All New Who

{{ So the finale of the Flux. Did it wrap everything up and give us answers? Well no it didn't even really try except in the most shallow fashion.

Its easier at the end of this six part run to go through each episode and point out all the things that have no explanation or reason for or which were simply a waste of everyone's time.

Episode 1- Why is Kavernista trying so hard to kill the Doctor and Yaz if they were once the best of friends, all that happened is she has forgotten, so why is he trying to kill her and why does he just stop and never try or want to again after this opening? If Dan is his human he has to rescue why does he keep trying to shoot him? Why don't the other Lupari collect their humans upon arrival? If the plan has changed to form a shield instead why does Kavernista keep trying to find his human throughout the story?

Why did Passenger take Diane? How did it know who she was and she'd be important to Dan? Why was it even on Earth? Why was she the only random human it took?

Claire and her angel- if the angel in Claire was on the run from the others why did they send her back to 1901 when they caught her? If they sent her back as a trap for the Doctor how was it supposed to work? The Doctor ends up in 1901 by being hijacked she isn't looking for Claire and hasn't mentioned her once. So what was the point of the Angels actions?

The Flux wipes out entire suns and planets reducing them to dust, but we see planets have also partly survived it but this is never explained beyond a very vague 'sometimes it does that'. This is just the start of contradictions about the Flux's powers and scale.

Where was the Grand Serpent ruler of? He appears to be the leader of some large inter-galactic empire in episode one, then some sort of out of a job ex-leader working freelance when next we see him, what happened? How did he go from Vinder's supreme leader to wandering about on his own doing work for Sontarans?

Vinder and Bel- why? really is the main question with them. Why are they here at all? In this Vinder is set up as someone who went against authority for the right reason and got punished with a solo posting to the middle of nowhere, but none of this comes into play again at any point, not plot wise or character. Had we just met him wandering the partly destroyed galaxy later looking for Bel it would be exactly the same- none of this set up serves any purpose. Its not like its important to set up his personality as it turns out they wont bother fleshing him out beyond looking for girlfriend for the six episodes anyway. And linking him to the Grand Serpent makes no difference, his name doesn't come up with Vinder until they meet again right at the end and then the Grand Serpent doesn't even know who he is.

Ep 2- The Sontarans. They somehow unseen by anyone snuck onto Earth in a massive fleet just before the Lupari put up their planet covering shield. No one on Earth seems to have a response to this and we see no reaction at all from anyone on Earth to an alien race putting a shield all round the planet- and how is there still sunlight and stuff? Aren't the Lupari covering the whole planet? And didn't the Flux destroy the rest of the solar system when it swept through at the end of episode 1?Talking endings, how did we get from TARDIS in the path of the Flux to the Crimea in the past? There is zero explanation for this.

What was the point of the Sontaran's plan? They went back in time to Crimea to infiltrate and set themselves up as a power on earth in the past- why not a more primitive time when it would have been much easier, before Empires? And this plan has nothing to do with their main plan in the final episode so what was the point of doing this at all? At this point the Sontarans appear not have the final plan which means they don't have a means to survive the Flux, so this entire plan is pointless as even if they took Earth it would still be wiped by the Flux in the future.


Ep 3- This gives us the secret shouldn't exist planet Time with it Mouri people that run the Time thing there. So what is this planet? What does it do? Why does it exist? Who built it? Who are the Mouri? What exactly is it they do? Well by series end the answers to all of these questions is- no idea. After this episode we never go back there, they get one mention in the finale but it doesn't answer anything. The entire planet is just a cheap plot device to have a lot of mixed up flashback scenes to fill in backstory.
And the backstory we get is all but useless- we find out why Vinder got exiled it sets up the Grand Serpent too as the powerful empire leading leader, then that's never mentioned again.

Yaz backstory is even more pointless and is only there to set up next weeks Angels episode, how the Angels get into the time stream, why they follow Yaz in particular when they are after the Doctor and never bother with Yaz again on a personal level is all again unexplained by the end.

