REVIEW OVERVIEW: WHICH IS THE BEST UMBRELLA SEASON? - PART 4-A: FLUX

Finally! We've reached our third Umbrella Season. This rabbit-hole I've gone into has nearly reached its end!     

BACKGROUND: 

History appears to be repeating itself. 

Just as it did in the late 80s, Doctor Who is going through another "rough patch". BBC execs aren't out to get it, this time (mind you, they don't seem to be offering a whole lot of support, either!) but fandom definitely seems to have an axe to grind with the show. Chris Chibnall's brand of storytelling does not seem popular with certain people. Comments in fan groups are littered with disparaging remarks about the current Showrunner. 

Ratings aren't necessarily looking much healthier, either. Although this particular problem can't be truly laid at Chibnall's feet. The dip first happened toward the latter end of the Moffat era. But, regardless of who was in charge when the drop began, things are still starting to feel like they did when Colin Baker and Sylverster McCoy were the stars of the show. 

Some theorise that part of the problem lay in the controversial decision that was finally made to cast a woman as the Doctor. That the fan outcry, at least, is a none-so-cleverly veiled sense of sexism. In the same way that a lot of racists knew they couldn't openly object to Barrack Obama as President so, instead, they viciously attacked his policies - fans are criticising the writing rather than saying they can't accept a woman in the lead role. 

All this is highly speculative, of course.Whether it's true or not, the bottom line is: the show is in trouble. Again!     

But then, History repeats itself even more. In the midst of all this drama and chaos, our third Umbrella Season is born. In the same way that we got Trial of a Time Lord when the show's future was looking bleak in the late 80s, we now get Flux. 

POINTS OF CRITERIA: 

(What?! You still haven't read the intro that explains my method of analysis?! For Zarquon's Sake, what have you been doing with yourself?!!  https://robtymec.blogspot.com/2022/03/review-overview-which-is-best-umbrella.html)  

1. The Foundation 

In my Review of Trial of a Time Lord, I mention how much I enjoy the fact that the story hits the ground running. The central premise gets introduced to us in a way that doesn't slow down the narrative all that much at all. 

Mysterious Planet, however, has nothing on the breakneck speed of Halloween Apocalypse! 

The opening scene truly sets the tone. The Doctor and Yaz seem to be in the most terrible of predicaments with only seconds to find a means of escape. At the same time, some nasty alien is about to go cause a major problem for Earth (we'll find out later that this isn't quite the case!). This story is wasting no time on an info dump of any sort like the other two Umbrella Seasons did. It's getting straight into the action! 

We don't really get to the main storyline of Flux until the episode is nearly done. Poor 'ole Vinder is sitting out in his lonely space station as he watches the event begin. This is the true crux of the season: watching the Universe deal with the devastation of a major disaster. The fact that this gets introduced so late in the first part is a huge departure from how the other two seasons laid their Foundations. But it still works quite nicely.  

There is another important Foundation laid here, however. It's made clear to us in Halloween Apocalypse that we are going to get "Game of Thrones-style" storytelling. All sorts of plots and subplots get established in this first episode. As the season progresses, the threads will, eventually, come together and have a final consequence of some sort on the main story. Other shows have used this technique, of course. But Thrones is probably most famous for it. 

Without a doubt, Flux has a very different Foundation from its predecessors. But I did find it to be ridiculously effective. I might even use a superlative like "Awesome!" to describe it. As the closing credits for Halloween Apocalypse rolled up, I couldn't wait to see more! 

A Foundation can't do much better than that. 

2. Momentum

With a Foundation that is already propelling us along at a speed that is practically giving us a nosebleed, the Momentum for the rest of the season can be a very tricky thing. While the other Umbrella Seasons have Foundations that give future stories somewhere to go, Flux is already whipping along furiously in its first installment. This can be a very difficult pace to maintain.  

Somehow, though, it manages to. In fact, the Momentum of the season is nothing short of spectacular. 

It helps a lot that both War of the Sontarans and Village of the Angels are probably the best stories that ever feature these monsters. You're just a lot more engaged when you see a beloved returning foe being treated well in a story. It was especially pleasing to finally see New Who do the Sontarans right. And it stands to reason that a good story will also be well-paced. 

Mind you, from the moment Jericho opens the door to see angel statues in his front yard in Village, we get a ridiculously intense roller coaster ride that barely allows us a moment to breathe. That really was one of the maddest tempos I've ever seen a Doctor Who story move at.  

What really impresses me, however, is Once, Upon Time. It doesn't particularly benefit from a strong presence of recurring enemies (admittedly, it does get some cameos) but still hammers along at a magnificent speed. The Doctor fluttering in and out of a multitude of timelines is a great image that really does make the episode fly by. 

So the next three episodes after Halloween Apocalypse do a fantastic job maintaining the pace it sets. 

