longing look. The Doctor leaves as Yaz reunites with Graham and Dan.

The trio arrives in a meeting room with a support group of former companions. They admit that, since returning from their travels, they’ve never been able to talk about what they experienced. Graham, Dan, Ace, Tegan, and Kate are joined by Jo Jones, Mel Bush, and even Ian Chesterton. They swap stories and make friends. They’re going to be okay.

The Doctor lands on a seaside cliff and asks the TARDIS to look after the next Doctor while she takes in a final sunrise. She says a fond farewell to her current incarnation before welcoming the Fourteenth Doctor. In a burst of explosive energy, she regenerates.

Her body changes. Her clothes change. But instead of someone new, the Doctor’s new form is someone familiar.

The final adventure of the Thirteenth Doctor is an amazing one. It ties off the CyberMasters storyline (which still irritates me, so it’s still effective) and fulfills the prophecy from The Vanquishers. It’s chock full of connections and callbacks, which is standard for an anniversary special, and it’s (surprisingly) well-written.

The end of the CyberMasters is well-crafted, spending the regeneration energy the Master stole from Gallifrey to restore the child the Time Lords pillaged to achieve immortality. I still have hope for the restoration of Gallifrey, but this is poetic justice.

The Master’s plan is diabolical and brilliant. Attacking the people the Doctor loves and handing the planet over to their greatest enemies is one thing, but taking the Doctor’s form and discrediting them throughout time and space is next level.

I also like how the franchise keeps playing with regeneration. While forced regeneration was established in 1969, the modern era has experimented with a “vanity” half-regeneration, transfer of regeneration energy, extending lifetime limits, jump-starting regeneration, and tests of loyalty. The classic era also experimented with Romana trying out different bodies. Here we add the ability to reverse a regeneration, but only under special circumstances that require a large infusion of regeneration energy.

It is in that regeneration/degeneration cycle that we find a fascinating mindscape to represent the Doctor’s continual transitory nature. The Edge of Existence, guarded by the past incarnations, marks the Doctor’s own river Styx. In Greek mythology, the river Styx separated the living souls from the dead souls of the Underworld. The river was guarded by Charon, the boatman who ferried the dead across. Funeral rites included low-value coins with the corpse which would be paid to Charon, and those who couldn’t pay wandered the shores for a century before being allowed across. It is fitting that the essence of the Doctor serves as the Guardian of the Edge, ensuring that each incarnation is truly ready to move on after death.

I kind of want a Tales from the Edge anthology. Who greeted the First Doctor? Were the Second and Tenth Doctors ready to accept the end? How would the Watcher figure in? Why does the Eighth Doctor despise the Gallifreyan robes so much?

The final thing I really like is the companion support group. While I dislike Ryan’s absence (particularly since he was among the first companions in this era), I love the concept of former companions swapping stories and bonding over their adventures. I have often wondered what happened to companions when they returned to their normal lives, and now I wonder why this idea took so long to arrive.

That brings me to the big friction point I have with this regeneration.

On the one hand, it was a necessary evil. What should have been a triumphant era in Doctor Who‘s history was plagued by lower budgets and declining viewership driven by substandard writing and plotting. Episode orders were cut, including for the Flux event and the follow-on specials. The show was nearly cancelled (again). Bringing in the most popular Doctor and the most popular showrunner leading into the 60th anniversary was a brilliant marketing move. It was a necessary marketing move, designed to tell the skeptics that The Powers That Be were serious about the longevity of the franchise.

On the other hand, it gave the most toxic members of fandom exactly what they wanted. Since Jodie Whittaker was announced as the Thirteenth Doctor, social media, YouTube, and places like 4chan were flooded with complaints and doom-mongering: Missives about how a female Doctor ruined representation for male fans and emasculated the fan base; How the show was becoming “woke” and feminist; How the next Doctor should be David Tennant and the years since his departure should be “decanonized” and cast aside as a fever dream.

Yeah, the vocal toxic minority wanted to erase the Smith, Capaldi, and Whittaker eras. So when David Tennant appeared as the Fourteenth Doctor, it felt like Russell T. Davies was giving them exactly what they wanted. By burning away the Thirteenth Doctor’s face and clothing (which hadn’t been done since Hartnell’s regeneration) and replacing it with a copy of something twelve years past, it felt like RTD was erasing Whittaker’s legacy.

It took a while to come to terms with RTD’s assurance that he wasn’t doing that, but symbolically that’s how it looked, and it added a sour note to what is otherwise an amazing, fun, and fitting send-off for the Thirteenth Doctor.

Rating: 5/5 – “Fantastic!”

UP NEXT – Series Thirteen and Thirteenth Doctor Summary

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The Timestamps Project is an adventure through the televised universe of Doctor Who, story by story, from the beginning of the franchise. For more reviews like this one, please visit the project’s page at Creative Criticality.

Timestamp #310: Legend of the Sea Devils

Michael Falkner1 Comment

Timestamp 310 - Legend of the Sea Devils

A spell of swashbuckling with Sea Devils.

A coastal Chinese village is under assault. The year is 1807 and a pirate queen stalks through the village, intent on smashing the statue at the center. A man named Ying Wai confronts her, telling his son Ying Ki that destroying the statue will unleash something inconceivable. The pirate chips away at the statue and green energy pours from the cracks. The statue explodes, revealing a Sea Devil that kills Ying Wai.

The Doctor, Yaz, and Dan arrive on the beach. The Doctor and Yaz are in period-specific clothing, but for a visit four centuries off course. Dan, however, emerges from the TARDIS in a pantomime Western pirate outfit. Yaz has been having fun with him. The tone changes when the Doctor finds a localized geomagnetic disturbance, and the team follows screaming voices to the village.

The Doctor and the companions confront the Sea Devil as it rampages through the village, but it is rescued by a large airborne pirate ship. The villagers’ wounds are marked with hexo-toxic poison, and the Doctor meets Zheng Yi Sao, better known as Madame Ching, the pirate queen. She was seeking the lost treasure of Flor de la Mar when the Sea Devil attacked.

Speaking of the Sea Devil, he is the Chief of the group, and he summons the Hua-Shen sea monster to do his bidding. That critter snacks on an innocent fisherman for fun.

Madame Ching returns to her ship as Dan joins Ying Ki to sneak aboard. Meanwhile, the Doctor and Yaz try to track Dan as the latter learns about the Sea Devils. The Sea Devil ship has cloaked, so the Doctor decides to talk to Madame Ching. But first, she decides to travel to 1807 and find the lost treasure.

Dan and Ki are captured as stowaways. They’re shocked to find the ship empty aside from Madame Ching, and the pirate queen offers to spare them if they help her find the treasure. The Doctor and Yaz travel to 1533 and watch as captain Sin Ji-Hun forces his crew to jump overboard. The captain is soon joined by the Chief Sea Devil, for whom the captain has emptied his ship for the Sea Devil’s use. The Sea Devil betrays the captain, and the travelers run for the TARDIS as the ship begins to sink. The travelers move 274 years in the future and land on the ocean floor. In a spectacular view, the Doctor jokes about being a good date (which rattles Yaz) before noting the lack of a shipwreck.

