Face the Raven

Chapter The 218th, wherein I just can't face it - I just can't face Face The Raven.

Plot:

Present day England. Ashildr, a rather petulant and ungrateful person whom the Doctor saved from death but inadvertently made immortal hundreds of years before, is running a refuge for aliens in a so-called trap street in London. The street is hidden using a telepathic field, which also makes the aliens appear to be human. Persons unknown (it will later turn out to be the Time Lords) approached Ashildr and threatened the street unless she contrived to capture the Doctor. She somehow found out that the Doctor and Clara had briefly met graffiti-artist Rigsy once before, and somehow got Rigsy to visit the trap street. She then framed him for the murder of a popular resident, wiped his memory, and sent him home. Before that, though, she applied a chrono-lock to the back of his neck - a tattoo that's continually changing, counting down. When it gets to zero, a Quantum Shade - a cloud of black gas that sometimes manifests as a raven - will kill him, no matter how fast or far he runs. Rigsy contacts the TARDIS using a number that Clara had given him in case of emergencies. The Doctor and Clara help Rigsy to investigate, and find the street. The Doctor confronts Ashildr, who grants him time to clear Rigsy's name. He eventually finds that the supposedly murdered person is still alive in a status pod, but when he tries to free her, he's trapped with a teleport bracelet on. Ashildr then says she'll take the chrono-lock off Rigsy. Unfortunately, Clara has agreed earlier to take on the chrono-lock herself, and Ashildr can't save her. The Raven kills Clara. The Doctor is teleported to location unknown, and he's not happy.

Context:

January's been a bit of an exhausting time, back to the day job after the Christmas holidays with much work to do and cold, dark days outside. I had a brief break from watching Doctor Who stories for the blog after a couple of intensive marathons watching every story on the recent season 17 Blu-ray box set including Nightmare of Eden, and then before that watching all of Flux in one go; refreshed, I felt ready to watch and blog something new (and preferably involving less of a time commitment), so figuratively rolled the many-sided die (actually an online random number generator) to decide which story to cover next. When this dictated that the story was Face the Raven, I have to admit that my heart sunk a little bit - it wasn't a story of which I had fond memories, and sitting through it again felt like a bit of a chore. I put it off for a little while longer, instead choosing to watch the last special feature I had left to view on the last Blu-ray box set but one. Yes, at that point I preferred to watch six hours of different takes of scenes from Delta and the Bannermen (the location footage from a disc in the Season 24 set) than watch a 45-minute story from Peter Capaldi's middle series. Finally finishing that set after so many months, I considered going back to season 17 (I still have info text, commentaries and a couple of extras to watch), but decided to buckle down and get Face the Raven over with. How bad could it be? I watched from the Blu-ray on my own on a Saturday afternoon.

First Time Round:

In November 2015, I sat at a desk at my day job next to a woman from North Wales whose name I sadly can't remember any longer (it's only been six years, but I'm coming up blank, sorry Whatever-your-name-was). I can recall, though, her telling me on the Monday after Face the Raven had been first broadcast in the UK (Doctor Who's 52nd anniversary, November 23rd, after the episode was shown on Saturday the 21st) that she'd seen it and that it had been "pretty weird". As is usual for me in these events, I got bashful and changed the subject - I'd had enough of defending my favourite show as a youngster; if adults had problems with it they were on their own. I'm not even sure that she didn't like it as the following Monday she told me that the episode that week, Heaven Sent, had been "very weird" - her experience the previous weekend clearly hadn't stopped her from watching. Maybe weird is good. One person who had given up on Doctor Who around this time was the Better Half. So, I would have watched Face the Raven alone late on the Saturday night to judge its suitability (at that point, my three children's ages ranged from 3 to 9 years old); it was fine for them, so we four watched it the following morning. The Better Half had got bored with the series after the Zygon 2-parter, but watched Face the Raven retrospectively after she'd seen Heaven Sent the following week (she'd watched Heaven Sent as I'd nagged her to, based on its quality). To this day, she has not ever watched Sleep No More. 

Reaction:

Face the Raven is a story where one of the Doctor's friends, a character played by a regular cast member, one of the TARDIS crew, dies. This had happened only a few times previously in the history of the show - a couple of short-lived companions in the 1960s, Adric, Peri (sort-of), and no one after that, no new series companion before Clara. Each time it had happened before, it had had a considerable impact. I liked Clara as a character, and I liked the way Jenna Coleman played her. I should have felt something when she died, but there was no impact. The music and the slo-mo of her death scene is supposed to jerk tears, no doubt; the effect of the black smoke pouring out of her mouth is supposed to be grim and scary. I felt nothing, apart from mild disappointment, both when viewing in 2015 and 2022. Why might this be? Maybe the scenario is just too unreal. This one 45-minute story contains so many concepts that have no readily graspable scientific explanations: a tattoo on someone's skin that's counting down, a mystical raven that steals people's souls and will follow them to the ends of the Earth, a woman that can live for ever, a race with heads looking in both directions who can see the past and the future, a hidden street in London where people who are different from the general populace can go. That last one is pure Harry Potter (the trap street is essentially Diagon Alley), but all of these concepts belong more to the world of magic and mythology than Doctor Who's normally much less fantastical science fantasy. That wouldn't usually be a problem - Doctor Who's flexible format can sample any tone or subgenre - but it's hard when the narrative is expecting me to believe in finality. In this magic world, will death really prove to be the end? It doesn't feel like it.

As well as being unreal, the set-up in the story is convoluted. A simple ending where Clara sacrifices herself in place of Rigsy would be easily digestible by the audience. Instead, it's framed clumsily as a contractual negotiation. Ashildr has a deal with the Raven / Shade (how exactly one would go about brokering an agreement with a cloud of gas or bird is not clear, but never mind) that it is owed a soul, but she can somehow avoid that for Rigsy but not for Clara. Ashildr has a long bit of dialogue that's whizzed through at speed but is worth dwelling on: "I made a contract with the Shade when I put the chrono-lock on Rigsy - I promised it a soul and only I can break that contract. When you took it from him, you changed the terms, you cut me out of the deal." This doesn't make any sense. If Ashildr indeed has an obligation to provide a soul - a position that's reiterated multiple times with dialogue like "You can pass it on but you can't cheat it" - then why would she be able to break the deal? Why would it make any difference whose soul it was? Why can nobody else make the same deal she did originally? Why can't the Doctor take on the countdown from Clara, just as she did from Rigsy? Given the intended drama of the moment, the logic has to slot together perfectly for the audience to suddenly realise the trouble that Clara is in at the climax, but it just leaves one scratching one's head. It also is the culmination of a plan that's massively overcomplicated. The Doctor needs to be separated from the TARDIS and then teleported off somewhere. Yes, just asking him to come along might have aroused suspicions. The plan as shown, though, is so far the other way it's ridiculous.

Ashildr has to arrange for someone that the Doctor's met only once before to be in a specific place at a specific time to be framed for murder, then wipe his memory and send him back home while the clock is ticking. What if Rigsy had slept in the following day? What if he'd lost the Doctor's number? What if the TARDIS team and Rigsy had taken longer to find the trap street? Rigsy wanted to call the Doctor as his advocate when he was first accused, so why didn't Ashildr let him? It doesn't make any sense for her to risk her plan by wiping his memory; it only happens to give the first 15 minutes of the story some mystery. There isn't any narrative-world purpose to those first 15 minutes at all - the story could start with Rigsy calling in the Doctor directly to the trap street; the Doctor would still get the investigation to do that's meant to flatter his nature and entrap him. It wouldn't set up Rigsy's partner and child, of course, but I'm not sure that's very well handled anyway. Presumably a scene was cut from the script or final show introducing Jen, the mother of Rigsy's baby, as it looks in the final product like they're leaving the baby alone with nobody to look after it. A TV-literate viewer will immediately be alerted when a character has a new baby and a scene dwells on it, it's like a character saying they're one day away from retirement. Perhaps that was misdirection as to who was not going to make it to the end of the story. Any TV-literate viewer, though, will be very suspicious of a main character disappearing when there's still two episodes left of the season; it was almost certain that Clara would be back in either or both (both as it turned out). It's also a trick that's been pulled before: Clara had pretend leaving scenes at the end of the last series, and again in the last Christmas special. Face The Raven's ending, already questionable for the reasons above, is further undermined by these metatextual factors.

