[S13 E05] Survivors of the Flux

[Catsmate]

The penultimate episode, let the rampant speculation be loosed!

Also, what did people think?

[ninjaconor]

Torn between "Good, but..." and "Bad, but..." on this one, but went with "Good, but..." just because it is an improvement on the sort of stuff we got in series 12.

Like "One Upon Time", it didn't really have a story of its own and was a bit of an exposition dump. I really don't like how much Chris Chibnall has demystified The Doctor's origins with his Timeless Child shenanigans, and now he's made it very difficult for a future showrunner to ignore. I did appreciate the UNIT stuff, which felt like throwing the fans a bone, and I am really intrigued by the story even though I'm not really fond of what it does to The Doctor as a character. I guess the proof of the pudding will be in the finale. We'll see next week if it's all been worth it.

[grinch]

As much as I dislike this series and the mess that is the Timeless Child retcon I have to say I’m really liking John Bishop as Dan. He’s been the real standout character in all this and I’m definitely planning on having him included in a future campaign on the back of it.

But yeah, this episode still fails to impress me.

[spydalek]

I enjoyed this episode, though the whole skipping between timezones was a little confusing. But I really enjoyed seeing the classic UNIT uniform again.

But the two major things I'm taking from this season?

1) Dan is one of my favourite companions, and B) I really love the idea of the Lupari and need a Race Package of them. I have ideas for something involving a member of their species now.

[Escher]

Nov 28, 2021 19:30:04 GMT ninjaconor said:

I guess the proof of the pudding will be in the finale. We'll see next week if it's all been worth it.

This.

[misterharry]

I enjoyed it very much - hopefully we'll get a series finale worthy of the journey. I don't see the Timeless Child as demystifying Doctor Who. The Doctor's origins were pretty much known in general, if not in detail. So for me this adds new layers of mystery, which may or may not be resolved.

[Escher]

Nov 29, 2021 9:04:15 GMT misterharry said:

I don't see the Timeless Child as demystifying Doctor Who. The Doctor's origins were pretty much known in general, if not in detail. So for me this adds new layers of mystery, which may or may not be resolved.

I agree.

I also wouldn't mind seeing some of the possible 'hundreds' of pre-Hartnell Doctors make guest appearances in adventures in the future with guest actors. It would be immensely thrilling.

[ninjaconor]

Nov 29, 2021 12:45:09 GMT Escher said:

Nov 29, 2021 9:04:15 GMT misterharry said:

I don't see the Timeless Child as demystifying Doctor Who. The Doctor's origins were pretty much known in general, if not in detail. So for me this adds new layers of mystery, which may or may not be resolved.

I agree.

I also wouldn't mind seeing some of the possible 'hundreds' of pre-Hartnell Doctors make guest appearances in adventures in the future with guest actors. It would be immensely thrilling.

I'm not a fan of it. I feel it kind of dillutes the significance of the Doctors that we've seen. Like, when we first learned of the War Doctor, it was so shocking, because we thought we knew all The Doctor's lives. It felt so special! It was the Doctor who didn't follow his code. But now there can be hundreds of incarnations that didn't follow his code.

We saw The Doctor progress from his haughty Time Lord William Hartnell days to gradually soften and become more heroic through his adventures with his companions. But this isn't really the journey of his life anymore. He was already being heroic before William Hartnell. What we saw was just a gradual return-to-form. after recovering from a memory wipe.

Also, if Big Finish are going to be able to churn out pre-Hartnell audios for Doctors played by every actor under the sun, I feel it's going to take a certain amount of prestige out of the role.

One thing I do appreciate is the implied use of the chameleon arch for the memory wipe. That way, I guess I can think of the proper Doctor and the pre-Hartnell Doctor as essentially two separate characters; same body, but different software. I'd personally have liked much more room for ambiguity, but I guess it'll have to do.

I guess it's something that will probably just blur into the fabric of Doctor Who lore over time, but my initial reaction is that it weakens rather than strengthens the story.

[markrand]

It was good, and less confusing then some of the other chapters in the story. I hope the final chapter clears the rest of it up.

