A girl without her parents, taken in by a villainous group in order to serve their own ends. The girl has mysterious powers which enable her to survive, but also allow her new adoptive family to exploit her for their own ends… I’m talking about Anisa Lagrange in the series “The Precious Sister of the Villainous Grand Duke,” Obviously. The trope of a special child taken from their family and raised by another without their knowledge is an old one, with countless permutations. But usually, it’s a plot mechanism that allows for a few different plot points to play out that audience wishes to see. Such as the reunification of the child with the family they were stolen from, or the confrontation between them and their original family discovering there was a reason they were taken from them they didn’t know. In “The Precious Sister of the Villainous Grand Duke”, a webcomic by Ikkamnu and Éclair, illustrated by Lunaheng, this child is Anisa. Stolen from her mother, Anisa was part of the Euclid family, and was born with a special magic power that allows her to see people’s auras and cleanse them, giving them a new chance at life. As part of the LaGrange family, this proves to be pretty darn valuable as the family pits the children to kill each other in order to determine who is going to be the heir, and to do so leaves items laced with demonic energy around their estate to poison their minds and souls. Because Anisa can cleanse this, she’s able to survive without just doing murder, and changes the course of the story-- DIVISION PROTOCOLS ACTIVATE INITIATE INTRUSTION INTERUPT ESSAY - DIVISION PROTOCOLS Chaos: Well, personally I was enjoying that. Order: This isn't a game, we already retold this story with the Irish Policeman. I liked that one. Chaos: Of course you did, your name is literally Order. Order: Well don't rub it in. Anyway, what exactly is the point here? I'm sure it's all a symbol for something. Chaos: Does it? Can't I just spill out the toybox and let you step on the legos? Order: Lego is plural, you don't add the s. Chaos: Literally no one with a social life does that. Anyway, I say we let it proceed. Order: It’s a pretty weird comparison though, I mean, a Korean comic? Manga? Manhua? Doesn't really seem to have a lot to do with this. Chaos: It has everything to do with this. /End protocol Anisa makes a friend in Dietrich, her adoptive brother who helps protect her even as he himself fights and engages in the cruel machinations required to become the family heir to the LaGranges. He even begins to make pacts with demons, such as the demon Baal, who becomes quite the comic figure despite/protocol error /error/the torn mask on his face. But the access to such corrupted forces allows Dietrich to go to the main family estate, and wipe them out, converting them into demons themselves. This fulfills the prophecy from the previous romance manga series about a hybrid that would be of two races (Lagrange/Demon) and destroy the family. It can get a little confusing though, because by all accounts that prophecy was already resolved, and now we have resolved it twice. But regardless, Dietrich is now the only Lagrange left, leaving Anisa to destroy the family to save them both, but this role is taken from her at the last minute by a character she's barely known, the old man from the Lagrange family cellar who had fled there after the death of his own family. /error attempting correction/ /reversing time/ /error, attempted to reverse planet named time, now reversing concept of time/ The Doctor gets the idea to make money on Gallifrey by entering the lottery, and buying as many tickets as she can. This ends up being facilitated by the older Timelord the Rani, as she-- /error/ /end script/ DIVISION PROTOCOLS Chaos: Sorry, this is all falling apart. Order: Its a pretty simple concept isn't it, the essay is just comparing the two stories and getting them mixed up. Its a clever format decision! Chaos: But is it? Does the format change actually add anything to the story here, or the analysis? It feels like we're cutting back and forth so much that we're killing the whole flow of the story. Order: Why are you the one complaining here, you're Chaos? Chaos: That's just my name. My mom named me that. Order: Let's just reset the servers, maybe that will stop things from being in such flux. /loading /loading /essay start Before the latest episode of "The Precious Doctor of the Villainous Grand Division" aired a British politician make the absolutely ludicrous statement in a speech that the character of Anisa becoming a woman was causing a massive crime spree in Britain. After all, if the heroine of a girl's romance manga can't be a man, then what sort of role models would men have left? This has been a big problem since the start of the series after all, with countless men online stomping their feet and screaming that they need a series starring a man. When pointed to the countless romance manga starring male characters, the criticism was deflected. It was never about having male representation after all, I mean, Dietrich is right there, as is her other brother Yurik, but about having a series starring a female character at all. Simply being a woman was the sin, which led to a new strange problem. The worst critics of the series were so vile in their directed attacks, that many felt hesitant to voice their more reasonable complaints for fear of aiding them. Like