The Mouri

Story: Flux - Chapter Three: Once, Upon Time
Written By: Chris Chibnall
Length: 50 Minutes
Year: 2021

Things have gone crazy.  The Doctor and her friends are flipping around in time, sort of.  The Doctor decides that before time can be thrust through Yaz and Vinder, she will also put Dan and herself in harm's way as well, which puts her within the timestream and gives her a chance to fix things.  She and the Mouri put the other three into their own time streams, but time is not quite right...details are wrong and they each see the others fluttering before them or in place of others.  The Doctor herself is thrust into a distant memory she has long since lost...in the Doctor introduced last season as some long forgotten past version of herself (the fact that she has a TARDIS like a police box still bugs the hell out of me...that and most of the resolution to Season 12 in which the Doctor was made Time Lord Jesus...sigh).

It turns out that somehow the Doctor may be the cause of the Flux, but things are put right too soon for the Doctor to get that resolution, which will have to be left until a future installment.  Meanwhile we also get a story of someone named Bel who is out searching for her lost love in the aftermath of the Flux...which it turns out is Vinder.  And she is pregnant, and as that is lingered on...perhaps that is going to be important? The episode's cliffhanger involves the TARDIS dropping Vinder off on his Flux-destroyed home planet, and after taking off having the TARDIS invaded by the Angels!

I enjoyed this episode even if it reminded me of the godawful end of Season 12.  It is temporal madness, and can be easily confusing...in that sense this is a very Moffat-style episode.  Big, bombastic, full of time traveling shenanigans, and it even throws in the Weeping Angels...it is almost as if Moffat has returned!  If I was really missing him that might be nicer.  Still, I was still going with it, but as Chibnall seems to be taking this story in a similar direction as the previous season, where the Doctor's own forgotten and strange past comes back to bite her, I may end up frustrated as this wraps up.  We shall see.  

Again, I thought it was an intriguing episode, though it is very much meant to be an episode that raises more questions than it answers...so enjoyment of others may vary.  I also believe it is an episode that will really rely on how this all shakes out.  I am currently going along with it hopeful that it has a good ending, but PTSD from how good Season 12 had been vs. how badly it ended has me admitting there is some concern since Chibnall has brought back not just the mystery past Doctor but also the Doctor's past being shady and causing a lot of the problems they are currently facing...this could be a problem if he can't stick the landing again!

NEXT TIME: The Angels, once again, have the Phone Box.