TV Review: Doctor Who: Flux (spoilers)
Thank. God.
Chibnall took over after Steven Moffat’s departure and was
gifted a new Doctor in the guise of Jodie Whittaker, the first female Doctor.
As with another of my favorite Doctors, Sylvester McCoy, I can only imagine how
good she might have been had she been given any decent scripts to work with.
In the three seasons under Chibnall’s leadership, I have
enjoyed exactly one episode, the Amazon parody Ker-Blam. Based on IMBD ratings I am not alone; season
1 under Chibnall had an average episode rating of 6.1, which is not good, and in
season 2 the average rating shot up to 6.2.
For his third season Chibnall rolled the dice and did a 6-part
miniseries called Flux that was about . . . well, it was about 6 episodes
long. Beyond that I am not sure. The series was Chibnall’s best season, producing the
only two episodes that were rated higher than a 7 at IMDB, but I see the whole
thing as a disaster.
To explain what I think are Chibnall’s deficiencies I will
do something unfair and compare him to his predecessor, Steven Moffat. Why is this unfair? Because Moffat is a genius. He has written some of the best Doctor Who episodes
of all time, and on top of that won an Emmy for writing Sherlock. Comparing a TV writer to Moffat is like
comparing a short story writer to O. Henry. But both Moffat and Chibnall worked
on Doctor Who, so there is room for overlap.
Moffat writes episodes that use the Doctor’s ability to
travel in time, but unlike Chibnall he knows how to construct a linear
narrative while having characters moving back and forth in time. I am thinking of two of Moffat’s best Doctor
Who episodes, The Girl in the Fireplace and Blink (possibly the best Doctor Who
episode EVER). In both of those
episodes, despite the fact that events in the story occurred in a non-linear
fashion, the plots played out as if they were linear. There was a beginning, a middle, and an end
to the story. Moffat used the ability to
move about in time to strengthen the structure of his narrative.
Chibnall, by contrast, just has character pop from one time
to another because they can. Chibnall is
more interested in creating puzzlement than understanding; enjoying a good
mystery is one thing, but to be deliberately obscure is not the same as good
story telling.
The other attribute Steven Moffat brings to Doctor Who that
Chibnall lacks is an emotional investment in what’s going on. The Girl in the Fireplace pays off because Moffat builds an emotional connection between the Doctor and Madam du Pompadour (if
you haven’t seen the episode, don’t ask; just go watch the episode). Chibnall moves characters around like chess
pieces, but it is never clear what we are supposed to feel about what is
happening other than we should like the Doctor and hate her enemies. I mean, we aren’t supposed to like Swarm and
Azure (they have names!) but it is hard to emotionally invest in disliking someone
who says their goal is to destroy all objects in the universe. At least they
have goals.
There are a lot of other nitpicks I could raise about Flux
(Spoilers!!!). I think it is cheap for Chibnall to have the Doctor transform
into a Weeping Angel and then turn her back again and say it was only to make
transporting her more convenient. And
then there is the small matter that at the end the Doctor commits triple
genocide by allowing the Daleks, Cybermen, and Sontarans all to perish in the
final push of the Flux. The Fourth
Doctor famously debated eliminating the Daleks in Genesis of the Daleks and
decided that genocide was wrong, even of an evil race that did nothing but
kill. I guess the Doctor has changed her
mind. Oh, and a Sontaran is induced to commit treason for . . . chocolate? Please.
Chibnall’s era isn’t quite over. He is the showrunner for the New Year’s
episode, which IMDB has little information on.
But he has produced the worst seasons of Doctor Who since the dreaded
McCoy era, which was unable to recover from the damage done by the even worse
Colin Baker era. The show went off the air in 1989 until it was brilliant
revived by Russell T. Davies in 2006.
Davies will re-assume showrunner duties of Doctor Who after
Chibnall steps down. All I can say is
that he has his work cut out for him again.
