Warning: Contains Spoilers!

I’ve always loved the phrase ‘Curate’s Egg’. It’s an oddly British expression to describe something which is good in some parts and bad in others. I’ve no idea of the origin of the phrase, but I often find it useful for describing episodes of Doctor Who. The Vanquishers is a Curate’s egg, because although it was fast-moving and fun to watch, it was so jammed full of ideas that it was difficult to follow and one important plot point was muffed so badly that, if the online reaction is anything to go by, a lot of people (well-known Doctor Who aficionados included) missed it completely. It was always going to be muddled, that much was obvious by the sheer weight of questions that were posed by the previous 5 episodes. We all remember The Ultimate Foe and how it floundered to patch up the holes created by the previous 12 episodes of The Trial of a Time Lord – but this should have been easier, it was all one writer and didn’t suffer the misfortune of having one of its progenitors drop dead before the scripts could be completed.

With only 6 episodes to weave together, you would think that any scenario Chris Chibnall posited for the first episode of Flux would have a resolution pre-prepared and ready to be worked towards, but that doesn’t always seem to have been the case. That’s the recommended way to work with any story, even one as long as this – you come up with the set up, you come up with the resolution, then it’s a case of working from Point A to Point B. You might go to Point Z somewhere in the middle, but that should be well behind you by the time you approach the climax and your only target should be Point B. The problem with The Vanquishers is that it’s still in Point Z when it should be heading back to Point B, so the final resolution feels like a mad dash. Don’t get me wrong, as mad dashes go, it’s exciting and breath-taking, but in those moments after you’ve got your breath back, you find yourself thinking, “Hang on, did I miss something…?”

The previous episode ended with the Doctor being advanced upon by Swarm, who was going to disintegrate her, and Azure, who was going to open up the fob-watch containing all of her suppressed memories. However – for the second time this series – with one bound our hero was free. The Doctor’s not out of the woods yet though, because she ends up destabilised in time and split between three places; one version remains with Swarm and Azure, another is with Yaz, Dan and Williamson in the tunnels underneath 1904 Liverpool and yet another finds herself on board the stolen Lupari spacecraft, rescuing Bel and Karvanista from marauding Sontarans. In Scenario 1, Azure opens the fob watch, but whereas these Gallifreyan Memory Keepers have in the past had an effect that is dramatic and instantaneous, this one just takes the Doctor back to that monochrome crooked house. Swarm and Azure (who’re somehow also in this delusion) tell the Doctor all her memories are in the house. What… she’s got a choice? That’s not how it’s worked in the past.

Anyway, having identified a weakness in the shield around the Earth, the Sontarans have invaded for the second time in as many weeks and concocted a devious plan. They will torture humans into revealing the location of the final Flux event… wait a minute, why would humans know that? Never mind. Anyway, once they know that, they will lure the battle fleets of their deadliest rivals the Daleks and the Cybermen there for peace talks ‘cos, y’know, the Daleks and Cybermen have always been big on peace. But, it’s a trap and the matter of the combined fleets will combine with the antimatter of the Flux and slow it down. Devious or what? But no-one on earth seems to know the location of the Final Flux Event. No s**t, Sontarlock. When she learns of this plan, the Doctor, still split into three, comes up with a plan, which involves tracking down Claire (who’s no longer part-Angel, but is still psychic) and having her and Professor Jericho let themselves be captured.

Claire reveals the location of the Final Flux Event to the Sontarans and they put their plan into effect, but the Doctor turns their own devious scheme against them, having Karvanistar disperse the shield of Lupari ships that is protecting the Sontaran fleet, so all of the Sontarans, Daleks and Cybermen are destroyed by the Flux, then the Flux is absorbed by a Passenger. Do we get an explanation of what the Passengerforms are and where they come from? What do you think! How about an explanation of how the Doctor is able to take control of one of the Passengers? Don’t hold your breath. So, the Flux is gone and all of the parts of the universe that it destroyed have been somehow miraculously restored, though you may not have realised that depending on if you’re one of the multitude of people who blinked and missed that explanation.

Okay, in fairness to the production team, it is mentioned that eliminating the Flux at the Final Flux Event will reverse all of its previous destruction (though it isn’t explained how) – but it’s done with such a gabbled throwaway line that it’s almost impossible to catch in the dialogue. I’ll come clean and admit that I missed it first time around and only picked it up on a second viewing. And from a brief scan of the Internet, I’m by no means alone; there are thousands of others who didn’t pick this up – including writers and industry professionals on their Facebook and Twitter pages! For a series in which exposition played such a massive part to let such an important piece of exposition – probably the most pivotal piece of exposition of all – just slip by unnoticed is simply exasperating. Come on, guys, you need to be better than this; surely to God somebody noticed at some point in the whole production process that this wasn’t made clear enough!