the infection of the demonic energy into the Lagrange household, it spread, tearing things up in a flux till simply surviving that deluge became a problem. And it never ends. That politician is only the latest in a long series of bad-faith complaints that all crash against the rocks with their paper-thin criticism and candy-floss strength analysis. But it does its damage all the same. Even so, we now end up with a new problem: What if the story problems, totally disconnected from the issue of the sexist attacks on the series as a concept, begin to themselves pile up? Part way through the series, it becomes apparent that Dietrich is in fact going to be the male lead of the series, that is, the romantic interest for Anisa to fall in love with. There's of course a big issue there: he's her brother. Sure, they're not related by blood, and it’s even clear that she's been stolen from her original family, but... he's still her brother. For many fans, they never quite recovered from this revelation, even though it can be quite common in the genre. It’s still pretty damn gross. Like, really? Her brother? Come on now. //error //refreshing paragraph Part way through the series, it becomes apparent that the series isn't going to live up to the reputation of being woke that it's gained simply by its casting. While the show does some amazing work in diversity, many fans get put off by a series of creative choices such as the episode "Kerblam!" seemingly having an anti-workers message, Anisa using the skin color of Dietrich's latest regeneration as a weapon to get him captured by literal Nazis, and erasing the memories of some female historical heroes while leaving men in the same series with their own. For many fans, they never quite recovered from this turn, even though it can be quite common in the genre. It’s still pretty damn gross. Like, really? Using his skin color against him? Come on now. /error DIVISION PROTOCOLS Order: But is that really a fair criticism? I mean, it really is just a time travel convention. Reveal the person from the future to be a liar and get them in trouble! Chaos: Yeah, but the issue is they used his race, and used literal Nazis as a weapon against him. That’s messed up. Order: Hold up, which story are we talking about? Chaos: I mean, the incest is bad too. /loading But how does this all relate to Anisa Who: Dark Aura? Well, how do you deal with a follow up to something kind of gross, that starts getting better, but drops the ball in a different way? After all, this full series has been trying to tell one story, and when it works, its worked very very well. The Sontarans and Weeping Angels were good fun, and while it got mixed public reception I actually quite liked “Once, Upon Euclid” which I thought did a great job of balancing its new story elements even if some of them worked better than others. But here in part 5, the threads start to fray. Because we’re starting to pay off things that the series has been setting up for a long time. But how it pays them off is going to determine quite a lot of how enjoyable the era as a whole is. And… while I’ve been fairly positive of the series, even despite my reservations about the plot involving the LaGrange family’s machinations. But here we are. Anisa finally confronts her mother, the woman who picked her up and brought her into the LaGrange home. And how does that go? Camilla LaGrange isn’t a good woman, something we could surmise for her work for a secret time traveling evil organization, but we’ve barely met her before. The confrontation between mother and daughter feels like it should be climax of this whole story: after all, Anisa is the Timeless Child. She’s the one where the magic power to regenerate the auras back to purity came from, as we learn in later dialogue: Anisa: The Demons created the dark aura because you're scared of me? Of the Euclid bloodline? Baal: Not scared. Wary, perhaps. Anisa: How much power do you imagine I have? Baal: You inspire. Make people question and rise up. You give them hope. Just look at Yurik and Veronica. That can be problematic. Anisa: Who even are you? But the confrontation with her mother is filled with so much explanation of the setting’s lore, it kills the shock of it all, and the rapid cut back and forth between the different divided characters doesn’t help either. DIVISION PROTOCOLS Order: Hold up, I think we’re straying from Anisa’s real story here. Chaos: Look, it was never going to be a one-for-one comparison. Order: But Anisa was abandoned by Donna Euclid, right? Chaos: How do we know the Doctor wasn’t abandoned? Order: We don’t! But she could have also been stolen. That’s the issue here, we get explanations of the lore, but we’re missing the explanations of the character dynamics. We know that the Doctor feels wronged, but we get far more dialogue about the whole multiverse-thing going on. Chaos: That gives the moment focus though! And it underscores her own lack of knowledge. Order: But shouldn’t Anisa meeting her long lost mother be more emotional? Shouldn’t this be the emotional climax? Why is this episode 5? Chaos: We’re going to get answers next episode probably, we saw that Azure has the pocketwatch. Order: It still feels like a missed opportunity for the Doc… Anis… which story are we talking about? /error /redirect Which leads to the episode’s strangest choice: to kill off Anisa’s mother just after we’ve met her, completely