What’s it About: Space doggies, universal destruction, a scouser, and a mattress in the TARDIS.
Oh Brilliant: The Doctor has been through a lot of late. She’s travelled to the end of time and seen humanity and the Cybermen tear seven shades of hell out of each other, visited the ruins of Gallifrey and seen it destroyed, discovered terrible secrets about her past and been imprisoned by the Judoon for years. You might think that the 13th Doctor of the Flux season might be pensive, thoughtful, perhaps even a little quiet and brooding. Not a bit of it! Hanging from a Grav-raft in the opening scene; tackling a shaggy dog that appears to out to destroy the Earth and has information that she is after and acting every inch the silly, sunny, quirky heroine that she has always been. I have heard people say that Trial of a Time Lord (the last time we had a story this long play out in Doctor Who) is a showcase for everything that makes Colin Baker a great Doctor and I would happily make the same argument for Jodie Whittaker and the Flux. She’s already marvelous, but everything is stepped up a notch here. She is in full command of this six-part series; commanding, curious, hilarious, smart, witty and loving life as the Doctor. I’ve heard many people say that this was where they really came on board with Whittaker as the Doctor, and I’ve heard others say that this was her peak awesomeness. Just watch as she is flailing about on the grav-bar trading barbs with Yaz, making jokes about her previous selves, dodging acid pools and kill-discs and calculating a miraculous escape into the TARDIS from a great height involving a heroic freefall and a mattress. It’s enough to drive the shippers wild. Hearing a female Doctor admit she was a ball boy for Trent really made me smile. She gets one of many confrontations with villains this season here but the joy of this one is that Karvanista is nothing of the kind, as we get to know as the narrative unfolds. The fact that she has forgotten that he used to be her best friend and is now treating him as her enemy is absolutely woven into the narrative. It’s left until late in the episode to reveal just why the Doctor is seeking out Karvanista and Chibnall in a massive two finger salute to the NMDs reveals that he is following up on the promise of the Timeless Child/Division/Tecteun revelations of the series finale last year. And boy is he going to lean into that by the end of the season. I got tingles because it was quite slyly dropped during a fun scene, and I just admire Chibnall for going ahead and exploring something that has been so divisive.
Yaz: Yes! Yes! Yes! Finally, and for one episode only as the Doctor suddenly starts amassing more companions than ever before (I’d happily call Kavanista, Bel & Vinder and Jericho companions before the end of the Flux) we get to see what could have been a very fun and almost flirty relationship had the Doctor and Yaz gone one on one from the start. Series 11 all but ignored the potential of Yaz as a companion, series 12 rectified that a lot (I thought she was particularly strong in Spyfall, Praxeus, Can You Hear Me? and Ascension of the Cybermen) and now series 13 sees her as the seasoned Doctor Who companion, teaching Dan the ropes, going solo in a handful of episodes and being quite magnificent and dropping any ambiguity that she is in love with the Doctor. And Mandip Gill is just terrific and really seizes every opportunity that the Flux season gives her. I really the scenes of the Doctor and Yaz on Earth alone investigating Karvanista and Dan’s house. There's’ a zippiness to the dialogue and their interaction. It really is a peak into what this could have been all along. Yaz is pissed that the Doctor is still holding things to her chest and not letting her in. This sounds like an argument that is going around in circles but it is paid off in the final episode of this mini season. Isn’t it great how Yaz can go off an rescue Dan all on her own? It’s not even commented on. That’s picked up too when Dan essentially becomes her companion come episode five.
Dan: Has anybody NOT enjoyed Dan Lewis this series? Jon Bishop has skipped into Doctor Who with relatively little fanfare and become many people’s favourite of the era by the sheer charm and cheeky good humour of Bishop’s performance. He’s not the world's most compelling of actors. I don’t think you are going to see a Catherine Tate or Bradley Walsh style level of heartbreak from Dan but what he makes up for that with is his charisma, his likability and his earthy realism. His love of Liverpool (which is gloriously mocked throughout), his instant rapport with the Doctor and Yaz, the brilliant love/hate relationship he has with Kavanista, his humble living arrangements and charity work, his fricking hilarious parents and his suggestion that there is no point in being alive unless you are making people happy are all designed to get you on board with this character. And it really, really works. Ignore those people that cannot understand or object to his accent and tell them go and watch Hartnell’s time where everybody lisped in RP. Dan is an awkward romancer and bashfully asks Diane out for a drink. He’s a humble bloke who is down on his luck but makes the best out of life. How can you not love somebody like that?
