“The Vanquishers” is a great classic Doctor Who title! Like a decent First or Second Doctor story with monsters that have fish faces or something invading a planet of generic humanoid scientists. Those kind of stories were fun, “The Vanquishers” should be fun. It is not.
Not that it doesn’t have its’ moments -there are a few scenes and beats that are very exciting and interesting. But in many ways the episode is just what I expected: an often incoherent rush job to complete each storyline, justify the breadth of this miniseries, and answer every plot contrivance from both this episode and others with explanations as dense as they are superfluous. It’s a series finale that does its’ job technically, but accomplishes almost nothing more. It plays like the cliffs-notes version of an actually good story -there is about three episodes’ worth of material in “The Vanquishers” and I’d have probably preferred that time.
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And yet, it is relieving to have Flux over with: a project with scope that vastly outpaced its’ capacity. Chibnall had called it “the biggest story we’ve ever done”, and I don’t think that’s untrue, but the result is underwhelming. Most of the storylines end in underwhelming places, the villains dealt with in underwhelming ways, and yes, I am still sore about that pointless death of Tecteun in the final seconds of the previous episode.
From that start point, the Doctor once again manages to get out of the cliffhanger in an incredibly lame way: by trying to run down the hall with the Ood in an effort to escape Swarm and Azure. Removing a conversion plate keeping her in this dimension, she attempts to recall herself back to the universe, but due to either the pull of the spacecraft or some suggestion that a part of her is too drawn to the fob watch of memories, she winds up splitting herself across three dimensional points, more successfully than in “Once, Upon Time”. It’s an easy way of literally putting the Doctor in three places at once for the necessity of each plot thread, and there’s not a lot of effort to reconcile them. The Doctor is embedded in each situation simultaneously, yet the episode doesn’t treat it with this lens. It’s framed more like three duplicate Doctors on their own adventures, due to her emotionally disassociating from what’s going on in each individual circumstance. One version of the Doctor experiences a trauma and then moments later in another place is just exchanging barbs with her captor. It’s one of those things that just didn’t occur to the creative team, more interested perhaps in the potential for one sequence of twin Jodie Whittakers.
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The Doctors’ two persons wind up respectively in the midst of the fight between Karvanista, Bel, and the Sontarans while the other reunites with Yaz, Dan, and Jericho, who have hopped back into 2021 from Williamson’s tunnels, where they are greeted by Kate Stewart, self-proclaimed leader of Earth’s defence against this latest Sontaran invasion. There’s a sorrowful acknowledgement of just how long Yaz, Dan, and Jericho were stranded in the 1900s, but this lasts a second before its’ business as usual, the Doctor formulating another complex plan to combat the Sontarans latest machinations -which involves cornering a sugar-addicted Sontaran at a convenience store to get information on how to infiltrate their ships, and pulling Claire back to her own time from the 1960s (now sans Angel), so she and Jericho can pinpoint the Final Flux Event as undercover Sontaran tools; while the Doctor leads a rescue mission of her other self and Karvinista, who’ve made themselves strategic captives, as Bel coordinates an escape once sufficient information has been gotten. That’s a lot to keep up with, and I didn’t even mention where the Grand Serpent fits in, his particular vendetta with Kate, and the efforts by Vinder and Diane to escape the Passenger Form and alert the Doctor to their whereabouts. Obviously of course, the Doctor’s prime form remains in the custody of Swarm and Azure, taunting her with their plan for universal destruction, using the Division ship to unleash a Final Flux Event with the promise of torturing the Doctor by making her watch it on repeat from the end of the universe at Atropos, whilst dangling that tantalizing fob watch for her.
These plot-lines are whizzed in and out at such a high rate and with little grace (the transitions are often extremely abrupt, cutting on the dot of a line to retain a manageable runtime) that it becomes incredibly difficult even just to break a synopsis down. Everything is happening and with little clarity as to how. Even the direction has taken a hit, as while some bits of the episode are drawn with very strong choices and imagery -and which I’ll get to- others are rather bland and bizarre. When the Doctor first finds herself in that Liverpool tunnel with the gang, the editing is noticeably frenzied: a half dozen jump cuts to the Doctor reacting to each character, it looks downright incompetent (and would seem to suggest having to accommodate schedules -for how much her return was built up at the end of last episode, Jemma Redgrave clearly didn’t have a lot of time for this appearance). And despite my presumption last week that Chibnall had worked backwards in the plotting of Flux, it would seem that some of the elements introduced in past episodes, he didn’t know what to do with. The Grand Serpent for instance, ultimately doesn’t serve much of a role to the narrative except where he needed to get the Sontarans back into the picture last episode. Diane clearly just functioned as a motivator for Dan, and her and Vinder’s imprisonment in the Passenger Form was purely for the sake of that concept needing to play a major role in the climax. Claire’s reappearance is just so she can be restored to her timeline. Williamson’s role however I imagine was planned from the start, but by the end Chibnall didn’t really have room for him, and so he has to shuffle off two thirds of the way through, his dimensional underground railroad having served the purpose of bringing Yaz and Dan home. It’s like so many elements were introduced in the hopes of one of them paying off the narrative in a big way, and I have to admit I didn’t expect the Passenger Form to be it.
