Doctor Who The Flux: 10 Huge Questions After The Halloween Apocalypse

She’s back, and it’s about time! With the character redefining revelations of The Timeless Children conveniently side-lined for the one-off New Year special, the search for the Doctor’s true origins is now well and truly on.

The Halloween Apocalypse, the first in a six part story, threw us straight into the action with the Doctor and Yaz left hanging by the one person who might help the Doctor unlock the secrets of her forgotten past.

What followed was a sometimes confusing, but always entertaining, series opener that was very much an extended trailer for what is to come. It’s too early to say if this is Doctor Who back to its best. How well those individual storylines slot together by the end of the series will be key. The Halloween Apocalypse is either a masterpiece or a greatest hits collection with the best tracks in all the wrong places.

With so many new characters and threads introduced, by the end of this high octane adventure, we were the ones left hanging, and not just because of that jaw-dropping cliff-hanger…

John Bishop was an instant hit as the Doctor’s new companion Dan Lewis. A down on his luck, but proud Liverpudlian, Dan has that likeability factor that audiences will warm to. Volunteering at the food bank, despite his own fridge being empty, already makes him a hero.

But is he too good to be true? He’s remarkably unfazed about being kidnapped by a furry alien and his subsequent rescue in the bigger-on-the-inside TARDIS barely raises an eyebrow. When the Doctor hands him his miniaturised house, he shows no sign of disbelief.

If Dan was a Steven Moffat creation, you would put your money on him not being as ordinary as he seems. There would be a reason why he is immune to Karvanista’s attempts to hypnotise him. But under Chris Chibnall, companions are far more relatable than say Amy or Clara because he links them more closely to their social context. Dan belongs to Liverpool as much as Yaz belongs to Sheffield.

Dan’s ability to make it look as if he take things in his stride are likely to be simply part of his personality and sardonic wit. Given his unofficial museum tours, we know he can probably blag his way into anything. The line about having a friend with a bigger TARDIS than the Doctor’s is on face value a joke, a put down to imply he is unimpressed by the alien technology. It works for this character, so it would be a very clever bluff is there’s something more to it.