The final reason why Clara's death won't be the end is it's not heroic. She's very brave facing her fate at the end, but the action that she's taken is dumb. The script, and various moments in the previous stories of that year, have been sketching in a motivation that Clara has become reckless thinking she's invincible, but that doesn't quite sell why she makes such a foolish decision. She says it will buy them more time, but she knows it won't - the countdown doesn't restart when it passes to her. She also says, somewhat contradicting the buying more time thing, that she can't die as Ashildr has promised her absolute protection (which is set up earlier, but comes to nothing as Clara still dies). Again, it's just confused and not precise enough to be any kind of twist. More than that, though - and channelling Lalla Ward in some interviews on the season 17 boxset who makes this point - Doctor Who is a melodrama, and melodramas have rules. One is that a hero can't do something knowingly unheroic. As such, it seems obvious that Clara will be back before the end of the series to redeem herself. (An aside: when she does return, Clara doesn't really redeem herself, which makes the year's finale Hell Bent somewhat underwhelming too, but I'll review that - and who knows maybe change my position - when it comes up to blog.) The execution of the story is not that bad; the production design and pacing is fine, the mystery of the first 15 minutes is effective, even though it's fake. There's some great visuals like Rigsy's painted TARDIS memorial to Clara shown in a post credits scene. The performances are mostly good; Maisie Williams is okay, but she just doesn't have the heft to be a credible antagonist versus the forceful presence of Peter Capaldi. That he's beaten by her ruses, at a terrible cost, is not that satisfactory or heroic for him either, but it ends 'To Be Continued' so he can maybe do something about that in the next story...

Connectivity: 

A tough one this; both Face the Raven and Nightmare of Eden contain references to a drug (Vraxoin and the Retcon amnesia drug respectively) and both contain creatures that are not quite what they seem (the Raven is a Quantum Shade, the Mandrels are the source of Vraxoin). That's about it.

Deeper Thoughts:

The Golden Age Myth Ballooning. The narratives of Doctor who stories in general encourage looking to make the future better rather than dwelling on some perhaps glorious but now faded past. There are many stories with ex-imperial villainous races trying aggressively to recapture past glories and coming a cropper, and one story explicitly calls out "There never was a golden age... it's all an illusion." Unfortunately, this hasn't stopped commentators (both amateur and professional) from harking back to golden ages they have perceived in the show itself. For example, as part of my intensive and extensive quest to consume all the material on the season 24 boxset (sorry if it's dominating this blog post, but it has dominated my life for many months), I listened to the Time and the Rani commentary, recorded in the first decade of this millennium when the returned post-2005 Doctor Who was a few series in; the late writers of that story Pip and Jane Baker both bemoaned the return of the sonic screwdriver in the new episodes, as it was the equivalent of a magic wand and made the Doctor into a wizard rather than the scientist he's supposed to be. They are not alone in those involved in the making of Who in thinking that things had got a bit silly or too easy compared to previous times. Does this stand up to scrutiny, though? Was there ever a golden age of Doctor Who? Many people will have their favourite periods of the show, but agreement as to which will never be anything even approaching 100 percent even amongst the smallest group of fans.

I do not think there's ever been a particular golden age of quality. No matter which year from 1963 to 1989 and from 2005 to date, there will be classics and there will be clunkers. And different people will put any one story into those two categories differently. Many people like Face the Raven a lot more than me for example, but I'm not silly enough to think that they're wrong and I'm right. I'll go one step further, though: never mind quality, there's not even a golden age of tone, approach or detail. All is fluid, and anything could happen - it's exciting. For example, I don't think the Doctor has ever consistently been portrayed as being a scientist, no matter what the Bakers thought. In the early days, he was a curious dilettante who liked to go off exploring and was very proud of his synthetic food machine, but he wasn't depicted using scientific methods; but then, in the early days he wasn't the hero, Ian was, and the science teacher, who'd on paper be much more likely to used his applied knowledge to solve problems, was more of an action hero. The Doctor tended to talk his way out of tight spots (his oratorial skills are to the forefront in stories like An Unearthly Child and The Keys of Marinus in that first season). Later he's seen tinkering with the odd bit of engineering here and there. The only couple of times I can think of that the Doctor ever used a truly experimental approach was when trying to find antidotes to diseases in The Ark and Doctor Who and the Silurians; the former is just a quick montage to ramp up tension, and the latter is one section of a seven-episoder, where they clearly wanted to fill up the story time any way they could. Daleks have never been able to shoot straight, and the sonic screwdriver has always been able to open any door in the universe, except when it can't. Everything else is propaganda.

It's forgivable that Doctor Who fans fall for the golden age myth, though, as it's endemic in many walks of life. Politicians and the media are particularly susceptible, always hankering for imagined times when people knew their place, or when there was no crime, or when nobody had to pay a licence fee for their TV (a recent and particularly egregious example in the UK). Perhaps it is this fertile ground that grew a rumour that's blossomed recently, that the next actor taking over from Jodie Whittaker to be the incumbent Time Lord will be none other than David Tennant. I don't think this is likely to happen. The returning showrunner Russell T Davies has always tended to demonstrate that desire to push for the new rather than dwell on the past. It's the 60th anniversary of Doctor Who, of course, which might lead to some celebratory celebrity shenanigans - I could see Tennant making a guest appearance (though I'm not even sure that's a good idea) but not taking over the role for good. This rumour, taken as fact, is also being used by the usual clickbaiters as a stick to beat the current show. What's interesting, though, is that this didn't happen the last time an actor made an indelible mark on the role. If the equivalent of David Tennant for the classic series is Tom Baker, I don't remember any time during the 1980s that there was hope or even speculation that he'd come back. Perhaps this is a good sign. Towards the end of the classic series, rightly or wrongly, Doctor Who was not seen as the sort of successful venture that would tempt back a star who'd already made their mark. That it is currently seen as something that a busy and popular TV actor like Tennant would want to re-do is testament to the good shape that the series is in. The only golden age therefore is right now.

In Summary:

I've watched it a couple of times, and I'm not feeling the love, so I'm afraid I now shall watch this story... nevermore.

Nightmare of Eden

Chapter The 217th, is silly but nonetheless somewhat addictive.

Plot:

Near the planet Azure c. 2116, two spaceships crash into each other; the first, a cruise ship called the Empress, was coming out of space warp in a semi-materialised state at the time, and now is stuck enmeshed with the other smaller ship, the Hecate. The Doctor, Romana and K9 arrive on the Empress and find its Captain Rigg arguing with the one-man crew of the Hecate, Dymond, who is keen to be on his way. The Doctor has a plan that will separate the ships, but they need to reach the power unit of the Empress which is blocked by the Hecate cutting across the hull. There are also now aggressive creatures called Mandrels (not Mandrills, though that would have been just as silly) aboard. A zoologist Tryst is travelling on the Empress having finished a long expedition. He's collected specimens, flora and fauna from various planets stored in a prototype Continuous Event Transmuter (CET) machine - essentially an electronic zoo storing the materials on laser crystals. The crash has made the machine unstable, letting the Mandrels (collected from the planet Eden) escape and run amok. The Doctor finds evidence that someone on the Empress is taking a dangerous drug, Vraxoin. Captain Rigg's drink is spiked with some of the drug, and he acts strangely, eventually attacking Romana.