Dan's flashback turns out to be the weirdest of all, as it concerns him seeing would be girlfriend Diane and her being angry he missed their date -given how their relationship weirdly ends in ep 6 with her complaining about this minor thing, and given the reason why he never showed up and all she has been through should show her, yeah that's a good reason, this is still the thing they choose to pin their relationship on.

And it ends with an Angel getting on the TARDIS via Yaz's phone. How did it get on her phone? Stop asking questions there aren't answers for!

The Doctor story involves her trying to rescue everyone else from their time streams and discover her memories, she relives the Ruth Doctor raid on the Temple that originally captured Swarm and Azure. Why Ruth has a police box TARDIS before Hartnel still remains unexplained by series end. Also worked alongside Karvinessta? How? That would have been thousands of years before, and if the Ruth stuff is set as stated in the Dark Times then we are talking billions of years ago. Karvineesta states he doesn't have time travel so how can he be alive still? This is never even mentioned.

Ep 4- Ok so the Weeping Angels for some unexplained reason have an army of Angels asleep in what looks like a neolithic burial mound just waiting for the Doctor to be trapped here? The Angels plan is to use the Angel in Claire to lure the Doctor to them so they can transport her to Division HQ. Why not just do that in episode one, or at any point during this episode, why does it need to be here? What was the point of the whole Claire plan if they were just going to hijack the TARDIS and fly it here anyway? And why not land right at this tomb thing from the off? And when did the Angels make this deal with Angel in Claire, according to Claire the deal is only made at the end at the tomb. But if that's the case then the Angels were genuinely trying to catch Claire/Angel in episode one, so why did they zap her back in time instead to here? And if they just wanted the Doctor here why not just hijack her as they did anyway and not bother with the rest of this elaborate pointless plan?
And the Doctor is turned into an Angel, just for a laugh as it turns out, and its immediately undone within 10 seconds of the next episode starting.

Ep 5- Survivors of the Flux- So Yaz, Dan and the professor from previous episode escape the village- how is not explained, it was last seen removed from space and time with them trapped in it with young girl Penny. This episode opens with just Yaz, Dan and the Professor in South America three years later. Where is Penny? No mention at all. How did they escape? No mention at all. How did the village get back to its proper space and time? No mention at all. The three of them are on a globe trotting quest to find the date of the Flux event and its eventual destruction of the universe, that the Doctor for reasons unknown thinks past human civilisations seers and prophets would have recorded. So they go tomb raiding for ancient artefacts to find the all important date. Meanwhile agents of the Grand Serpent try to kill them and stop them. How does he even know what they are doing? Or who they are? They are acting on a holographic message left by the Doctor with Yaz. How would he know their plan or what they are doing? And even if he did know why is he trying to stop them, he and the Sontarans are trying to determine the same date, if they lead right to it all the better surely? Again there are no explanations. Bad guys working for the Grand Serpent are just after them because.

Then they find a comedy seer up a mountain who tells them instead to 'fetch their dog' and the entire date thing vanishes out the story never to be mentioned again. So they paint a message that somehow Karvenistaa sees from space in the future. So basically all that happens here is they escape by unknown means, run about doing a pointless soon to be forgotten task for no reason and most of the running time, then just leave a message and get rescued, the end.

And then there is the Grand Serpent- he is on earth in the 1960's at the founding of UNIT. His plan is to infiltrate UNIT, get to the top and then undermine it so that it gets shut down by the year 2021. We have to jump ahead to the final episode here as the reason he is doing this rather illustrates why the whole thing is pointless and makes no sense. We are told he is doing all this as means to allow the Sontarans to invade Earth in 2021.
However we know by the end what the Sontaran plan was for the invasion- to board and kill the Lupari taking control of their ships and Flux defying shield, to send troops and ships to the surface and take control. There are millions of them all invading at once. It would make not the slightest difference if UNIT existed or not. The entire purpose for the whole Grand Serpent sub plot is rendered useless by the fact it doesn't even factor into the Sontaran's plans in the slightest.

