War of the Sontarans
The Flux storyline in Season 13 of Doctor Who is a step up from the messy, chaotic opener. There’s better pacing and some genuinely menacing Sontarans. Is Doctor Who back on track?
The Doctor awakens to find herself and her friends, Dan and Yaz, thrown out of the Tardis onto a planet littered with bodies and rubble. They’re in the middle of a battlefield, during the Crimean War. ..
The British are fighting a war against an alien race that is said to be more powerful and advanced than any other on Earth. The Sontaranians, or those who ride on horseback, are said to be the most powerful and advanced race in the world. They have been fighting the British for years, but this year they have finally managed to defeat them.
Officer Vinder wakes up in a strange temple after the Flux Event. A floating Priest Triangle tells him to go down to the main chamber to try and repair a contraption that seems to house beings known simply as Mouri. ..
According to the Doctor, Dan and Yaz suddenly disappear as, according to the Doctor, Flux and vortex energy collide to whisk them through time to Earth further along the timeline. For Yaz, she shows in the middle of her street in present day Liverpool, complete with a Sontaran ship above Anfield stadium. ..
Dan’s parents show up and save the day, bashing the Sontarans in their weak probic vent spot in the back of the neck. This allows Dan to use a wok as his weapon of choice, which proves to be very effective. ..
Yaz is aboard the same temple we saw Officer Vinder on earlier in the episode. Just like before, a priest triangle appears and asks Yaz if she can repair. After checking her palm, and noticing letters “WWTDD” (what would the doctor do) she proudly proclaims that she can.
Yaz is led down to the main chamber where she meets Vinder. It seems the holograms are part of a larger whole, the Mouri as mentioned, who are Guardian priests of the Temple of Atropos. According to the spinning triangle, they’re from a planet responsible for harnessing and controlling time. Anyone else sensing this is Time Lord doing on Gallifrey?
The Doctor and Mary Seacole return to Sontar, where they find that time has been rewritten and distorted. Russia and China have been replaced with Sontar, but the General and his British legion still appear to retain information about Russia. Alongside the Doctor, Seacole finds herself nursing the wounded – including a chained Sontaran.
The Doctor decides to negotiate with the Sontaran, allowing him to leave in exchange for a parlay. The crux of the issue here comes from the Doctor telling this Sontar soldier about the Doctor’s whereabouts. The main purpose of this whole ruse is to find where the Sontar camp actually is. And it happens to be hidden behind a camouflaged veil.
Mary Seacole is sent to keep an eye on the Sontaran camp, where thousands and thousands of Sontarans bustle about below. Commander Skaak is in charge here and he makes quick work of the disgraced Sontaran soldier when he returns with news about the parlay.
The Doctor eventually meets the Sontaran commander, who tells her that the creatures used their psychic command to time their attack right before the Lupari shield took effect on Earth. This was all meticulously planned to take advantage of the carnage and take over Earth. ..
The Doctor and Skaak travel to Crimea in order to broker a peace treaty, but the British soldiers show up and start a bloody conflict. The Doctor and Skaak must use all their skills to stop the bloodshed before it becomes a massacre.
Dan and his parents head down to Liverpool waterfront today. This is the first place the Sontaran soldiers appeared, six hours before everywhere else. It seems as if they all arrived after the Karvanista ships encased the earth. This is being colloquially referred to as the Three Minute Eclipse.
Dan heads aboard the Sontaran ship and begins messing about with the controls.
The Doctor and Mary Seacole are on a Sontaran ship when they’re interrupted by the Sontarans themselves. They realize that there are intruders and they’re going to have to deal with them.
The Priest Triangle suddenly swings in and realizes that they’re banned from the place. However, Swarm wipes out the triangle, and a couple of the time-locked priests standing on these pedestals.
The Doctor uses the Sontaran’s weakness against them, by sabotaging the ships before they can recharge for 7.5 minutes every 27 hours. This effectively reduces the fleet’s size and renders them useless.
British officer sets up gunpowder and blows all the Sontaran ships sky high on the verge of retreating
The Doctor is finally being himself, and it’s a nice moment. He calls out the Doctor for his cowardice, and reminds him that they were retreating. This whole sequence is quite reminiscent of The Christmas Invasion, where Harriet Jones fired on the retreating Sycorax.
With this time period saved, the Tardis materializes and the Doctor skips forward to collect Dan in present-day Liverpool. Dan is then taken to the Doctor’s home planet of Gallifrey for a meeting with the Time Lords. ..
Karvanista appears to save Dan at the last second. He knows about the Sontaran’s plan and intends to stop it too. He joins up with Dan as they use the ship as a battering ram to take out the entirety of the dockyard. In order to get away, they use a waste-pipe to tumble down and into the water below.
The Doctor and Dan are taken on a journey to the bottom of the Tardis, where they meet up with our enemies. Something is wrong with the ship, and it seems to be related to the goo that has been appearing lately. The Doctor and Dan must find out what is causing this before it destroys them all.
The Swarm monologues, and the Doctor is wise to what he’s saying. He reminds the Swarm that there is no such planet as Time, and could they be referring to Gallifrey? Anyway, Yaz and Vinder have been repaired, sort of. ..
Azure counts down from five, Swarm intends to blast Yaz with the full force of time energy. As he clicks his fingers… the episode comes to an agonizing end.
The Episode Review
The first episode of Doctor Who was a bit of a letdown. However, with a more controlled story and a better pacing, the show improved greatly in the second episode.
This episode saw the return of the Sontarans, a threat that had been absent for some time. Their design, which leans closer to that seen in Jon Pertwee and Tom Baker’s era, is much better and more menacing. ..
There are a lot of throwbacks to RTD’s era here too, which are a little annoying. I’m all for nods to the past, but directly ripping off lines and using nostalgia-bait for brownie points, doesn’t really sit well and it feels vapid and shallow. ..
The other issue with the story is that it feels like it’s missing a lot of important plot points. For example, we’re never told what happened to Yaz’s partner, or why she left the force. We also don’t learn much about Yaz’s past and her relationship with Chibnall. These are all important questions that could have been answered in a more interesting way.
Dan’s parents were killed in front of him, and he immediately shrugs it off and starts joking around. He’s a pretty fun guy, and his parents could well be brought back if time is about to be rewritten.
The stand-out moment in this chapter is when the Doctor is shocked and appalled that the Sontarans are blown up with gunpowder, which reaches back to that caring, assertive side of the character that’s been sorely missing for a while.
This Flux concept has been a nice way to close things out on a high and Jodie Whittaker does a great job here, lapping up much improved scripts and dialogue. If this is a sign of things to come, 13 may not be an unlucky number after all.