The instability allows the Doctor and Romana to jump into the CET projection of Eden, finding themselves on the small extracted section of the planet where they investigate. They find one of Tryst's expedition party Stott, who was thought lost; he's been collected up in the CET crystal and stuck in there until the crash. Stott is really an undercover agent investigating the Vraxoin smuggling. He shows the Time Lords that he's able to leave the projection at different exit points leading to different areas of the ship; this allows the Doctor and Romana to reach the power unit and instigate the ship separation plan. A Mandrel attacks but is electrocuted and dissolves into powder - the Mandrels themselves are the source of the drug! As the ships separate, the Doctor finds himself on the Hecate, and discovers equipment to receive signals from the CET machine. Tryst and Dymond are the smugglers - Tryst evaded security by storing the Mandrels in the CET, planning to broadcast them to Dymond. On the Empress, the Mandrels are rounded up and put back into the machine. Tryst performs the transfer, and Tryst and Dymond attempt to escape in the Hecate. But the Doctor uses the CET to scoop them up and imprison them. They are pulled out of the projection and arrested.

Context:

On the 20th December 2021, Online Pre-Order Santa bought me an early Christmas present, the Blu-ray box set of season 17, Tom Baker's sixth and penultimate run. This is the tenth release of the range; all the sets lined up on my shelf are now looking like a veritable collection, not just a random few boxes. This set for example plugs into a continuous run of three years and 80 upscaled episodes on Blu-ray that take Doctor Who from the 1970s into the 80s. It's all very exciting. Including the version of Shada completed with animation, I have previously blogged five out of the six stories on this set. To introduce something of a random factor, I flipped a coin. It came up heads, so I proceeded to watch the final remaining one, Nightmare of Eden, for this latest post; it was the story in the set to have new effects, so I watched that enhanced version. This now completes the fourth full season of Doctor Who I have covered bit by bit in random order for the blog over the years. The other three were season 8 (Jon Pertwee's second year), season 23 (Colin Baker's second year, The Trial of a Time Lord) and new series 13 (Flux). I watched the Blu-ray on twelfth night, the decorations all taken down, and a fire crackling away in the living room's hearth. That much was atmospheric, but it was slightly undermined by the Better Half, who was reading a book in the corner of the room and occasionally snarking about the quality of the acting.

A shelf, my house, recently

First Time Round:

I have mentioned this on a blog post before, but Nightmare of Eden is the first Doctor Who story I ever experienced in any way (and it was a very small way). When I was a youngster (this is early December 1979 when the story was first broadcast, so I would have been seven years old), the merest hint of the Doctor Who theme tune would terrify me and send me racing out of a room. As such, the first glimpse was inevitably going to be midway through an episode. My memory is that I looked through a crack in the door into my parents' bedroom, where they had a black and white portable TV, and it was showing a scene of a woman in a billowy dress and a tiny malevolent metal horse scooting about. I was just as scared by this as I was by the theme tune, and ran away again. The images were thereafter etched into my memory by the fear, and later I worked out from that and the rough timing that it was almost certainly a scene from Nightmare of Eden episode three, and the metal horse, K9. I later caught odd glimpses of Full Circle (spider attacking blonde lady's face), Warrior's Gate (Mat Irvine showing off a model explosion on Saturday morning kids' TV) and The Keeper of Traken (curly haired girl looking wistful in a garden) and was not scared by then, but still not interested. Finally, about two years after that first nightmare glimpse of Nightmare, I  watched a full episode and then a full story, and very rapidly I became a fan (more detail of how this came to pass is recounted in the Deeper Thoughts of the Carnival of Monsters blog post from a few years back).

It was many years before I got to see the rest of Nightmare of Eden. For a contract period starting in the summer of 1997, I got a cable package that included the channel UK Gold, and they at the time were showing omnibus editions of Doctor Who on Sunday mornings. I had a lot of the later Tom Baker episodes that were being shown already on VHS, but it did give me a chance to tape and keep a succession of the generally unloved, lower-half of poll positioned stories: The Invasion of Time, The Creature from the Pit, The Horns of Nimon, Nightmare of Eden, and Meglos. None of them were quite as bad as the reputation that preceded them, and Nightmare of Eden was my favourite of the bunch. Maybe the schedulers of the VHS range agreed on that last point, as it was the first of the five to be subsequently released on tape, less than 18 months later. So it was that in January 1999, I got to see the story in full with the beginning and end credits in place.   

Reaction:

The box set including Nightmare of Eden does a great deal to improve the reputation of season 17, perhaps one of the most unloved in Doctor Who's history (see Deeper Thoughts section below for more details of the set). The season did have a lot of issues stacked up against it, and it's worth listing them to give context: the budget was in real terms reportedly one of the lowest ever given to a run of Doctor Who; the main star of the show, though no doubt a genius in his own way, was becoming more and more difficult to work with; the new script editor, though no doubt a genius in his own way, was unqualified and not a good fit for the role; industrial action was a potential issue that could, ahem, strike at any time, and Doctor Who was still a difficult show to find sympathetic writers for, so scripts would often fall through or need major reworking at short notice. In order to make an impact across the year, producer Graham Williams put a bit more budget allocation into the Dalek opener, and a reasonable amount more into the foreign jaunt and Cambridge-based finale. This left the middle three episodes with less, Nightmare of Eden particularly: it has no location work, and the model effects are on video rather than film. The other two of those middle 'poor relation' stories have at least one input from a very talented individual to salvage a bit of pride; The Horns of Nimon has some fantastic costume design by the peerless June Hudson, The Creature from the Pit has good direction from seasoned pro Christopher Barry. Costume design and direction on Nightmare of Eden were not so lucky.

The Better Half's snark about the quality of the acting is maybe justifiable; there's a lot of shall we say 'large' performances; never large enough to reach, say, Graham Crowden's operatic silliness in The Horns of Nimon (Lewis Fiander comes closest with his outrageous comedy scientist accent) but sufficient to stand out in the wrong way. There are various moments where another take was needed (a character calling someone by the wrong name slips through, for example, and different members of the cast pronounce "Hecate" differently). Some of the cast are playing it relatively straight, but a good few are pitching it at the level of a children's comedy skit. I don't think the actors are to blame in this instance, though. I've always seen such inconsistency as a symptom of less than adequate direction; I may have been wrong about that on previous occasions, but there's a weight of evidence to confirm it to be the case here. The special features on the disc consistently speak of an unhappy production with members of cast and crew severely at odds with the director Alan Bromly (some of the crew had T-Shirts printed at the end of the shoot to commemorate surviving this particular Nightmare, that's how bad it got). Bromly wasn't around to give his side of the story (he passed away before Nightmare of Eden was even released on VHS) but its on record that he resigned midway through his work, leaving the producer to finish the taping and post production. He can't have been all that happy either.