vaporized by the demon Asmodeus. This acts as a cliffhanger, and it feels like it should be shocking, but we haven’t had the build up to it we needed for that. Instead, it pushes the plot forward, and the emotions of the characters backward. We’ll deal with Asmodeus and Baal next time, but we’re simply left with the unfulfilled potential of this encounter. So, what is important in a story? Is it the plot? Is it a clever structure? Or is it the characters? Their emotions? The ties that bind them and separate them? I’ve never been a fan of this plotline, but it wasn’t because of the lore itself. It was because time and time again, it feels like the lore has come before the character’s actions. Twice now, we’ve had a character lecture Anisa on her own history, and she just stands there and listens. Talks back a little, but largely has no agency in these scenes that are so important to her story. Giving us the knowledge of her life seems more important than making us care about it, and there’s a sadness to that, because when you lay out the events on paper the dramatic potential is obvious: a lady confronting her abusive and manipulative mother who stole a whole potential life from her. It’s a rich tapestry, just waiting to be mined. But it’s pulled away for a cliffhanger. And maybe the cliffhanger is a fake out, and we’ll get more next week. Maybe we’ll get that resolution in the flashbacks from the magic watch. Maybe. But we can only judge it week by week for now, and for now, there’s an empty hole there waiting to be filled. Filled. Filled Filed. /Error Of course, the Master was confronting Division, and only pretending to hate her so she wouldn’t try to interfere, but the Doctor getting between them and confronting her trauma through the visions given to her to save both of them allowed them to subvert fate and move forward. Where will they go from here, now that they’ve saved Lagrange—I mean Galifrey? Or Time? So much of Anisa’s story involves memories of things she doesn’t know—versions of herself from past lives that she has to work through the memories of. Both herself, a girl from Korea, and the original Anisa who dies in the story. Not to mention the Fugitive Anisa version of the character who was hunted by the Judoon. Or the one who was a cop in Ireland. So the real question we have now, I think, is which is going to be more important in the finale: the contents of the memories, or the fact in themselves that they were lost? It’s a series of comparisons, an infinite set of alternate lives that show what matters. Whether its in the LaGrange manor, or the halls of the planet Time, the song remains the same in a dress or a coat. What will her memories mean to her? DIVISION PROTOCOLS Order: Alright, enough of that. Chaos: But it was fun. Order: I think the format itself is starting to get in the way of the piece. Chaos: We already covered that. Order: I mean—never mind. Let’s just talk about Yaz and go home. /error /reloading But what about the side characters? Yaz, Dan, and Eutacius get their own big side story here, and its absolute rollicking fun. We get to see the group in period get up, get a moment to tantalize Yaz/Anisa shippers, and even get a fun moment with Dan’s space dog that’s pretty damn funny. Their whole journey is a real highlight of the episode, and shows how much fun this era of the series can be. A little more confusing is a side-plot about the Grand Serpent going to Earth and helping start UNIT, run UNIT, and then disband UNIT so he can invite the Sontarans to invade it. Maybe we’ll get more explanation next week, but there’s a certain amount of “A+?=C” to the plan. Why help found UNIT only to later get rid of it, and spend decades on that endeavor? The segments themselves are fun, and the Grand Serpent is a pretty successful menacing villain. Craig Parkinson was excellent casting. Bel and Vinder are also there, as is Dan’s not-quite-girlfriend, and they mainly remind us of their presence for the finale. The tunnels finally get tied back in, and it’ll be exciting to see how that all plays in together. Its strange though, Flux has been made of so many strands. Next week, we will see how they all come together, and never before in Doctor Who has it felt so much like the way the strands come together will change how we reflect on everything before it. Maybe every grumpy complaint will be wiped away, maybe it will be a collapsing disaster. What if? We wait. If nothing else, the serialization is fun. The wait to see what we think. Complaining, rejoicing. It can feel like its all a menace sometimes, like disagreements about the quality of a story are very important things. But it all exists in our heads. And the version of it in our heads is the one that matters. Those precious memories, whether good or bad, form us and shape us. And I’ll certainly remember this series. And hopefully, unlike the Doctor and Anisa, your past will remain with you. And if it doesn’t, I hope you find the story of you somewhere and can find something that matters to you in it. After all, Tapas has regular updates of newly translated chapters. /end Division Simulation /begin memory deletion protocol /see you next week This post was brought to you by my wonderful backers on Patreon! You can join them for just $1 month at the link below, and support more fun stuff like this. http://www.patreon.com/jameswylder Images are taken and used in a transformative and moderate mannter from "The Precious Sister of the Villainous Grand Duke" also known as "Villain Duke's Precious One"