And then we have the Doctor and Division, and the discovery the Division is apparently one old woman and an Ood controlling all of Space and Time and armies of Weeping Angels. There may be more running the Division, but if so they don't get a mention, never see anyone else and Tectahuan acts like she is the only person running it. We do find out however that the Division created the Flux to destroy the universe, as Division is moving to a neighbouring universe to run it instead. And they are doing this because the Doctor giving people hope all the time was somehow interfering with plans of Division. We never know what those plans are, we never know how they are interfered with exactly, and we don't know how the Doctor giving hope to anyone somehow means the entire universe needs to be destroyed rather than say just her.

I mean they bring the Doctor to Division where she is utterly at their mercy. Why don't they just do that and kill her from the off instead of a hugely dangerous plan to destroy the entire universe just to get her and moving to another one? Or if for some reason they cant destroy the Doctor put her in another universe. No, they think its better to wipe out their entire universe and make a risky manoeuvre of transferring to another and trying to take control of it instead, just to kill the Doctor.

Then they invite her to come with them anyway!

The Division's plan is bat shit crazy, makes not a jot of sense, and could have been accomplished much easier in a ton of other more obvious ways.

The Doctor for her part s annoyed about her lost memoires and that she's has been denied her real life. Not you know that her supposed 'mother' tortured her over and over by repeatedly murdering her and forcing her to regenerate to learn the secrets of it. That doesn't warrant a mention in this mother/daughter conversation. And of course Techy has all the Doctor's lost memories she has been searching for in a Chameleon arch fob watch. So after all this info dumping about Divisions vague plans and even vaguer and stupider reasoning for things Swarm and Azure pop up and kill Techy on the spot and that's the end of her.

Ep 6- So now it all comes together in the clumsiest fashion possible. Bel having been hijacked from her story of search for Vinder, it having gone nowhere, and put into the main plot by Kavinesta, and Vinder having been hijacked from his search for Bel plot, also having gone nowhere, by Passenger now all get brought together when Diane handily and inexplicably the only person left inside Passenger – why wasn't she used for magic juice too? - and who now is a tech genius too for some reason knows how to escape. So they do and somehow send a message from there to the Doctor on Earth, and they get rescued.

Cue reunion with Bel and Vinder and the revelation they really were just two random folk looking for each other- end of their storyline. No really, that's it.

Then there is Azure and Swarm- Ive barely mentioned them throughout as everything they have done is also utterly pointless come the end. You see Swarm and Azures story makes no sense start to finish- they were personifications of servants of Time apparently, and they were out and about for unknown reasons in the past where they tried to do something on the planet Time but got caught by the Division and the Ruth Doctor and imprisoned for. One in a hi-tech spacey cage thing somewhere desolate, and the other for reasons never explained in a human form on earth in a cabin with a human husband.

They both escape in the present day when the Flux is released, let out by Division to do something that is never made clear. But its an odd choice as they are sworn to avenge themselves on Division and the Doctor in particular. They get to Division eventually and kill Techtaun immediately. Is the Division just her? Is it gone now? Is there more Division out there? Who controls the Angels now? Who knows?

Then they sort of torture the Doctor in such a fashion is allows her to be in three places at once. Then at the end having failed in their task of letting the universe be destroyed and avenging themselves on the Doctor they go before a personification of Time itself, who instantly kills them both for failing in their task.
Then for some reason Time helps the Doctor, who it had sent its lackeys to kill and get vengeance on and who it just killed for failing, instead of you know killing her on the spot itself. So what was the point of Swarm and Azure? Division simply they let them go. Why would they do that? No idea. And if the Division were the ones who started the Flux as they say then why are Swarm and Azure killed for the Flux's failure? No idea. If Time wants to triumph over Matter why would it help the Doctor out saving Matter? No idea.

Then we have the whole Sontaran invasion thing, turns out their grand plan is to use the Lupari ships shields against the Flux whilst getting all the Daleks and Cybermen to a big meeting in the path of the Flux, then drop the shields wipe out everyone else. Why would the Daleks and Cybremen agree to a meeting spot that's immediately in the path of and very close to the Flux? But this is the really good bit apparently the Flux consuming all those ships will somehow slow it or stop it because of the amount of matter. What? Its been eating suns and planets and black holes, and apparently a fleet of Dalek and Cybermen ships is now too much matter for it?

