Series 13: Flux-Final Thoughts

I loved it and the journey across the five weeks. I don’t think it was perfect, but there was so much to enjoy and it’s been a pleasure spending time with this TARDIS team.

Jodie has consistently been at her peak throughout Flux, particular in the latter half where she spent time alone and interacting with the guest cast, which is where she’s at her best. I adore John Bishop as Dan and he hit it out the park straight away. Yaz will never be a favourite, but I’ve enjoyed her evolution and how she stands on her own.

All of the guest cast have been great, even with limited material for some of them, with Kevin McNally being the highlight.

In terms of what I’d change. Hmm, I don’t think I’d do anything majorly drastic, to be honest, I’d just try and make more out of the running time. I don’t believe Flux needed more episodes, just a re-evaluation of what it did. For example, Vinder, Bel, Di, Kate, Grand Serpent and the Passenger didn’t amount to much, if anything, really. I don’t think that would’ve changed with extra episodes save for dedicating that time to them entirely. Instead I’d cull them and further develop other areas, such as the Division and some more flashbacks, and give more time to Azure and Swarm, who seemed to go off the radar in the middle act of the story. The way their motivations was explained in The Vanquishers was well handled, despite being a huge infodump, but I’d have rather seen some of it earlier on.

I’d also try and make each episode feel a touch more cohesive in their own right. Not to undermine the overall story in any way, I think it’s been a success, but I’d have liked to have come away each week and really know what I thought to that chapter, rather than it being a sequence of seemingly unconnected events in the case of at least three chapters.

I think Survivors of the Flux perhaps fares worst for the above and also in terms of advancing the plot very little. There’s no need for Yaz, Dan and Jericho’s exploring to have gone any further than the pre-titles, with the bulk of the episode being them exploring the different doors of the tunnels. With the UNIT sub-plot scrapped, I think there’s scope for further exploration of the Division and also seeding the Sontaran’s reappearance, with the cliffhanger being their annihilation of the Lupari fleet and therefore Earth becoming unprotected from both them and the Flux.

Just to reiterate, I loved it, just the running time could’ve been better utilised in some respects. Some of it is juggling a lot of characters, which is why I’d have culled them, but a sizeable amount is Chibnall’s way of writing under his tenure. A lot of exposition and recapping from scene to scene, as though he’s writing for an audience that are both scrolling through Twitter and have an eye on the telly. I wonder if his kids do that and it’s come from there?

Well it kept me tuning in and it hadn’t done that since Chibs took over

Well, as I have written in the other thread...
Series 13 was a big step up from series 11 and also a step up from series 12.
The visuals and the firework of ideas, the new Lupari race, the use of the Angels, all of this is stunning and top notch.
Two of the episodes, War of the Sontarans and Village of the Angels, are absolute classics.
Especially Village of the Angels was massively unsettling and edge of your seat.
The ending however left me a bit unsatisfied (but as I wrote at the very beginning, this was what I had expected would happen, so no real disappointment from me).

I would have wished for the story to be longer, to have more room to breathe, to give more time to the individual characters.
The ending was too sudden, too unsatisfying with unresolved threads, it was too "Deus ex Machina".

The serialisation worked well for me.

Overall, Flux was a pretty solid story. It wasn't perfect, and there were a lot of things I'd change, but it was decent. My biggest issue is that there were so many plot threads, most of them didn't get a chance to properly breathe. That being said, the elements that were fleshed out were done so very well. Dan's a great companion, and the characters of Vinder, Jericho, and Karvanista are probably my favourite additions of the Chibnall canon.

Does anyone else think this series was pretty much made for Big Finish? There's the Grand Serpent's UNIT invasion; there's the three years Dan, Jericho, and Yaz spent in the 1900s (and McNally's no stranger to BF...); the adventures of the Fugitive Doctor and Karvanista; and - the most exciting of all, imo - the further adventures of Karvanista, Vinder, and Bel. I'd especially love it if BF ever gets a chance to do a series about that.

So yeah, overall, the build-up was better than the ultimate payoff, but this was the first time I've really enjoyed Chibnall's Who. By The Vanquishers, Jodie finally felt like she was hitting her stride all the time, and the dialogue in that episode was uncharacteristically good for one written by Chibs. Azhur Saleem has proven himself one of the best directors of Who - The Vanquishers had some really gorgeous shots. I guess, having said that, my genuine biggest gripe is that Flux was frustrating. Every episode had so much good, but usually only one or two bad things. This was most noticeable in the final episode, which had the best acting of Jodie's era so far, the best direction, and the best dialogue, but just didn't have as solid a story as the rest of the series.

Anyway, I give Flux a 7/10, and if things keep going the way they are, the next three specials should allow Chris and Jodie to go out on a high.

I know it was only 6 episodes (quite lengthy ones, though), and I dislike making such 'grand' declarations, but I think Flux has been the most consistently brilliant series I can remember. Even the wonderful Series 10 (a favourite of mine) had the tiresome 'monk' trilogy, which dragged it down.

Events in Flux moved so quickly, that any less than exciting moments were over in a flash. I loved everything about it, and having tackled such a thing as ongoing *total* chaos, I think the series will remain unique - this isn't something you can pull off twice.

Also, to think it was filmed during a pandemic, the results are pretty amazing. In fact, I'm not even waiting for the Blu-ray; I'm going to watch the whole thing again on I Player.

47? Hardly out of the playpen! 😁

Here's Radio Times's take on 'Flux'. Quite fair, I think.

As a whole, I think Flux was a success. It was exciting, I greatly anticipated watching it every week, and it was clear that a lot of effort went into it. It may have some little areas, particularly in the last episode, where it doesn't quite hit the mark, but this is hands down the most engaged I've been in Doctor Who since Capaldi's first season. I think the jury's still out on the unresolved portions of the story, but as Flux stands right now, I'm a big fan of it. It accomplished a lot of what it set out to do and elevated the era. The villains were intimidating and memorable, Whittaker was in top form, Dan is a great new companion, the weeping angels were scary again, the show looked and felt epic, and it felt like this era really came into its own. "Village of the Angels" was the best episode of the six. It was truly, start to finish, excellent Doctor Who, with one of the best Who cliffhangers ever. We got a surprisingly large cast by the end of things and I was impressed with how well the show handled that many characters. They each felt distinctive and engaging. These are characters I genuinely hope will return to the show, and hopefully will join Big Finish as well.

I've loved Doctor Who for so long now, ever since it helped get me through a lonely, rough time, and to see it shine like this really reminded me of why I love it.