Another infamous aspect of the production is the Mandrel costumes, but they aren't that bad at all (apart from a visible zip in some shots, they are a perfectly reasonable design), the issue is with how they are performed, lit and shot - there's one scene of a single Mandrel emerging from the mist where it looks perfect. Unfortunately, key sequences require the Mandrels to be on the over-lit spaceship corridor sets. All the other costumes are terrible no matter how one might light them: Romana is in a maternity dress, and every other outfit has been put together based on the principle that futuristic = glitter and sequins. The Eden jungle sets are okay, better than the drab spaceship sets. There are occasionally some nice trippy visuals as characters move around in the unstable areas of the ships, and the effects sequence of the Mandrel dissolving into powder is nicely done. Visually it's not a complete failure, but it is one of the worst looking stories of the period (and that's saying something, as failures of production design were more common during Graham Williams's tenure, alas).   

 

Underneath this gaudy upper layer, though, is a very solid script. As with every story in the season, it's full of great ideas and comic lines ("Of course we should interfere, always do what you're best at", "I don't work for anyone, I'm just having fun", "Just in the same way a jam maker conserves raspberries", etc. etc.). Unfortunately, like most of the stories, the execution leaves something to be desired. The quality of the ideas is unsurprising given that the author is recently departed and already much missed Bob Baker and the script editor is the long departed and still much missed Douglas Adams. Baker's previous scripts for Doctor Who with writing partner Dave Martin, and Douglas Adams' work for the show and elsewhere, were ever brimming with big concepts; here, there's the two ships being stuck, crashed neatly into one another because of  hyperspace materialisation - a clever extrapolation from a popular sci-fi concept of the time; the CET machine, a miniaturised digital zoo; and, a race of creatures that turn into narcotics when they are electrocuted. Best of all, there is the instability of the projected image of the CET machine which allows great moments like Romana watching the recording of the planet Eden and seeing eyes in the forest staring back at her; the end of episode two also - the Doctor and Romana jump into the projected image and find themselves in another world; it's a great turn of the story, and one of those episode endings that has the audience wondering where the narrative is going next. These are all fun and typically envelope-pushing ideas of Who stories of this vintage; what's unique about this story is that at heart it has a very serious intent.

Should they have gone there? The drug smuggling story, and the scenes of characters having taken drugs, are still quite shocking to watch even now, as Doctor Who has never really done anything like it before or since. It arguably had to be an over-simplification of the issues to be told in a subplot of 100 minutes of kid-friendly TV, but it nonetheless is breaking new ground and so shouldn't be dismissed out of hand. Some of the story's best moments arise from this theme. Whatever you think of the pitch at which he starts his performance, the way David Daker (as Captain Rigg) modulates it once he comes under the influence of Vraxoin creates some great scenes, both darkly comic (Rigg laughing as he watches the passengers being slaughtered) to raw and terrifying (Rigg suffering from withdrawal and attacking Romana). There's also the magnificent moment at the end where Tryst tries to justify his crimes to the Doctor, who coldly rejects him with a "Go away". I'm sympathetic to the argument that a serious issue is cheapened by being part of a presentation that elsewhere looks so unserious; but, if Nightmare of Eden had been presented with more realism and restraint, it would almost certainly have turned out to be unsuitable for a family audience. Imagine the scene between Rigg and Romana being played out with totally naturalistic performances on a moodily lit spaceship set with nobody wearing any glittery light-entertainment gear. It would have been traumatising. Maybe two wrongs do sometimes make a right.

 

Connectivity: 

Both Nightmare of Eden and Flux feature spaceships crashing together, unstable areas of space-time and characters able to move in and out of a projected moving image. Flux contained lots and lots of elements from Doctor Who's history, but it couldn't find room to include any Mandrels, alas.

Deeper Thoughts:

Galactic Salvage Insurance Report: Doctor Who: The Collection - Season 17 Blu-ray box set overview. But for being stuck at home in self-isolation after testing positive for Covid, I would have had a nice write-up of the BFI screening of City of Death in December 2021 that may have been of interest to anyone reading (Hi Mum!). As it was, I heard that those that could make use of their booking were well entertained, and that the main interviewee Julian Glover was interesting and funny. It was a shame to miss him in particular, as Glover doesn't have much of a presence on these Blu-rays; his contributions to discussions of City of Death are restricted to material that appeared previously on the DVD that have been ported over to this set. Focus on this run is usually centred on its second story as it is one of the best of Who's history and was the first to film outside the UK; the Dalek story is a distant second place, and the remaining ones are best not dwelt upon at all - except maybe the finale Shada, but that's usually seen as its own thing in a space elsewhere somewhat removed; it was technically not part of the season having been scuppered by a strike and so never finished or broadcast. The semi-animated Shada, previously available as a feature length omnibus version, is presented here in what's called "The Definitive Version", as full episodes with cliffhanger endings for the first time. This extension of the season from 20 to 26 episodes, as well as restoration throughout, makes a big difference. Suddenly, this is the season as originally intended; taken as a whole, the deficiencies of certain episodes (as there always are in any season of Doctor Who) balance out. In summary, this latest watch is the most I've enjoyed this run of stories. 

Just based on the restoration, an episodic Shada and the new digital effects in Nightmare of Eden (which are really good and improve a thousandfold the crucial scenes of ships in space, as well as smaller moments like the insect that flies out of the Eden projection, and various laser blasts), I'd recommend buying this set. If you haven't got it already, it is still available in limited edition packaging at the time of writing (usually these sets sell out - I told you it was unloved!), but it will be available in standard packaging too soon, the window between the different versions of these releases seems to be shortening. In terms of Special Features, there isn't one major one that stands out as a reason to buy in the same way that, say, the John-Nathan Turner biography Showman or the Terrance Dicks tribute Terrance and Me and Me did for their respective sets. Instead of one big Christmas present, there are a lot of enjoyable stocking fillers. There's a long documentary in tribute to Douglas Adams's life and career; it doesn't break any new ground, but it's nice to have it, particularly some of the archive footage of Douglas. It's funny that most people interviewed focus on Adams's impact on them in person rather than through his work (he was an arch procrastinator, so the work is by far in the minority); it falls to Richard Dawkins to be the fanboy, quoting some of his favourite parts of Adams's books. It's also interesting to know that his successor as Doctor Who script editor Christopher Bidmead was a friend, as Bidmead seems to have spent the years since and to date criticising Adams's approach in the role.

Davros in the specially made trailer for the set

Other long features include a comprehensive discussion with Lalla Ward on season 17; this is taken from an interview from 2007, some of which has been used in other featurettes on the set, but most of which has not been seen before; there's also a separate long chat with Tom Baker setting the world to rights (but not really touching on anything as boring as season 17's stories); similarly, there's a 40-minute tour de force convention appearance by Tom recorded in 1997 where he avoids the subject of Doctor Who altogether and is all the more entertaining for it. Best of the longer new pieces is Matthew Sweet's latest In Conversation interview, this time with Bob Baker. It wasn't intended to be so, but it acts as a commemoration, Baker having died in November 2021 between the interview being recorded and the box set coming out. He is an engaging and frank interviewee throughout, and there's a staged moment accompanying the end credits that's very sweet. As usual, there is a Behind the Sofa for each of the stories (including Shada), where selected Doctor Who luminaries watch and comment entertainingly on sections of the action a la Gogglebox; here, the viewing teams are Katy Manning and Nicola Bryant, Colin Baker and Matthew Waterhouse, and Mat Irvine, June Hudson and Graeme Harper. The two best documentaries for me, though, are not new, a couple of pre-existing authored docs that previously appeared on DVDs: Paris in the Springtime (the Making of City of Death) and A Matter of Time (an overview of Graham Williams's producer-ship); I'd not seen either of these for a good while, and they are very enjoyable.