Authors: Ikkamnu / Eclair Artists: Lunaheng You can read the story here (its good!): https://tapas.io/series/villain-dukes-precious-one/
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Going back to one of the most revered things in a franchise is always tough for a creator. You can just repeat the greatest hits of it, but you'll end up with something crowd-pleasing but whose sheen fades as soon as the newness wears off, and people have the option between choosing between it and the original. The other option is to push things in a new unfamiliar direction, which can be initially off-putting but which has a lot more staying power if it’s done well. It's the sort of statement that can get tomatoes thrown at you, but a pretty good example in my eyes is the difference between the Star Wars films "The Force Awakens" and "The Last Jedi". The Force Awakens plays within the boundaries of existing expectations, and in doing so creates a very fun and well executed film that's a blast to watch. But then you have the Last Jedi, which does new things and challenges your expectations, creating whole new things for your imagination. "Village of the Angels" is interesting, in that it tries to have its cake and eat it to. It’s an episode built up out of familiar elements, and allowing them to play out, but then butting in with brand new things that crack the shell of your expectations. But it’s also not a standalone story, and so it’s difficult to judge some of its elements till we see how they play out in the next two episodes (if they do at all). The Weeping Angels are one of the most iconic and beloved monsters in Doctor Who, despite only appearing as the main antagonists in a handful of episodes, and this story very quickly gets us up to speed on all their elements: time-shifting, moving when unobserved, the image of an angel becomes an angel, a person becoming an angel and having sand in their eyes. At first, it seems like its just going through the motions, until after setting those elements up, it plays with them. And those parts? Well… Where this episode really shines, is its understanding of what visual elements Doctor Who can actually pull off well--aside from some dodgy CGI at the end, but even that was unique and interesting enough for me to suspend my disbelief even while it resembled a video game cutscene. There are some truly fantastic visuals here that stick in your memory: the Doctor crumpling the drawing of the Angel up, and the angel itself crumbling with it. The Doctor throwing that paper in the fire, and the flaming angel that appeared afterwards. The night/day divided screen of the past and future of the Village. And of course, the final and likely instantly iconic image of the Doctor turning into a Weeping Angel. There's enough here to keep you coming back just to see the things you remember fondly, and I expect this is going to be a well-regarded episode by the general public for just this reason--its super entertaining. This is one of those episodes where even though I'm going to whine about the issues I have with it in a minute, I'd be lying if I said wasn't a bunch of fun. The things that work about it work well enough that I'm sure lots of folks will have a very good time with it, and I'm very happy for them. But does the episode as a whole work? Well, no. While other episodes have played very carefully with the Covid filming restrictions, this this definitely the episode where the inventive solutions to the problems end up hurting the episode instead of rescuing. Largely, this is due to the vast difference in how the tension is being built up between the two halves of the split main cast. It’s become a signature of this series to split the cast up into two parties so that filming the episodes under covid restrictions would be less ungainly. Only here, one half of the cast is having the tension ratcheted up as they try to fend off Weeping Angels in a spooky house, and the other half of the cast is engaged in a slowly unraveling mystery about a missing child. Both these plots are fine on their own but cutting back and forth between them ends up stopping the buildup of tension in each story to a halt during the switch overs, because they're not having story beats of equivalent tension next to each other. This is a nuts-and-bolts criticism, the sort that most viewers probably just vaguely feel in the back of their head, but it’s there, nonetheless. But the biggest issue with the episode is everything after the reveal of why the Rogue Angel has infested Claire's mind. And... alright, we can't avoid it anymore. Let's talk about the Division. The Division is of course the secret service style group on Galifrey that erased the Doctor's memories of being a secret chosen one from another Universe and has been a very important part of this whole series. We've slowly been learning about them, and the big reveal this episode is that the Rogue Angel is something of a Space/Time Wikileaks Whistleblower, holding all of the information the Division kept from the Doctor, and it will give that info to the Doctor if she saves it. Of course, the Angel is duplicitous, and turns the Doctor in to save its own skin (stone?). But it’s an odd sort of turn, and it doesn't work the way it did before. Last week, the Doctor