[Stormcrow]

Meh.

The Weeping Angels cliffhanger's resolution was lame. "We turned you into one of us to transport you to Division. Bye, now!"

The Doctor didn't do anything the entire episode but fail to learn anything useful. We don't know why Division decided to destroy the universe. Something about the Doctor messing it up.

The adventures of Yaz, Dan, and Professor Jericho were more interesting, but ultimately pointless. They finally got to where they needed to be because Williamson just happened to show up on their ship and drop a clue as to where he was coming from. All the other stuff they spent years doing? Nothing to show for it.

The UNIT stuff? We'll presumably find out what the point is in the final episode.

I just can't bring myself to care without a sense of progress. I'm quite convinced that whatever happens in the final episode, it won't feel like a satisfying ending. I suspect it'll be even more tearing down of established Doctor Who.

[scottbarratt1989]

I can't help but feel like we won't get everything tied up next week, some of our questions will be unanswered. And a few of these questions/threads will be kept for New Years Day and the odd episodes (specials) next year.

[senko]

Nov 30, 2021 2:45:06 GMT Stormcrow said:

Meh.

The Weeping Angels cliffhanger's resolution was lame. "We turned you into one of us to transport you to Division. Bye, now!"

The Doctor didn't do anything the entire episode but fail to learn anything useful. We don't know why Division decided to destroy the universe. Something about the Doctor messing it up.

The adventures of Yaz, Dan, and Professor Jericho were more interesting, but ultimately pointless. They finally got to where they needed to be because Williamson just happened to show up on their ship and drop a clue as to where he was coming from. All the other stuff they spent years doing? Nothing to show for it.

The UNIT stuff? We'll presumably find out what the point is in the final episode.

I just can't bring myself to care without a sense of progress. I'm quite convinced that whatever happens in the final episode, it won't feel like a satisfying ending. I suspect it'll be even more tearing down of established Doctor Who.

Not watching the current series or voting on these polls (made my feelings plain last season) so I've mainly said nothing in these threads just kept half an eye on them to see if things continued in the vein that put me off originally.

However I will respond to this. I do feel that its not just a tearing down of the doctor that's my problem with the current show but the overuse and demystifying of ideas. This isn't just Chibnall its a problem with trying to reuse ideas and feeling you have to expand and explain them resulting in a loss of the magic and mystery that they had originally. The weeping angels is a good example they were incredibly creepy and disturbing in their first apperance but the more they got new powers and changes culminating in angel new york with an angel statue of liberty they'd lost a large part of that creepy nature to me. Now as one reviewer put it they seem to be just an uber to transport people around. They're not this mysterious possible relic of the timewar, in explaining their origins they lost the last of their mystery. Its the same with the timeless child stuff they retconned and changed the doctors history in the process making him less special and they did in a horribly clunky exposition. The same with Gallifrey its back, its gone, its back, its gone, its back, its gone for good this time really. Again not just Chibnall the first return and defeat in the end of time was impressive to me, the doctor sealing it away the same, trenzalore iffy as it was again an attempt to return but now it just feels like a resolving door with no impact especially in the way it was done with an offscreen "Oh they're cybermen now".

I again haven't been watching so I admit I may have the wrong impression but it feels like this season is just more of the same exposition and a loss of magic in attempt to explain more and more about the new history.

[Stormcrow]

I don't think demystifying is the right word. misterharry is right: the Doctor was already fairly well known, even before the restart in 2005. That was the genius move of Davies: take all the well known stuff and set it lovingly aside, saying "This is great, but it's not mysterious, so let's focus on new stuff that is mysterious without touching the old stuff."

It's natural that a show become less mysterious as it continues, since if you never learn anything about a character or a situation you eventually lose interest. So as Davies slowly let stuff out of the holding pen, I understood. Moffat opened the pen and let the old stuff all pour out, but he at least had Davies' template to ride on and new mysteries to rise above the old, solved ones. Even Moffat managed to restrain himself from inventing the Doctor's name or the reason for its secrecy, even though he was obviously sorely tempted to do it.

