May turn out to be retrospectively brilliant but as a standalone episode: uninteresting and needlessly cryptic
The Doctor flicks around time, apparently hiding her friends in their past, or present, or future, while trying to figure out what is temporally wrong with the Universe. Meanwhile, side-plots feature a Who's-Who of the Doctor's more famous adversaries just in case you have forgotten what you are watching (unfortunately they also introduce even more trite and uninteresting characters into an already crowded storyline). The problem with open-ended time travel plots is that anything can happen and I find stories where there is no mandate for 'rules' and internal consistency to get boring fast (once the novelty of the imagery fades). This episode may turn out to be a clever, imaginative, and essential linker in the season 13 story-arc otherwise, it's a loud, boring, confusing, self-indulgent morass of Whovian imagery mined from earlier, better storytellers. I will amend this review if my opinion is altered by Flux's remaining three episodes.
- jamesrupert2014
- Nov 14, 2021