Karvanista: I think it’s probably fair to say that humour hasn’t always been Chris Chibnall’s forte in the past couple of years. Dare I mention the spectacular jocularity of the Wi-Fi family in Resolution? It feels like with a comedian on board this year that the scripts have had a pass through more rigorous comic eyes and suddenly much of the comedy is starting to land. With a joyous bounce. Karvanista is a gloriously absurd character; a Wookie-like creation from a species who pair bonds with a human and is sworn to protect them and played with absolute seriousness by Craid Els. And it is that gruff, grumpy gravity that makes him so deliriously funny. He’s a massive bloody dog man for goodness sakes, and yet I completely believe in this character. It’s the Nicholas Courtney effect. If you play it for laughs it really isn’t funny but if you play it seriously with a twinkle in the eye it is enjoyable to watch. Dan touching his nose might just be the funniest thing in the whole episode. Seven billion ships and seven billion Lupari is such a mad idea that I just rolled with it.
Sparkling Dialogue: ‘Or maybe I was Scottish when I set them up. Rrrrrrrelease!’
‘By the way, here’s your house.’
The Good: Originally, I was planning on putting the heavy reliance on CGI in the next section until my brain kicked into gear and remembered that this story was filmed during a worldwide pandemic and there wasn’t the opportunity to shoot on location as much as possible and so green screen work was almost a given in order to bring this epic story to life. But it also allows them the opportunity to make Doctor properly weird and unusual looking again, probably for the first time since the beginning of the Chibnall era. In this episode alone we get to enjoy a vast acid sea planet with terrifying skeletal crags and spitting acid seas (think of Marinus taken up to eleven), a picturesque snapshot of Bristol in 1820, an elaborate quarry prison asteroid, a vast vista of Lupari ships that interlock into a foreboding protection shield around the Earth, space station Rose with a glorious view of the universe at large and a front row seat of the Flux eating its way through entire planets, and finally the TARDIS spitting vortex fire at the event and it not even raising an eyebrow. This is only the beginning. Effects work in Doctor Who are stepping up a massive notch.
You're either going to completely get on board with the serialised structure of the Flux season or not and there isn’t a great deal of ambiguity in between and that makes The Halloween Apocalypse a series of vignettes that make very little sense at this point in the story but essential to the overall narrative come the end. Joseph Williamson is dropped early in this episode and pops up as a raving madman throughout the first four episodes before the purpose of his character and the tunnels that he keeps banging on about drops in episode five and becomes important to the story. It’s the Lost principle. You can either wait for answers, or you want everything sown up week on week. I used to be the latter and I totally came on board with Doctor Who doing that in the new series (instead of telling a story over a month or so it would zip through a plot in one week) but this feels like a real refreshment after 12 (bar series 6 I would say) season of that. Be patient and the sequences featuring Williamson, the Angels, the Sontarans, etc in this episode will all make sense.
Matthew Needham plays a terrifying older version of Swarm before he is regenerated and much like the Jacobi Master it might have been nice to have spent a little more time with him before he transformed. There’s a stillness and an intensity to his performance that is really chilling. However, Sam Spruell steps into the role in incredible make up and has the most fun of practically anyone in this story as the younger, camp as Christmas and confidently despicable Swarm that walks as through the season. Beyond a shadow of a doubt the one thing that Chibnall gets spot on this year is his phenomenal cast of villains and monsters and Swarm and Azure (more on her later) are right at the zenith of the pack. The regeneration sequence itself impresses as the crystals burst from his face as he screams in what could be agony or absolute pleasure. The make up for Swarm is elaborate and clearly a labour of love for the make up technician.
Just when you think that Dan’s house is going to be a replay of Martha’s house exploding in The Sound of Drums (finding the device and how they exit the building is shot in a very similar way), Chibnall subverts that expectation by shrinking the house and landing the flushing toilet gag. The Doctor and Yaz apologising is genuinely laugh out loud. As if Dan coming through the floor of the console room wasn’t enough to make his TARDIS introduction scene a lot of fun, then the Doctor hands him his tiny house. I was laughing my head off.
There’s no hint within the episode that the Angels will feature and so when Claire meets one on the street it comes as a complete surprise. This is the first time that the Angels have featured on screen not written by Steven Moffat and after the law of diminishing returns, this set piece featuring the very simple idea of Claire having to turn around to put her key in the lock is terrifyingly executed.
The Sontarans feature in a small sequence that serves to set up the next episode. I had massive fears that Chibnall would treat them like he did the Cybermen last year – with deadly earnestness. I was laughing my head off at the delightful rapport between the two soldiers (‘You look really disgusting’) and their shared laughter at the oncoming massacre. Oh ye of little faith, Joe – this turns out to be the best Sontaran season ever.