The TARDIS is taken by the Hua-Shen as the ocean floor crumbles beneath it.

Madame Ching, Dan, and Ki try to navigate toward the treasure, but the compass and the stars keep moving inexplicably. Ching explains that her entire crew (including her two juvenile sons) have been captured and will be executed unless she returns with the treasure. They are attacked by Hua-Shen, which can throw cannonballs back when it is shot at.

Hua-Shen dropped the TARDIS at the Sea Devil base. The Doctor and Yaz confront the Chief Sea Devil. The Doctor babbles about the technology around them as she thinks, but the Chief calls her bluff. He reveals that Ji-Hun’s ship is their flying craft and that he needs a Keystone, so the Doctor offers it in exchange for a tour of his ride. The Keystone is a gem of extraordinary power and will lead the Chief to the treasure. The Chief has also kept Ji-Hun in stasis since betraying him, and the Doctor learns that the captain was trying to trick the Chief to save his crew and safeguard the Keystone.

The Chief Sea Devil is alerted by the Hua-Shen that the Keystone is on the surface, so he threatens the Doctor’s life before she forces the ship to surface. Yaz, the Doctor, and Ji-Hun swing over to Madame Ching’s ship as the Chief Sea Devil materializes on deck. Ki has had the Keystone all along, holding it as a family heirloom passed down from Ji-Hun’s trusted second-in-command. The Chief takes it and returns to his ship, forcing the Doctor and her team to follow.

The Doctor confronts the Chief, uncovering his plan to flip the planet’s magnetic poles and flood the planet. The Sea Devils want to reclaim the Earth. A swordfight ensues between the two crews and Ji-Hun kills the Chief, an act that upsets the Doctor. She submerges the ship and asks Dan to watch Ching and Ji-Hun while keeping the Sea Devils at bay. The Doctor and Yaz head to the control core and try to disarm the flooding mechanism.

Ji-Hun sends Ki and Ching to retrieve the treasure while Dan carves through the Sea Devils. Meanwhile, as the Doctor and Yaz work, the former confides (with mention of River Song) that if she was going to commit to anyone, it would be Yaz. But she cannot commit because time always runs out. As they start the process, Ji-Hun offers to sacrifice himself to stop the flooding mechanism. The rest of the team boards the TARDIS and ends up on Ching’s ship as the Sea Devil base is destroyed.

Madame Ching offers Ki a place on her crew as she takes the treasure to save the rest of them. The travelers take a well-deserved break, including a phone call to Diane to patch things up. Meanwhile, the Doctor and Yaz talk about their previous conversation. After what is essentially a “it’s not you, it’s me” discussion, the Doctor makes a simple wish behind a sad smile:

“I wish this would go on forever…”

While the Sea Devils’ return is welcome, this story primarily works as setup for Jodie Whittaker’s finale: The evolving dynamic between the Thirteenth Doctor and Yaz, the budding relationship between Dan and Diane, and the discussions of what happens to companions after the Doctor moves on… all of it sets the stage for the next adventure. Who knows if they’ll ever find that beach vacation.

That said, it’s a pleasure to see the Sea Devils again. They’ve been in two major stories since 1972 – The Sea Devils and Warriors of the Deep – and a few minor appearances including Frontier in Space, Dimensions in Time, The Eleventh Hour, and The Timeless Children. Much like the Sontarans in Flux, the costumes that nod to the classic era were fun.

The swashbuckling doesn’t come without a price as the heroes (especially Dan) are a bit bloodthirsty. The Doctor hangs the lampshade with her disapproval of the Chief’s death, but the Sea Devil body count is pretty high. It’s not the greatest look.

On the other hand, I like Ki’s change of heart from vengeance to gratitude as he realizes Madame Ching’s motivations. She offers him a family after his responsibility to guard the Sea Devil Chief is absolved, and that is precisely what he needs. It was great character development in the span of one episode.

This was the second Easter special in franchise history, joining Planet of the Dead in that elite rank. Much like its predecessor, it comes in the home stretch of its Doctor’s run, but it wasn’t nearly as popular. Regardless, it does pose a good stride toward the finish line as the Thirteenth Doctor prepares to say goodbye.

Rating: 4/5 – “Would you care for a jelly baby?”

UP NEXT – Doctor Who: The Power of the Doctor

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The Timestamps Project is an adventure through the televised universe of Doctor Who, story by story, from the beginning of the franchise. For more reviews like this one, please visit the project’s page at Creative Criticality.

Timestamp #309: Eve of the Daleks

Michael Falkner2 Comments

Timestamp 309 - Eve of the Daleks

A fun holiday murder romp!

It’s New Year’s Eve 2021 and Sarah is angry. She’s the owner of ELF Storage and her business partner Jeff has failed to show up once again. She’s also perplexed because regular customer Nick arrives and asks for a list of items that cannot be stored in his storage unit. Luckily, his Monopoly game does not fit this category.

Nick is kind of adorable if a little lovesick.

The Doctor and her team arrive in ELF’s basement, but they were aiming for the sentient beaches of San Munrohvar. They don’t get another shot because the TARDIS is rebooting to clear the Flux debris. In place of a party, they find a temporal disturbance.

That disturbance includes Daleks, which promptly exterminate poor Nick. The Doctor and her friends find his body while Sarah takes a call from her mother. The Dalek emerges behind her and opens fire. The travelers try to confront it but the Dalek exterminates them as well.

Press reset – Let’s do the time loop again!

Nick and Sarah do the routine but recognize that something is odd. The TARDIS crew do the same and try to stop Nick’s death but find nothing there because Nick has returned to the lobby to save Sarah. Sarah finds a force field surrounding the building, so she heads for Jeff’s storage unit to see if he’s hoarding any weapons.

Nick arrives in the lobby and is exterminated. Sarah finds that Jeff has stored his stuff across an entire floor rather than in one unit, but her frustration turns to fear when she is exterminated. Team TARDIS finds the forcefield and the dead bodies, and the Dalek informs them that a time malfunction has resulted in a repeat of the last few minutes. They are exterminated again.

Let’s do the time loop again! Except this time, it starts at 23:53, one minute later than the last cycle. Nick is already at his unit, Sarah sees the Dalek arrive on the CCTV, and Team TARDIS runs for Nick. Everyone collects on the first floor and seek refuge in Nick’s unit, which is full of items belonging to ex-girlfriends just in case they want it back. Unfortunately, there’s only one exit and the Dalek burns through it. The group agrees to meet on the fifth floor before they are exterminated.

Let’s do the time loop again! Starting at 23:54, Nick and Sarah decide to ignore the Doctor’s plan since they blame her for their predicament. They go the basement while Team TARDIS head for the fifth floor. After the Doctor detects a second Dalek signal, Dan splits off at the lobby as a distraction, which he does until he’s exterminated.

Nick and Sarah find the TARDIS and a second Dalek. Nick confesses that has an “embarrassing” crush on Sarah and comes in every New Year’s Eve because she’s guaranteed to be there since Jeff always lets her down. After the touching moment, Nick is exterminated, Sarah finds a door that is not shielded by the forcefield, and then Sarah is exterminated.

