Azuma Yeonchi: "*OLD CONTENT REPOST* The orig…"

YeonchiDoctor Who Series 13 (Flux) Review Chapter Three: Once, Upon TimeAir date: 14 November 2021 Let’s face it, the only reason why this episode isn’t called Once Upon a Time is because it sounds too close to Twice Upon a Time - not that the current title doesn’t come close already. This episode frequently jumps between plot streams and I feel called out by this given how I’ve been doing the same in my personal project. My spoiler-free thought for this episode: “Can we honestly call this a filler episode? We’re getting a lot of insights but they’re not really going anywhere.” Spoilers continue after the break. Please ensure you have caught up on the episodes, particularly Series 12, before you continue reading. All episode titles revealed Before this episode premiered, we got the titles for the remaining episodes in Flux at least two weeks in advance of broadcast. After the title for the fifth episode was released last week, the title for the sixth episode was also leaked because someone managed to hack into the BBC’s asset manager, which they use to manage all the images and videos to be posted on social media - well not really, someone just managed to do a bit of guesswork with the URL. And frankly, after the two years they’ve kept us waiting just to ensure nothing gets leaked, we deserve this. Just before I posted last week’s review, I added all the titles for the rest of Series 13 into the respective section of the page where I have links to all the Thirteenth Doctor Reviews I’ve done. The title for the final chapter will have been confirmed anyway by the time this gets posted, so I won’t need to worry about the title changing. Breaking the third episode paradigm So this episode isn’t an SJW-fest like the third episodes of Series 11 and 12 were. I think Chibnall realised he didn’t have time for it since the BBC had to cut this series to six episodes. In terms of historical figures, we got Mary Seacole in the last episode to make up for the lack of the SJW-fest third episode (because she’s a forgotten hero guys, just like Nikola Tesla, did I mention she’s also a notable POC?) and Joseph Williamson, who is yet to have any relevance in the story. Look at me, I’m a fast thinker! When we last left off, Swarm was about to send time running through Yaz and Vinder, who had replaced the two broken Mouri. The Doctor took Dan and places him where another Mouri stood but was turned to ash by Swarm. The Doctor then sends Dan, Yaz, Vinder and herself into a time storm, where they are pulled back by the forces of time. The Doctor sees a Weeping Angel in the time storm as well and realises that space isn’t just being corrupted, but also time as she is pulled back by the forces of time as well. The Doctor manages to make contact with the Mouri and they work to hide Dan, Yaz and Vinder in their own memories as she works on a way to stop Swarm and Azure. From this point on, some characters in the different time streams will be represented by the Doctor, Dan, Yaz and/or Vinder. The names I use may vary depending on the context of the scene. The Doctor is brought to the Temple of Atropos in the past, with her jacket inside-out and her companions possessing Division guns. While the Doctor suffers from temporal hazes, she and her companions break into the temple so they can confront the Ravagers, rescue the hostages, end the Siege of Atropos and reset time so that the universe can function again. While calling on the Ravagers to surrender, the Doctor looks at a mirror and sees Ruth, the Fugitive Doctor; that name is cemented thanks to the credits of this episode but for the sake of consistency, I will continue to call her Ruth. It is then that the Doctor realises she is in her past, meaning that she was at the temple as Ruth during her time in the Division. I’m surprised that the Doctor is accepting of Ruth being in her past, but I’m even more surprised that Ruth could apparently see her future self in the reflection and talk to her, given that she is supposed to be in a memory. I was hoping that the Doctor would still be sceptical of her identity as the Timeless Child, which would make her investigation of the Division more meaningful. At this point, Chibnall is continuing on the path to doubling down on the Timeless Child being the Doctor, but personally, I still have some doubts about that storyline because we don’t have the full story yet, so I’m maintaining some optimism about it. As the Doctor confronts Swarm (in his previous incarnation) and Azure, we learn what the Passengers really are; they are beings barred from this dimension that can hold hundreds of thousands of lifeforms. With five such Passengers in their possession, Swarm and Azure each turn one