#doctor who: flux

[intuitive-revelations]

Rewatched Heaven Sent a couple weeks ago (I was flying back from a research conference in San Francisco, and British Airways had it available to watch, which was a pleasant surprise) and man, I've got to ramble a bit...

Something-something about how the Confession Dial is clearly pulling elements from the Doctor's childhood. This has been said before of course, but when you really pull everything together, it sure does paint a picture.

It's unclear whether this was the original intent for the soul-catching ritual (which is presumably what the dials are used for, making them a sort of Matrix data slice like Nethersphere), or something added by the Time Lords in corrupting it into a torture chamber, but it's there.

From the teleportation chamber loom...

...to the night sky being a 'burnt orange'...

...to the lilies flowers of remembrance for the lost dead...

...to sentient buildings...

...to that internal soup parallel, both alone in the dial and surrounded by their cousins at the barn...

...to the jars of dust.

And speaking of that "tall woman" in a "grey shawl", who is also oddly oversized, as if putting the Doctor in the perspective of a child,

and is explicitly a nightmare from the Doctor's childhood:

a woman who died, but seemingly passed away far quicker than anyone around her expected (and all the implications relating to that and connecting to the identity of the Hybrid)...

Finally, and this is definitely a stretch, but think back to the room numbers. The Doctor has to find room 12.

Fittingly. But if 12 corresponds to the Twelfth Doctor, then what about those other rooms...?

They must also correspond to incarnations, right? It's not like the God Complex - there was only ever one prisoner in the confession dial, after all.

Incarnations, numbering "a bit confused", in a fascimile of the Doctor's childhood home? Huh...

"Illogical house, a construction that makes no sense..."

[thirteenthdoctorscreencaps]

[nightmanatee]

there’s something about yaz saying “something’s wrong with the universe. saw it myself.” and then 13 acts weirdly and she screams at yaz and she’s being mardy and she’s passive-aggressive and stuff (and yaz sees it herself). and she’s IS the universe and the universe is hiding secrets from yaz and is broken and is so not okay. i mean (flux ep2 vs flux ep1 vs flux ep6):

and then AND THEN of COURSE yaz is here to repair. of course she wants to repair time that is breaking/traumatazing/taking the doctor away from her. and of COURSE those triangles think that she IS repair: (flux ep2):

bc 13 is the universe and the universe is broken and it STAYS broken even after flux but yaz is here to repair to heal and to save 13 from time.

[thirteensfavoritetoy]

In the description box:

The Flux wasn't the first big threat the Doctor and Yaz faced together - but it certainly brought them closer!

We love you little gay intern ❤️❤️❤️

[t0o-m4ny-f4nd0ms]

Pretty sure Karvanista is coming back for the power of the doctor. If you look at the design on the lupari ship from flux, looks pretty similar to the promo shot of the cybermen from the centenary

Thoughts ?

[readingoodbooks]

[COLLEZIONISMO] Doctor Who: Flux - The Complete Thirteenth Series

[rocks-in-space]

Currently thinking about how the journey 13′s been on contemplating who she could have been before Tecteun’s and the Division’s interference parallels what the Master must have been feeling when he discovered the timeless child.

“A little piece of you is in me. All I am is somehow because of you, and believe me when I say, I cannot bear that.” But also that the Time Lords messed with his DNA, with all of their DNA. Decided for them that they weren’t enough as they were and needed to be modified to be superior, to be good tools. And the Master already has experience with that with the sound of drums they put into his head, but now he knows that there is no part of his identity that was untouched by this imperialism. Surely he must be thinking about who he could have been and what his life could have been like without that intrusion.

“I gave you a life. Everything you are is because of me. But I understand. You think you could have been something else, someone else.”

And how he gets 13′s attention, by altering the DNA of the spies! This post is what made me think of that. He’s lashing out, and giving her a horribly twisted clue!

AND the way he tries to reclaim agency by bonding with the Cyberium!! 13 is chasing the stolen memories of her past trying to regain some control and knowledge of herself, and the Master is doing the same thing! If they’re going to modify him, might as well do it himself on his terms, using this reclamation of agency as an avenue of revenge against the Time Lords.

Anyway the parallels in this era will be the death of me

[dwimpossblog]

War of the Sontarans

The Sontarans are fighting the British in the Crimean War - something has definitely gone wrong with time! War of the Sontarans is this week's #TBT!

[cynicalclassicist]

On realising the religious allusions going on in Doctor Who: Flux, suddenly it takes on a new level to me! I was thinking today about how 13 getting turned into an Angel and taken up by the Angels to meet a Founder figure felt like a parody of ascension... and then it snowballed out!

[anxietyriddenhuman]

Doctor Who: The Jodie Whittaker Era's Most Burning Questions

All excellent points.