The Doctor and Yaz explore Jeff’s storage units and find a room full of dangerous weapons. The Dalek arrives and reveals that a squad was assigned to kill the Doctor for her role in destroying the Dalek war fleet using the Flux. They also learn that the TARDIS created the time loop. Both women are exterminated.

Let’s do the… well, you know. Starting at 23:55, Team TARDIS heads for the lobby and berates Sarah for breaking the agreement. Sarah tries to save Nick, thinking that since he dies at five minutes to midnight, he might not make it to the next loop. Nick survives by luring the Daleks into a trap where they kill each other. The Doctor finds him and they return to the lobby. The group make a plan to bounce their lifesigns around the building while they look for a way out, including asking Sarah’s mother to call ten seconds before midnight. The team is exterminated when three Daleks materialize in the lobby.

Resetting at 23:56, Sarah is immediately killed when the Daleks destroy the elevator. Nick is promptly killed when the power goes out and he is ambushed. The Doctor rushes into the darkness while Yaz and Dan discuss the former’s romantic feelings for the Doctor. The Daleks exterminate them and then hunt down the Doctor.

Resetting at 23:57, Team TARDIS finds Jeff’s stash of illegal fireworks. Yaz goes to the fifth floor while Dan tells the Doctor about Yaz’s feelings, pointing out that the Doctor pretends otherwise. Yaz retrieves Sarah and Nick and the Doctor explains that the next loop is a decoy to hide their true intentions. They are exterminated.

Resetting at 23:58, Sarah rushes to the 5th floor and calls her mother, telling her she loves her. When she emerges from the elevator, she is exterminated. Nick sets up a distraction with his stuff and is exterminated. Team TARDIS lounges in Nick’s storage unit apartment before being exterminated.

Resetting at 23:59, the team takes Nick’s hazardous materials to the basement. The Doctor sets up the trap while the humans run for the door. The Doctor joins them as Sarah’s mother calls, triggering the explosion when the Daleks shoot the phone. ELF Storage collapses in a brilliant fireworks display.

Having survived the Dalek trap, the Doctor, Yaz, and Dan find the rejuvenated TARDIS while crane operator Karl Wright films the fireworks show. Later on, Nick and Sarah embark on a trip around the world. As they start their new life together, the TARDIS arcs through the sky behind them.

All told, this was a fun story that acted like a coda to the Flux storyline. The TARDIS needs to recover and the team needs to come to terms with what they faced, and one of their enemies wants revenge.

The fact that the Dalek squad was dispatched indicates that something of the Dalek fleet survived the Sontaran strategy, and that makes sense since the Doctor’s enemies (and their Master) will be her end. It seems the destruction wrought by the Flux will be a matter of plot convenience going forward.

We get some hints of lore – Dalek assassins figured heavily into The Chase, and the use of sonic screwdrivers on concrete was a small part of The Doctor Dances – but otherwise, this one is light, quirky, adorable, and fun.

Rating: 5/5 – “Fantastic!”

UP NEXT – Doctor Who: Legend of the Sea Devils

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The Timestamps Project is an adventure through the televised universe of Doctor Who, story by story, from the beginning of the franchise. For more reviews like this one, please visit the project’s page at Creative Criticality.

Timestamp #308: Flux – The Vanquishers

Michael Falkner4 Comments

Timestamp 308 - Vanquishers

The end of a story with little resolution.

Picking up immediately at the cliffhanger from Chapter Five, the Doctor dodges Swarm’s attempt to disintegrate her and rescues the Ood to find a way out. The Doctor nearly escapes from the Void, but is lured back by Swarm and Azure as they hold the Doctor’s fob watch. Swarm touches the Doctor as the Ood finds a way home for her, forcing her to materialize on Karvanista’s ship where a pitched battle is underway. Unfortunately, the Doctor is phasing.

Meanwhile, Yaz, Dan, Jericho, and Williamson are under Sontaran assault in the tunnels under Liverpool. Yaz lassos the door labeled “Death Rays” – a sort-of Chekhov’s gun hung upon the mantle in Chapter Five – and kills the invaders. The team rushes through the tunnels, trying various doors that transcend time, before entering one labeled December 5, 2021. The team finds Kate Stewart and the TARDIS as she leads a human resistance against the Sontarans.

The Doctor appears in the modern-day tunnels and meets the team (with a hug for Yaz) before bouncing back to the Division station. Swarm and Azure are pleased with their inadvertent results as the Doctor flashes to Karvanista’s ship and flies into Stenck’s command ship with Karvanista and Bel.

Sontaran Commander Stenck calls on the Cybermen and Daleks to join his assault on Earth. Stenck and the Grand Serpent defeat the Doctor’s assault as she offers Bel the chance at a covert mission. As the Doctor flashes back to Division, Azure opens the fob watch but the Doctor refuses to absorb the memories. Swarm begins shredding the memories, which inflicts pain on the Doctor.

Flashing to Liverpool, the Doctor investigates the tunnels and learns about Williamson’s and Stewart’s efforts. The group decides to send undercover operatives into the Sontaran ships, exploiting a weakness thanks to the invaders’ fascination with corner shops. It turns out that Sontarans are obsessed with sugar, and the Doctor bargains with Commander Shallo to trade chocolate for an operative. The team travels to 1967, picks up Claire, and enlists her psychic abilities for 2021.

The Doctor flashes to the Sontaran command ship in 2021 where she’s in a cage with Karvanista. She asks him about his time in Division, but he cannot talk about it due to a device in his brain that will kill him if he discloses his secrets. She flashes back to Division where Azure restores her to consciousness. Azure and Swarm plan to move the final Flux event from Earth to the planet Time, releasing the physical embodiment of Time and using it to replay the universe’s destruction in an endless loop, forcing the Doctor to witness it for eternity as revenge for their incarceration.

Flashing to the Sontaran ship, the Doctor meets Stenck and the Grand Serpent. Stenck reveals that they killed all of the Lupari, leaving Karvanista as the last of his kind. The commander takes the Doctor for interrogation as Karvanista howls in sorrow for his people.

Taking a detour to the Passenger form, Diane and Vinder search through endless landscapes and realize they are alone in their vast prison. Everyone else was used as energy but Diane was determined to be insignificant. Diane reveals she’s been busy exploring the bioform’s systems and defenses, and they use her knowledge to escape to the real world.

Jericho and Claire are taken to Stenck’s ship and tasked with determining the time and place of the final Flux event. The psychic work is intrusive and painful. Meanwhile, the Grand Serpent interrogates the Doctor about Kate Stewart’s location. She taunts the Grand Serpent and he tries to kill her with his serpents, but because the Doctor is split across three locations, the effort fails. The Liverpool Doctor fragment arrives in the TARDIS with Dan and Yaz, incapacitates the Grand Serpent, and rescues the Sontaran Doctor fragment. They also rescue Karvanista and Bel and make contact with the psychic agents.

In the TARDIS, the Doctor fragments witness the Sontaran message to the Daleks and Cybermen, then make telepathic contact with the third fragment and learn how the Flux is made of antimatter. Meanwhile, Claire finds the data about the final Flux event and Stenck recalls his troops. The Grand Serpent uses artron energy readings to find Kate Stewart.

