My Thoughts on the Doctor Who: Flux Trailer

I make it no secret, I’m not a massive fan of Chris Chibnall. I’ve not loved his writing, I’ve not been in love with his direction of Doctor Who either. Generally, I think for a show about a space wizard that is immeasurably good by nature, he has a skewed morality. Twice in the span of 12-months, he made it so that our lovely blonde Doctor, who I want to love so much because the actor is nothing short of brilliant, practically White-faced someone in front of Nazis (or used them as a weapon). I’m not going to touch what the preceding series did, I’ve got reviews for that sort of thing. In short, I have my issues with him that I’ll address later.

So, now we have Doctor Who: Flux or series 13 to those of us with a burning desire to pretend this isn’t the 1996 film all over again. We had the reveal of when it starts airing last weekend, and this weekend just gave us a sneak peek behind the curtain of what has been happening in some quarries in Wales. Ok, joking about the upcoming series and what came decades ago aside: We do have a new trailer to unpack, and it is a heavy one. As we saw/heard with the exposition in the teaser revealing the date, this series is meant to be big and ambitious to the nth degree. I think every monster across the nearly 60-years of Doctor Who is getting a walk out of the storage shed in this series.

Well, at least every monster from the 70s (and New-Who), when Chibnall was a young lad. This is the one thing we do know from Chibnall, he wanted to bring in that classic flair into the modern run of Doctor Who. All three showrunners, to some extent, have done it themselves. This is arguably the most brazen of them thus far, doing a Star Trek: Discovery and playing with the established design of the brown rubbery-men for the planet Omicron Persei 8. Ok, Discovery made it so the Klingons couldn’t speak properly, but here, we’re just getting Strax’s grandad commanding a legion of potato-faced warmongers in some kind of battle, probably.

Of course, we don’t know exactly who or what is on which side. We’ve got the Weeping Angels, Cybermen, the Judoon, Ood-kind, the Ravagers, Sontarans, what looks like the space French Legion, and whatever that lovely Scottish Terrier-kind species is that I swear was somewhere in Doctor Who before. Following what was a series that almost entirely took place on Earth aside from those bits on Gallifrey, this looks to be ambitious, and (more importantly) at least a little sci-fi. Among the last two series, there hasn’t been a villain or monster introduced that we’re going to see too often once Chibnall disappears, at least introduced first on TV and under his watch.

Of course, there are no Guy Ritchie-style pauses with cards to introduce all the monsters/characters one-by-one (“Locked Shot”). However, one might assume the creepy-looking bloke that says “our final fight has begun,” might just be one of these Ravagers that the 9th Doctor fought in Big Finish. We don’t have confirmation on that, so we might find that out in early to mid-November when that episode finally airs. This is the trouble with talking about trailers such as this, they are meant to tease and we can work backward on what has been said about production or how things are supposed to go. Most of that is speculation.

I have said this before, I’m not excited for this series because it is Chibnall once again taking hold, and “The Timeless Children” was a disaster of writing. However, at the very least, this looks to feature some ambition. It is trying to be something sci-fi, and that’s more hopeful. That’s what is bringing me around to say, “don’t screw this up, Chibnall,” instead of, “how have you screwed this up?” Which, despite sounding neither like a compliment nor entirely like an insult, it is a marked improvement from my position within the political party for the removal of Chris Chibnall, by force. I’m still wary though if I am quite honest.

Thus far, Yaz has been directionless and when she could/should have used her special skill of being a probations officer, she’s had a bit of a blank face. I’ve argued that Graham at least had character and that was simply because Chris Chibnall, a straight White middle-aged man from England, knows how to write that type of character. Sadly, he doesn’t know how to write a young black man with a troubled relationship to his step-grandad and dad while struggling with Dyspraxia or a young suicidal possible lesbian/bi Asian woman that feels she could do more in her job. Meanwhile, we also have a new character named Dan to introduce in this heavy series too.

Aside from directionless characters, I am worried as to how busy everything will be. We’ve seen it all throughout Jodie’s run, but episodes have been cluttered and not in Moffat’s fun/annoying conspiracy way. More so in a messy “where is the script editor or showrunner to fix this” way. As I say, this series is giving me more hope that issues I’ve had are at least acknowledged, if not totally addressed in their entirety. I’m hopeful and that’s what this trailer has done for Doctor Who: Flux. It made me tentatively interested in what I was concerned I’d be going into with anger, following how poorly the last series was handled and how this Doctor is written. I’m hopeful we’ll at least see Doctor Who proper this time.