by Alex Henderson, Contributing Writer
It seems that we’ve finally arrived at the final series for not only Jodie Whittaker, but showrunner Chris Chibnall as well. There are only three specials to go after this one, but my question is, did the 13th series titled Doctor Who Flux stick the landing, or is it another example of wasted potential? I’m sadly going to have to inform you that Flux just simply isn’t good. For everything slightly good about this season, there’s something that just doesn’t work. I feel like the Whittaker era has been a misstep. After every season, I just keep waiting for it to finally get good, and now that we’ve had three complete series with her and Chibnall at the helm as showrunner, it just seems to make it all the more disappointing. Now while this is just a review of the 13th series, I feel I had to bring that up being that this is the big final attempt to win audiences over, and as you can tell it just didn’t.
As I mentioned earlier, I do think there are a few things that worked in this series, the main positive being John Bishop Playing the new companion Dan. Bishop brings a fun energy to the character, and comes across as charming overall. He’s quite funny and sympathetic without the show having to dedicate too much time to it driving away at the overall narrative. And speaking of the narrative, here I do want to say that I very much loved the idea of this continuous storyline throughout all six episodes. Typically, Doctor Who likes to stick to a more serialized way of storytelling week to week, that structure being the Tardis appears on a random alien planet or a specific time period, something is wrong causing the Doctor and her companions to investigate, they uncover a huge conspiracy, reveal it, and save the day. And if it’s not a conspiracy, you can just replace that part with the word “monster” and the structure is all the same. This is why I more than applaud Chibnill for taking a leap and doing something new with the modern era. A show that’s been around for almost 60 years needs to try something every once in a while to stay fresh, and I honestly wouldn’t mind this to be a recurring thing moving forward from time to time.
The positives don’t stop there, by the way. The decision to keep this at only six episodes allowed for what seemed to be a much higher budget, or at least spreading it around more to overall improve quality with special effects and CGI. When I saw the original cheesy makeup design for the Sontarans appearance, I did fanboy a little bit. When Russell T Davies rebooted the show in 2005, he went for a more modern design, so to see such a callback that stuck around for the majority of the story’s arc was extremely entertaining as a fan of some classic Who.
And lastly I wish to mention that Whittaker is still quite an excellent Doctor. I think she’s doing the absolute best with what she’s given to work with, and it shows in her performance. It’s a shame that she’ll be stepping down from the role soon, as she has grown on me quite a bit over the years. I hope she returns for the 60th anniversary in 2023, and I hope she had just as much fun on set as I did watching her make history as the first, but hopefully not the last, female Doctor.
Now I bring you to what was inevitable: the things that sadly just did not work for me this season. So for some reason they decided to bring U.N.I.T. back for the first time since the Peter Capaldi era, which I felt was nice at first because they seemed to be explaining the origins of how the division was originally founded. Now the origins part I didn’t really mind, as much as I just didn’t understand why they even bothered getting rid of them in the first place. This seems to be a recurring theme with Chibnall. Series 11 was completely filled with new original monsters, and was almost a complete reboot for the entire show on its own. And then as soon as we got to series 12, he did an immediate flip flop and filled almost the entire series with monsters and villains we had seen before. And while it was nice to get a few retro costumes in this series with classic villains, looking back, it seems more like nostalgia bait. That’s not to say there isn’t an effort with the overarching plot of the Flux; it just sadly came out to feel as a greatest hits of all the fan favorite villains.
Speaking of the Flux, this entire storyline just fell flat for me. Its biggest issue is that it brings so many questions to the table, while juggling all the new characters and old ones brought along for the ride. There’s a subplot with the fugitive Doctor that gets tossed into the mix, as well as exploring Tecteun more as she was teased back in series 12. I was excited to see more of these characters and have them further explored, seeing that we’re slowly reaching the edge of this new era. Last time they were brought up, they had to do with retconning the Doctor’s past pre-William Hartnell era, giving us so many questions that I just don’t think we’ll have enough time to get answered moving forward, as here we barely got anything from the reappearance of them. That now just makes me wish that whenever Davies takes over after Chibnall, he just retcons this all or finds a different way to add into canon. It wouldn’t be the first time Who has done such a thing. When the eighth doctor said he was half human in the 1996 movie, they seemed to retcon that one pretty easily, so it wouldn’t surprise me if they did the same with this subplot moving forward.
I just can’t help but feel that series 13 was a huge letdown that bit off more than it could chew. With so much crammed into such a small amount of time, I think perhaps maybe more time or more episodes with answers to hanging threads could’ve saved this series. Now I know that this series was made in the midst of a pandemic and I can’t say what or who is completely responsible for the final product on display, but only that I feel like more time in the oven and extra thought into some subplots would’ve done this storyline justice. John Bishop is quite the standout for me, as well as Whittaker, as she continues to absolutely kill it as the 13th Doctor; it’s just unfortunate that it wasn’t quite enough to save it.
Grade: D+
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