Survivors of the Flux, I find, does something different. It slows down just a bit. We get a bit of fun with Yaz, Dan and Jericho trying to escape 1904 There's also a huge pause for Tecteun to give a Division Info Dump to the Doctor. But then, of course, there's also the whole new plot involving the Grand Serpent. Something that creates, at least, a bit of Momentum by keeping us intrigued as he infiltrates UNIT over the years.  

I do feel all that happens in Survivors works quite well for the Momentum. It gives the audience just a bit of a breather before going into the Conclusion. It's exactly where this sort of thing should happen. And it doesn't slow down so much that the flow is wrecked. It just introduces a slight variation that gets the season to work better than if we'd just gotten one more episode that's trying to hurtle along like a freight train. 

I really do think, at this point in the season, this was the perfect choice.  

3. Conclusion

Using the Game of Thrones writing technique can be a very tricky thing. You've had all these plot threads running along that need to be satisfactorily resolved. Many fans of  Game Of Thrones were, in fact, not happy with how the series ended because they felt a lot of strands were not competently handled. 

As I reached the end of Flux, however, I was quite happy with how most things were addressed. I did think that Kate Stewart was under-utilised. I also felt that Williamson's tunnels probably should have done more than just get used as a bit of a convenient plot device. Having said that, however, Di's usefulness to the story was a pleasant surprise. I also really liked how Vinder and Bel don't turn out to be anything more than just lovers trying to unite across the span of a cosmic disaster. I remember reading all kinds of wild theories from fans about how their child was going to create some kind of major contribution to the show's canon. I loved that their story was far simpler than what so many suspected. 

I should probably dislike the fact that the Doctor drops her fobwatch down a deep shaft in the TARDIS console. It does smack a bit of how Key to Time ended. But, in this case, I feel that the resolution works. The Doctor has suddenly realized that she doesn't want the truth, after all. But that, maybe, someday her feelings might change. Which leaves things open for the mystery to get solved at a later juncture. 

Here's the weird thing: because I love the entire season of Flux so much, I've viewed it from beginning to end several times over. Each time I re-watch that final episode, I loved it all-the-more. To the point where I've actually stopped having any real problem with it. Nowadays, I feel all of it really fits together well. 

As pretentious as it sounds, I do think there is so much to take in as the season concludes, that you need to see it several times before you realise the whole thing really does end perfectly. All the different plot strands get the exact level of attention that they need. The various conflicts and problems are solved in just the right way. But you have to view it a few times before you can truly see how well the Big Picture is painted. Which, to me, is some damned amazing writing. 

But here's what I really love: even though we see the possibility of the Doctor hitting a sort of "cosmic re-set button" during the fifth part - she doesn't manage to do it. The after-effects of the disaster are left intact (for now, at least - perhaps the Universe will be restored in Thirteen's final story). I absolutely adore that we didn't get the usual "huge disruption to reality that is then completely fixed in a way that it seems to have never happened" plot contrivance that has occurred in so many other stories (ie: Last of the Time Lords, Big Bang, Lie of the Land etc...). It's a beautiful subversion of the usual formula we get in adventures of this nature. 

4. Coherency

Coherency in Flux is handled in the most direct of manners. Whereas Key and Trial use various framing techniques within their smaller stories, this Umbrella Season links things together by just regularly updating all of its plot strands. 

Even with episodes like War of the Sontarans that really do seem to be telling a specific, individual story, time is still taken to check up on what Vinder and Swarm and Azure are up to. We even get one of the weird out-of-nowhere cameos from Williamson (which is one of my favorite parts of the whole season - I love how he keeps showing up out of nowhere!). War of the Sontarans didn't need to do this. We could have just spent the episode watching the Potato Heads trying to pervert the course of human history and that would have been fine. But breaking away to these other strands reminded us that there was still a much bigger adventure going on that we needed to keep track of. 

All the episodes do a fair amount of this sort of thing. Village of the Angels is probably the only plot that really isolates itself that much. But even it lets us check in on how Bel and Vinder are doing in a post-credit sequence. 

Continually propelling along all these individual plot strands really keeps us conscious of the much larger tale that is going on the whole time. Of the three Umbrella Seasons, this one does the best job with Coherency. At no point do we stop experiencing how inter-connected the whole thing feels. 

And, once more, we'll grab a little break before tackling the last two Points of Criteria. We'll see you again, shortly...

I was just ranting and raving about The Flux a short while ago in a series of CHRONOLOGIES AND TIMELINES entries. Here are the links if you'd like to look at them:   

State of Flux Part One: 

https://robtymec.blogspot.com/2022/02/chronologies-and-timelines-state-of.html 

State of Flux Part Two: 

https://robtymec.blogspot.com/2022/02/chronologies-and-timelines-state-of_19.html

State of Flux Part Three:   

https://robtymec.blogspot.com/2022/02/chronologies-and-timelines-state-of_27.html