was the focus of the parts of the episode that lead up to the Division plot reveals, and they worked. The episode built up to them, and paid those things off. But the set up and pay off here is odd, in a lot of ways. Claire is the min focus of the segments with the Doctor, only for us to learn very late in the game that actually the focus is the Doctor in a way that doesn’t tie into anything we learned or followed about the Angels—it’s a follow up from things from previous episodes, and it feels like an emotional leap. Maybe if you marathon Flux later it will all flow together better and this will feel more natural, but week to week it not only feels unearned, but Claire’s plot goes rather unfulfilled as well. Will Claire get her moment next week? We can only hope. The other weird thing is the plot with the little girl—I was talking to Will Shaw (who writes incredible coverage of this Doctor Who Series you should read) after the episode, and after I mentioned I wondered what the payoff to her story set up would be, did he point out that the payoff was that she was the old lady they met earlier in the episode was actually her. Was it just that I am too jaded to these sorts of twists and figured that out very early on? Or was it just the weird way that the pacing was thrown off by the divided cast segments that meant that it didn’t feel like a climax to a storyline as things didn’t build up to it specifically? I’m not sure, but it didn’t quite fly. But does that matter? Its visually pleasing, the Angels were creepy, the Doctor was funny. Is the script a structural mess? Absolutely. Will anyone care? Probably not. Its an odd case where the episode could be better with stronger emotional payoffs and more impactful scares with just a little tweaking, but there’s enough that works that complaining feels pointless. It could be better, but you had a good time. Whatever sort of bar that is, I’m fine with it. See you next week! This post was brought to you by my wonderful backers on Patreon! You can join them for just $1 month at the link below, and support more fun stuff like this.
http://www.patreon.com/jameswylder In old television anthology series, there was an understanding that the same cast could come in and play multiple roles throughout the production as need be. You'd tune in one week, and a character actor would be playing the secretary to the mayor, then a few weeks later you'd see her back as the detective's long separated ex-girlfriend. Over time this became less and less common, but you'll still find it in long running dramas like "Midsomer Murders" or "Law and Order", albeit with the roles often spaced out by years instead of weeks. This method was used in its fullest extent in the A&E Nero Wolfe series in 2001, where every episode had the same cast working in the various changing roles, giving the whole production the feel of a local theater company presenting you these stories. While this trope used to be common, it's fallen away till it’s mostly only seen in long running crime dramas, and so here we are in Doctor Who Flux, three episodes into the season, three paragraphs into this essay, and with Chibnall taking this format and using it for one of the most creative and successful episodes of his tenure. "Once, Upon Time," was perhaps vastly oversold before airing as being an experimental revelation for the show. It's not, and really the comparison does the episode no favors in that it obscures the clever way its playing on tropes the viewer is already familiar with. How much you enjoy those tropes is going to factor a lot into the gas milage you'll get with this one. So, ya like procedural cop dramas? A lot has been made of the 13th Doctor's relationship to the police. One of her companions is a police officer, and her expressions of her identity often emphasize elements of justice, and law and order (dun dun, executive producer Dick Wolf). This is brought into its most focal point with the revelation that the Doctor worked for an organization called "The Division", a sort of Timelord Spacecop group that was entangled in a bunch of the past events the Doctor has been uncovering during her adventures. I'm not going to attempt some defense of the "Doctor as a cop" thing, its not a take I like, but its also not one I'm going to pour more ink into tearing into because... well its already been covered, and I'm not passionate enough to dig into that with a greater depth than is already out there. So, for now lets just establish that it's a bad idea and leave it at that. Because like it or not (and well, I'm in the not) its there. Which leads to the question of what exactly Chibnall is trying to do with this? I think that question has come into focus here, as after setting us up with the basic serial structure he used writing Broadchurch with a tangle of plot threads thrown at us to watch untangle and come back together, we now reach something playful with the format. We're given backstory flashbacks for our characters, where different roles are played by our main cast, straight out of Nero Wolfe. Part of this is clearly very clever Covid filming protocols, each actor is clearly on set with as few people as possible, and the group of main cast members who have to be around each other anyway get to work around the awkwardness of shooting whole scenes with just shot-reverse-shots. The result is much better performances from everyone, as they're