Fetch Your Dog

Story: Flux - Chapter Five: Survivors of the Flux
Written By: Chris Chibnall
Length: 50 Minutes
Year: 2021

It's coming near the end now, and this story is still building.  While I have yet to dislike any episode, the story is very complex and yet it doesn't feel like we know really anything for sure right now.   Chibnall is just teasing and teasing out information, but this felt like a very packed and dense episode and yet I am not sure I truly know what is happening.  Next week is going to either be dense and feel like a real payoff or it is going to fall flat on it's face.  Hard to say! 

The Doctor, having been turned into an Angel and recalled to the "Division" ends up on a strange space station housed in the void between two universes.  There she meets a woman who claims to be the person who originally found her as a child and raised her and experimented on her, created the Division and used the Doctor before wiping her memories and setting her on the path she has been on all this time.  Or maybe not?  I dunno.  The Doctor questions whether or not the Master lied, I think it would be a wonderful thing if he had because this Doctor origin story is garbage, just as any other past attempt at a Doctor origin story has been or could be.  Honestly, for any issues you can lay at RTD of Moff during their tenures, both knew that the origins of the Doctor are pointless and the mystery is part of the fun.  When Chibnall scaled things back and was just telling fun adventure stories, it was glorious, this overblown epic origin business just does not work...and I don't think any writer could make this work.  

Anyhow, The Division claims to have guided the universe and tried to make it in the image it wanted, but the Doctor keeps causing problems by showing up and causing uprisings or inspiring people to think, so they've decided to blow it up, move to the universe next door and start again. Maybe the Doctor can join her! She'll even save Earth and give her memories back if she plays nice!  

Meanwhile on Earth, Yaz, Dan, and Jericho have been stuck in the 1900s for three years and have been globetrotting trying to find some...stuff.  It seems the Doctor left Yaz some instructions to try and find things to save the Earth and Time and Space, but while everything they are doing is fun, it feels a little half baked.  But whatever, at least they were doing some fun things.  

We also get a running story involving the Grand Serpent, who is also on Earth in the past and has been lurking behind the scenes of UNIT for decades, helping guide it's creation and it's many years until he closes it down and sneds Kate Stewart running underground.  He also agrees to help the Sontarans invade and take over.  What a jerk!

The episode ends with the Skeleton twins showing up at the Division and killing the person who could have many answers for the Doctor and her past...but there is still that Fob Watch full of memories as a possibility!  It would be terrific if it opened up next week and actually made this Timeless Child story be phony or something. 

We've got one episode to wrap up this story, and I hope it ends better than Series 12's nonsense did.  This is doing a lot now to carry on a "Doctor is a God" storyline I really hate, so I am currently feeling much dread about how this will only expand on that. 

NEXT TIME: Destroying the Universe!

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