The Doctors receive messages from Vinder and Kate, and they decide to split up to tackle each problem. Vinder and Diane are pulled back into the Passenger form, the tunnel doors fluctuate due to Flux effects, and Williamson returns home while he has time. The Doctor pilots the TARDIS inside the Passenger form and rescues the prisoners, resulting in a reunion between couples Vinder and Bel and Dan and Diane.

The Doctor also figures out that the Sontaran peace treaty is a trick: They plan to use the Dalek and Cyberman fleets to counteract the Flux event, leaving the universe as the Sontaran playground. The Doctor hatches a plan to save the universe as her Division fragment is taken to Time by Swarm as a sacrifice.

Claire escapes using a transmat ring, but Jericho is stuck on the Sontaran ship. The Dalek and Cyberman fleets are destroyed by the Flux, but the Sontarans are left outside the Lupari shell when Karvanista reprograms the fleet. The Doctor tries to save Jericho, but he’s unable to escape as the Sontaran fleet is consumed. Finally, Diane summons the Passenger form which traps the rest of the Flux.

Last stop is Atropos. The physical form of Time manifests as Swarm and reveals that the Flux has been defeated. Time consumes Swarm and Azure for their failure, then takes the Doctor’s form as the Time Lord retrieves her fob watch. Time teases the end of the Thirteenth Doctor at the hand of the forces that mass against her and their Master, then restores the Doctor by combining her fragments. Now in the TARDIS, the Doctor sets course to take everyone home.

In the tunnels, the Grand Serpent confronts Vinder and Kate Stewart but ends up stranded on a tiny asteroid forever. Vinder and Bel decide to travel with Karvanista, and Claire remains in 2021 with Kate as the Doctor expresses her hope of seeing both of them again.

Sometime later, Dan returns to the museum where he meets up with Diane again. Diane turns down his offer for a drink as she processes the adventure she just experienced. The Doctor and Yaz offer him a spot on the TARDIS. As Dan settles in, the Doctor finally apologizes for her secrecy. Yaz leaves to help Dan navigate the TARDIS, leaving the Doctor to hide her fob watch in the TARDIS console.

She instructs the time capsule to keep it safe and only give it back when she really asks for it.

This frantic episode shares Chapter Five‘s issue with a fast pace that doesn’t offer much room to breathe. Thankfully, it slows down near the end, offering some space leading into the disappointing ending. Why is it disappointing? I don’t like the Doctor running from knowledge.

So much of Doctor Who concerns a quest for learning and doing good in the universe, yet this epic story ends with the Doctor running away from her own history. The answers are right there, yet she hides them instead of facing them.

If I had three words to tell her, they would be “Brave heart, Doctor.”

The other disappointing part of the finale is the lack of resolution. Multi-part stories and episodic seasons should have an overall resolution, but this one leaves the universe in a state of flux (pun intended) with immeasurable destruction wrought throughout. We have no idea how much of the universe is left standing, let alone how much of the local solar system.  The whole thing is just passed off as the new status quo with hardly a mention.

Say it with me, now: Chris Chibnall has a problem with endings. It’s been apparent since he started, and even though I thought it might be better with long-form narratives, this proves that it’s not. I like the Planet of the Ood and Planet of the Dead-style warnings for the Thirteenth Doctor’s impending regeneration. They’re just cryptic enough to make you wonder what’s coming, but it’s only a lonely spark in what should have been a lovely fireworks show.

Concerning the Lupari, I like the drama created by the Sontaran genocide of Karvanista’s people, but it would have been more emotionally involved had we seen it instead of being told about it. Karvanista’s mourning howls are heartbreaking but somewhat hollow. It is fitting, however, that Vinder and Bel become his new family in the end.

I had similar thoughts about the TARDIS materializing inside the Passenger form. It just happens and the story moves on. No discussion aside from a one-liner about how the TARDIS doesn’t like it, and no tie-in to the TARDIS’s currently warped and/or broken state. Is that even still a thing at this point, or did that magically get resolved?

Flux was a ride, but it could have been more.

Rating: 3/5 – “Reverse the polarity of the neutron flow.”

UP NEXT – Doctor Who: Eve of the Daleks

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The Timestamps Project is an adventure through the televised universe of Doctor Who, story by story, from the beginning of the franchise. For more reviews like this one, please visit the project’s page at Creative Criticality.

Timestamp #307: Flux – Survivors of the Flux

Michael Falkner4 Comments

Timestamp 307 - Survivors of the Flux

Three twisting threads make one convoluted episode.

The Doctor’s Story

The Doctor, now in the form of a Weeping Angel, learns she is being transported somewhere and that her friends are stranded in time. The Angels deliver the Doctor to a space station built around a large cherry tree. She is returned to her normal form by an Ood and meets Awsok. The space station is Division headquarters.

The Doctor tries to interrogate Awsok for answers about Division. She learns that Awsok is the current leader and that Division spans innumerable species across time and space. In fact, it has outgrown the original goal of ensuring Gallifrey’s safety by guiding events in time (which contradicts the edicts of the Time Lords). The Doctor demands to know why she could not find evidence of Division in the universe and learns that they are not within the universe at all. The station is bridging the void between two universes.

Awsok explains how Universe One (the Doctor’s home universe) is being destroyed in an attempt to stop the Doctor. Anything that survives will be transplanted into Universe Two where Division will start over. Awsok reveals herself to be Tecteun, the woman who discovered (and experimented on) the Timeless Child. Tecteun confirms the Master’s story about the Timeless Child, which infuriates the Doctor.

The Doctor tries to reason with the Ood assistant to stop Tecteun. It eventually shows her a map of the universe, which is much smaller than it should be due to the Flux and houses Earth at its center. The Doctor is distracted by the whispers of a biodata module in the form of a fob watch. The Doctor’s lost memories are kept within and Tecteun offers an ultimatum: Return to Universe One and watch it fall or re-join Division and reclaim her memories in Universe Two.

The Doctor promises to stop Tecteun, but they are interrupted by Swarm and Azure who have used a psycho-temporal bridge powered by the energy of survivors to teleport aboard. They kill Tecteun and set their sights on the Doctor.

The Companions’ Story

Yaz, Dan, and Professor Jericho are raiding an ancient temple in 1904 Mexico after surviving in the early 20th century for three years. They find a mystical offering pot that they need to decode. They take it to Constantinople to decode it, then escape an assassination attempt. They avoid another attempt on a cruise liner and learn that the assassins have a snake tattoo. Yaz watches a glitched hologram of the Doctor while Dan and Jericho throw the assassin’s body overboard. Dan consoles Yaz, promising they’ll see the Doctor again.

Jumping to Nepal 1904, Yaz, Dan, and Jericho seek the legendary seer Kumar. The man is light-hearted and teases the trio. He gives them a message to “fetch your dog,” and the team travels to the Great Wall of China. There they paint a message: “KARVANISTA! DAN IS HERE – 1904, FETCH YOUR HUMAN!”

Karvanista gets the message but does not have time travel capability.

