Thirteenth Doctor Era
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Flux Chapter Six: The Vanquishers
The Ravagers have won, but for how long will they bask in it before Time catches up to them?
The one where it all comes full circle.
The universe is facing its Darkest Hour. The Doctor is captured by Swarm and Azure, who are preparing to initiate the destruction of the universe; the various other protagonists are either captured or under siege; and the Earth is once again under Sontaran occupation. And across the entire universe, there remains one question in desperate need of an answer: can the Flux be stopped?
Tropes:
- Anti-Climax: The final confrontations with Swarm and Azure is abruptly interrupted without getting any clear answers about their roles in the Doctor's hidden memories because they end up dissolved into nothing.
- Awesomeness by Analysis: Diane has been able to figure out an impressive amount about how Passengers work merely by being interacting with her surroundings while trapped inside one of them. This allows her and Vinder to escape from the one they're trapped in and send a distress signal to the Doctor, and her suggestion to use the infinite space inside one to contain the Flux ends up saving the rest of the universe.
- Batman Gambit: The Sontarans remembered how their fleet was taken out by a sole kamikaze vessel last time and have prepared accordingly, with the Doctor's ship stopped and held in place by Deflector Shields. Which the Doctor is counting on, as she's pulling a Trojan Prisoner gambit.
- Bigger on the Inside: The inside of a Passenger Unit is perceived as a shifting but functionally infinite plane by those trapped inside it. Fortunately, this makes it the perfect way to contain and dissipate what remains of the Flux after it destroys the Daleks, Cybermen and Sontarans.
- Bittersweet Ending: The Sontarans, Ravagers, and the Grand Serpent are all thwarted, but Jericho and practically all of the Lupari are dead. Dan is rejected by Diane as a result of her trauma, but joins the TARDIS crew properly, and the Doctor apologises to Yaz for closing her out, but cries when nobody is looking. Also, while Earth is safe, half of the universe has been destroyed with no Reset Button in sight. (Curiously, the Doctor wouldn't even express any guilt about this until their next life.)
- Bookends: A scene near the end of the episode mirrors the one near the start of "The Halloween Apocalypse" that first introduced the audience to Dan and Diane: Dan is impersonating a tour guide at the Museum of Liverpool and giving a speech to some tourists, he gets interrupted by Diane and tries to ask her out for a coffee.
- But for Me, It Was Tuesday: The Grand Serpent has no memory of Vinder, or any idea of the impact his actions had on his life, when Vinder confronts him at the end of the episode.
- Cassandra Truth: After snapping at everyone he meets who implies that he's mad, Williamson becomes quite emotional when Yaz reveals that she knows about the upcoming apocalypse too.
- Chronic Backstabbing Disorder: The Doctor realises the Grand Serpent's plan is to double-cross his allies and rule over a grateful Earth as their liberator. The Sontarans meanwhile plan to dispose of their most dangerous enemies (except the Rutans, whom they can't even pretend to extend the three-fingered hand of friendship to) by offering a mutual alliance for survival, only to betray them at the last minute.
- Cold-Blooded Torture:
- Swarm uses his powers to vaporize and then reassemble the Doctor's memories — and later, the Doctor herself — to torture her for fun, letting her feel the pain of the experience so he can rewind and then do it again. It's a microcosm of what they plan to do to the entire universe, as revenge for what was done to them.
- The Grand Serpent tries subjecting the Doctor to it, but she just turns it around on him by spending her time trying to work out who and what his deal is, and her current condition prevents him getting a proper lock on her anyway.
- Continuity Nod:
- Time was previously established as a godlike sentient being called an Eternal in the Doctor Who New Adventures novels and the embodiment of temporal events, then an ally of the Seventh Doctor after she chose him as her champion, but the character was never officially referenced in the TV series until now. This episode reveals that Time really can think for itself and have jurisdiction over certain events. Though she seems to have a more tense relationship with the Thirteenth Doctor.
- The Doctor's fear being destruction calls back to when we saw the Doctor's greatest fear back in "The Mind of Evil", which was all-consuming fire.
- Trapping someone in a time loop is a tactic used by the Doctor in the past, such as in "The Claws of Axos". Presumably Swarm and Azure regard it as Laser-Guided Karma.
- Did Not Get the Girl: Dan asks Diane out for a second time, but there seems to be too much water under the bridge now.
- Driving Question: Why was Tecteun so keen on erasing her native universe? She's wiped from existence before she can give a straight answer.
- Drunk on Milk: Sontaran metabolism and sugar results in this. The Doctor manages to bribe a Sontaran into helping by offering him all the chocolate he can stuff his face with, along with the recipe to make his own.
