Doctor Who Flux Episode 1: A review and many complaints

I’m a little late to the party, but last week Doctor Who returned to our TVs! What an exciting time, not everyone will get to see the downfall of a bellowed show like this. This time, we have Doctor Who Flux, a strange large cloud in space that is eating away at everything.

But, before I begin, I will say that this is part 1 of 6. This is the first episode and there are 5 more, so hopefully, a lot of what I say in this blog will change.

This review won’t be formal so if you want a super detailed formal analysis of the episode, you’ll probably want to go somewhere else.

Before I start, I will say that this is ALL MY OWN OPINION. You can disagree and you might. If you post hate in the comments you will be blocked.

But let’s start!

I’m going to start with a fun little episode recap. A bit of banter on this dark day. If you want to skip it, you can scroll all the way down until you see a bold piece of text, just like this one.

The episode opens up with the Doctor and Yaz stuck in a situation that would easily kill them. Unless they had god on their side. How the Doctor and Yaz escape such a situation is beyond me. They are upside down, above a large pit in some poisonous-looking planet, with robot drones pointing at them whilst their hands are tied. Whilst it would be possible to have them escape through clever writing, it seems our writers have decided to go for a more ‘cooler’ but improbably approach. I won’t say how it all happens as you should watch this part yourself.

It’s quite clever how they put this at the start, cause it mentally prepares you for what is to come.

So anyway, the next part takes place in 1820s Liverpool, and we can skip all this because it has no importance to the story.

But then, suddenly we are 201 years later in Liverpool and we get to meet our latest addition to the team, Dan.

I actually thought his introduction as a character was good. It surprisingly shows a bit about his character but is ruined by some really terribly written dialogue (The terrible dialogue plays throughout so I won’t mention it again).

Jump now to the TARDIS! It’s having issues, and then the Doctor suddenly gets a call in her mind? (I don’t know how else to describe it.) But it takes us to a scene of our ‘villian’ who is currently trapped in a very poor prison. His introduction is pretty cool. I say something that makes a good villain is how much they make you want to punch them, and this guy makes me wish he lying on the floor in front of me, bleeding out whilst I stomp on his body. This is just a me thing, I hate really cocky characters but do understand that it shows off how strong this guy really is.

 So we meet our strange bad guy, who kills people by looking at them? It doesn’t matter how he kills them, just know that he escaped from his prison. This guy just breaks out and walks out. If he was really dangerous why wouldn’t they have some form of a guard? Why not just shoot him into a black hole?

I don’t care to argue because back in the TARDIS, we see a great example of Chibnall’s ‘Tell not show’. We literally see the TARDIS leaking this black goo, and Yaz says: “It’s like the Tardis is leaking.’

Thanks for that Yaz, brilliant observation skills, you really could give Sherlock Holmes a run for his money.

We’ve got a lot of story left, and we are back to Dan helping people in a food bank. He’s with some girl who notices something strange. He doesn’t care. The audience doesn’t care. We go to his house, have a pointless Halloween interaction, and then another one but with a drunk person.

And then we meet an ugly dog-man.

This is about a third of the way in, and Dan gets kidnapped by the Dog.

So the Doctor and Yaz show up, enter Dan’s house, which is number 37 next to door number 49. (Maybe this is common in Liverpool?). They notice that his door was broken and that some Alien was there. I should mention, this dog alien is also the same one that hung them above a giant pit with their hands tied at the start.

So the Doctor uses “Dan’s” Laptop to magically find out where the ship is going and does it so easily that the audience doesn’t need an explanation, it just happens. But then, the doctor starts to talk. She asks question after question after question as if she possesses no ability to stay silent. 

Then she becomes prejudice!

She questions why Dan would have a flashy computer, obviously having seen the state of his house, it was impossible for him to have a nice laptop. But in actuality, it wasn’t Dan’s laptop and was just a trap laid down by the dog man, that shrinks the house.

Then we go to the arctic circle for some reason, about a couple staying there with more cringe filled dialogue.

Skip.

Then to Dan and the Dogman with more bad dialogue.

Skip.

Then Yaz questions the Doctor, wondering why she’s obsessed with this man. 

But then the best thing of all happens.

A random girl named Clair shows up.

They haven’t met Clair yet, or they will, in the past, if it’s true…

(The above is the actual dialogue she says)

This is the thing that you only hope has a purpose in the future, and it better be a good one because if you have to wait for 5 more episodes to find out what it was, only for it to be a poor excuse or time travel jargon, then it’ll probably annoy a lot of people.

But after one confusing encounter is interrupted by the Doctor’s sonic, they leave. And the TARDIS is still messing up, this time has moving doors!

The Doctor and Yaz argue like a couple because that is how they communicate.

A Weeping Angel returns to hunt Clair, touching her.

This would be cool if not another random unexplained thing that probably will be forgotten about.

Now it’s time for a new character!

I think his name is Vinder? But I could be wrong.

Anyway, who cares. He’s not the last new character in this 50-minute episode.

So back to the arctic circle, I hope you still understand what’s going on.

The villain kills the man whilst he was asleep and turns out the wife(?) was his sister. Amazing… I don’t care.

So the Doctor and Yaz are on the dog’s ship, and they free Dan, confront the dog and find out what’s going on. The Dogs are trying to save Earth from a large terrible fog that eats things, the Flux.

We see the Flux eat away the planets as Vinder(?) tries to escape.

The Doctor and crew escape the Dog’s ship because they decided to make an enemy of a guy trying to help them. 

Then, the sontarans return. Why? Find out in the future episodes. Probably.

And finally, the Doctor finds the Flux, tries to run. Long story short, she tries to run but can’t. And it ends on a cliffhanger.

OH! And there is a house that calls out to Dan’s ‘friend’. That’s the funniest part yet.

That’s all for the recap!

I’m going to end on my quick thoughts because this post is really long already.

So, I’ve already mentioned how the Doctor never shuts up. But I think it’s clear that too much goes on for no reason. I see no point in introducing all these characters and events if they are going to be used later. The pacing is what does it. It could be much better if they were done better. Things feel like they are just inserted into place rather than having an actual reason to be where they are. It messes around with your time scale of things. Especially since the Doctor is in space, you have no way of knowing what happens first or when.

Coincidences are common in writing, but this era of Doctor Who is full of them. The very start of this episode is the best example of this.

It feels like it doesn’t know what it wants to be. You can have a long multipart story without all these mini-events going on. You don’t need to have a use for everything, because it feels like none of this will get explained.

And finally, this Doctor is written as if she is the dumbest person on the planet. The Doctor is so different to any other Doctor that her decisions are strange and questionable. She doesn’t feel smart or calculating. She just comes across as confused and out of place in her own show.

Anyway, I do hope that this does come together well. The start is rocky but that could be because it has a lot to set up. I’ll keep watching in hopes, but if all episodes are like this, then we are going to have problems.

I will just throw out a little theory, but most likely the Doctor will somehow travel to the past and warn herself or someone else or something. Because why not. The timeline of Doctor Who was always messed up. Why hadn’t the Flux happened before?

3/10

Anyway!

Thanks for reading. I did rush this a bit because I literally just finished watching the episode 30 minutes ago, but hopefully, it makes sense. As always, my links are below. I was a little late because I was reluctant to watch it as I knew it would be pretty bad. My links are below if you wish to follow me elsewhere.

Shares and likes are appreciated, and if people want, I will do one of these for the next episode (which is tomorrow at the time of writing this) and it’ll be out much sooner than before.

Thanks again!

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