Yaz, Dan, and Jericho return to the cruise liner and encounter Joseph Williamson. The man vanishes, prompting the team to return to Liverpool and investigate the tunnels. After six and half hours, the team finds Williamson (who is long since dead by 1904), and the man is overjoyed to find others who understand the threats to time and space.

In Liverpool 1904, Williamson reveals his headquarters and the dozen doorways he has explored. He has been building defenses and mapping the various worlds and times, but his explanation is interrupted by a knocking at one of the doors.

In Earth orbit, 2021, the Lupari shield over Earth has a hole since one ship never responded to the Species Recall. That ship is the one Bel is flying across the universe, and Karvanista takes remote control of it to restore the shield. As a result, she barely misses Vinder on a monolith where Swarm and Azure have gathered survivors. Those survivors are disintegrated and fed to a series of beacons. Vinder is captured by a Passenger form and meets Diane. Together, they plan their escape.

UNIT’s Story

In 1958 England, the Grand Serpent poses as a man named Prentis. He discusses the formation of a United Nations-funded task force with another man named Farquhar. In 1967, General Farquhar leads Prentis through Ministry of Defence UNIT headquarters. They discuss Corporal Lethbridge-Stewart and the TARDIS, the latter of which was found in the remains of Medderton. Farquhar tests an alien detection device and is puzzled by Prentis’s results. The Grand Serpent kills the general with a spiked snake creature.

England 1987 finds the Grand Serpent holding a retirement dinner for Millington, the Chair of the UNIT Oversight Committee. Prentis wants the job, but Millington refuses so the Grand Serpent kills him.

In 2017 London, the Grand Serpent informs Kate Stewart that UNIT’s operations are being shuttered. Kate has been digging into the Grand Serpent’s history and understands who he truly is. She’s protected herself with a psychic manifest shield and promises to call in the Twelfth Doctor if he doesn’t stop. When she returns home, her house is bombed, so she calls Osgood and goes into hiding.

Bel’s ship is returned to Earth but the confrontation with Karvanista is cut short by an attack by the Sontarans. The Grand Serpent has lowered Earth’s defenses so the Sontaran fleet can take their revenge. A fleet of Sontaran ships, led by Commander Stenck, arrives and begins its assault on the Lupari shield.

Yes, this story is as big a mess as it seems. It pulls the viewer from place to place, time to time, and story to story without allowing much room to think or process. Even trying to unravel the tangle of timestreams was a challenge.

It’s indicative of just how convoluted the Flux story was. This is a shame considering how much better the overall concept is for this miniseries – a concept sabotaged by chaotic and confusing writing.

There is a lot to like here, including a bit of history for UNIT and an explanation of where they’ve been during the Chibnall era. I like the idea that UNIT may have been inadvertently influenced by the Grand Serpent over the years, but the goal isn’t clear. What is his vendetta against Earth? Does he just want chaos sown by the Sontarans?

The Grand Serpent also reminds me of the Mara, which headlined both Kinda and Snakedance. It’s a missed opportunity to tie those classic stories to this one.

I’m a big fan of exploring the repercussions of the Timeless Child revelation, and the return of Tecteun presented a huge opportunity. Unfortunately, it is wasted by killing her in the final minute of the episode and by using her for scant few minutes in the meantime. Does she care about the slaughter of her people, or does she think everything will be okay by taking over the Shobogans of Universe Two and using her DNA to create the new Time Lords?

This episode marks Nicholas Courtney’s first credit on Doctor Who proper since Battlefield, and it’s due to a line by the Brigadier that was lifted from Terror of the Autons. In the overall franchise, not counting Cyber-Brig, we last saw him in Enemy of the Bane.

Finally, I do like how the companions drove much of the plot. They aren’t just cooling their heels and waiting for the Doctor to save them, and I appreciate that about them.

All of these positives can’t really overcome the chaos in this episode, which presumably comes from trying to cram this immense story into six episodes during a global pandemic and period of reduced funding.

Rating: 3/5 – “Reverse the polarity of the neutron flow.”

UP NEXT – Doctor Who: Flux – The Vanquishers

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The Timestamps Project is an adventure through the televised universe of Doctor Who, story by story, from the beginning of the franchise. For more reviews like this one, please visit the project’s page at Creative Criticality.

Timestamp #306: Flux – Village of the Angels

Michael Falkner4 Comments

Timestamp 306 - Village of the Angels

The Weeping Angels return to form.

In a basement laboratory circa November 1967, Claire Brown tests a lie detector. Professor Eustacius Jericho is amazed when she claims her birth year is 1985, and she quickly corrects it to 1935. Outside, Reverend Shaw looks for a girl named Peggy with a group of people and a note marked “Leave Now.” The experiment is interrupted when Claire adopts a deep voice and warns about the end of time. When she recovers, she states “The Angel has the TARDIS.”

The time capsule in question is hurtling through the vortex as the Doctor pulls glowing cables from the walls and triggers a dimensional compression wave that reboots the TARDIS and ejects the Angel. As the TARDIS recovers, the travelers decide to investigate their new landing place: The village of Medderton in 1967.

The team meets Gerald and Jean, and Yaz and Dan talk to them while the Doctor follows her sonic screwdriver. The Doctor’s sonic leads her to the basement laboratory and Claire, the source of the sonic’s perturbations. Claire feels ill and retreats to the restroom where she sees Angel wings sprouting from her back. The Doctor finds drawings of an Angel and the TARDIS.

Mrs. Hayward asks Reverend Shaw to count the church’s gravestones. During his count, he is taken by an Angel. Yaz and Dan also encounter an Angel while searching for Peggy.

The Doctor continues her investigation of Jericho’s home, finding broken glass everywhere and a field of Angels surrounding the house. The Doctor and Jericho secure the home while Claire explains that before she met the Doctor in 2021, she started receiving visions. Those visions led to the discovery that the entire population of this village will disappear, repeating similar events from 1901. The group retreats to the basement with a television while the Doctor sets a trap. Claire finds stone dust in her eye.

Yaz and Dan materialize in the village of the past. The place is deserted, but since the Weeping Angels are involved, Yaz and Dan decide to search for Peggy. They find the girl and a warning: The Angels left her behind so long as she didn’t explore beyond the village boundary. Yaz and Dan discover that the entire town is floating in space, something Peggy relates to “quantum extraction.” The village also appears to be shrinking.

In the present day, Gerald and Jean discover that their village is also floating in space. They find an Angel and are transported back in time. Mrs. Hayward then approaches with no consequence.

The Doctor, Claire, and Jericho monitor the Angels using a primitive CCTV. As the Doctor mentions that images of Angels can become Angels, one attempts to emerge from Claire’s sketch. The Doctor defeats it, but soon finds Claire transforming into a Weeping Angel for housing the image in her head. The Doctor decides to make psychic contact with the Weeping Angel in Claire’s mind.

The Doctor finds herself on a blue beach between parted waves. The Angel inside Claire is the same one that hijacked the TARDIS, and it asks for help to escape from others of its kind. The Angels hunting her are searching for a rogue as part of an extraction squad sent by the Division.

