Doctor Who Flux: The Halloween Apocalypse Review - 6 Ups & 3 Downs

1. The Rapid-Fire Pacing Was A Little Disorienting

The Halloween Apocalypse was bursting at the seams trying to contain everything in its 50-minute runtime. On the upside, its layers of story made for an episode that moved along at a brisk pace, but on the downside, it didn't feel like everything had the breathing room it needed.

Indeed, the episode jumped between so many different places and timezones that it was difficult to stay invested in everything that was going on. Just as things were getting interesting in the Doctor's hunt for Karvanista and Dan... we were whisked off to two random characters in the Arctic Circle. Just as we'd got ourselves acquainted with Vinder... we were pulled away to Swarm and his sister. Even the Weeping Angel scene - as much as we loved it - was a distraction from the main narrative thrust.

Hell, when that character montage played at the very end of the episode, we'd totally forgotten about Mr. Williamson and his marvellous mutton chops, since we hadn't seen him for the last 45 minutes.

Admittedly, there's part of this that's a viewer problem. Doctor Who fans will definitely need to recalibrate their expectations of what a "standard" episode is - we're used to self-contained episodes that are wrapped up neatly by the end, but Series 13 is going to give us more scattered pieces of story that will only make sense once the entire puzzle is visible.

All that said, if we're talking about our in-the-moment, gut reaction to watching the episode, then it did feel a little unfocused.