Doctor Who recap: Flux chapter two – War of the Sontarans

If you expected the season-long continuous story that is Flux to settle down into more of a regular one-story-a-week pattern after last week’s fragmented intro, you will know by now that that isn’t the case. Chris Chibnall wasted no time in splitting the Doctor, Yasmin and Dan off into three separate adventures that tied together at the end – one historical, one contemporary Earth invasion, and one future outer-space. Three flavours of Doctor Who for the price of one.

The Doctor (Jodie Whittaker) was fending off a Sontaran assault on the British army during the Crimean war, encountering nurse Mary Seacole (Sara Powell). There were lessons both on the futility of war and the positivity and compassion of Seacole, who came to the aid of an ungrateful wounded Sontaran, who wished that death would “rain down on” her in return. Seacole’s line – “If we all of us waited to be sent for, we would none of us find our purpose” – resonated heavily.

John Bishop found his purpose all right, and Dan shone in this episode, with all the best lines. We had seen him in publicity stills armed with a giant wok, and soon discovered that it was for whacking Sontarans unconscious in contemporary Liverpool. We got to briefly meet his parents, and I was glad to see Karnavista (Craige Els) turn up again to rescue Dan near the end. He is rapidly becoming my favourite recurring alien of the Chibnall era, and the way they quipped with each other ended up like a very enjoyable buddy movie. It’s a double act I would like to see more of in coming chapters.

Over all, War of the Sontarans was fast-paced and – most importantly – fun. The effects shots were again top notch, but if you were going to fault this episode, the Sontarans did end up suddenly dispatched quite easily (it was awfully convenient that just one ship crashing into their entire fleet on Merseyside could cause a temporal explosion that wiped them out). And is it really plausible they would leave their Sevastopol camp totally unguarded while they all had a precisely 7.5 minute rest period at the same time? It is well established that Sontarans can be a bit arrogant and dim at times, but even so …

Sum it up in once sentence?

A Sontaran plan to invade the whole of Earth’s history is thwarted by a dog, and a man with a wok, and because they all needed a quick nap in the 1850s.

Life aboard the Tardis

Yaz (Mandip Gill), meanwhile, found herself in a mysterious time and place where she met Vinder, and then fell foul of what looks so far to be the season’s main villains. Her willingness to try to throw herself into dangerous situations like the Doctor would have worked well in rescuing Dan last week. This week, getting bogged down into trying to repair the Moirai, not so much.

And Vinder? Jacob Anderson’s character is still very much an unknown quantity, both personality and history-wise, but we do now know he is “shamed, disgraced and rejected”. And was there meant to be a frisson of potential love interest between him and Yaz when they met?

Fear factor

In the brightly lit studio surrounds of the Temple of Atropos, Swarm and his sister Azure didn’t come off anywhere near as creepy as last week. In fact, there was an element of camp Rocky Horror Show about Sam Spruell and Rochenda Sandall’s performances, which wasn’t entirely unwelcome, but wasn’t quite what I had expected, given their introduction. I am in awe of those shoulder pads, though.

As for the Sontarans, they were a pleasing mix of bloodthirsty and deadpan. Jokes about having picked Crimea to invade because they wanted to ride horses were offset by the summary executions of trespassers in Liverpool and their willingness to relentlessly massacre their enemies on the battlefield.

Mysteries and questions

“Time is evil and it will seek its own,” said the automated priest. Did this episode set up the behaviour of time itself as the big bad for the series? By the time the full ensemble had reconvened for the finger-clicking cliffhanger, there had been plenty of hints that the whole workings of the universe somehow relied on time being kept in check by the silent and mysterious Moirai.

There was no word on what happened to Dan’s would-be girlfriend, Di. Or any sign of Intriguing Claire. And just the one brief, baffling appearance in space by the 1820 Liverpool industrialists who were presumably building the real-life Williamson Tunnels when we saw them last week.

And did I miss a trick last week? There was lots of speculation that rather than simply absorbing some energy as he killed novice Division member K-Toscs, the change of actor playing Swarm from Matthew Needham to Sam Spruell along with the special effects indicated he had undergone a form of regeneration in chapter one. Notably he said he was “renewed at last”, just as Patrick Troughton had described his change from William Hartnell as the Doctor in 1966 (“I’ve been renewed”). In a series that threatens to reveal more about the origins of the Timeless Child and where the Time Lords obtained the power to regenerate, that seems … potentially significant?

Deeper into the vortex

• This episode is the first time the Sontarans have appeared as the main titular protagonists in a Doctor Who adventure since The Sontaran Stratagem / The Poison Sky in 2008, although Commander Kaagh was also the main foe in the Sarah Jane Adventures story The Last Sontaran, released in the same year. Since then, they have mostly appeared as either cameos (in The End of Time and The Pandorica Opens) or comic relief (every single episode with Strax).

• Speaking of Strax, you probably recognised the actor who played him, Dan Starkey, as nearly every Sontaran underling who appeared in tonight’s episode. He has really cornered the market in potato-heads.

• The Sontaran commander refers at one point by name to Linx, the first Sontaran we ever met, who claimed planet Earth for the Sontaran empire in 1973 episode The Time Warrior. He even planted a little flag.

• They did not get named in the credits, but I am going to assume the statue/people in the Temple of Atropos were based on the Greek mythology of the Moirai, or Fates, one of whom was called Atropos. I was getting distinct Sisterhood of Karn vibes from them as well.

• Just me, or did that cantankerous Priest Triangle’s attitude remind anyone else of sarcastic know-it-all computer Orac from Blake’s 7?

• At one point the Sontarans invoked the Shadow Proclamation, who uphold galactic law – first mentioned by the Doctor in Russell T Davies’s 2005 relaunch story Rose, and eventually seen on-screen in 2008’s The Stolen Earth.

• The Doctor’s disgust with humans after General Logan (Gerald Kyd) blew up a retreating enemy echoed the 10th Doctor’s response to prime minister Harriet Jones destroying the fleeing Sycorax in The Christmas Invasion in 2005.

• It was sad to hear this week of the death of Bob Baker, a writer who contributed greatly to Doctor Who, including as the co-creator of the Doctor and Sarah Jane Smith’s best friend – robot dog K-9. There’s a lovely obituary here from Toby Hadoke.

Next time

Once, Upon Time is the awkwardly titled next chapter. “Time is beginning to run wild” according to the synposis, and we saw a brief glimpse of returning Cybermen in the trailer. Excellent.