The Doctors final solution to getting rid of the Flux is to use a Passenger to absorb it because Passenger somehow contain infinite matter inside them? Wait what? How? If it was that dense it'd rip a whole in space time just by existing. And how can one Passenger pull the entire Flux into itself in about 2 seconds flat? We saw the Flux on the map thing the Ood had, its all around the universe and closing in, its encircles hundreds, thousands of galaxies still. The sheer scale of it means it would take possibly longer than the universe is old to hoover it all up like that.
But hoover the Flux up it does and then its gone, problem solved, happy ending for universe.

But hold on, what about everything that got destroyed? Like most of the universe? It didn't seem like the Flux event was undone just stopped, so is everything still screwed? Does Earth even have a sun any more? Do we even have a galaxy any more?

Oh and the entire Lupari race got wiped out by the Sontarans,but Kaveneesta survived because he had Bel to help him kill the four Sontarans that boarded their ship? Not one other Lupari survived? And worse it has no noticeable effect on Karvineestas attitude or behaviour going forwards. He has a howl about it literally, it gets a mention and a line of sympathy from the Doctor and that's it. Also hard to care when we've never seen another Lupari in six episodes, just their ships from the outside.

On the subject of Lupari are they all here, their entire species? If not did they protect their home world with a shield or just earth? This is never cleared up. And if Kavanissta can take control of every ship in the fleet when controlled by someone else like the Sontarans, how come he couldn't take control of the one ship that drifted out the shield formation and let the Sontarans through in the first place?

The Doctors story in this is the worst, as she get split in three and directs events in all the story strands. But mainly she is teased with her old memories. Swarm opens the fob watch but instead of it doing what its done every other time we've seen one opened- released all the memories instantly to the person. Here it manifests the memories as an abstract crumbling floating house. And that's as close as we get. This episode ends with the Doctor dumping the watch into the Heart of the TARDIS telling the TARDIS to keep it hidden from her unless she really asks. So after all this for the Timeless Child to this episode she has been searching for these memories, cried at her 'mother' that she felt her true life had been stolen from her without them. And she doesn't bother taking the memories back- just buries them away in the TARDIS. Maybe a symbolic gesture the whole thing was a terrible mistake and it needs buried and forgotten about going ahead.

So was it worth it? The rewriting of the Doctors origins, making her a non Time Lord non Gallifreyean super being for another universe? Causing the Division in the fans?Weighing down the job of being the first female Doctor with a super divisive story line? Was it worth it for these revelations? The memories don't matter?

The questions raised- about the Ruth Doctor, about Division, about the Flux, about the Grand Serpent, Swarm and Azure about Bel and Vinder- none of them actually mattered much or came to anything. And a huge reason for that is they're is no one to care about here. Its not about characters, its about moving writing devices about the board, putting bits of the plot into the appropriate slots. But it's not about anyone, no character gets growth, no character has a real emotional through line, and nothing that happens in the end seems to matter, not even to the Doctor, even the memories of the Timeless Child are simply discarded without attempt at answers right in front of our eyes. If the story doesn't care, and the characters don't care, why on earth would a viewer care either?

Worse is this just covers the major issues with the plot. I could write as long about the issues with characters too. Or all the smaller stuff that doesn't make sense or that causes issues- like 13's TARDIS sitting in the commander of UNIT's office for the 1960's till 2021 and none of the Doctors from 3 to 12 noticing it, hearing about it, or having it mentioned to them that an identical TARDIS to theirs is sitting in the room next door. Or the Brigadier who worked there for decades ever seeing it.
There is simply so much in these six episodes that's clumsy, badly written, exposition filled, lacking in character reasoning or motivations, lacking any sentiment or reason to care. Just a total waste of six episodes of Who.

the candy sculls say they would... rewind or whatever the flux so they could relive it over and over. Which means..