‘Doctor Who: Flux’ Was Too Many Big Swings That Never Quite Connected

I’m a huge fan of TV shows taking chances. Shake up your formula, try something new and different, and even if it doesn’t work, you’ve learned from your mistakes and apply what works, going forward. Doctor Who: Flux, a six part serial that deviated heavily from the show’s previous 50+ years of storytelling by juggling multiple storylines and characters with an ongoing plot definitely attempted to shake things up… But by taking too many big swings at the same time, the overwhelming, six hour long experiment never quite connected.

To wit, here’s the plot — as far as I can suss out — of Doctor Who: Flux, explained as simply as possible. A secret, universe spanning organization called Division, run by The Doctor’s (Jodie Whittaker) adoptive mother Tecteun (Barbara Flynn), is hastening the death of the universe using a massive cloud of anti-matter called The Flux, before planning to escape to another, parallel universe (that The Doctor may or may not be originally from). Two ancient enemies of The Doctor named Swarm (Sam Spruell) and Azure (Rochenda Sandall) take over control of The Flux, and to punish The Doctor want to destroy the universe, reverse time, and then destroy it over and over again. The Doctor stops them (sort of) and in the process abets a few genocides by standing by and watching the murder of massive armies of Daleks, Cybermen and Sontarans — the latter of which briefly took over Earth, and did a genocide of their own by killing off all but one of the dog-like race of Lupari. The Doctor stops The Flux, watches Swarm and Azure get stopped by Deus Ex Machina, and end of the day there’s the promise that The Doctor is about to enter her final adventures before regenerating (i.e., getting recast), and her arch-enemy The Master is on his way.

That, by the way, was the extremely simplified version. I didn’t mention the subplot about the literally star-crossed lovers Vinder (Jacob Anderson) and Bel (Thaddea Graham), or the introduction of a new villain called The Grand Serpent (Craig Parkinson) who can make people barf snakes, or the new companion Dan (John Bishop) and his parents and possible girlfriend, or Joseph Williamson (Steven Oram), who was running around in a bunch of tunnels and had a room filled with doors to other time periods, or the planet called Time that’s populated by flying pyramids, or the fact that The Doctor has a pocket watch containing her hidden memories in the form of a weird house that she threw into the center of her TARDIS, or any number of other subplots, twists and turns that took place during the run of Flux.

Point being: it was a lot, and while your mileage may vary about how successful it was in tying everything up, the sum total of everything going on led to a lack of focus — to the point that The Doctor, famously unfocused, was split into three different versions of herself in the final episode, all tackling the problem from different angles.

The frustrating part about Flux is that there were about a season’s worth of ideas in there (or two), some of them very good and exciting. But by running them all at the same time, the main takeaway was one of being overwhelmed. And because 13 episodes (approximately) were compressed into six, none got the time they potentially could have, with more space allowed to tell the story. Bel and Vinder are a great example of that, two interesting characters with a potentially epic love story who instead seemed to pop up randomly and then disappear for long stretches of time. Or on a concept level, the Passengers, massive beings who can contain billions of life forms in an endless prison, who ended up being pretty easy to escape and ultimately only necessary to contain The Flux in the finale.

This all was compounded, though, by the season continually adding details and characters nearly every episode, that carried as much import as the ones presented before. The Grand Serpent is clearly a major, new villain who is intrinsically tied to The Doctor’s allies U.N.I.T. and promises to be a thorn in their side going forward. But he was not initially one of the main antagonists here, first mentioned in Episode 3 in an off-hand manner, introduced in Episode 5, and took up a huge amount of real estate in the final two episodes without ultimately providing much of a challenge to defeat. Again, a good idea; but one that deserved its own episode, not weirdly existing to the side of everything else happening on the show.

Similarly, the real main idea of Flux, that The Doctor is missing huge chunks of her memory, whether thanks to Division futzing around, or the fact that she may or may not be from a parallel universe, is a good one. It’s bold, it’s big, and continues the chances the show has been taking the past few seasons by adding details like a secret regeneration of the Doctor (not to mention, she was the first Black Doctor in series history), or revealing that all regenerations for Time Lords started with The Doctor being discovered, not vice versa as had been previously believed. But ultimately backing away from the reveal of The Doctor’s full memories in the final episode (presumably to kick that down the road for Whittaker’s final episodes next year) is a frustrating one, because it side-steps the promise of the plot of the season. We started with The Doctor realizing she had gaps in her memory, and ended up with her deciding to avoid finding out what they were until some later point. It’s meant to be teasing, but you can only stretch out mysteries so long before they become annoying, rather than engaging.

The biggest crime of Flux, though, was shoving The Doctor’s companions out of the main action, particularly Yasmin Khan (Mandip Gill). The fan-favorite character finally grabbed focus at the end of last season with the departure of The Doctor’s two other companions… Only to find herself repeatedly frozen, or lost in time — with new characters like Dan getting more screen-time, and more back-story than Yaz. Part of the story Flux was attempting to tell was a rift between The Doctor and Yaz, something that is, to be fair, emotionally and poignantly resolved in the final episode. But to get there, Yaz was repeatedly and inexplicably yelled at by The Doctor, before getting sidelined entirely. Even Dan, who by comparison got a lot more to do in Flux, had most of his development as a companion happen off-screen while lost in time for three years. Doctor Who doesn’t always know how to center The Doctor’s companions without turning them into some sort of universal savior/god-like being; but there has to be a halfway point between “the most important creature in the universe” and “not actually on the show that much.”

Mind you: Flux wasn’t all bad, and in fact its best parts point to a clear path forward for the series. The villains, as usual, were very well designed and have the potential to be palpable threats in line with classics like the Daleks and Cyberman. Despite what I mentioned above, The Grand Serpent does have a solid presence, and his black suit and white stripe in his hair offer a villainous silhouette. Similarly, though Swarm and Azure seem to be easily beaten by walking away from them to the other side of the room, their strange design, with crystals breaking out of their heads, and the deliciously sinuous delivery from Spruell and Sandall make them instantly enigmatic, and they would be welcome sights in future episodes, if they’re given a more cohesive plot.

But more importantly for lessons learned, out of six, the two best episodes of the serial were Episode 2, “War of the Sontarans”, and Episode 4, “Village of the Angels”. Both episodes continued the ongoing plot of Flux, but found The Doctor working with her companions in one location, on one problem. The ongoing threads bubbled in the background, but the foreground plot was classic Who. The former found our heroes trapped in the Crimean War, except instead the Russians have been replaced with the potato-headed Sontarans. In the latter, they’re trapped in a small village that’s being invaded by the time-eating Weeping Angels, monster movie style.

Essentially, what worked about Episodes 2 and 4 is that they were classic Doctor Who adventures with the modern, serial twist. Rather than the Sontarans and Angels being dealt with and dispatched in one hour, those plots impacted what happened going forward. If the show embraces this style, to have one big idea an episode that continues to snowball as the season goes, it’ll ultimately get past that lack of focus, and be able to present a cohesive story that doesn’t feel as scattered as The Doctor on her worst day.

This all isn’t to say that Doctor Who can’t experiment, but there is a reason the show has had the same formula since 1963, and why it hasn’t deviated too far from that since the reboot in 2005. Change is good. Change should be encouraged. It allows the writers, the actors and the rest of the creative staff to stretch in new and exciting ways. But trying to do all the changes at the same time isn’t an experiment; it’s a mess. Fingers crossed, as Whittaker’s Doctor enters her final adventures starting New Year’s Day, and continuing through the rest of 2022, the show takes this experiment, keeps what works, and tosses the rest like a pocketwatch full of memories being dumped in the center of the TARDIS.

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