Flux: Once, Upon Time Notes
Bel’s Story.
Interesting, the Flux has already come and trashed the universe and
gone. I did not expect that pacing for
the story.
Bel is in the Dalek sector, which keeps growing.
Time is totally jacked and flips around
Swarm of blue glowing things that affect people just like
the flux. Wait, is that actually Swarm?
Bel is trying to get to someone she loves.
When we left our heroes, Yaz was about to have all time
poured through her. We pick right up at
the same moment
It’s not very clear what the Doctor is accomplishing at
first. By design.
She put all four of them inside the time storm, because time
is broken. Is it like an eye of th
ehurrican situation?
Everything is corrupted.
Yaz, Dan and Vinder got drawn back into ‘time’
And suddenly we’re all wrong footed by all four of them
being together but in a totally different situation,
I appreciate how little concession they’re making to clarity
at this point.
The Siege of Atropos
Mouri Skiens
She’s on a long ago mission to resuce hostages and restart
time.
And Dan, Meanwhile, is meeting up with Di to bring her
coffee in the morning. They’re sweet
together. And clearly in the ‘friends
that fancy each other. But haven’t acknowledged it yet.’ Stage
Di: I fell asleep in
front of him.
Dan: I thought you
were going for pizza?
Di: I fell asleep in
me pizza in front of him. He was so
boring.
Nice how it’s not immediately obvious that place and time
keep shifting behind them
We’re getting Dan’s backstory. He was engaged and she called it off at the
last minute.
That does sound brutal.
**** That’s life, isn’t it.
Nobody gets by without some bruises.
Yes, Di was waiting and Dan didn’t come. What happened to her? Nice reminder from the show that that mystery
is still out there.
The Doctor can project herself into these other timestreams
to tell the others what is going on. We
don’t get any info yet beyond that she can do this. Which counts as information I suppose.
And then the Doctor is chatting with Yaz in one of her
memories, but here they’re just establishing that the people you’re seeing in
these memories aren’t necessarily the people that were actually there at the
time.
Plus, thery’re bringing the Angels into things. But they’re only seen in the mirror this time
which is interesting.
Yaz’ timestream has
something glitchy in it trying to keep the doctor out. That builds nicely on the info we got when
she popped into Dan’s timestream e.g. that they were in their own timelines and
the doctor could pop in.
And then we get to Vinder, who we know the least about so
will benefit most from this format.
We’ve been given enough clues to guess that this isn’t
really Yaz in his memory, and Vinder confirms it in dialogue just as we’re
figuring it out.
Vinder took all offers of counseling. That’s refreshingly not the ‘macho bullshit’
characterization
The Grand Serpent.
He’s demanding. This boss must
know how shady the grand serpent really is.
It’s nice that they’ve established what the inside of this
temple looks like before attacking it from the outside.
They really are making this a huge clusterfuck as far as how
time is functioning. They’re all in on
the ‘time is broken’ idea.
Giant Mouri. They
just told us that we were in a different part of the Doctor’s life
So are the Mouri just extradimensional beings that can
funnel time? Ho wmany of them are there
It should be clear that this is whatever happened the first
time Swarm and Azure attacked the temple, but it’s just not spelled out enough until
we see Doctor Ruth in the reflection.
The Doctor really wants to know more about her past, it
makes sense that she’d obsess about it here.
She threw them all into a time storm and it kicked them all
into their memories
Dan is Karvanista, they’re slowly hinting at it. I wonder who Yaz and Vinder are for real?
They’ve promised the Doctor that if she succeeds in this
mission, she’ll be free from the Division
***What am I running from?
Williamson accuses Dan of turning his back on The Task
What IS Williamson’s deal?
Here’s the azure swarm again
They remove people and objects from the mortal plane
The Doctor is trying to hide Dan but he keeps fidgeting out
of his timestream
Time is breaking and hunting down anomalies
The Doctor: Not that
I want to worry you. Cause I don’t. But I have.
So sorry.
Del’s sector coordinates.
They’re kind of meaningless with space this jacked up
The Lupari have vanished from their home galaxy. That’s because they’re all protecting Earth,
right?
The red planet with fields is pretty
And here’s the cyber sector.
We think she’s talking to one of those tamaguchi pets or
whatever they were called.
So it’s a duality.
The flux is destroying space and the fall of Atropos is destroying time.
The Grand Serpant.
Not sure about his jacket.
Who is Yaz in this memory.