actually able to go back and forth with their co-stars. But beyond being practical, we're being thrown into familiar genres. Our first strand is Bel, a survivor of the Flux who is living in the post-apocalyptic wasteland that follows it, hiding from monsters like she's in a horror movie. Turns out she's Vinder's partner, which I was surprised by because I thought for sure she was going to be some lesbian representation since we hadn't had anything so far this series, but it is what it is, and the character as envisioned is a strong one. After that, we get the "one last mission before I can retire" cop drama of the Doctor going on a job for the Division in the past, the domestic drama of Yaz at home with her sister, the political conspiracy of Vinder, and the Romantic Drama of Dan. Azhur Saleem does a great job switching between these and manages to quickly capture the tone and feeling of each strand so they feel unique. Quick aside here: Azhur Saleem is the best director of the 13th Doctor's tenure so far, yes? He has a grasp of visual space and clarity of character that makes the show pop from the script page in a way that seems to have finally come into focus with him. It’s too bad it’s so late in the game, but we finally have a real working vision of how to direct the 13th Doctor's era. I'm looking forward to his other two episodes. Back to the strands--Chibnall's experience with police drama comes into focus here, as the tropes he's playing with quickly establish each segment. But what's notable about these flashbacks is how each is so filled with failure (the exception being Bel's, the only story that's largely "present"). None of these stories are true triumphs: Vinder stands up for what he believes and gets punished for it. The Doctor confronts the bad guys as a spacecop, but only puts off the problem to deal with later. Yaz can't manage to balance her family and work life, and still can't even now with the Doctor despite everything, getting into a spat with her just like with her sister. Dan almost manages to move forward with his love, but he's held back by both his own past and his own circumstances. Everyone here is haunted by their past, and presumably this is why we're seeing the weeping angel's featured so strongly leading up to next week, villains who literally throw their targets into the past. We'll see if that clear thread is picked up next week or not. For now, we have an episode that was the most fun I've had with the show in a long time. I really liked this one, and I'm hopeful that it's a sign of good things to come, especially with the other episodes directed by Mr. Saleem. We'll see. So till then, we'll wait for the angels. This post was brought to you by my wonderful backers on Patreon! You can join them for just $1 month at the link below, and support more fun stuff like this.
http://www.patreon.com/jameswylder Well, that was pretty good. After the whirlwind of last week which spent most of its runtime setting up the future story threads, we finally get to sit down and actually enjoy one of those stories and... you know, once again, one really gets the sense that this is the form that Chibnall's Dr Who always should have been in. If you don't like Chibnall's quirks, you won't like them here either, but the way it’s all executed simply works better than it has before for the 13th Doctor. I don't even think this is the best episode of Chibnall's Doctor Who, but it is certainly the one that feels the most like it’s something that could be sustained. My previous favorite episodes very much felt like one offs--you don't do Demons of the Punjab twice, or if you do, the second time isn't going to work as well. Here, we have a structure that could be repeated across a variety of stories with different elements, and have it work. Again, this is because the structure is playing to Chibnall's strengths. We spent a lot of time doing set up last week, and because of that we can simply spend time with all of the different plot threads and character without needing to reestablish who these characters are, and reducing the guest cast with lines down to a minimum. Which is also useful, because this is also a very obviously, "Effected by Covid" episode. Not in a bad way, it’s very well structured around that, but you can tell. Previous Chibnall series have reveled in being able to place several characters in frame at once, giving the show a feeling of constant presence, emphasizing connectivity between characters so that shots showing divisiveness strike harder. Here though, shots are much more isolated. Lots of shot / reverse-shot conversations where there isn't a "back of the head" body double for the other party they're talking to, as they're keeping the contact to a minimum. Lines of dialogue from characters feel sometimes like declarations being given to the room, as the actor was clearly alone on set during that shot. But this isn't a criticism. In fact, I'd say it comes together stronger than the choices made in previous seasons. Chibnall's Doctor Who has always wanted to be a character drama, but without the extended runtime of serialization, has often staggered at the attempt as there were too many characters in each episode trying to do too many things. But here, our heroes are divided up, and given characters to play against directly. There's an intimacy to it all, a sense that we're really getting to meet these people