[intuitive-revelations]

I'm so glad we FINALLY have (some) acknowledgement of the destruction of the Flux.

(For a moment I even thought it was going to be a bigger part of the plot of this episode, based on the emptiness on the edge of the universe setting, before I remembered RTD suggested it was a relatively small part of the story.)

Even as someone who genuinely loved series 13 (and I did!), I felt even at the time the way it was wrapped up was by far the weakest part.

Like, it's insane that this would be all that remains of the universe? You can literally see the individual spiral galaxies? While it's not at the exact centre, at least spatially, I'm pretty sure that the main spiral galaxy visible is the Milky Way. That's only like a few local groups wide, and even that's stretching it, going more by the density of galaxies than their relative distances. If we were doing the latter we'd be lucky to even squeeze in that.

At best, we can maybe imagine the map is logarithmic or something, but even then you can see galaxies quite close to the edge proving it's not scaling that quickly.

And remember this is before the 'final flux event'! The universe is probably even smaller by the end of the series. Thankfully we know it wasn't spreading evenly, so it reaching Earth in the finale doesn't necessarily mean it wiped out the rest of the galaxy around it.

However, even if we're really generous, and assume the CGI isn't representative of the narrative, "half the universe" is still likely understating it.

The universe is basically dead. The Flux pretty much succeeded.

(And you thought the entropy wave in Logopolis was bad?)

The only reason the DW!Earth isn't in chaos right now is that it's still got the incoming light from the destroyed universe, since the flux event itself happened in the modern day and not retroactively like the reality bomb.

Like... sure most of the stuff we care about as viewers remains, since a lot of it was in or near the Mutter's Spiral / Milky Way (Earth, Gallifrey, Mondas, Skaro and Sontar in satellite galaxies etc. - although even then some sources disagree on most of those), but anything else? Basically any other galaxy (eg. the Isop Galaxy) and any planets that we don't already know to be local to the Mutter's Spiral are gone, with all the potential retcon ramifications that comes with.

Sure, it was implied that it could potentially be restored, based on the whole 'compression' thing, but the Doctor was never actually able to do this. We didn't see her do so, nor were ever told so.

The fact the next two specials also included space-time being weird (seriously what was up with those constellations in Legend of the Sea Devils?!), gave me hope that restoring/'regenerating' the universe would have been a part of the central plot of Power of the Doctor, but that obviously didn't end up being the case...

[thirteenthdoctorscreencaps]

[nightmanatee]

the way 13 goes from not caring about the view/standing in front to trying to impress yaz/standing behind her/enjoying the view (yaz)

[thirteensfavoritetoy]

Got a question about the Hologram scene in "Survivors of the Flux" in case anyone happens to know the answer:

Has anyone ever read or seen anything about whether Jodie & Mandip filmed the scene together & were able to react to one another's lines, OR if their parts were filmed separately & their "reacting" to each other was due to editing?

[t0o-m4ny-f4nd0ms]

a list of tragic thasmin songs that’ll make you sob like a little bitch (curated by yours truly) - part 1.

the night we met - marianne beaulieu & justin beaulieu

from yaz’s perspective, post regeneration, this song to me depicts how yaz would be feeling after just having lost her version of the doctor.

“I had all of you, then most of you, some of you now none of you… I don’t know what I’m supposed to do haunted by the ghost of you… take me back to the night we met”

We know that if yaz could redo her journey with the doctor, she’d do it in a heartbeat.

the last time - taylor swift & gary lightbody

from yaz’s perceptive, set during series twelve but mainly during flux. yaz, so desperate to make this work, so desperate to be there for the doctor, her friend - maybe something more, but how hard should she have to beg for someone to let her in?

“this is the last time im asking you this, put my name at the top of your list, this is the last time im asking you why, you break my heart in the blink of an eye”

find my way back - eric arjes

from the doctors perspective. set in between the timeless children and revolution of the daleks. the one thing the doctor thought about all throughout prison was getting back to her fam, getting back to yaz. despite everything the universe has thrown at her, the doctor found her way back to yaz.

“even if you slip away, ill be holding on to you…no distance could ever tear us apart. there’s nothing that I wouldn’t do, I’ll find my way back to you”

the 1 - taylor swift

from the doctors perspective. post legend of the sea devils. perfectly captures everything the doctor feels about yaz. to the doctor, yaz is the one and if it could’ve worked out, if time weren’t a factor, it would’ve been everything she could’ve ever wanted and more.

“if my wishes came true, it would’ve been you…I have this dream you’re doing cool shit, having adventures on your own… if one thing had been different, would everything be different?”

[veshialles]

really appreciate how Segun's Sontaran theme sounds so much like Mars, Bringer Of War. Very fitting