The third episode of the short event series that is Doctor Who Flux is something of a misfire. After the first episode was filled with fun and set up many different plot points (border line too many for one episode) last week’s episode started to narrow it’s focus to start making sense of some of the threads that had been started in episode one.
Episode 3 was something of a confusing episode that I genuinely had to watch a second time to fully get my head around. That isn’t to say it was bad, but they sure didn’t make this as easy to digest as they could have.
This episode was a bit like Quantum Leap, where we had characters playing other characters and we would see brief flashes of who the actual characters were to help us make sense of it. It was also like that episode The Wedding of River Song where all time happens together at once. Details of the various times we saw were said to be wrong or out of place, giving the whole episode a strange dream like quality.
I feel like this will be an episode that you will be able to fully appreciate once you’ve seen the whole series and more things that we saw in it make sense with full context. It did bring back Jo Martin’s Fugitive Doctor (who is now credited as such at the end) and we see her as something from the Doctor’s personal time stream. This would seemingly confirm that she is actually from the Doctor’s history and yes at some point all the questions of how that can make sense may have to be addressed. If nothing else Clara was spread across the Doctor’s whole history in his time stream previously and never met the Fugitive Doctor, although as we know the War Doctor had also been hidden. So time will tell.
we also learn more about Vinder and are introduced to Bel, who is carrying his child. Rumours are already that the child will turn out to be the Doctor and this will explain the origin of the Time Lords. This will also give us the Doctor’s parents on screen and fill in that part of the history more fully.
We again see Swarm in his previous incarnation and learn how he was defeated by the Fugitive Doctor previously. This adds some, but not quite enough backstory to who Swarm is and there’s still a lot of unanswered questions about the timeliness child storyline and how the Fugitive Doctor fits in.
Yaz meanwhile has run ins with Weeping Angels and is stalked by one who appears in a video game and as seen previously with Amy Pond is able to escape an image to become real. This ties into the ending when the Doctor is able to bring Yaz, Dan and Vinder to the present only to find that a Weeping Angel has found its way into the Tardis in a dramatic cliffhanger.
Conclusion
This was a bit all over the place, but feel it will grow on viewers more with time. There are still many questions to be answered and once they are I’m confident this will require more viewings.