The late, great Bob Baker (pictured with Matthew Sweet and a couple of other friends)

There's plenty of archive clips included also: a Swap Shop, an Ask Aspel, a couple of Wogans, lots of Blue Peter clips from 1979 (featuring the somewhat forgotten line-up of Simon Groom, Christopher Wenner and Tina Heath). There's also commentaries old and new, information text and lots of other bits and bobs. More than enough to occupy even the most obsessive fan for months; I should know, as I am such a fan, and I'm still working through it (and still have a few things left to watch from the last release, season 24, too).

In Summary:

The script is not quite paradise, but it's pretty good; the execution, though, is a nightmare.

Flux

Chapter The 216th, is the biggest chapter to date.

Plot:

[These are the most recent episodes of Doctor Who at the time of writing, so be wary of spoilers from this point on if you haven't seen the shows; there's also a lot of plot to recount.]

Many years ago, some Time Lords including Tecteun - the Doctor's adopted mother who took the Doctor when she was the seemingly abandoned Timeless child - formed the Division. This was a group that slowly came to recruit operatives from all races including Weeping Angels and Ood, who interfered in events in a way that the official Time Lords swear never to do. Early on, they created the Temple of Atropos on the Planet Time to imprison the chaotic and destructive time force that existed back then. Two Ravagers, brother and sister Swarm and Azure, powerful creatures who revere this time force as an anthropomorphised entity, later take over the temple and there is a siege. The pre-William Hartnell regeneration of the Doctor, who later was a fugitive on Earth in Gloucester, led a Division team that broke the siege, and captured Swarm and Azure. Both were imprisoned - Swarm fully conscious in a remote prison somewhere in space, and Azure on Earth in human form, unaware of her real identity. Tecteun, now in charge of Division, notices the current Doctor's investigations into the forgotten lives she had before she was an old man with long white hair. Wary that the Doctor will find out too much about the Division, Tectuen decides on a quite extreme way to stop the Doctor - destroying the universe. Tecteun is based on a vehicle outside our universe, poised to navigate to a new one. She releases the Flux, an energy wave that destroys matter. Just in case that's not enough, she also frees Swarm who then finds and frees his sister; they will want revenge on the Doctor, and will ensure complete destruction by mucking about with time too.

In 1820, Joseph Williamson is building his tunnels under Liverpool, and finds that some of them lead to other times and places (through rips in the fabric of time and space). From what he witnesses, he pieces together the danger that the Flux will mean in the future, and develops the tunnels to become a survival chamber for humans. On an unnamed planet, Bel and Vinder are life partners, and recent graduates of space pilot academy. They only have one night together before they are given separate postings. Vinder is given special duty as the personal guard of their ruler, the Grand Serpent. The Grand Serpent is corrupt, though, and abuses his position to threaten his political enemies. Vinder tries to blow the whistle, and finds himself sent to do a punishment duty in a deep space observation station, Outpost Rose. As he was sent there directly, he does not know that Bel is pregnant with his child. Vinder spots the Flux coming, and it destroys planets around him and finally Outpost Rose. It also unbeknown to him lays waste to his home planet. Vinder is transported to Atropos by the Ravagers as part of their plan to humiliate the Doctor. Bel travels off world to find Vinder.

The Doctor, helped by Yaz, has found an ex-member of the Division, Karvanista, a dog-like alien from a race called the Lupari. He won't tell her anything of her history, tries to kill both her and Yaz, and makes off for Earth. It looks as if he and the massive Lupari fleet are out to invade, but they are really trying to save the human race. Each Lupar is pair-bonded with a specific human. As he's ahead of his fleet, Karvanista is the first to pick up his human, arriving on the evening of October 31st 2021 and caging the human within his Flux-proof craft. This is Dan Lewis from Liverpool, who's very surprised to be on a dog's spaceship, and is even more surprised to then be rescued by the Doctor and Yaz. Eventually working out that Karvanista isn't exactly against her, the Doctor gives the Lupari a new plan, to configure the fleet into a Flux barrier encircling the Earth. The Earth is safe, but the Sontarans, exploiting possibilities offered by the Flux, sneak in before the barrier goes up. In the TARDIS, the Doctor, Yaz and Dan just avoid being destroyed by the Flux in space, and materialise in the Crimean War. The Sontarans have changed history and taken the place of the Russians in this conflict.

The Doctor is left alone when her two companions are transported elsewhere by the time disturbance. Yaz goes to Atropos and meets Vinder. Dan appears back in Liverpool 2021, meeting his Mum and Dad who explain that in the two days since he's been gone, the Sontarans have taken over the Liverpool docks. Helped by Mary Seacole, the Doctor defeats the Sontarans in the Crimea. Dan sneaks aboard one of their ships and communicates across time to the Doctor. The Potato-Heads' misadventures in the Crimean War are just a pilot scheme, and they plan to continue temporal warfare throughout Earth history. With Karvanista's help, still protecting his human, Dan destroys the Sontaran ships on Earth, and the time explosion reverts things to normal as if they'd never been there. Leaving Karvanista and the other Lupari in their ships still protecting Earth, the Doctor and Dan go in the TARDIS to find Yaz on Atropos.

Since the siege, the temple has been enhanced by incorporating time-sensitive lifeforms called Mouri that have the time vortex flowing through them as part of the temple circuit. Several of the Mouri have now been destroyed by Azure and Swarm sabotaging the system. The Ravagers wire in Vinder and Yaz to take their place, and are just about to switch on, which will kill both. To save them, the Doctor pulls herself, them and Dan into the unstable time vortex, hiding everyone in moments from their own timelines while she pieces together some of the backstory of what's happening, and persuades more Mouri to complete the temple circuit again. Once this is done, the Ravagers don't seem too bothered - they were just taunting the Doctor. They reveal that their attendants are Passenger forms, bigger on the inside prisons shaped like lumbering blokes in masks. Inside one is Diane, the person that Dan was set to meet for a date on Halloween night, who they've kidnapped. Again, they tell Dan this just for shits and giggles then they nick off. The Doctor drops Vinder off to search for Bel; Bel has by this time commandeered an abandoned Lupari ship and is searching the remaining areas of the Flux-impacted universe for Vinder. The TARDIS team are in the control room when a Weeping Angel, which Yaz had seen visions of in the time vortex, appears and takes control of the time ship.

Claire Brown lives in Liverpool in the present day and has psychic ability. She sees visions of the TARDIS, the Doctor and a Weeping Angel. On Halloween night 2021, she briefly met the Doctor and Yaz, and then got attacked by an angel, and zapped back to 1965. By 1967, she is in the village home of Professor Jericho who's investigating her abilities. The Weeping Angel brings the TARDIS to that village, and the Doctor finds Jericho and Claire. Meanwhile, Yaz and Dan are zapped back to 1901 by another angel. The angels attack Jericho's home. These angels are an extraction squad working for Division and want the angel from the TARDIS, who is now hiding in Claire's head, because it also previously worked for Division and has vital knowledge including information about the Doctor. The angels break in to the house. The Doctor, Claire, and Jericho attempt to escape but Jericho is zapped back to 1901 where he meets Dan and Yaz. The Doctor and Claire escape to find a stone vehicle that the angels used to get to Earth. The extraction squad angels are no longer interested in the rogue angel, they have a bigger prize now: the Doctor. Yaz, Dan and Jericho watch through a portal linking the time zones to see the Doctor turned into an angel and taken off.