In the past, Gerald and Jean find Dan, Yaz, and Peggy. The elderly couple encounter an Angel and are turned to stone after touching it. No being can survive two touches from a Weeping Angel, and the couple shatter into pieces.

In the present, the Angels taunt Jericho with his supposed failings. The rest of the squad moves when one of them affects the television and tries to emerge from it. Jericho smashes the television and the squad breaks into the basement.

Inside the psychic vision, the Doctor questions the rogue Angel about Division. It offers an ultimatum: Stop the squad from obtaining knowledge of Division and the Doctor’s forgotten lives and it will spare Claire and answer the Doctor’s questions. The link is broken when Jericho wakes them up, and the trio is forced to escape through a hidden tunnel. Unfortunately, the walls are covered in Angel arms, and the trio is trapped between two Angels.

In 1901, Peggy tells Yaz and Dan about a Stone Age burial site that suddenly appeared overnight. They find a split in space-time where Peggy sees Mrs. Hayward, the woman who is actually Peggy grown up. The burial site is a collection of Weeping Angels who want a witness to their quantum extraction.

In 1967, the trio struggle with the Angels. Claire escapes, but Jericho is sent into the past. The Doctor continues through the tunnel but is left untouched by the Angels. She emerges from the burial ground next to Claire and sees the rift. The area is surrounded by Angels taking joy from the Doctor’s struggle. The quantum extraction is a process to take the village out of time to capture the rogue Angel. The rouge makes a deal to capture the Doctor, passing a message that she is recalled to Division.

The Doctor slowly transforms into a Weeping Angel, sprouting wings and adopting the typical stance. She turns to stone and joins the rest of the squad.

While all the Angel shenanigans are going on, Bel continues her search for Vinder. She lands on the former resort planet Puzano and is offered safety as a refugee by Namaca Ost Parvess Po. Bel and Namaca join a large crowd searching for safety from the Flux. Azure and a Passenger appear and take the entire crowd away. Bel throws Namaca to the ground, leaving them as the only survivors. Azure tells them to bring others, and Namaca is furious for missing his chance at sanctuary. Namaca later finds Vinder and leads him to a rock wall with a holographic message hidden within. Bel’s coordinates are lost in the message, but Vinder promises to find her.

All of his faults aside, Chris Chibnall (and Maxine Alderton, the only co-writer for the Flux miniseries) succeeded in making the Weeping Angels scary again. After their introduction in Blink and their evolution in The Time of Angels & Flesh and Stone (in which we learn about the image of an Angel becoming an Angel), the villains lost their narrative power as they became bit players and goofy antagonists. Despite the sad game-changing ending, The Angels Take Manhattan (and its Statue of Liberty Angel) is the epitome of the effort to make a monster more menacing by escalation.

This story gets back to basics with a temporal twist. The Weeping Angels stalk the main players as they play a vicious game in a unique twist on their mythology. The story cleverly plays with elements of their background – don’t blink, draining of power, temporal dislocation – while returning them to their horror roots. The Division angle adds to their mystery, as does the Doctor’s peril at the end.

This flow is disrupted by Bel and Vinder’s story, which feels like filler that tries to keep Azure relevant. I’m sure it will mean something in the remaining chapters, but the inclusion here threatened to derail the powerful “A” plot. This was exemplified by the glitchy mid-credit scene that interrupted that spooky rendition of the Doctor Who theme.

Other than that, I found this story to be a treat to watch.

Rating: 5/5 – “Fantastic!”

UP NEXT – Doctor Who: Flux – Survivors of the Flux

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The Timestamps Project is an adventure through the televised universe of Doctor Who, story by story, from the beginning of the franchise. For more reviews like this one, please visit the project’s page at Creative Criticality.

Timestamp #305: Flux – Once, Upon Time

Michael Falkner5 Comments

Timestamp 305 - Once Upon Time

A story that covers a lot of ground only to go full circle.

This chapter starts with a woman named Bel and her story in the aftermath of the Flux. On the run from Daleks, she’s trying to make sense of corruptions in time and space. As a swarm of blue particles consumes a pair of survivors she vows to find the one she loves.

Back at the Temple of Atropos, the Doctor tries to save Yaz and Vinder by pushing Dan on a pedestal as she leaps into the heart of the time storm. The others vanish as a Weeping Angel appears, then she’s swept away. A flashback follows to the Seige of Atropos where the four are commandos with the Doctor in charge.

Dan has his own vision where he gets coffee with Diane in Liverpool. Yaz has a similar vision where she’s on patrol with her police supervisor. Vinder has a vision where he receives an award and a promotion. All of them are aware of the irregularities in their scenarios as the Doctor flickers in and out.

The Doctor’s vision continues as her team infiltrates the Temple of Atropos in search of the Ravagers. She’s returned to the time storm where she stands before three giant Mouri. She’s returned to the temple where she discovers she’s reliving a moment from the Fugitive Doctor’s life. To save her friends, she needs to survive the encounter.

Dan ends up in tunnels where he encounters Joseph Williamson holding a laser weapon. After an encounter with the blue swarm, he returns to Liverpool where a vision of the Doctor tells him not to disappear while she tries to convince the Mouri to help.

Bel’s story continues after stealing a Lupari ship and flying to a new sector dominated by Cybermen. She consults a device called Tigmi before pushing onward.

Vinder’s memories continue as he serves the Grand Serpent. Yaz lives a memory of playing video games with Sonya, learns the truth of their predicament from the Doctor, and discovers that her timestream is being corrupted by the Weeping Angels.

At the Siege of Atropos, the Doctor faces the Ravagers (including Azure and an older version of Swarm). She learns about the Passengers – an endlessly large living prison with five of them holding hundreds of thousands of beings – and captures the Ravagers after they destroy two of the passengers. The Doctor reveals that one of the Passengers belongs to Division and contains the Mouri. The Doctor convinces the Mouri in the time storm to replicate the same infiltration.

Bel escapes from the planet but her ship is invaded by Cybermen. She narrowly survives by shooting all of them only to learn that all of the surviving villains are fighting for the scraps of the universe.

Vinder’s service to the Grand Serpent reveals that his commander is corrupt. When Vinder reports the Grand Serpent’s actions, he is exiled to Observation Outpost Rose. He is allowed to record only one message to his family.

The Doctor finishes her mission on Atropos, learning that one of her cohorts was Karvanista. She is swept to a station where she meets an old woman named Awsok who tells her that the Flux and Ravagers were introduced intentionally to destroy space and time. It was designed to stop the Doctor.

Yaz, Dan, Vinder, and the Doctor emerge in the modern-day temple as Mouri are restored. Swarm and Azure summon the blue Time Force particles and gloat that they have already won, taunting Dan with an image of Diane trapped in a Passenger. The villains teleport away and the team returns to the TARDIS, which Vinder easily recognizes.

Bel sits beside a campfire and listens to Vinder’s message. She promises to find Vinder and reunite him with his unborn child. Meanwhile, Vinder returns to his home planet and finds it ravaged by the Flux. He stays behind to search for Bel as the TARDIS moves on.

Peace on the TARDIS is shortlived, however, as a Weeping Angel appears on Yaz’s phone. It soon emerges and takes control of the ship.