of them into ash, but the Doctor had managed to swap out one of the Passengers with one having six Mouri embedded into them. The Mouri take their places in the temple and Swarm and Azure are captured with Dan’s Authorise Buster-like gunaxe - only that’s actually Karvanista. So if Karvanista is represented by Dan, then who is represented by Yaz and Vinder? My guess is that they’re respectively Gat and Lee Clayton from Fugitive of the Judoon. As for the Ravagers, Swarm is imprisoned for the infinite duration of the universe while Azure is stripped of her identity, presumably the circumstances that led to their appearance in the first episode. Seeing this experience leads the Doctor to ask the Mouri to send four of them to the Temple of Atropos in the present day. Just as she is about to be sent back, however, the Doctor becomes desperate to know what happened after that, despite knowing that the forces of time will break her. She then ends up somewhere and is confronted by someone named Awsok, who tells her that the Flux is merely a spatial event and that the Ravagers are a temporal poison; on top of that, the occurrence of the Flux wasn’t accidental or natural, but it was actually the Doctor’s fault. So who is Awsok? I think she looks like the woman played by Claire Bloom in The End of Time. We never got to see much of her in that episode, but Russell T Davies intended for her to be the Doctor’s mother. If the story keeps going in the direction I think it’s going, I think that she could be Tecteun. I don’t know, I’m desperate for closure at this point. I have a job… or do I? Yaz finds herself at some point in the past when she was still a police officer (at least it’s not the present lol). The Doctor is waffling on next to her, but she turns out to be a representation of her police colleague. Yaz sees a Weeping Angel in the mirror, but not knowing what it is, she turns and it is nowhere to be found. The Doctor manages to get through to Yaz, but there is a barrier that is keeping her out for some reason. Yaz next finds herself in a place that is apparently not her house, playing video games with her sister, Sonya, who is trying to impress a boy. The Doctor manages to get through to Yaz again, taking Sonya’s place. She reveals to Yaz that there is something wrong with her time stream, but before she can explain further, they see a Weeping Angel in the game. The Doctor gets Yaz to quit the game, but the Angel still appears in the room. As the Doctor disappears again, Yaz gets up and smashes the game console, causing the Angel to disappear. Back home… or am I? Dan meets Diane outside the Museum of Liverpool and gives her a coffee. As they walk, Dan finds himself in different places before Diane asks him where he was and disappears as a Passenger stands in the distance. While the Doctor tries to hide him, Dan finds himself with Joseph Williamson, who has a laser gun, in his tunnels. They see a swarm of mites pass them and Williamson notes that the mites remove people and objects from the mortal plane. I have to ask, when is Williamson going to be relevant in this story? The mysterious backstory Vinder finds himself on his home planet with his commanding officer, represented by Yaz. After saving three of his comrades on his last mission, he is given a new posting as the guardian of the Grand Serpent, who seems to be the emperor or leader of Vinder’s planet. Following an alliance meeting between the Grand Serpent and the Alforia in which the Grand Serpent orders some dissidents sheltering on the latter’s planet to be killed or returned to face justice, Vinder decides to file a report holding the Grand Serpent accountable for the deaths of the dissidents. As a result, Vinder is exiled to Observation Outpost Rose, where he manages to record a message for someone. New external thread Outside the four threads we have covered, there is a fifth thread featuring someone named Bel, who is trying to survive as races such as the Daleks, Cybermen and Sontarans expand their empires in a final attempt to rule the dying universe. She is accompanied on her travels by Tigmi, who she communicates with on a device she carries with her. Near the end, we see Bel watching Vinder’s message and it is revealed that she is looking for him and that she is pregnant with their child, meaning that Tigmi could be the name of the unborn child and Bel is communicating with it through her device, which is not only strange seeing as Bel has already named her child given how she doesn’t look that pregnant in this episode, not to mention creepy, or that Tigmi could just be an artificial intelligence. Rounding up the aftermath So after the Mouri have been restored, Swarm and Azure reveal that their attack on the Temple of Atropos disrupted