The final words from the Doctor were “The Angel has the Tardis” – an obvious nod to “The Angels have the phone box” from Blink, a line good enough to go on a range of T-shirts. Photograph: James Pardon/BBC Studios Deeper into the vortex Yaz (Mandip Gill) sums up the conflict between her and the Doctor. The fact that it was a multi-species team on the mission also poses a question: is the Division even really a Time Lord organisation? Or something else that sometimes employs Time Lords?īarbara Flynn also made her first appearance as Awsok, the mysterious woman who seemed to give the impression she was running the universe – theories?
Lupari must live for a very long time as a species if Karnavista was knocking about with the Doctor in the Division. I am not sure my kids have understood a single sentence he has uttered. He speaks as if he has leaked from an episode written by Mark Gatiss – a constant jumble of words showing off the writer’s 19th-century vocabulary. There didn’t seem any logic to him being in the Temple of Atropos last week in his one scene this week, he had a ray gun in the 1820s. Steve Oram’s Joseph Williamson again made a brief, but perplexing, appearance. Some thought the Mouri might turn out to be a Weeping Angels origin story – quantum-locked, linked to time? There had also been speculation Passenger might turn out to be housing Dan’s would-be girlfriend, Di (Nadia Albina), although older familiar faces (Sacha Dhawan? Timothy Dalton?) were bandied about. I enjoyed your theories below the line last week very much. Photograph: James Pardon/BBC Studios Mysteries and questions Rochendra Sandall didn’t have much to do as Azure, but did it as deliciously as ever. I couldn’t say the same for Matthew Needham in the role of Old Swarm in the flashbacks, so it was a relief to get some of Spruell at the end. Sam Spruell’s Swarm had positively swaggered his way through the opening two chapters – he is easily one of the best “big bads” we have had in recent years on Doctor Who, absolutely relishing being evil for evil’s sake. Some younger viewers will surely be a little disturbed at the idea Angels can get at you from a video game, especially if you have to smash up your precious console to save yourself. I found the idea of a hidden Angel creeping up on Yaz via the mirrors on her police patrol car a nice twist on their usual approach. Weeping Angels were also used sparingly in this episode – but to much greater effect. They might have been in the trailer, but that barely counted as a cameo by the Cybermen. We didn’t get much more backstory to Dan (John Bishop), although we will presumably find out next week how he copes with loss. Relations between Yaz (Mandip Gill) and the Doctor (Jodie Whittaker) were more fraught than ever – with some sharp words between them as the Doctor continued on what seems to be a one-woman mission to uncover her past. Thaddea Graham’s Bel made her first appearance in chapter three. That is surely a flaw in a television episode. While you would miss out on some of the nice space visuals and the unexpected sight of Daleks floating through a forest, Once, Upon Time would work as an audiobook without much alteration.
I appreciate that the series was filmed under Covid restrictions, but an awful lot of the chapter seemed to consist of one actor standing on one set giving a monologue about what was happening. (That said, it might have been more fun to see the Fugitive Doctor (Jo Martin) and Karnavista (Craige Els) let rip in those scenes rather than occasionally flickering into view.) Martin absolutely rocked it as the Doctor in Fugitive of the Judoon and has been desperately underused since.
On the plus side, we began to get some answers – and a look at the Doctor’s history with the Division and a mission on the planet Time, which had been hinted at by Swarm in the previous two chapters. It was definitely the weakest chapter of Flux so far. It looked good, but it was more a disjointed series of exposition scenes rather than a story that flowed. After last week’s fun romp with the Sontarans, this was a frustrating reversion to the mean of the Chibnall era. A t one point, newly introduced Bel (Thaddea Graham) said: “I’ve no idea what that means, but it doesn’t sound good,” and it seemed she might be speaking about the episode as a whole.