The Angel has the TARDIS.

On the one hand, this story provides a ton of backstory for Vinder and the Doctor, particularly for the latter as a small slice of the Fugitive Doctor’s life is explained. It ties the Doctor to the temple and the Ravagers and provides a thread for the future about the Flux and its engineered impact on the universe. It also provides another plot thread as Bel searches for Vinder.

On the other hand, this chapter spins in a circle, ultimately going where Dan and Yaz went, which is nowhere. In fact, Dan and Yaz are effectively sidelined in safe pockets of time while the Doctor figures out a solution.

The story itself is the most chaotic of Flux so far, ping-ponging to and fro and ultimately resulting in a loss for our heroes. They didn’t achieve anything concerning saving the universe, though, to their credit, they did gain new information by following the path the enemy laid out.

It’s an interesting concept, but the execution felt frantic and anxious. Instead of ramping down at the end, it crashed to a halt with a cliffhanger. Thankfully, though, this intrusion into the TARDIS actually made sense since Yaz brought the Angel with her from the time storm.

Rating: 3/5 – “Reverse the polarity of the neutron flow.”

UP NEXT – Doctor Who: Flux – Village of the Angels

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The Timestamps Project is an adventure through the televised universe of Doctor Who, story by story, from the beginning of the franchise. For more reviews like this one, please visit the project’s page at Creative Criticality.

Timestamp #304: Flux – War of the Sontarans

Michael Falkner3 Comments

Timestamp 304 - War of the Sontarans

It’s history, but not how you remember it.

Following last chapter’s cliffhanger, the Doctor gazes upon a giant, misshapen, dilapidated house as the Cloister Bell rings. She comes to on a battlefield with Yaz and Dan. The TARDIS stands nearby as the Doctor scans the surroundings, but the team is interrupted by a woman named Mary Seacole who accuses them of robbing the dead.

The Doctor deduces that they have been thrown back in time to the Crimean War, specifically Sevastopol in 1855. Unfortunately, the British aren’t fighting the Russians in this history. The enemy is an army of Sontarans, led by a commander on horseback.

We next catch up with Vinder, who has somehow landed inside a stone temple with a floating diamond-shaped entity called a Priest Triangle. The central chamber contains six plinths with humanoid holographic figures. The triangle explains that the Mouri must never be compromised.

The Doctor and her team arrive with Mrs. Seacole at the British Hotel, leading Yaz to wonder if history is being rewritten. Both Dan and Yaz vanish in a blue glow, the result of vortex energy combining with the Flux. The Doctor tries to enter the TARDIS, but the doors are not visible. Dan rematerializes outside the remains of his former home but finds that time has been rewritten due to the Sontaran invasion. He escapes an army of enforcers after his parents knock out the Sontarans with cookware.

Yaz materializes inside the temple where Vinder did, encountering Joseph Williamson from the year 1820. The temple floor plan keeps shifting and Williamson runs off, leaving Yaz to deal with a Priest Triangle. She agrees to help after reading the letters “WWTDD” on her hand.

The Doctor returns to the British Hotel and meets Lieutenant General Logan of the Light Division. They discuss the general’s battle plans, finding Sontar on a map where Russia and China should be. Since Seacole and Logan vaguely recognize the name Russia, the Doctor concludes that the temporal disruption must have been a recent event.

The Doctor accompanies Seacole on nursing rounds and finds a Sontaran foot soldier named Svild. The Sontaran was captured after being hit by a cannonball, and he asserts his right to silence under the Shadow Proclamation. That decision is quickly rescinded when he hears that the Doctor is nearby. She frees him under the promise that he will relay that information to his commander, allowing her to meet the commander on her signal.

The Doctor and Seacole follow Svild across the battlefield. They find the Sontaran camp under a camouflage shield and with it, a fleet of ships protected by hundreds of warriors. The Doctor asks Seacole to stand watch overnight while Svild relays his intel to Commander Skaak. The commander is impressed but executes Svild for his disgrace.

Back to the future, Dan hides with his parents and learns that the Sontarans arrived after the Three Minute Eclipse (the Lupari shield) and Dan’s subsequent disappearance. Eileen and Neville have learned how to kill Sontarans by hitting the port on their necks. They go to where the Sontarans first appeared, the Liverpool Docks, and Dan decides to scout ahead alone with his father’s wok. He eventually encounters Commander Ritskaw, a Sontarn who executes three innocent humans for spying, and learns of the Temporal Offensive. He then tries to find his way onto a Sontaran spaceship.

In the temple, Yaz meets Vinder. Together they learn that this is the Temple of Atropos on the planet Time. The Mouri, the people on the plinths, harness and control time in the universe. Two of them, however, are broken, and the triangle claims that time is evil and must be harnessed.

In Sevastopol, the Doctor uses her sonic screwdriver to signal for parlay. The Doctor and Skaak meet across the wide, empty battlefield, and the Doctor reveals herself. Skaak tells her they knew of the Flux and took advantage of the Lupari shield to slip onto the planet and embed themselves in a period of deep conflict. Skaak claims Linx first made a claim to Earth in the 13th century, and he chose the Crimean War because he wanted to ride a horse. General Logan ambushes the Doctor and apprehends her, leading to a human massacre.

The Doctor escapes by using Venusian aikido on her guard and meets with Seacole. With the Sontarans engaged on the battlefield, they decide to enter one of the ships. Due to the Temporal Offensive, the ships that Dan and the Doctor are invading are linked, so the two share what they’ve learned. The Sontarans are building ships to invade the entire history of humanity, using Crimea as a springboard. The call is interrupted by Ritskaw, leaving Dan to face off against a handful of Sontarans, but he is soon rescued by Karvanista.

Swarm and Azure visit the Temple of Atropos with a silent black-clad figure called a Passenger form. They promptly destroy a Priest Triangle with a touch. They encounter Yaz and Vinder and display their non-linear knowledge by revealing the WWTD marks – What would the Doctor do? – on Yaz’s hand. Azure and Swarm dodge Vinder’s gunfire and find the quantum-locked Mouri. Swarm kills one of them.

The Doctor and Seacole regroup at the British Hotel. General Logan arrives in distress, and the Doctor details an action plan. Since the Sontarans need to rest for 7.5 minutes every 27 hours, they will be vulnerable in approximately 38 minutes. The Doctor plans to drain the Sontaran supplies while they rest thus leaving them vulnerable to Earth’s atmosphere.

The Doctor faces off with Skaak while Dan and Karvanista destroy the Sontaran fleet and create a temporal explosion. Skaak orders his fleet to evacuate, but Logan gets revenge by destroying the Crimean fleet. The Doctor is furious with Logan but leaves him when the TARDIS calls. She arrives in Liverpool with a sopping-wet Dan and Karvanista, offering the human space on the TARDIS. The Lupari remains behind to protect Earth.

The TARDIS is in a bad state, and whatever is corrupting it hijacks the time capsule. The Doctor and Dan emerge in the Temple of Atropos where Azure leads them to the central chamber. Yaz and Vinder have replaced the two flickering Mouri, and Swarm and Azure count down before allowing the full force of time to blast through them.

