Doctor Who “Flux Chapter Six: The Vanquishers”

Well, that’s it for the Flux.  I think.

So, in the end, this mostly made sense.  Did it need all of these characters doing all those things?  I don’t know.  I suspect much of it was there to make the story run for six episodes instead of, I dunno, two or three.

But, in the end, most of the characters running around got something to do.  Did the story need Kate Stewart?  Well, I haven’t seen her in a while, and she finally got to meet this Doctor, and…well, she said she liked the Thirteenth Doctor, but they barely spoke to each other.  Meanwhile, the Sontarans actually proved useful, but it mostly came down to a single Ood splitting the Doctor into three people, able to run around and do what needed to be done.  One could keep Swarm and Azure busy.  One could rescue Karvanista and Bel from the Sontarans.  And one could go down to Williamson’s tunnels to retrieve the TARDIS while meeting up with Dan, Yaz, Jericho, and Kate.

From there, she can go rescue VInder and Diane from inside that “Passenger” thing, find Claire in the 60s to work with Jericho to trick the Sontarans into revealing their next move, and then just being where she needs to be to stop the Flux by finding out where it starts.  Ultimately, the only really unnecessary thing seems to be Vinder’s old boss the Great Serpent, and they just leave him on a very small asteroid.

I might wonder a bit about why the Doctor let the Daleks and Cybermen die, but it’s not like anyone can permanently get rid of those things.  They just keep coming back all the time.

Anyway, the Flux was antimatter.  Matter will slow that stuff down, and the Sontarans, after wiping out the rest of Karvanista’s people (boo!), took the dog-people’s shields and figured they’d just propose an alliance with the Daleks and Cybermen to “fight” the Flux while actually setting both those guys up to die.  The Doctor then had some of her people sabotage the Sontaran shields, meaning she essentially let all three armies go out and die.

Look, Sontarans just grow new ones, and the Daleks and the Cybermen have a habit of always coming back, but with two Flux waves, is there anything of the universe left?

Never mind.  The Doctor then absorbed the Flux.

Can she do that?  Apparently.

From there, it’s like everyone gets a happy ending except for the awesome Professor Jericho since his own shield was damaged, but he went out bravely facing down the Sontaran commander.  And then Swarm and Azure freed “Time,” the whole point of their using the Flux, but since they screwed it up, Time takes them out but spares the Doctor aside from a cryptic warning that her end is coming soon.

So soon?  Seriously, this was one short run for any Doctor.  That may be partly due to COVID, but still.

From there, it’s about taking everyone home, and then picking Dan up because Diane still won’t go out with him.

You’d think being on-hand to save what was left of the universe would give the guy something of a boost.  Oh well.

So, that was the Flux.  In the end, I mostly understood it, but it still had far too many characters.  It was also the end of this series of Doctor Who, leaving this Doctor’s journey to end after three specials, the first of which apparently features some Daleks.

Told ya they keep coming back.