What Chibnall is doing isn't demystifying. He isn't explaining things we've always wondered about. Chibnall is changing. He is retroactively changing the nature of the character and the universe he or she inhabits. Instead of the renegade Time Lord who was so annoyed at the non-interference laws of his obnoxiously serene and conservative people that he stole a time ship and went gallivanting around the universe helping out, we now have a high-profile agent of an organization bent on universal control, who finally rebelled in defiance and was punished with an inexplicable memory-wipe, and for some reason was let go instead of imprisoned or killed, to the point that the organization itself decides the Doctor has ruined their plans so much that they're going to destroy the entire universe and move on to the next one. It makes no sense. Where has the Division been all the two thousand or so years of the Doctor's known life? If he was causing such trouble, why didn't they stop him? Or at least show up? Why would this nigh-all-powerful organization decide to just trash the universe because they can't have it?

The trouble with Chibnall isn't demystification. The trouble is that the whole premise is just dumb. It's not heroic or plucky or moral. It's edgy and jaded and the villains behave like adolescents.

[senko]

Nov 30, 2021 22:13:29 GMT Stormcrow said:

I don't think demystifying is the right word. misterharry is right: the Doctor was already fairly well known, even before the restart in 2005. That was the genius move of Davies: take all the well known stuff and set it lovingly aside, saying "This is great, but it's not mysterious, so let's focus on new stuff that is mysterious without touching the old stuff."

It's natural that a show become less mysterious as it continues, since if you never learn anything about a character or a situation you eventually lose interest. So as Davies slowly let stuff out of the holding pen, I understood. Moffat opened the pen and let the old stuff all pour out, but he at least had Davies' template to ride on and new mysteries to rise above the old, solved ones. Even Moffat managed to restrain himself from inventing the Doctor's name or the reason for its secrecy, even though he was obviously sorely tempted to do it.

What Chibnall is doing isn't demystifying. He isn't explaining things we've always wondered about. Chibnall is changing. He is retroactively changing the nature of the character and the universe he or she inhabits. Instead of the renegade Time Lord who was so annoyed at the non-interference laws of his obnoxiously serene and conservative people that he stole a time ship and went gallivanting around the universe helping out, we now have a high-profile agent of an organization bent on universal control, who finally rebelled in defiance and was punished with an inexplicable memory-wipe, and for some reason was let go instead of imprisoned or killed, to the point that the organization itself decides the Doctor has ruined their plans so much that they're going to destroy the entire universe and move on to the next one. It makes no sense. Where has the Division been all the two thousand or so years of the Doctor's known life? If he was causing such trouble, why didn't they stop him? Or at least show up? Why would this nigh-all-powerful organization decide to just trash the universe because they can't have it?

The trouble with Chibnall isn't demystification. The trouble is that the whole premise is just dumb. It's not heroic or plucky or moral. It's edgy and jaded and the villains behave like adolescents.

That's also true its the combination of the two that put me off. I could tolerate things getting explained though I'd personally have prefered they weren't but as you said they're retroactively changing things and not in my opinion in a good way. I didn't like the Division in their first appearance as they felt pointless with the CIA already existing. Thinking about it they aren't even limiting the changes to old who as with the masters reintroduction undoing Missy's growth and change, unit just being sidelined, earth accepting aliens are real becoming a laughing joke at believing in them and a lot more. I really feel like I'm watching a bad fanfic with the author rushing through world changing events (in a "Oh no this big bad is really a cheap joke and was killed in an accient involving a rubber chicken, to tubs of banana's and a hadock but we have this new cooler big bad instead" sense not a "New york was blown up" sense.) in the first few paragraphs to set up the story they want to tell and I'm left going "Wait that makes no sense you had alien spaceships on live tv multiple years in a row how does a united nations task force to DEAL with them get defunded???" Especially since a lot of the major changes like the timeless child are being delivered in exposition. Still that's other threads so I'll stop now.