Bel goes to the planet Puzano, one of the last remaining wrecks of planets surviving after the Flux, and where she and Vinder were planning to honeymoon. She finds that Azure is tricking refugees arriving there, promising to take them to safety but instead locking them up in a Passenger form. Vinder arrives on Puzano too, but after Bel's left, just missing her. Bel and Vinder both trace the source of the Passenger form signals, but Bel's Lupari spacecraft is called away to join the rest of the fleet round Earth before Vinder can catch up with her. He is captured by the Ravagers, who are exploding all the people they have abducted to generate power. They put Vinder in a Passenger form where he meets with Diane. Yaz, Dan and Jericho spend a few years of the early 20th century trying to work out when the final date for Flux destruction will occur, based on a recorded mission set for them by the Doctor. They don't get very far, but finally bump into Joseph Willamson, who shows them the portals within his tunnels. Meanwhile, still protected by the Lupari shields, with the Flux still active elsewhere in the cosmos, Earth becomes a target. The displaced Grand Serpent makes his way there, and infiltrates UNIT at its formation, then hopping through its formative years using time travel. In the present, Kate Stewart uncovers this, and gives him a warning; he blows up her house, so she goes underground. Karvanista boards the Lupari craft to wrest control of it back from Bel, just as the fleet is attacked by Sontarans. The Grand Serpent has done a deal with them, and has used his UNIT influence to weaken Earth's defences.

The Doctor is taken to Tecteun's base outside the universe and returned to her normal form. She has a converter attached so she can exist outside the universe. Tecteun and an Ood are controlling the Flux from here. Tecteun reveals that she has all the Doctor's lost memories in a fob watch, but neither the offer of this, nor an offer to spare the Earth from the Flux, persuade the Doctor not to interfere. With their needed power built up, Swarm and Azure are able to cross into Tecteun's domain, and kill her. They tease the Doctor with the memories from the fob watch, threatening to erase them, then roll back time, and erase them over and over again. The Doctor persuades the Ood to come to her aid, and rips off her converter device to return to the universe. Because of the time disruption, this instead splits her into three identical copies of the Doctor phasing in and out: one with Swarm and Azure, one with Karvanista and Bel, one with Yaz, Dan and Jericho. Between them, the three Doctors and her various helpers work to defeat the Sontarans. The Sontaran plan is to lure the Daleks and Cybermen to the area of space where the final Flux activity will happen, with a promise to use the Lupari shield to protect them; they'll then let both races be destroyed with the hope that all that matter being consumed will exhaust the Flux's anti-matter energy, leaving the Sontarans to rule over the remaining universe.

Kate Stewart arrives in the Williamson tunnels with the TARDIS (that UNIT retrieved from the abandoned 1967 village attacked by angels) and shares a plan that she's been developing to infiltrate the Sontarans. They are using humans with psychic ability to forecast where the final Flux activity will take place. The Doctor picks up Claire from the 1960s, and Claire and Jericho infiltrate a Sontaran psychic team, and come up with the desired coordinates. Diane and Vinder work out a way to signal to the Doctor, and she rescues them. The Sontaran fleet is destroyed alongside the Daleks and Cybermen, but not before they kill all the other Lupari except Karvanista. Claire manages to transmat away from a Sontaran ship before the Flux hits, but Jericho is not so lucky and dies. It's still not enough matter to halt the Flux though, but Diane has had the idea to use the Passenger form to suck up the remaining Flux energy, which works. Swarm and Azure summon their "Saviour" Time and offer up the Doctor. As the Flux has not destroyed Atropos, Time is still not free, so it destroys the Ravagers in punishment. It does not kill the Doctor, though, instead dropping a hint that her time is ending soon. The three parts to the Doctor come together as one and stabilise. The Grand Serpent is banished to an exile on a barren rock in space. Bel and Vinder are reunited, and go off with Karvanista. Everyone else is returned to their proper time and place. Diane is no longer interested in going for a date with Dan. The Doctor invites him instead to join the TARDIS team. The Doctor still has the fob watch, but decides not to open it for now, and hides it deep within the TARDIS.

Context:

I brought this on my self. About this time three years ago, in a blog post for the 12 x 25 minute episode story The Daleks' Master Plan, I made the following comment: "Unless Chris Chibnall were to take things in a very unexpected direction in 2020, Master Plan is going to be the longest story with which I will ever wrestle". Well, it took him until 2021, but he did indeed take things in a new direction, and created a story longer than that William Hartnell behemoth that took up three months of Saturday afternoons in the 1960s. Flux is composed of varying length episodes, three of 50 minutes and three of around an hour, so is the equivalent of at least 13 episodes of classic Who, making it the second longest Doctor Who story ever, measured in minutes. The winner, 14-episode The Trial of a Time Lord, doesn't really count to my mind, as it is composed of four discrete segments under an umbrella title. Each story is as separable as those that make up the Doctor's quest for the Key to Time, say, or various parts of more involved series arcs in 21st century Who like the Silence episodes in 2011. Not Flux though. If you cut out all the running subplots, you could make a standalone adventure out of Chapter 2 (War of the Sontarans) or Chapter 4 (Village of the Angels) at a push, but everything else is interweaved too tightly with the overall narrative.

There was nothing for it but to cover the story as one long piece. It troubled me a tiny bit to burn through so much of Jodie Whittaker's limited and precious stock of remaining stories, so I've decided I won't post about any of her three 2022 specials until they come up randomly, the better to make her era last throughout the remaining lifetime of the blog. Perhaps perversely, I also decided if I was going to use up six episodes in one go, I would use them up in one go. I would binge the lot in one five and a half hour marathon, with only the odd bathroom break on pause. I previously managed this for the relatively svelte 10-parter The War Games, but this would be even more of a challenge. I very nearly made it, but during Christmas holidays in a busy family house it wasn't possible to not have one meal break of half an hour. It at least took place between chapters four and five, so not interrupting an episode and following a cracking cliffhanger. I was accompanied throughout both shifts by the youngest (girl of 9) who was keen to watch it all again, and felt happier that some outstanding questions in her mind were answered by this re-watch. We viewed the story from my PVR recordings of the episodes rather than on the BBC iplayer, so we could get the surrounding idents, continuity and trails as part of the experience.

First Time Round:

I have often bemoaned my meagre remembrances of recent stories when covering them only a few years later here on the blog; many times I've suggested the keeping of a viewing diary, so as an experiment I tried it for Flux:

• 31st October. Chapter 1: The Halloween Apocalypse. Giving out sweets from about 5.30pm while the kids are out trick or treating. All sweets gone in half an hour, but that's not stopping people ringing the doorbell. Put up polite notice - 5 minutes to go before the broadcast, but kids not back yet. Start to watch live at 6.25pm, but feel guilty that I'm not waiting and give up at "Liverpool 1820" just after the beginning credits. When they get back, kids need to warm up with some soup. End up watching [from the start] with the two youngest (boy of 12, girl of 9) time-shifted using the PVR about 40 minutes later than live.
• 8th November. Chapter 2: War of the Sontarans. Missed the live broadcast as I was at the BFI for the Galaxy 4 animation screening, then with friends in London afterwards. Kids waited so they could watch with me. Put on the PVR recording the following evening after dinner with two youngest [they will be my only viewing partners throughout Flux]. Lots of chants of "Sontar-ha!" from both before they settled down to bed afterwards.
• 14th November. Chapter 3: Once, Upon Time. First episode we watched live as it went out on BBC1. Caught the obligatory last few minutes of Countryfile, waiting in anticipation. Youngest showed me that she was keeping her eyes wide open whenever the Weeping Angels were on screen.
• 21st November. Chapter 4: Village of the Angels. Slightly time-shifted (about 10 minutes or so) as we couldn't wolf down our supper fast enough. Youngest needed to play a game on my phone to distract herself towards the end as it was getting too scary, but didn't want to leave the room and kept occasionally glancing at what was on screen.
• 28th November. Chapter 5: Survivors of the Flux. Watched live including the last few minutes of Countryfile again. Youngest is feeling a bit poorly but didn't want to miss it. [This will turn out to be Covid and everyone in the family will get it before too long.]
• 5th December. Chapter 6: The Vanquishers. Tested positive the day before on a Lateral Flow Test, so could not be at the BFI again for City of Death as planned. Consolation is that we can watch the finale live. All three of us enjoy it.