This chapter does well by splitting up the heroes and making connections with the secondary characters. The Doctor and Dan get the lion’s share of the work in this episode, but Yaz gets shorted despite connecting with this miniseries’s main character in a major setting.

There are also plenty of mysteries to layer on, including the connection between the miniseries villains and the temple. The Sontarans make a great return here, including ties back to the classic era with both Linx and the same makeup style. It’s a wonderful love letter to the classic seasons.

Historically, this episode’s events could be the inspiration for Lord Alfred Tennyson’s Charge of the Light Brigade, which dramatizes an actual event in which the Light Brigade marches into certain death during the Crimean War. Notably, the Second Doctor had ties to the same conflict in The Evil of the Daleks and The War Games.

Logan’s revenge on the Sontarans reminds me of Harriet Jones and the retreating Sycorax (The Christmas Invasion) and the Brigadier’s destruction of the Sontarans (Doctor Who and the Silurians). The Doctor is rightfully angry about the murder of combatants who chose to disengage, and it’s good to see her acting the role as this era matures.

All told, I really enjoyed the story and the groundwork it continues to lay for the overall Flux storyline.

Rating: 4/5 – “Would you care for a jelly baby?”

UP NEXT – Doctor Who: Flux – Once, Upon Time

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The Timestamps Project is an adventure through the televised universe of Doctor Who, story by story, from the beginning of the franchise. For more reviews like this one, please visit the project’s page at Creative Criticality.

Timestamp #303: Flux – The Halloween Apocalypse

Michael Falkner6 Comments

Timestamp 303 - Halloween Apocalypse

He’s not quite Dan’s best friend.

Of all the odd places, Yaz and the Doctor are trapped, upside down, dangling over an ocean of acid.  As an alternative to the locks releasing their ankles in 79 seconds, a supernova is about to consume the planet. As an alternative to that, Karvanista’s kill disks will blast them into oblivion.

The death trap is reminiscent of something from Batman ’66.

After some shenanigans including voice-activated restraints and a well-placed mattress in the TARDIS, the Doctor and Yaz escape and set a course for Karvanista’s next target: Earth.

In Liverpool, 1820, Joseph Williamson digs a tunnel in preparation for the “cataclysmic”, reasoning that would supposedly drive anyone else mad. Two centuries later, Dan Lewis leads a tour group around the Museum of Liverpool. He’s not a real tour guide, however, and a museum employee named Diane escorts him out. Dan just wants to make people happy. The pair make plans for Halloween drinks later that night.

En route to Earth, the TARDIS refuses to land. The Doctor receives a psychic vision of two agents on a planetoid checking on a prisoner named Swarm. The prisoner has been contained in the Burnished Rage battleground since the dawn of the universe, but today is when he breaks free, restoring his vitality by consuming their life forces. The two women were apparently agents of the Division. When the vision ends, Yaz tells the Doctor about a black fluid leaking from the TARDIS. The Doctor scans it and sets their new course for October 31st.

Dan volunteers at the Jenning Street Food Bank, turning down a food box for himself. As he and Wilma lock up, a device scans them. Dan goes home and gives out candy for Halloween, though he refuses a man holding a carton of eggs. He later regrets not taking food from Wilma since his fridge and cupboard are bare, but his lament is short-lived as Karvanista breaks down his door and reveals his canine-like Lupar visage. Dan soon ends up in a cage.

The Doctor and Yaz follow Karvanista to Dan’s house and find evidence of a Lupari fleet waiting to invade Earth. They spring a trap and escape just as Dan’s house is miniaturized. Meanwhile, Dan wakes up in an electrified cage on Karvanista’s ship. Unfortunately for him, the hunter explains that he’s totally irrelevant.

Jumping to the Arctic, two researchers named Jón and Anna hear an alert from a glowing device in their garage. They seem to recognize it, but Anna smashes the device and ignores the warning.

In Liverpool, the Doctor investigates the house. Yaz and the Doctor meet a woman named Claire who claims to know them from the past. The Doctor rushes off at a signal from the Lupari, but the TARDIS seems to have some dimensional issues. Together, the Doctor and Yaz pilot the temperamental TARDIS to find the fleet. Yaz berates the Doctor for keeping secrets from her, but the argument is interrupted by a temporal field around Karvanista’s ship.

Claire returns to her house and finds a Weeping Angel. She seems to know something is coming for her, and the Angel eventually sends Claire back in time.

Next up, we visit Observation Station Rose in the depths of the universe. Observation Officer Inston-Vee Vinder makes (yet) another status report, finding the beauty of the universe a balm to his otherwise overwhelming boredom. He detects an error and watches as a dark cloud consumes Thoribus Minor.

Jón and Anna receive a visit from Swarm. Jón is consumed, but Anna is revealed as Swarm’s sister Azure.

The Doctor and Yaz land on Karvanista’s ship. The Doctor rushes off to confront Karvanista while Yaz seeks out Dan. It turns out that the invasion fleet is a recall fleet, bonded to humanity as guardians to rescue them in an ultimate crisis. Dan is the designated human to which Karvanista was bonded. Also, Karvanista is the only living Division operative left and the Doctor wants answers about her past. Instead, Karvanista tells the Doctor about the Flux.

The Flux, the ever-consuming cloud, bears down on Vinder’s station. With only a few minutes to survive, he launches an escape pod.

The Doctor, Yaz, and Dan escape from Karvanista’s ship on the TARDIS (which having more dimensional issues). They head to the edge of the solar system as, thirty trillion lightyears away, Sontaran Commander Ritskaw and Psychic Surveyor Kragar prepare to take advantage of the pending destruction. The Cloister Bell sounds as the Doctor receives another vision, this time of planets and entire civilizations being destroyed. She also sees Swarm on a desolate landscape, who reveals himself as her nemesis from the Doctor’s Division days.

The Flux changes direction and pursues the TARDIS, forcing the Doctor to set course for Earth. On the planet below, Azure lures Diane into a trap, but the planet is saved as the Lupari encase the Earth in a protective formation. Unfortunately, the TARDIS is unable to escape the Flux, even as the Doctor uses pure vortex energy as a weapon.

The Doctor stares down the end of the universe as the Flux rushes toward the TARDIS.

The vibe of this introduction is creepy and frantic. It does the job of setting up the game board and building tension as the Flux bears down on Earth, but the stakes are all too familiar in modern science fiction. How do you come back from demolishing the entire universe?

The relationship between Yaz and the Doctor has obviously strengthened since Graham and Ryan left the TARDIS. Yaz has learned to pilot the TARDIS (like Donna and Nardole before her, as well as several others in the audio universe) and has no problem calling the Doctor on her bluffs. It’s a welcome reprieve from being in the backseat for many of the previous adventures.

It’s definitely a good start and plays well into Chibnall’s strengths with long-form television. The only question that remains: What’s up with the well-placed mattress?

Rating: 4/5 – “Would you care for a jelly baby?”

UP NEXT – Doctor Who: Flux – War of the Sontarans

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The Timestamps Project is an adventure through the televised universe of Doctor Who, story by story, from the beginning of the franchise. For more reviews like this one, please visit the project’s page at Creative Criticality.