- Exploited Immunity: The Sontarans' plan; lure the Cybermen and Daleks to the place where the Flux will cause the most damage with a fake offer of mutually assured survival, then use the anti-Flux shielding seized from the Lupari fleet to protect themselves while the Flux rips apart two of their most hated enemies.
- Explosive Leash: Karvanista has a poison injector implanted in his brain that will kill him if he discusses his work with the Division with the Doctor.
- Face Death with Dignity: Professor Jericho, facing imminent death by Flux, simply mutters, "What an awfully big adventure..." and closes his eyes peacefully.
- Fate Worse than Death: The Grand Serpent is transported to a piece of rock hardly bigger than a truck, with no hint of planets or people nearby to provide rescue.
- A Form You Are Comfortable With: Time, who takes the form of Swarm initially when talking to him and Azure, then takes the form of the Doctor, with the coat she had in the memory set on Atropos. The Doctor mocks the implied ego-boosting tactic on the first occasion, only to change her mind when Time takes her form.
- A Good Name for a Rock Band: When referred to as a nameless human, Jericho indignantly introduces himself as "Professor Eustacius Jericho, scourge of scoundrels!", then thinks it would have been a good name for an autobiography he won't live long enough to write.
- Hoist by Their Own Petard:
- The Sontarans intend to use the Lupari's Flux-proof shield to defend their fleet while allowing the Flux to consume the Dalek and Cyberman fleets. Karvanista and the Doctor's team take control of the shield and reassemble it behind the Sontarans, instead, consuming all three.
- Happens to Swarm and Azure on two levels: the ultimate weapon against the Flux turns out to be their own Passenger, which provides an endless wave of matter to cancel the tide of antimatter; and their attempt to offer the Doctor as a sacrifice to Time only leads to them being consumed instead due to their failure to release Time from its prison (although Azure at least seems happy about this).
- After having exiled Vinder in the backstory, the Grand Serpent is left stranded on a tiny remote asteroid for the rest of his life, with no planets visible for light years in any direction.
- Howl of Sorrow: Karvanista does one after being told the news of the Sontarans wiping out the rest of the Lupari race.
- Human Sacrifice: Time Lord sacrifice but similar in concept. The Ravagers plan to offer the Doctor to Time as a sacrifice.
- It's Personal: Vinder and Kate, who both have a personal grudge with the Grand Serpent, are the ones to come out of the TARDIS and direct him to his final fate.
- Last of His Kind: Karvanista becomes this by the episode's end, as it's revealed that the Sontarans butchered and dumped out the airlocks the rest of the Lupari in order to take their shield ships for themselves.
- Lured into a Trap: The Sontarans plan to lure the Daleks and Cybermen to the origin point of the final Flux event under the pretence of shielding all three fleets with the Lupari shield, only to move the shield at the last moment so only the Sontaran fleet will be covered. The goal is to use the combined matter of the two fleets to weaken the Flux enough for the shield to neutralize the rest, leaving the Sontarans as the dominant power in the universe.
- Me's a Crowd: The Doctor gets split into three individuals over the course of the episode: one who remains captured on the Division's extra-universal space station, one who gets teleported to the Lupari ships and meets Bel and Karvanista, and one who reunites with Yaz, Dan, Jericho and Kate in the Williamson Tunnels.
- Moment Killer: Just as the Doctor finally starts telling Yaz why she's been doing what she's been doing, Dan interrupts because he can't find the bedrooms.
- Morton's Fork: When the Sontaran Science Officer Kragar hooks Jericho and Claire up to his psychic probe, he informs them that the experiment will result in either success or their deaths.Jericho: And the reward for success?
Kragar: Death. - My Friends... and Zoidberg:
- The Sontaran commander offers the hand of friendship to all their enemies... except for the Rutans, who will be crushed under the heel of Sontaran boots.
- The Doctor is delighted to see Yaz, and Dan, and Kate, and Jericho, and her TARDIS, and... a Victorian-looking bloke she doesn't know.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Jericho enthusiastically blasts away with a Ray Gun, only to find he's destroyed his teleport ring and the controls to the door that would get him to safety.
- Patrick Stewart Speech: The Doctor gets a glorious one!Doctor: Life must win. Otherwise, why are we here?
- Prepare to DieSenstarg: By the wrath of Sontar, I will now execute you!
Jericho: I really don't think you're going to have time.
[Senstarg screams as the Flux consumes him; Jericho decides to Face Death with Dignity] - Primal Fear: Azure deduces that the Doctor's greatest fear is destruction.
- The Reveal: Most of the questions that weren't answered last episode get answered here.
- What exactly is the Flux? It's a wave of antimatter generated outside the universe and then forced into it by the Division's technology.
