Doctor Who: War Of The Sontarans Review - 7 Ups & 5 Downs

Did Chibnall just save the Sontarans? Sontar…huh.

Doctor Who Flux
BBC

Episode two of Doctor Who: Flux saw a more focused plot, reducing the amount of story strands in unfolding at one time. Regardless, with the TARDIS team split up, we still have three plot lines to dissect - with the Doctor and Dan battling the Sontarans in the Crimean War and present day Liverpool simultaneously, and Yaz and Vinder encountering the villainous Swarm and his sharply dressed entourage.

So did this episode keep up the momentum after Flux’s powerhouse of an opener? Are the Sontarans still a laughing stock? And, most importantly, is everyone’s goodest boy, Karvanista, safe and protected?

Let’s get the Flux on with it…

12. DOWN - An Unresolved Cliffhanger

Doctor Who Flux
BBC

Last week, we watched on in disbelief as a planet eating cloud of annihilation headed straight for the TARDIS, putting our protagonists in one of the most high-stakes cliffhangers the show has seen. The question on everybody’s lips was: how are they going to escape this one?

The answer: we… don’t really know. They were teleported away to the past and woke up in a field, and that was sort of that. We’re left a little underwhelmed, to be honest. We wish we could tell you this was the last convenient teleportation of the episode, but it wasn’t…

Realising that Dan and Yaz aren’t where the plot needs them to be, they are both teleported away a second time, without real explanation. Yaz is conveniently dropped into Vinder and Swarm’s plot, whilst the Flux drops Dan back on his home street (what a helpful and kind thing for the Flux, a force of ultimate destruction, to do). All of this undermines the threat of the Flux a fair bit and reeks of poor planning.

Ask yourself this - if we removed the modern day conflict in this story, and had Vinder face down Swarm alone, would that really have been so bad? The companions could have easily stayed with the Doctor on this one, with Yaz finding a way to get captured at the end of the episode, following the fourth and final convenient teleportation of the episode when the TARDIS gets hijacked.

This really wasn’t a difficult issue to fix.

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Alex is a sci-fi and fantasy swot, and is a writer for WhoCulture. He is incapable of watching TV without reciting trivia, and sometimes, when his heart is in the right place, and the stars are too, he’s worth listening to.