[imajica]

Exposition is pretty much the problem. We've always had at least 1 companion who's job it was to ask "but what is it?", allowing the Doctor to explain what was necessary for the story to proceed. All the rest has just kinda drip-fed out over the decades. This whole need to explain everything, unasked, is tiresome.

I agree that you don't need the Division when you've got the CIA. That the Earth not believing in aliens when it's been live on TV and the whole bloody planet moved at least once is kinda dumb. Each new big bad is killed off in a manner that would make Spike's entrance on Buffy and the exit of the kid look complex and intricate.

I'm going to blitz this next Monday, see how much I can cope with before I bin it and play Doom Eternal instead.

[drinkplentyofmalk]

I get that Chibnall has accidentally(?) written the most unthinkingly pro-establishment version of the Doctor we've ever seen, but it still left an awful taste in my mouth that her biggest concern upon being told that the Division have been manipulating people's timelines (and as such, independence/free-will) for countless years is that 'the Time Lords have rules against that!'

Sidenote, but did anyone else find it odd that instead of the Doctor confronting Tacteun about the unethical murder-experiments carried out on her as a literal child... she instead focused on the baseless idea that she was taken from biological parents she has no reason to believe were alive, and that adopting abandoned children is actually a good thing?
Plus, it's all SO abstracted from the Doctor's actual lived experiences: it was untold thousands of years ago, she doesn't even remember it, she just saw what was essentially a recording of it. She had to even ask Tectaun if the Master was telling the truth: how would she have reacted if she just said no?
I hate to make personal comments about people I don't know, but this obsession with genetics and unrecalled experiences makes me curious as to what Chibnall's perspectives on identity or personhood actually are.

[Stormcrow]

Meh, I don't think Chibnall is projecting his own perspectives here. He's just appropriating the current fads in science-fiction television: conspiracies, personal existential crises, and espionage.

I've been trying to watch Star Trek: Discovery recently, and it's pretty much the same thing.

[senko]

Its most things produced these day's sadly not just sci fi look at the issues with Peter Pan and Anne Bolyn.

[skudge001]

I just want the season and Chibnall's era to end. He has thrown so many contrived and partially thought through ideas at the wall to see what might stick that everything is muddled and disconnected. This season in particular. In doing so he has failed to provide anything that might be an emotional beat or arc for the audience to care about. Even with the couple from the future there is no real connection, just the contrivance of them being unable to find each other. As a result we are waiting on a final episode where I just don't care about any of the characters. This is not the actor's fault since they haven't been given much more to do than spout exposition off at each other.

There have been a few moments and ideas that have been interesting this season, but that's about it. Even if the last episode is brilliant, and I don't expect it to be, it's not going to make up for villains that have no substance, companions that have no character growth or emotional arc, and a Doctor that bounces from plot element to plot contrivance with next to no agency in what they are doing. 

[Stormcrow]

I'll give the season one thing: the Lupari are funny.

[skudge001]

Dec 4, 2021 20:19:50 GMT Stormcrow said:

I'll give the season one thing: the Lupari are funny.

Perhaps, to each their own. While I think the antagonistic partnership is mildly interesting, and it could be engaging. The engagement just doesn't happen for me since I find the inclusion of the Lupari as another example of random world building without much thought to even basic considerations. Who are the Lupari, why do they exist in the universe, what is their motivation, how do they expect to accomplish it, where are they located in the universe or time, and does their use in the story serve some purpose? All we really know about them is that they are species bonded to humans which requires them to be protective in some way that is by no means defined, they are technologically advanced, and some of them don't like the human they are bonded to. So we have a powerful species with some sort of species defining link with humans resulting in the Lupari coming out of nowhere to be a humorous surprise ally with no effort to integrate them into the Doctor Who continuity.

I can think of several ways that they could be incorporated into the continuity and plot that gives the Lupari a reason for being there, but I don't think we are going to get anything other than what we have seen so far. Ultimately I think the Lupari purpose in the story thus far could have been served better by using the Silurians. The Silurian's established history, planet bond, and technology in my mind would make more sense.

