10 Doctor Who Scenes More Terrifying When You Know The Truth
6. Doctor Who's Pandemic Parallel
Despite being produced pre-COVID, Revolution of the Daleks featured some rather timely imagery, with the Doctor locked in prison and forced to “self isolate” from her fam.
Flux was the first series of Doctor Who to be produced in a post-COVID world, and also featured parallels to the pandemic. But on this occasion, they were completely intentional.
Most notably, the Flux itself was inspired by COVID, as former showrunner Chris Chibnall recently confirmed:
“I mean, Flux is a metaphor for COVID… there’s a big thing coming for you… a massive thing that’s going to disrupt all life as you know it!”
This was implied in the episodes themselves, with Bel’s opening monologue in Once, Upon Time being a clear giveaway: “The biggest changes to our lives start small. Catastrophes creep in quietly, and by the time you realise, the life you once had is already behind you.”
The Flux has much in common with COVID beyond this (it’s relentless, deadly, and takes many prisoners, with those that do survive finding themselves in a world that has changed forever), and Tecteun explicitly refers to the Doctor as a “virus”.
Anything too explicit would've been an unwelcome reality check in a show that's supposed to be escapism, but it was inevitable that the circumstances affecting Flux’s production were going to creep into the scripts one way or another.