- Why is the Grand Serpent working with the Sontarans? Because he was overthrown by the civilization he ruled over and hopes to use the Sontarans as patsies to work his way back into power.
- What is Swarm and Azure's plan? They intend to use the destruction of the universe (and the sacrifice of the Doctor) to free Time, which is revealed to be a sentient being imprisoned by the Temple of Atropos. With the power of Time on their side, they will rewind the destruction of the universe and watch it play out again and again for eternity, all as revenge for the fates inflicted on the two of them by the Division.
- Why is Karvanista so hesitant to talk about his time in the Division? Because the organization put a device in his brain that will kill him if he ever speaks about his time there. He also reveals that he was once the Doctor's companion, but that she abandoned him when she fled from the Division, leading to his resentful attitude towards her that he's had the entire season.
- What is the Bizarrchitecture floating house that the Doctor has been seeing in visions? It's a representation of her lost memories, which she's been glimpsing thanks to the psychic link with Swarm.
- Revenge:
- This is the primary motivation of the villains. Swarm and Azure want to make the Doctor pay for their millennia-long imprisonment, while the Sontarans are seeking retribution on humanity and the Lupari for their defeat and their fallen soldiers in "War of the Sontarans".
- There are two major instances of this from our heroes as well. The Doctor and Karvanista arrange for the Sontarans to be utterly wiped out by the Flux, alongside the Daleks and the Cybermen — partly to keep the Earth safe from them, and partly to avenge the seven billion Lupari who were slaughtered by the Sontarans. Meanwhile, Vinder pays his former boss back for ruining his career and having him exiled in deep space by stranding him on an asteroid floating in space, with no way back to civilization.
- Screw Yourself: The Doctor spends a chunk of time flirting with herself while she is split apart.
- Sequel Hook:
- The Doctor drops the fob watch containing her lost memories into a tunnel, telling the TARDIS to keep it somewhere she can never find it... unless she really, really needs it in the future.
- During their final confrontation, Time gives the Doctor the ominous warning that no-one can escape her forever, and that the Doctor's end is coming sooner than she thinks; it specifically warns them to watch for the forces massing against her, and "their Master".
- The Slow Path: The TARDIS, believe it or not. UNIT has been keeping her safe since 1967 all the way until the end of 2021.
- Summon Bigger Fish: When a squad of Sontarans confront Yaz, Dan, Jericho and Williamson in the tunnels, Yaz opens a door which Williamson has plastered with labels reading "CERTAIN DEATH" and "DO NOT ENTER". Whatever's on the other side of the door manifests as a series of red tendrils that kill the Sontarans.
- A Taste of Their Own Medicine: Done to the Grand Serpent, twice:
- The Doctor refers to the trope by name when she traps him in the same torture device he was using on one of her duplicates.
- At the end of the episode, Vinder and Kate direct him through Door 7 of the Williamson Tunnels, exiling him to a lonely asteroid in the middle of nowhere, similar to the Reassigned to Antarctica punishment Vinder received for trying to expose his evil. Vinder even comments that he is "a man who knows the pain of exile."
- TechnobabbleDan: Have you any idea what's she talking about?
Yaz: Not a clue. Normal service resumed. - That's What I Would Do: Said when one Doctor rescues the other and traps the Grand Serpent in his own torture device. Dan, somewhat confused, points out that's what she did do!
- These Are Things Man Was Not Meant to Know: The Doctor treats the fob watch with her lost memories like a forbidden fruit, fearing what she will do if she learns everything about her past and her morality changes with it.
- Thrown Out the Airlock: The fate of the Lupari when the Sontarans seized their fleet of ships.
- Time Is Dangerous: Revealed here as a sentient force that is The Man Behind the Man for Swarm and Azure.
- Took a Level in Badass: The Sontarans finally get a chance to pull off a Time War-scale event of their own. They destroy a majority of the Daleks and Cybermen by pretending to offer protection from the Flux, only to screw them over and take out their second and third biggest adversaries. Had the ultimate plan succeeded, they would have let the Flux decimate the universe except for the few survivors, and lord over them as "the vanquishers".
- To the Pain: Swarm and Azure plan to torture the Doctor for eternity, dissolving and undissolving her all that time.
- Was It Really Worth It?: In "Village of the Angels", the Weeping Angels taunted Jericho with the empty life he had led. As he faces his imminent demise, Jericho comforts himself with the excitement and purpose of his recent adventures.
- Would You Like to Hear How They Died?: Sontaran Commander Stenck informs Karvanista that he is the now the Last of His Kind, as the rest of his species were Thrown Out the Airlock when the Sontarans seized their ships as punishment for defying Sontar.
- You Have Failed Me: Time vaporizes Azure and Swarm for failing to bring the Flux to Atropos.
