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

2. The Doctor's Secrecy Doesn't Feel Earned

Doctor Who The Halloween Apocalypse Thirteenth Doctor
BBC

We're going to hop over to Yaz's side for this one, because the way the Doctor treated her throughout this episode felt unnecessarily harsh.

For starters, there was that one moment where a concerned Yaz asked the Doctor why she didn't mention her mind glitch, only for the Doctor to coldly retort "you know what Yaz? I don't mention everything". But our bigger problem here is the Doctor's refusal to tell Yaz what's going on.

There are several points in The Halloween Apocalypse where Yaz asks the Doctor why they're hunting Karvanista, or what's going on inside her head. The Doctor, in response, goes on the defensive, inferring that Yaz should simply be grateful for all the amazing adventures they've been on, essentially telling her to shut up and mind her own business.

The Doctor comes off as super unlikeable in these moments, and they're particularly frustrating because there doesn't seem to be a good reason for her secrecy. When the Eleventh Doctor was hiding stuff from Amy and Rory in Series 6 (the pregnant/not pregnant weirdness, Amy's Flesh doppelganger) it was abundantly clear why he couldn't tell them. Here though? It isn't, and the tension between the Doctor and Yaz feels incredibly forced as a result.

Chibnall clearly wants to have a heartfelt reconciliation between the pair later in the series, but he could've come up with a better way to get us there.

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Danny has been with WhatCulture for almost nine years, and is currently Doctor Who Editor and WhoCulture Channel Manager, overseeing all of WhatCulture's Whoniverse coverage. He has been writing and video editing for 10+ years, and first got a taste for content creation after making his own Doctor Who trailers and uploading them to YouTube (they're admittedly a bit rusty by today's standards). If you need someone to recite every Doctor Who episode in order or to tell you about the making of 1988's Remembrance of the Daleks, Danny is the person to ask.