The Vanquishers: Rank - 279

  The Vanquishers

(Series 13, Dr 13 with Yaz and Dan, 5/12/2021, showrunner: Chris Chibnall, writer: Chris Chibnall, director: Azhur Saleem)  

Rank: 279

It's the one where by the end Flux has been re-calibrated, The Swarm have been vanquished, time is back to normal, the Dr's stopped having a split personality and the Sontarons are be-Twix everything...

The big finale of 'Flux' is good, but muddled. It has one hell of a lot to do within an hour ending a series arc that threw everything at us except for a dimensionally transcendent sink and, well, some of it got sorted better than I feared and other parts not as much as I would have liked. How do they explain so much in one go? By the clever but confusing means of splitting the Dr in 3! Mostly its all a case of shuffling the other characters around so that they all end up where they should be by the end, while the Dr learns why time has become messed up. Seeing as this series was written in lockdown it feels like a clever metaphor for the hazy, out of control yet mundane and repetitive life most of us were leading back then, at the mercy of merciless Gods. However the classic cliffhanger from the week before, of the Dr being shot at, is ducked (quite literally - the Dr just avoids the shot) and the plot point of the fobwatch containing all those past memories the Dr has been after for several episodes now is thrown away (literally - it's banished into the depths of The Tardis, where hopefully we'll never see it again). Worst of all The Swarm are an underwhelming final villain, ones you suspect would have been beaten in a straight fight by the Sontarons and Weeping Angels we've met along the way and whose powers are spoken about but not demonstrated that well on screen. They might have the power to shift all of space and time to get what they want off-screen, but on-screen it doesn't feel as if they have the power to make soup. Compared to them The Sontarons steal every scene they're in - thankfully there's a lot of them this week!

Positives + UNIT's back! Of all of Chibnall's sins as a showrunner writing one of the most beloved DW 'families' out off-screen without even a heroic end is one of the biggest. Say what you will about him, though, Chris has always been good at responding to feedback and it turns out that it was an alien working for The Swarm and the British government (figures: lots of candidates there) who axed them. They're carefully put back in the toybox here for all those who come later, with the Brig's daughter saving the day. Again. Also, I'm not quite sure if it belongs in the middle of a tense final episode trying to wrap up several continuity points, but I'm one of those fans who loved the Sontaron with a chocolate addiction when he thinks no one else is looking. The scenes of him stuffing his face in a corner shop in full armour, having just got off a horse, are the sort of mundane real-worldly things turned on their head that DW does so well.

Negatives - Maybe its the time constraints, maybe it's the writing, but this cast of regulars still don't act normally in most situations. The worst example of this is when Dr Jericho dies. Now, on screen we've only followed him for episodes so for us at home his death isn't up there in the grand pantheon of Who sacrifices. For Yaz and Dan, though, they've lived together for 3 years stranded in time, convinced they were trapped forever and now, just at the point of rescue it all goes wrong. Their reaction should be one of devastation, remorse, anger and possibly guilt, like that for Adric and Clara combined. On screen their reaction is basically 'That's a shame. What happens next, Dr?'