and peer into their perspectives. Whether by design or luck, it’s a stylistic improvement, and one I hope we'll see continued going forward. But what of the story itself? Well, it’s funny for one thing. John Bishop pulls off some punchlines that I had to pause on going back to them later, but I can't deny they worked. The Sontarans were a wonderful balance of evil and ridiculous and gave the biggest laugh of the night with "And I wanted to ride a horse!". The A and B plots, set in the modern day and in the Crimean War respectively, intertwine concerning a Sontaran invasion of Earth through time. They both shine, and I had a great time with both of them (aside from a thing we'll return to later...). But what of the C plot? What of Yaz? Well... unfortunately Yaz doesn't get a lot to do in this episode. After a refreshing turn last week, this week we find things are once again happening to Yaz, rather than Yaz doing things. She is transported to a place, a flying upside-down pyramid tells her to do something, she follows it, meets Vinder, and then meets the bad guys who turn her into a replacement statue/conduit. It's the weak spot of the episode, mainly redeemed by how much damn fun the actors seem to be having. Swarm, Azure, Vinder, and Yaz all seem to be having a blast on set, and the energy that Swarm and Azure bring to their performances is clearly infectious. But they steal the show from Yaz, who already just had the show stolen by a pyramid, and it would be nice if the following weeks give her an episode focused on her character. So, mostly its a good time. But what about that bit I said I'd come back to? Well, the ending. The ending is just the ending of "The Christmas Invasion", an earlier episode of Doctor Who, played out with the same emotional beats. Is it effective? Well, your milage may vary. But it left me pretty cold. I had been on board with the story, even the disappointing C plot, but the payoff felt like a whimper, even though it involved things literally going bang. Oh well. Even so, I'm hoping the renewed energy and structure continues in the coming weeks. My fingers are crossed. * * * Theme corner! This episode featured three plots of people turning their enemies’ own possessions against them. Two of the plots have our heroes using Sontaran tech to defeat Sontarans, and the third has Swarm and Azure using the technology of "The Planet Time" for whatever their scheme is and turning two of the heroes literally into objects to use against their enemies. Mary Seacole and the Doctor being healing figures is of course a contrast to Swarm and Azure placing two people into positions they will be hurt and turning to ash anything they don't like. And once again, we have a return to Chibnall's body horror, one of the defining tropes of his era in my opinion. Yaz and Vinder becoming statue like conduits for time, covered in writing and markings, is a very nice piece of subtle horror. We'll see how it plays out. And next week should prove... an interesting moment for my opinions on this series, judging by the preview. But more on that then. 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http://www.patreon.com/jameswylder Doctor Who: Flux
Part 1: The Halloween Apocalypse Doctor Who has been going on for so long that seeing it do something it hasn't done before on TV is always a little refreshing. Whether or not it works as intended is almost beside the point: when you're on your 39th series of a TV show (and 13th of its current run) that's had five TV spinoffs and so many spinoffs outside TV it’s not even worth trying to count, something new is always worth a respectful nod. And Doctor Who Flux is certainly something new for the show. Chris Chibnall is most known for his work on the mystery series "Broadchurch", a sprawling story about a small town that has a heinous crime happen in it. It’s a story told each season week by week, each episode part of a larger whole. When Chibnall became the showrunner of Doctor Who, I expected the format to be somewhat similar. And at first, it seemed I was right: the ending of the first adventure of the thirteenth Doctor is a cliffhanger right into the start of the second episode. However, that proved to be more the exception than the rule. Most of the 13th Doctor's era ended up being largely episodic, with fewer multi-part stories than any era of the show’s revival (and, with the current Flux story, tying the 9th Doctor's single season's multi-parters). It seemed a puzzling choice to me, as Chris Chibnall's greatest strengths as a writer were interconnectivity. His ability to juggle a group of characters who are each going about their own lives until events start forcing convergences between them. In Broadchurch, it was the murder of a child. Here, it’s the murder of the universe. There's a strange inevitability to this, a sense that this is what we should have been doing the whole time. It’s what Chibnall coming to Doctor Who feels like if you step back from it and just imagine it as a concept, to be a little insufferable, it’s the Plato's Cave of Chibnall Who. But well, we're finally here. All that waiting, and we're finally at that point. So, what's it like? Well, in short, its sort of like Broadchurch Season 2. That is, it its own story but one that is connected inexorably from the stories before it. As well as one where the opening episode spends a lot of time establishing things, we're