Steven Moffat may have promised us a sci-fi fairy-tale but it’s Chris Chibnall who gives the Doctor a wicked stepmother
Like an unwelcome Gandalf The White, many of Chibnall’s follies return to us now, at the turning of the tide in SURVIVORS OF THE FLUX, an episode title which feels more like a writer’s note placeholder than something which can stand shoulder to shoulder with the likes of THE HALLOWEEN APOCALYPSE, WAR OF THE SONTARANS or VILLAGE OF THE ANGELS. It is, in many ways, the counterpart to ONCE, UPON TIME except it lacks that episode’s structural justification for a discordant and disjointed approach to storytelling.
With The Doctor in the custody of the Weeping Angels and Yaz and Dan stranded in 1901, the future – and the past and present – looks bleak. Cue a time-jumping, universe-hopping patchwork tale that takes in Yaz and Dan’s swashbuckling Indiana Jones-style treasure hunting as they search for clues to the end of the world – an event dated the same as the season finale: 5th December – while the Doctor finds herself face to face with, and at the very epicentre of, The Division. In addition to this, we also get a potted history of UNIT, its origins and its downfall (as referenced in SPYFALL) at the hands of The Grand Serpent.
What’s particularly striking about SURVIVORS OF THE FLUX are the production design and values. The visuals are stunningly cinematic and while, overall, this series has been an aesthetic feast, there’s something about this episode that shows the series at its visual best. The episode, despite its somewhat clumsy piecemeal structure and a surfeit of exposition, also manages to retain much of the ‘epic’ air that’s been building throughout the FLUX story a story that started off with obvious inspiration from the MARVEL CINEMATIC UNIVERSE and now seems to be adding RICK AND MORTY to the list of Chibnall’s lockdown viewing and inspiration list. Perhaps in RICK & MORTY, there are even hints of how he’ll square the circle of the Timeless Child arc itself.
Yaz and Dan’s adventures across the globe are well-crafted and exciting and, in a pleasant surprise, instead of leading our erstwhile companions back to the story’s “present-day”, unite them with Joseph Williamson, a figure who’s been one of FLUX’s constant presences without good explanation until now. There’s also what feels like a homage to River Song’s galactic jaunt at the beginning of TIME OF THE ANGELS as Yaz and Dan – accompanied by Professor Jericho – leave an indelible message for Karvanista. While The Grand Serpent’s return is more of a surprise – not just a throwaway character in ONCE, UPON TIME after all, which feels neater yet makes the world of FLUX feel smaller just as it expands to the largest possible scope – it feels like a modicum of justice for UNIT after their summary dismissal off-screen in the previous season. Perhaps this was Chibnall’s plan all along or perhaps he was stung by the fan reactions to UNIT’s demise but either way it’s a welcome return for the Earth’s first line of defence and a hint that their time on the show may not be at an end, even if it does create yet another messy point of continuity around the presence of a police box TARDIS in UNIT HQ long before the 3rd Doctor arrives.
But the real meat of SURVIVORS OF THE FLUX is, of course, the full reveal of The Division. It’s metatextually fitting that The Division will come to define Chibnall’s era in charge of the show as division is what he’s brought to the franchise and the fandom. In my review of VILLAGE OF THE ANGELS, I complained about a lack of answers at this stage of the story. Well, this episode certainly puts that right, in the most Chibnall-era way possible – with a massive expository dump in place of drama.
It may have been Steven Moffat’s ambition to reinterpret DOCTOR WHO as a “sci-fi fairytale” but it’s Chris Chibnall who’s ended up giving The Doctor a wicked stepmother as the head of Division is revealed to be none other than Tecteun herself. Much of the backstory of The Timeless Child is then confirmed to be pretty much as we all suspected, with Tecteun transforming not only Time Lord society through her experimentations on the Timeless Child but also forming The Division so that Time Lord Society could keep its hand clean while simultaneously interfering on a micro and macro scale in the events of the universe at large. It would also, thankfully, seem to close the door on the fan theory that Bel and Vinder might be the Doctor’s parents as it’s explicitly stated the Doctor is not native to “our” universe while Bel and Vinder clearly are. We also kind of learn that the Flux has been unleashed by The Division itself in order to destroy the universe as we know it and provide the energy required to move The Division fully into a new universe.
Of course, this is far from the first time The Doctor has been outside our universe, accidentally or otherwise: an accidental jaunt into E-Space and the very deliberate trip to House’s asteroid in THE DOCTOR’S WIFE to name but two. It’s less clear who’s responsible for Swarm and Azure being released, though, and as Tecteun outlines her grand ambitions for The Division, it’s hard not to suspect that maybe the Ravagers have a point after all.
Given the scale and the stakes of the story, it’s all the more disappointing that the Doctor is almost entirely a passive presence in SURVIVORS OF THE FLUX, a passenger there to be lectured at by other characters and events. Both the lengthy exposition and the passive Doctor have been hallmarks of the 13th Doctor’s era where the focus has always been on tinkering deep in the arcane volumes of the series’ lore over developing the characters on screen. If the intention has been for the retrospective and revisionist additions to the origins of the Time Lords to somehow translate to a depth of character and personality on screen then it has comprehensively failed. Whittaker’s Doctor remains frustratingly challenging to articulate in all but the most superficial way, what defining quirks there are being somewhat short of heroic. Defined by doubt and dithering, the 13th Doctor is at her most typical here – reactively at the mercy of events that have long since gone beyond her control.
With Tecteun newly enthroned as possibly the biggest bad the Doctor has ever faced, it’s something of a massive anticlimax when she’s apparently summarily dusted by Swarm as soon as our favourite Swarovski skeletons arrive in the Division’s exquisite base of operations in between universes, having burned the life energy of everyone contained in their Passenger creatures to break on through to the other side. The big cliffhanger of SURVIVORS OF THE FLUX, then, is the dangling thread of the chameleon arch which contains all the Doctor’s missing memories but will she get the chance to remember before she too is dust in the wind at the hands of The Ravagers.
With the fate of the entire universe literally hanging in the balance, the Doctor – and her current showrunner – have got their work cut out for them in bringing this adventure to a successful, coherent and satisfying conclusion. But however it shakes out, there’s no denying that FLUX has been a wild and worthwhile ride.