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So much messiness and so much disappointment, and yet there are shining moments that deserve to be highlighted. The first is when the Ravagers show the Doctor a glimpse of what’s in the fob watch, and it’s here where we see that Howl’s Moving Castle again that the Doctor has had premonitions of. Supposedly, it’s where her lost memories are, and I really like that the illustration of that is a grand imposing haunted house with a shape and dimensions that don’t make sense. The sequence itself looks great too, the Doctor and her surroundings rendered in gray while the Ravagers remain in colour. You don’t get a lot of that kind of surreal visual experimentation in Doctor Who. Another sequence related to this prime Doctor is one of the only moments of the episode that isn’t in constant motion, where Azure questions her values. Why does the Doctor care so much about the universe and saving people? Why is she so fearful of the destruction of others? Sure it’s the age-old debate of ethics, but the Doctor is an innately selfless person and it is worth asking why. It’s also compelling that Azure can’t comprehend how the Doctor values life so much. There’s a perverse beauty the Ravagers see in destruction, and it’s something to contemplate -certainly it’s the one thing that has made them curious villains in this entire series.
There’s also the bit where the Doctor is imprisoned with Karvanista, and confronts him about his past relationship with her as revealed in “Once, Upon Time”. Karvanista it turns out was a companion to the Doctor, and a fiercely loyal one, during her time as an agent for the Division. But the Division it seems put a fatal detonator in him if he talks about it, and so he can’t reveal to the Doctor what she wants. There’s a lot of hurt there though, it would appear that the Doctor abandoned him at some point. It’s a fascinating clue, and very convenient with that prohibition on his ability to say much, but it also makes Karvanista a more tragic character, and one who in spite of his silly face, you can take seriously. That’s a mighty task and Craige Els has surpassed expectations in that regard. The tragedy comes harder when Sontaran Commander Stenck reveals that in their invasion of Earth, all the Lupari had been killed -viscerally so. Their crafts maintained for Sontaran use, they were simply flushed out into space -a darker picture of Sontaran cruelty than we’ve gotten previously, and an utter devastation to Karvanista -now the last of his race.
And how about that joyous reunion, after the Doctor managed to get a fix on the location of the Passenger Form. Just prior to it, when Vinder and Diane were able to momentarily break out and get a message to the Doctor, the way Bel’s face lit up at hearing Vinder’s voice was wonderful. And when they are brought together again, it’s lovely -Jacob Anderson and Thaddea Graham acting the hell out of that moment and proving there is chemistry there. Less warm is the reunion between Dan and Diane though, the latter still upset that the former missed their date, even though he had been incapacitated. Quite unfair of Diane honestly.
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Not long after this came the last stand of Professor Eustacius Jericho, which I wasn’t very happy about -another fun and interesting new character played by a tremendous actor being killed off when he could have been utilized for greater things down the road (I would have been perfectly happy with him joining the TARDIS as a companion). But Kevin McNally plays it very well and it succeeds as a poignant scene, Jericho going down with the Sontaran horde in confidence and bravery. There’s one shot of Yaz in response to this with tears forming in her eyes, a brief if insubstantial acknowledgement of the three years they spent together travelling the world. She and Dan knew Jericho as well as she did Ryan and Graham.
It’s the one hiccup in the Doctor’s master plan to thwart the Sontarans in their extremely elaborate bid for galactic domination. They’ve called for an alliance of convenience in light of the damages done by the Flux, with the Daleks and Cybermen, to be solidified at a kind of summit between the remaining survivors of the three races. But their real plan is to use the Lupari defence shield while the Final Flux Event wipes out their enemies, leaving them the sole victors and rulers of the universe. Why they explicitly exclude the Rutan Host, who’ve they’ve been at war with for forever is a mystery. The Daleks and Cybermen are apparently gullible enough to buy this though and turn up to be exterminated, only for the Doctor to have Karvanista take control of the Lupari shield, while Vinder and Bel launch an offensive, and the Doctor uses the Passenger From to in her words “hoover” the Final Flux Event into its’ dimensions, thus resolving the whole thing and sending the Sontarans fleeing with once more the promise to get revenge. It’s got a cool moment or too, Vinder and Bel being badasses for example, but it also is an extremely hollow end to such dramatic build-up.
