Doctor Who: Once, Upon Time Review - 5 Ups & 6 Downs

We’ve decided to take each of the five stories from this episode one at a time for this list, as organising this any other way is a headache waiting to happen. Let’s start with our newcomer, Bel.

Bel is introduced to us as a scavenger and survivor of the Flux, who is on the hunt for the man she loves. Straight off the bat, she’s shown to be an optimist and a fighter - an extremely capable one at that, successfully evading a pack of Daleks and taking down a platoon of Cybermen single-handedly. She’s sweet and likeable, and the decision to have her dialogue confined mostly to a voiceover saves the trouble of forcing her character to spout exposition out loud for no apparent reason - looking at you, Thirteen…

Bel carries with her a chirpy little datapad companion, which sends her encouraging emojis as moral support throughout her journey. It’s a cute if slightly odd element to her story that suddenly clicks into place at the climax of the episode. Bel’s connection to the rest of the story is unclear until we get the double whammy reveal that; firstly, the lover that Bel has been searching for is Vinder, and secondly, that her datapad is in fact a futuristic baby monitor of sorts, that allows her to communicate with the baby she is carrying - Vinder’s baby (or, as Bel refers to it, in one of the worst lines the show has seen in a long time: his ‘beautiful, as yet unborn child’…)

One complaint we have for this storyline is that everybody seems to know exactly what The Flux is: Bel, the unusually chatty dying Cybermen, even some random unnamed bloke Bel apparently met at a bar. Everyone understands the Flux, it seems, except the Doctor, and by extension, us. Getting some serious FOMO, here.

Regardless, these nitpicks aren’t enough to prevent us giving this spunky new star-crossed lover a big shiny UP.