the flow of time, causing the blue mites, actually particles of the Time Force, to be unleashed. They also reveal that Diane is inside the Passenger before they leave. The Doctor takes Vinder back to his home planet, where he is given a device to stay in touch with them while he goes to find Bel. A Weeping Angel appears in Yaz’s phone and suddenly comes out into the TARDIS, taking control of the console. To be honest, with the Weeping Angels being able to exist even in images or video, I never thought that they would become this overpowered, but an Angel piloting the TARDIS brings it up to ridiculous levels. Surely the TARDIS should have defences against them? Other general thoughts I honestly felt Ruth was criminally underused in this episode. During the Doctor’s confrontation with the old Swarm and Azure, we see her flashing between Ruth and her current incarnation. I think the Doctor and Ruth’s appearances in that scene should be swapped with a couple more flash-betweens placed near the end where the Doctor is holding the Priest Triangle-like thing. By doing this, Ruth can get a little more time to shine while also keeping her appearance a secret and allowing the image used for this review to be taken. In one of the behind-the-scenes videos for this episode covering the return of the Fugitive Doctor, Jodie Whittaker explains that she essentially had to act for two in the scenes where she plays her past forgotten incarnation, which is another reason why Jo Martin should have had more screentime to play her incarnation of the Doctor. In that same video, we see some footage from The Timeless Children, implying that the Ruth incarnation is part of the Timeless Child’s incarnations before she became the Doctor. I still question the link between Ruth and the Timeless Child a little - the only thing that would cement that link is if we see Ruth in a scene that matches one of the flashbacks, which would most likely be the scene where the Timeless Child has their memories removed. If you have to explain anything important in external material, then you’re not that good at storytelling. After seeing the Ravagers in action for three episodes, I feel that Swarm reminds me of Storious from Kamen Rider Saber while Azure reminds me of Carmeara from Ultraman Trigger: New Generation Tiga (or if you want to be more technical, Camearra from Ultraman Tiga: The Final Odyssey). So based on information from this episode and the TARDIS Data Core, the planet Time was created by the Time Lords in an effort to end the Dark Times; this was something known as “the anchoring of the thread”. The Dark Times were a prehistoric period of Gallifreyan history that was a chaotic mess, with the forces of time running uncontrollably until the planet Time was created to keep them under control with the help of the Mouri. Like I said in the last review, time shouldn’t be a force to be controlled given the premise of this show, so not only should the planet Time not exist, the concept of controlling the forces of time should have remained abstract. Just say that it was Rassilon and the Founding Fathers of Gallifrey who kept the forces of time under control by establishing Time Lord society as we know it. We’re going deeper and deeper into this as the series goes on. If this continues, the origins of the universe could be redefined before we even get to the full Timeless Child reveal. I honestly thought the Cybermen would have more prominence given their appearance in the trailer. Oh well, we still have three specials to go after this series, so hopefully they and the Daleks will still get some time to shine. I neglected to mention this in the last review, but the BBC logo at the end of each episode has reverted back to the old version. We’ll be seeing the new logo anyway by the New Year’s Special. Summary and verdict This was an okay episode. The main thing the episode had going for it was the return of Ruth and some insight into her time with the Division, something which will inevitably lead to the doubling down of the Timeless Child. Other than that, I just don’t feel strongly about anything else in the episode. Maybe it’s because I’ve been disillusioned from a lot of things lately. Rating: 5/10 I know I said I wouldn’t be doing a mid-series review for Flux given the minimal number of episodes in it, but I’ll just quickly say something about the series so far. The episodes have been okay in terms of story and the suspense has been pretty good. The main negative for me is how this series is moving toward doubling down on the Timeless Child; the SJW red flags are only small fish at this point. Stay tuned next week as I review the fourth chapter of Flux, Village of the Angels.

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