And before somebody steps up and says that Doctor Who is a show that is made to be viewed and re-viewed – NO IT ISN’T. No TV show is like that. As Doctor Who fans (or Star Trek fans or whatever) we watch the show we love again and again, but we are in the vast minority in doing so. Any show made solely for die-hard fans is destined to fail; you have to attract a bigger audience in order to justify your budget and that audience is casual viewers. Unless you’re something like Twin Peaks, which is essentially art-house television, you can’t be impenetrable and expect your casual viewers to tune in week after week. People get pissed off if they can’t understand what is going on and the viewing figures start to drop off. It’s entirely possible to write a good, solid science fiction story with relatable characters that will entertain fans and casual viewers alike without resorting to showy labyrinthine posturing and multitudes of unresolved loose ends.

Back to the story. The Doctor’s three parts have been reunited and she is taken to the Temple of Atropos to be sacrificed in front of their master, the personification of Time. But, it seems Time was not released because the Flux failed to destroy the universe. The swirly purple special effect used for the arrival of ‘Time’ and for when he/she destroys Swarm and Azure for their failure is really rather poor and reminds me of the Mr. Whippy time scoop from the dreadful special edition of The Five Doctors. Time does not destroy the Doctor, but warns her that her time is coming to an end, in exactly the same way that David Tennant and possibly Matt Smith were both warned. Unwilling to face her past after years of chasing it, the Doctor drops the fob watch into the inner workings of the TARDIS… and that’s sort of the end. There’s probably more to it than that, but it’s so convoluted that I’ve neither the time nor the energy to relate it.

I’m not sure how I feel about an anthropomorphised representation of Time being a villain. Although Doctor Who has always been a fantastical series, it has more or less adhered to the accepted laws of physics, even striving to be educational on occasions. Having ‘Time’ as a mystical character instead of a mechanical function of the physical universe plunges the series into the realms of all-out fantasy, with God-like beings and magical powers replacing the unfathomable wonders of the cosmos. It doesn’t feel like the Doctor Who I’m used to; I can’t imagine William Hartnell facing up against a character who was the living embodiment of Gravity, can you? All I can say is that right now I’m getting a greater sense of wonderment and splendour from watching Professor Brian Cox’s Universe than from the wishy-washy made-up mysticism that Doctor Who is serving.

Watching The Vanquishers was a bit like having a fast-food meal; it was quick, tasty and fun while it lasted, but afterwards you begin to see the superficiality of it all. The show had barely finished before I started to notice the hanging threads. What happened to Tecteun and the two Mouri Guardians disintegrated by Swarm? It’s been well established that Swarm’s touch does not kill people, but sends them into a Passenger. The Doctor knows this because she’s seen Diane, so why does she show no interest in trying to find and rescue these people? When all is said and done, I did enjoy it, so in that respect it was a success, but it was a very shallow pond to go paddling in and one that dried up almost as soon as I’d left it. That’s why I called it a Curate’s Egg, because on a very superficial level, The Vanquishers was a success, but observed from even so much as millimetre closer, it is absolutely full of holes.

However, whatever The Vanquishers may have lacked on the scripting front, it more than made up for with acting talent. Jodie Whittaker gives what is probably her best performance as the Doctor so far – or should that be Doctors, as there are three of her? It’s a more thoughtful performance than last year’s The Timeless Children, which veered a little towards the melodramatic for my taste. Kevin McNally was superb as Professor Jericho and it’s a shame that the character was killed off because he could have made a great recurring sidekick for the Doctor. Although well capable of doing something more dramatic, John Bishop’s Dan is mainly played for comic relief, but that’s okay because A) it’s what he’s exceptionally good at and B) we’ve had too many companions in New Who with heavy emotional back-stories and it’s nice when a Graeme or a Dan turns up to add a little buoyancy to the whole affair. Mandip Gill and Annabel Scholey put in great performances as Yaz and Claire respectively, although the former doesn’t quite get the character development we’d hoped for. Fear not though, Yaz and Doctor shippers, for the final scenes suggest there may be more to come.

The forthcoming festive special Eve of the Daleks (showing on New Year’s Day, surely they could have squeezed it in a day earlier to make sense of the title) looks to be a standalone, much like the previous couple, but we’ve still got two more specials after that before the end of the Thirteenth Doctor’s run. I’m still holding out a strong hope that the final two specials will neatly sew up some of the gaping holes in the Thirteenth Doctor’s era. I may have been critical of some of the decisions made in The Vanquishers, but looked at as a whole, Flux has easily been the best season of Doctor Who for a number of years. The best analogy that I can come up with is that it was like the most recent Star Wars trilogy: individually each part was entertaining, but it’s clear there was an overall lack of direction and we were left with a lot of unanswered questions at the end. It’s too late for Star Wars to fix that, but it’s not too late for Doctor Who. Call me an optimist if you must, but I’m hoping for a crackerjack ending for Jodie Whittaker’s time on the show.

Doctor Who: Flux can be watched on the BBC i-Player in the UK.