Reaction:

Chris Chibnall famously appeared as a young Doctor Who Appreciation Society member on BBC public feedback show Open Air to express his lack of appreciation of the most recently broadcast series of Doctor Who. It being 1986, that was The Trial of a Time Lord. It is amusing therefore that all these years later, Chibnall has used the key idea from that 80s epic (an entire season of Doctor Who as one long serial) and for the exact same reason (to make a benefit of a reduced episode count thrust upon the production team by factors outside of their control; Covid this time, rather than Michael Grade). To be fair to Chibnall, the structure of the series was never what he had a problem with, and he certainly wasn't the only one then or since to find the writing of Colin Baker's final year as the Doctor a little lacklustre. People now and in the future may well say the same about Flux. I always thought people were generally a little hard on Trial - it has some great moments, and hangs together reasonably well. I would think anyone being so sniffy about Flux was being massively unfair though. It's a magnificent achievement. Watching the whole thing in one go makes it clear that everything in the narrative is clearly explained and paid off. It's only confusing when you're meant to be confused, and is paced well overall across the six chapters - frenetic opening of multiple narrative strands, action story with a little bit of resolution, pause for the revelation of some backstory, chamber horror piece that ends of a big cliffhanger, confrontation and more explanations, big explosive finale.

Like many of the longer stories of 1960s Doctor Who, including the other major antecedent for Flux, The Daleks' Master Plan, the narrative keeps things interesting over its running time by hopping between many different locales. Every single one of these is beautifully realised. What is on screen is breathtaking in its scope (many CGI-rendered spacecraft whizzing through amazing starscapes), beautiful in its detail (the Samurai styling of Karvanista's Lupari technology, as just one example) and perfect in its design (the make-up and costume for Swarm and Azure is outstanding). These episodes were made during a pandemic, when the crew were working out as they went along how to operate within restrictions that kept changing. I can't think of any moment that lets the side down. There was some carping online that the Passenger masks were commercially available ones that hadn't been adapted, but this misses the point to my mind, and the point is: the Passenger forms looked really cool. Why mess with that? Just like Trial of a Timelord back in the day, the epic starts with a sequence that pushes the boundaries of effects technology (the Doctor and Yaz zooming around above a lake of acid), but this is then sustained. There's at least one amazing set piece in every episode, like the massed ranks of Sontarans versus British soldiers in the Crimea, or many of the moments involving Weeping Angels from the fourth episode including perhaps the most memorable image of the Doctor turned into an angel. This is the one episode that I think will come in for the most praise, but it was mostly quite derivative. Nonetheless, it was enjoyable and scary. It seems that no matter how many times you have statues advancing on people trying not to blink, it never gets old. In that story, the 1960s are expertly recreated, as elsewhere is the Crimean War, and various places in 1904, and the many 20th century moments in the formation of UNIT that the Grand Serpent gatecrashes.

More than times and places, though, the many people of Flux help propel it along, and keep the audience engaged. Chibnall clearly understands this, as he ends the first episode with an exciting montage of each featured character at the start of their journey. The cast is Flux's biggest asset and every performance is a good one, some great. Karvanista is the first of the recurring guest cast to be introduced, and he's an instantly complete and engaging creation: gruff, blunt, and very Northern, at times almost antagonistic, but always coming back however unwillingly to his basic moral code. He also looks like a very cute dog, which is a genius choice as it informs his character - it could've been rubbish and just seemed like a mask (though the handiwork is exceptional) but it's great because looking cute clearly annoys the character so much. The concept allows for some wit in the dialogue too; "I still have a human in this fight". He's also now stitched into the programme's lore as an old companion of the Doctor, and I'd love to see Craige Els return to portray him again. Vinder and Bel, as more straightforward action / romantic heroes, are not quite so interesting, but nonetheless are engagingly performed (by Jacob Anderson and Thaddea Graham respectively), and both have some good moments. Vinder's backstory as a punished whistle-blower in a corrupt regime is something a bit different, and it's great to see them reunited near the end after a series of near misses. Annabel Scholey as Claire Brown doesn't get much to do that doesn't involve reacting to moving statues, but makes the most of it; the scene where she looks in the mirror to see her reflection has stone angel wings (achieved in camera with physical effects work) is another standout moment.

Other guest actors shine in less extensively featured roles: Nadia Albina as the resourceful Diane, Jemma Redgrave returning as Kate Stewart, Sarah Powell perfect as Mary Seacole, the historical celebrity around which a lot of the second episode revolves. On first watch, Blake Harrison seemed a little wasted in the role of Namaca, but this time round I got that he's there to represent all of the refugees displaced by the Flux, who otherwise wouldn't have a voice in the narrative. Best of all the guest characters, even though he doesn't turn up until halfway through, is Professor Eustacius Jericho, haunted but indomitable, serious but with a twinkle. It was a treat when he continued to work with Yaz and Dan in episode five, as he looked set to be a one-off character specific to the Angels plotline. It's also nice that Kevin McNally gets to do another good performance in Doctor Who, but this time as part of a story that's not The Twin Dilemma. Also returning to Doctor Who after a reasonable time away is Dan Starkey, who along with Johnathan Watson plays the different Sontarans featured. They are both so good, and the slightly tweaked masks similarly good, that you almost forget that there are actors in there. This is perhaps the best Sontaran story ever - showing them actually getting to participate in a war, having one ride a horse, and putting them on a level with the Daleks and Cybermen as top-tier adversaries. Main villains Swarm and Azure are gleefully but also glamorously sadistic, and actors Sam Spruell and Rochenda Sandall are having enormous fun playing them. Best of all the baddies, and also well dressed, is Craig Parkinson as the Grand Serpent. Yes, he's playing an extra-terrestrial twist on a somewhat similar role he famously played in another series (I'm trying not to spoiler here, if you know, you know) but he's doing it so well. He's also still alive at the end, so potentially could return to face the Doctor again.

There's still room left for the regulars to shine. John Bishop arrives fully formed as Dan, and slots instantly into the team, bringing a down-to-Earth warmth and humour to a long-running team, but also a greater sense of wonder than the existing regulars who maybe take the adventuring a bit for granted now. A new companion, and long periods where the Doctor is separated from the others, allows Mandip Gill to shine as the experienced old hand, and even act as the Doctor surrogate at times: her having WWTDD (What would the Doctor do?) written on her hand is a lovely character touch. There's some great interplay between the two companions too; I particularly liked the following naturally funny exchange: "Dan, are you from Liverpool? Why have you never mentioned it?" "Alright Sheffield, keep your cutlery on!". Jodie Whittaker has never been less than excellent in any of her previous stories, no matter the quality of the material. Here, with a rollicking good set of scripts, she somehow steps it up a gear and is sensational. Too many memorable scenes to list them all, but some stand-outs include flirting with her self when split into multiple Doctors, many scenes with the Ravagers playing vulnerable as her secret past is teased but not revealed, and turning the tables on the Grand Serpent in the finale. Best of all are the sequences with Barbara Flynn as Tecteun, the Doctor confronting the mother she never knew she had, who has robbed her twice, once by changing the course of her life by taking her as a foundling (an assumption that the Doctor points out was not necessarily a sound one), and secondly by removing her memories. These are great scenes in a story stuffed full of them, and crackling with some great jokes and snappy dialogue.