[grinch]

Dec 5, 2021 2:01:38 GMT skudge001 said:

Dec 4, 2021 20:19:50 GMT Stormcrow said:

I'll give the season one thing: the Lupari are funny.

Perhaps, to each their own. While I think the antagonistic partnership is mildly interesting, and it could be engaging. The engagement just doesn't happen for me since I find the inclusion of the Lupari as another example of random world building without much thought to even basic considerations. Who are the Lupari, why do they exist in the universe, what is their motivation, how do they expect to accomplish it, where are they located in the universe or time, and does their use in the story serve some purpose? All we really know about them is that they are species bonded to humans which requires them to be protective in some way that is by no means defined, they are technologically advanced, and some of them don't like the human they are bonded to. So we have a powerful species with some sort of species defining link with humans resulting in the Lupari coming out of nowhere to be a humorous surprise ally with no effort to integrate them into the Doctor Who continuity.

I can think of several ways that they could be incorporated into the continuity and plot that gives the Lupari a reason for being there, but I don't think we are going to get anything other than what we have seen so far. Ultimately I think the Lupari purpose in the story thus far could have been served better by using the Silurians. The Silurian's established history, planet bond, and technology in my mind would make more sense.

That would probably have made more of an impact to be honest. The Silurians deliberately choosing to come out of hibernation to assist those filthy apes who took their planet. If only to protect Earth as it is both their home world after all. 

[Stormcrow]

You've missed my point. I didn't say they were good, or necessary or effective or interesting or believable or well-designed or anything else. I just said they're funny. That's pretty much the only thing I liked about them.

[skudge001]

Dec 7, 2021 3:27:21 GMT Stormcrow said:

You've missed my point. I didn't say they were good, or necessary or effective or interesting or believable or well-designed or anything else. I just said they're funny. That's pretty much the only thing I liked about them.

I understood your point. I didn't agree with it and tried to explain why. Wasn't trying to suggest anything else.

[Stormcrow]

None of that refutes my statement that I think the Lupari are funny. I did not ask you to think so too, and I did not base my estimation of the humor on any other perceived good qualities of them. I just think they're funny. Feel free to say anything you like about them, but please don't frame your statements as a disagreement with my thinking they're funny.

[Rassilon]

Please let's not have to lock this thread.

[imajica]

The Lupari. Species-linked, there to protect the Human Race from the worst that could happen. Where were they when the Daleks stole Earth? When <insert previous invasion here> happened? I know continuity has never usually been a strong point in science fiction but even Chris has got to admit there's an issue there. And yes, got to admit, they _are_ somewhat amusing.

[grinch]

Dec 22, 2021 10:15:40 GMT imajica said:

The Lupari. Species-linked, there to protect the Human Race from the worst that could happen. Where were they when the Daleks stole Earth? When <insert previous invasion here> happened? I know continuity has never usually been a strong point in science fiction but even Chris has got to admit there's an issue there. And yes, got to admit, they _are_ somewhat amusing.

Might have worked better had they deliberately been portrayed as a bit of a joke race.


Say, they’re still honour bound to protect humanity from the worst that could happen. But their ships are so slow or the journey is so far from their place of origin that when they arrived on Earth, the disaster they were meant to avert already came and went. (“What do you mean there is no longer an Ice Age?”) It was only a stroke of luck that the Flux event happened when it did otherwise they would have had a wasted journey.

[imajica]

Dec 22, 2021 13:11:02 GMT grinch said:

Say, they’re still honour bound to protect humanity from the worst that could happen. But their ships are so slow or the journey is so far from their place of origin that when they arrived on Earth, the disaster they were meant to avert already came and went. (“What do you mean there is no longer an Ice Age?”) It was only a stroke of luck that the Flux event happened when it did otherwise they would have had a wasted journey.

Now _that_ I might use.

"What do you mean there's no ice age?"

"Yeah, global warming's the problem now, mate."

"Oh, FFS. Fine. Get in anyway. Might as well, we're here now."

Or stray Lupari turning up to "rescue" human PCs wherever they happen to be...