After a ton of random set pieces throughout the episode, Chibnall climaxes The Halloween Apocalypse with a humdinger as the Flux sets its sights upon the Earth and the Doctor ingeniously organises the Lupari ships into a protective shield around the planet. We’ll skip over the notion of cutting off our access to the sun for the sakes of such an ambitious effects sequence that really looks cinematic. The Doctor punching the console and unleashing the vortex on the Flux is way cool. Sometimes Doctor Who is so dynamic.
Segun Akinola. You’ve just got it. The music at the climax gave me goosebumps. It’s epic and foreboding and has a sweeping majesty. I was transfixed.
The Bad: What the hell is happening to the TARDIS? She appears to be bleeding throughout the Flux season and the space inside is being reorganized and distorted and yet there is zero explanation about why throughout the six-hour run time. This is Chibnall playing a long game with his audience.
Why is Azure hanging out in the Artic Circle? I’m not sure that is ever explained. The joy of that scene is seeing Rochenda Sandall out of make up before she is poured into it for the remaining five episodes and giving a more naturalistic performance. I suppose after the last couple of seasons we have come to expect exotic locales in Doctor Who and this convincingly depicted, even if they clearly didn’t trudge out into the wintry wilds to film this.
I’m not going to make any serious excuses for Vinder talking to himself for the length of a bible because this is exactly the sort of Chris Chibnall exposition (it’s a very special kind that he has mastered) people agonise over but I will say that it is absolutely a good thing that there is a witness to the oncoming destruction that the Flux is wrecking on the universe.
Result: ‘Nice to meet you, Dan! Run for your life!’ What’s the most surprising thing that Chris Chibnall could have done with Doctor Who in series 13? Make it in the first place! Created during a global pandemic, we had the right to fear that Doctor Who might not make it to our screens in 2021 and in defiance of expectation Chibnall instead chooses to weaponise his limitations and create what a lot of people consider to be his finest year of Doctor Who to date. Can’t have unlimited number of actors? Chibnall writes in a guest cast that feature throughout and as a result we get to luxuriate with those characters and really get to know them. Can’t film abroad? Chibnall chooses his location filming wisely and instead takes us on a whirlwind tour of the universe to a diverse, weird and visually stunning number of CGI vistas. Can’t have an entire season of Doctor Who because of the health implications? Chibnall leans into his previous successes of heavily serialised television and creates the longest running, structurally ambitious and fluid piece of longform storytelling we have seen in Doctor Who for some considerable time. All of these things impress but what stood out for more than anything else was the insane amount of fun that Chibnall decides to have this season. Chibnall Who is a lot of things but he has never really leant into the out and out entertainment jugular before quite like this. Previously, his series seven episodes (Dinosaurs on a Spaceship and The Power of Three ) were deliriously fun to watch and I was expecting a lot more of that when he took over as showrunner. Instead, what we got was a lot more stripped back and worthy (do not read that as a negative). I never thought it would take until his third year to truly let his hair down and just embrace there fun but I am so pleased that we got here at last. A wealth of memorable and enjoyable guest characters, terrific villains and monsters, more exciting set pieces than you can shake a stick at, jokes that made me laugh out loud and a sense of dragging the audience along for a good time. Entertaining your audience is an underrated virtue and when I finished The Halloween Apocalypse, despite the universe munching Flux event that was causing mass genocide, I was tingling with pleasure from the ride I had been on. There was plenty here that was set up with no pay off, but the scenes themselves were great set pieces (the Angel attack, Diane being pulled into the house). Dan is introduced with great economy and clarity and immediately fits the series new comic tone and there is real enjoyment to be had with the Doctor/Yaz pairing that has previously been hidden to this extent. You’ll find the usual Chibbers exposition here (he has much more in common with Pip and Jane Baker than his spotty, precious youth would care to admit) and that is just an aberration in his work that you can either tolerate or not. Come episode five he takes it to meteoric levels so prepare yourself. I’m a massive fan of Star Trek and that is essentially people standing around explaining stuff all the time so I think I might be immune. What astonished me was at the climax where I felt that too many threads had been introduced and Chibnall had no hope in keeping a handle on all these characters and situations and in a nod to Broadchurch he climaxes the piece catching up with everybody and I realised with some punch the air excitement that he knew exactly where these characters were and where they were going. Stop resisting the fun, grab hold of the Grav-Bar, bounce of the mattress, leap from the miniturised house, duel with the doggie, and set vortex energy on the oncoming apocalypse. I haven’t even mentioned Swarm and Azure, two of the most exquisitely executed villains the show has ever given us. This is a gloriously entertaining start and I was absolutely on board for the ride. Segun Akinola’s music peaks at the climax: 9/10