When the Ravagers bring the Doctor to Atropos for the last bit of their grand evil plan (leaving the poor Ood behind by himself on the Division ship between universes), it’s almost funny how flummoxed they are when the embodiment of Time (taking Swarm’s appearance) tells them the Flux was averted. Swarm and Azure are disintegrated by Time and it looks like the same is going to happen to the Doctor; but instead Time ominously tells her (in her form now) that her own time is coming to an end -an echo of the foreboding message the Tenth Doctor received near the end of his own life in “Planet of the Dead”. “Beware of the forces that mass against you,” she says. “And their master.” I’m thinking Sacha Dhawan is coming back.
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The wrap-up is more evenly paced than much of the episode before it. Claire is deposited back in London with Kate, Karvanista goes off with Bel and Vinder -and I am super excited for that spin-off that will never happen, and Williamson is safe back in the nineteenth century to become famous for those Tunnels (a real thing this non-Liverpudlian learned of recently). Diane still doesn’t seem intent on forgiving Dan, who dejected, comes across the Doctor and Yaz, and they invite him to come along with them in the TARDIS, the Doctor setting aside a room for him in everything. It took six episodes, but Dan Lewis is now officially part of the team.
There is one more moment of note: the Doctor privately apologizes to Yaz once again for not being open with her and reveals that all this time she’s been looking for information on her past. She stops short of telling her everything, though an interrupting Dan is the cause this time. But I wonder if she’ll keep true on that impulse -it doesn’t seem likely. The Thirteenth Doctor has not been great at communicating honestly, she often distracts and evades, out of her own discomfort in confronting these things as much as keeping her friends unburdened. In her last action, she takes the fob watch, which she had retrieved from Azure’s ashes, and inserts it in a slot in the console, telling the TARDIS to hide it from her “unless I really ask for it.”
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And that brings us to the end of “The Vanquishers”, as well as Flux as a whole. It’s been bumpy to say the least, and this last episode, particularly so. Most of the storylines that ran through this series would have made for good individual episodes, but blended together and with so much investment in trying to make them make sense together, none of them really came out well. Even threads that I liked were somewhat let down: Bel and Vinder’s story, for its’ dramatic build-up, ended nonchalantly. And of course that whole thing about Yaz, Dan, Jericho, and even Claire being stranded in another time for so long that isn’t taken seriously by anyone. “The Vanquishers” made a poor argument for bringing the Grand Serpent back as a major villain -hell, it didn’t make a great argument for Kate either, a waste of Jemma Redgrave frankly. The Sontarans had better reason to reappear, but it kind of nixed the point of “War of the Sontarans” and the idea that that episode mattered. And of course, the series was mostly heavy plotting at the expense of compelling storytelling or strong character beats. This episode allowed for the Doctor, Yaz, and Dan to at last spend significant time together, but they were crowded too with a half dozen characters. There are good performances here and there, few outright bad ones, but even Jodie Whittaker didn’t have those great moments I remember well from her previous two series. The personal drama she deals with is drowned out by the cacophony.
Flux was a bold idea, and the Flux itself an intriguing one. I do wonder if it will have a ripple effect the way “the Blip” has in the MCU -my guess would be not, which might be for the better, though there is potential in it. I feel like a broken record though in saying that Chibnall tried to juggle too much with this series, and handle it all himself on top of that (with the exception of Maxine Alderton, who co-wrote “Village of the Angels”, he’s the only credited writer on the entire thing). Chibnall can handle large casts and sweeping narratives with lots of moving parts -he did well back on Broadchurch. But with the possibilities of science-fiction, the ball got away from him on Flux -it got too deep into its concepts and disparate avenues to feel meaningful in the end.
All that said, I liked Karvanista. I liked Bel and Vinder and Jericho and Tecteun. I liked “Once, Upon Time” and “Village of the Angels”. I liked the bits of mystery that once more challenged the Doctor’s identity. And I liked the thrill of some of the series’ best moments. I want to see more of each of those things again (please find a way to bring back Barbara Flynn!). But taken as a whole as it must be, Flux flounders more than it prevails, and it makes me sad Jodie Whittaker won’t get another series to make better.
Those specials coming though, I still have hope for. Chibnall’s not going to let Whittaker go out without at least some pizzazz for her and her run on the show. And if he’s looking to Russell T. Davis’ 2009 specials for influence, there are worse sources he could have. The New Years’ special looks exhaustively to involve Daleks again (but also Aisling Bea!). I’m going to be watching it carefully for how it may inform the direction of these last few shows though. The Doctor said at the end she had her reckoning with Time. That’s not true. The reckoning is still to come.
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