going to see later with the expectation that we'll stick around to see the payoff. The story establishes its ties to the past fast and furiously--though to be fair it establishes everything fast and furiously. Vin Diesel is nodding his approval somewhere. The Doctor is dealing with the Flux, a force that is unraveling the very fabric of the universe. She's also dealing with Sontarans invading Earth (though she doesn't know that yet), Weeping Angels (though she also doesn't know that yet), some guys in 1820's Liverpool having an issue (again, unaware), a fleet of doggos trying to kidnap humanity, and a pair of evil crystal-faced siblings who want to do bad things. And maybe something else I'm missing. The main point is that we're dealing with a lot of plot threads, which are being laid out to us in an unraveled state so that we can watch them entwine, in the opposite manner of the universe unraveling. Presumably, this entwining will go along with fixing the universe itself. We'll see. As such, it’s difficult to describe the Halloween Apocalypse, as its very much an introduction to what is going to follow. This is just a prediction, but while we may see bits from each of the storylines in each episode going onwards, it seems likely that we're going to have a structure of each episode dealing with one of the big plotlines we've established, with the Flux itself and perhaps the crystal siblings being running threads through all of them. Really, the episode is more focused on establishing its characters than giving this episode a focused plot, and considering the introductory nature of things, that's probably for the best. Surprisingly, a big highlight is the newcomer Dan, played with instant likability by John Bishop. Did I think I was going to like Dan going in? No. Did Mr. Bishop manage to sell me on the character very quickly? Yes. This goes into what has been one of the strongest points of Chibnall's era of Doctor Who: the casting. Bishop pulls off some lines that in other hands would be frankly pretty awkward, giving them a playfulness and sincerity that makes his scenes a delight to watch. When he finally gets to interact with Yaz, played by Mandip Gill, the way he doesn't absorb the energy in the room, but instead builds on it helps the scene shine, and you can see why they wanted to bring him into the cast's dynamic. Watching Jodie Whittaker and Gill go at it is good, and frankly pretty refreshing, at the episode's start. It’s the dynamic I was hoping to see, and the dynamic is fun. I was disappointed when I heard we weren't going to have the adventures of just the pair of them, but Dan doesn't derail the pair, because Bishop understands something that in hindsight makes some of the earlier episodes a little unbalanced in dynamics: he doesn't need to have the spotlight all the time, and the show around him is better if he doesn't try to focus it in on him with every line. So, Dan is our fresh face, asking questions for the audience, being surprised at things, while Yaz gets to be the old hand who has seen it all. Its good stuff and makes me look forward to their future adventures together. But again, there's a strange sense of "Ah, this is he dynamic we wanted from the get-go, isn't it?" I liked all of the fam in the previous Whittaker seasons, but four main cast members was just too much for the episodic format to handle. Here, it all clicks together nicely. It’s the right balance, and I like it. I have a feeling that this episode will work better when you can binge straight into the second, on its own its a madcap rush of ideas that doesn't give you the satisfying tie up you want, because that's not what it’s doing or meant to do. We'll have to be back next week to see how that plays out. * * * All those words, and we haven't actually answered the question: What is Flux about? Well, if I had to guess, it’s a story about things being taken and separated from things that matter to them. Throughout the episode, we start with the Doctor and yaz locked up on an alien world separated from the TARDIS, we see Dan kidnapped by space dogs, Dan's girlfriend and the mysterious Claire are both time-zapped by Weeping Angels to the past, we have one Crystal Alien named Swarm locked up by the Division (of Timeless Children Fame) and escaping, disintegrating his captors into crystal dust, before rescuing his sister who has been apparently captured and forced to live a life thinking she was a different person working for the Division. We also meet Vinder, who is separated from basically everything, locked away in a space station observing nothing, and a pair of guys in the 1800's who... ...who... ...Look I don't know why they're there yet and they don't tie into my thesis as far as I know, so maybe I'm full of it, maybe they're an outlier and should not have been counted. But most of the plotlines are filled with things being taken from people, and those people wanting them back. The biggest one of these things is of course that the Doctor wants to know the truth of the Division and the Timeless Children. A child stolen from their parents, raised by another culture, and their biology and memories stolen from them for the good of others. The Flux is wiping everything away, just as the Doctor struggles to learn what was taken from her. Now the question is, how will these strands form knots? |
James Wylder
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