The nature of such a long story with many facets is going to attract a particular criticism. When I reviewed similarly epic The War Games I described it as the Doctor Who equivalent of The Beatles' White Album. Could Flux then be the long medley from Abbey Road? In other words, it's lots of bits and bobs put together with only a semblance of coherence. I'd take exception to such a reading, as the whole is well integrated and more than the sum of its parts (actually, you could say that about side 2 of Abbey Road too, I suppose). Sure, any one of the story threads could be unpicked and lumped together to create more modular individual episodes, but the whole would suffer. You could, for example, take all of Steve Oram's moments as Liverpool tunneler Joseph Williamson out of chapters one to five and just have him in the finale, but him popping up and meeting characters at unexpected moments, being weird and portentous, is much more fun. Any other flaws I've seen levelled are minor ones, or ones I can't accept as flaws at all. Yaz, Dan and Jericho spend a globe-trotting episode achieving naff all, but it's so much fun to be in those characters' company. The Sontarans vulnerability at the end because they have become addicted to chocolate is no bum note, it's a sort of crazy genius. The universe is so changed by the end that the show might have to reset, but that's true towards the end of any showrunner or Doctor's era. The next episode on the 1st January features Daleks who were seemingly all eaten up by the Flux, so they're already ignoring it anyway. The story might not be very deep; unlike previous Jodie Whittaker seasons there are no political or ecological themes, just an exploration of lore. Some people might think this is a good thing, of course.

Connectivity: 

Both Flux and A Christmas Carol feature a Doctor paired with two companions, one male one female, and both see them assisted by a wider group of people, some of whom travel in the TARDIS. Both stories feature scenes set around a notable day of the religious calendar (All Hallow's Eve and Christmas). Both see the Doctor flying through the air in a somewhat unconventional manner. Flux contains lots and lots of elements from Doctor Who's history, but it couldn't find room to include any flying sharks, alas.

Deeper Thoughts:

Everything's in flux. The 2021 story / season was an enjoyable event as it went out weekly, and stands up well when watched as one very long - Peter-Jackson movie length - special. I think it's fair to say that nobody on December 31st 2020 could have predicted that Chibnall would provide us with the 21st Century's version of The Daleks' Master Plan or Trial of a Timelord in the following year. So, it's probably a pointless exercise to look ahead to next year and speculate; but, I like pointless exercises, so here we go. Whatever else we guess about what 2022 has to offer, we know it will have one of the most exciting moments for a Doctor Who fan - the final story for a Doctor. Jodie Whittaker has three more stories left for 2022: a festive special on January 1st, and then two more specials in Spring and Autumn. In the final one, no doubt some of the questions about the Doctor's past left unanswered by Flux will have been answered, but the smart money would be on it not being all of them. Some mystery is likely to remain. I'd also bet that Sacha Dhawan will return as the Master and Jo Martin as the Division Doctor, but it's not certain. The only thing we can be 100% sure of is that the lead actor will bow out (Jodie's finished all her filming) and the character will regenerate. Beyond that, anything could happen. It's not completely unprecedented for the regeneration to end on a cliffhanger without revealing a new Doctor and actor, but it's not been done for a long time and only happened once (Jon Pertwee did not appear in Patrick Troughton's finale). Large sections of the audience would be very miffed to not have resolution and confirmation of the new Doctor, but that doesn't mean returning showrunner Russell T Davies won't do it.

I think it's more likely that someone will be cast as the Doctor next year and announced before the final special airs. It would be lovely for it to be a complete surprise and revealed only at the end of that story, but I don't think it's realistic. Any actor and their agent is going to want to keep the casting secret for only so long; professionally, it would need to be known that the person has the kudos of one of biggest roles in television (as well as clarifying that they won't be able to take on any other work for a bit). When the 2023 episodes start filming, it would be very likely to leak anyway. It's exciting, though; it means that sometime in the first three quarters of 2022, we should find out. According to a recent interview, Davies and team have not cast anyone yet (but he has been known to lie in interviews to ensure surprises). He also confirms that he has already written more than one episode, and the first one will be broadcast in November 2023 around the 60th anniversary of the show. This means that there will definitely not be a festive special on January 1st 2023, so 2022 could see the end of that tradition (or the schedulers and Davies could move the special back to the 25th December and there'd be one before the year is out). It's always nice for the profile of the show that Doctor Who is on over the Christmas period, but maybe all the possible stories set sometime between the 24th December and the 1st January have been told now, so I wouldn't be that sad about it ending.

Aside from the new, there's also the new old. One animation of a 1960s missing story has been confirmed for 2022; this will be 1967's The Abominable Snowmen. There's no date confirmed yet, but it's likely to be in the first half of the year if it's already being talked up. There are now two teams regularly tackling the creation of pictures to accompany stories where only the audio survives intact. So, providing the budget's still there to commission both, the other team should be working on something (it certainly seemed that way when they appeared at the BFI showing their last project The Evil of the Daleks). My guess, which will undoubtedly be wrong, is that they'll do The Wheel in Space next and it will be released late in the year. This will complete season five (Patrick Troughton's second year) on shiny disc, and will make it feasible to release that season as a Blu-ray box set sometime in the future. With regard to the Blu-ray sets, they returned to their pre-Covid release frequency in 2021, with three limited edition box sets (as well as some re-releases of older box sets in standard packaging). From social media mentions from some of the people that work on them, more are definitely in the works, and I'd expect another three in 2022. I'll speculate again, and no doubt be wrong again, and guess that the releases will be season 13 (Tom Baker's second year, a fan favourite, and there seems to be a one Tom set per year rule), season 22 (Colin Baker's first full year), and season 2 (William Hartnell's second year, which would be the first black and white season set, and would likely have photo reconstructions of the only two missing episodes in the season).

The previously mentioned RTD interview tied in with the Guardian's annual countdown of the 50 best TV shows of the year. I looked through the list and - as usual, and doubtless as intended - disagreed with a lot of it. Flux does not make the list, which maybe shows more about a long-running consistent programme such as Doctor Who being taken for granted rather than necessarily anything about the quality of the episodes themselves. Having paid for a month of Disney Plus to watch the Beatles documentary Get Back (number 27 in the Guardian's list), I was finally able to see WandaVision (the Guardian number 16), one of the fantasy shows to which Doctor Who has been compared unfavourably of late, and... it's only okay; wildly overrated, to my mind, and nowhere near as clever as it thinks it is. I am still to watch The Mandalorian or Loki; I'll report back if they rock my world. I much preferred the new seasons of a couple of US shows that I first watched during last year's lockdowns: Superstore and Ted Lasso. The latter made the Guardian list (at number 14) , the former didn't. As good as Lasso is, Superstore's emotional final season was slightly better for this viewer. Best of all for me was discovering the UK comedy series Ghosts (a US remake also premiered this year, but I haven't seen that yet). It only made number 34 in the Guardian list, but it was top ten for me. At some future date, when they finish telling the story of Button House, the entire Ghosts creative team would be a great pick to become showrunners of Doctor Who (though they might fall out between themselves as to which of them gets to play the Doctor). Of course, the next showrunner Russell T Davies happens to be the writer of the Guardian's number 1 show of the year, It's a Sin. It was shown early in the year, but it was such an intense, upsetting, invigorating and unforgettable drama that nothing shown since could top it. A worthy winner. It's very exciting to see what the writer of It's a Sin (who's maybe a slightly different man to the writer The Second Coming all those years ago) will make of Doctor Who next. But that's 2023, and we have 2022 to enjoy first. Any minute now...

In Summary:

It's fluxing great. Happy New Year!