The Grand Serpent is a douche. Vinder was just being agreeable
So Vinder used to be a soldier of some kind for these people
and got assigned to be a personal guard to their king douche.
Yaz and I both aren’t good at gaming
I hate the way they’re re-inforcing the stereotype that
girls can only possibly be into gaming to trick guys into liking them
And now, finally they spell it out concretely nearly half
way in. They’re hidden in memories,
possibly past, possibly future.
The Doctor: The best
place to hide you all is in your own lives.
There’s something wrong with Yaz’ timestream, presumably
because of Angels. They can do that
because we know Yaz’ timestream, so they can use the time for something else.
They have to keep showing the Doctor with the Giant Mouri. The resolution of this episodes structure
resides with them
Swarm is more monstery and much less charming in the far
past
What is passenger
They’re barred from our dimension. By the Time Lords, one assumes
SO they can store endless numbers of life forms in each,
like a soul TARDIS?
What is the Divisions dirty secret.
Oh, the planet time itself.
So this planet is what the Time Lords used to ebnd the dark
times and impose order on linear time.
Swarm describes it as the battle between time and
space. He appears to be on the side of
time.
So the timelords constructed this planet as a vehicle to imprison
the force of time. That makes
sense. Space can be chaotic, but time
must be linear because the time lords imposed that.
Didn’t Einstein say that Space and time were the same thing
from different angles?
Why do Swarm and Azure have hostages? What do they want? How did the timelords find and deal with the
Mouri?
The Division used a passenger while being all high ground
about them being forbidden for other people to use
Dan has Karvanista’s gun – big hint that it’s him
So The Doctor just needs to replace the 4 burnt out Mouri
I like Bel
Tigmi – that’s linked to her unborn child then?
Sontarans, Daleks and Cybermen each have a zone. What, no Zygons? No Autons?
The Cybermen have lost that super speed thing and are much
less challengiung than last time
Time is the temporal center.
So the flux kind of took out both time and space
Cyberman: We shall
command. We shall rule.
Bel: Over what?
Bel’s mission is Love.
I like that the Cyberman was driven to document what Bel was
going for
I like the Alforian’s costumes.
I have a lot of questions about this culture ruled by the
Grand Serpent. But I like that they aren’t
really explaining it, just giving us the aesthetic.
The Grand Serpent leaves some dirty dealing including
ordering execution of his enemies’ family members off the record. And of course Vinder feels duty bound to
report it, which is why he ends up punished out on that observation post.
The recording would document that he stopped the recording
though, right?
Whistleblower protocols.
That don’t really protect anyone.
Vinder is the ‘do what’s right regardless of cost’ guy.
Vinder: I took an
oath. I swore my loyalty to our
constitution. Not to any one
person. Something bigger. More important.
Vinder begging not to have to relieve certain parts is
heartbreaking
Cut to , Vinder sending his one chance at recording a
message off to someone. It’s obvious in
hindsight, but I didn’t see it at the time.
*** I’m sorry. I was
doing the right thing.
Lovely transition to the eye of the Mouri
Confirmed that ‘Dan’ is Karvanista.
The 4 replacement Mouri are replaced but the Doctor is
willing to risk her life for even one more scrap of her lost memories. Understandable.
So we’re performatively not told how that part of the story
ends. I bet we learn more in part 5 or 6
Who is this woman with the hat on her back. She noticed the Doctor navigating all those time streams. She’s fixing something and says the damage to
time was intentional and done. She released
them on purpose
The Doctor: I’m
sorry, I’m normally very good at keeping up with things, but you lost me quite
early on.
The flux was deliberately made and placed because of the
Doctor and Swarm and Azure were released.
To destroy Space and Time, respectively
And with that, this week’s framing device is closed out
Apparently they knew all along what the Doctor would do, but
the circle was broken long enough to totally jack time up, so no problem.
Love the way Swarm points and says ‘Dan Lewis!’
Ah, Di is in the Passenger.
Why did they think they’d need her?
Swarm wants to reign in Hell.
So the Time Lords put a control on time to free Space, and
now that’s getting flipped.
Love the dimensional twists when Vinder puts his head in the
TARDIS
Wait, Vinder knows what a TARDIS is and thought they didn’t
exist??
Priest Triangle: Did
you repair? Can you repair?
The Doctor: I really
hope so.
Cut to Bel watching Vinder’s message. It’s him she loves and is trying to get
to. Sweet. And nicely structured.
The Doctor gave VInder a space pager with a direct line to
her when he needs them. Good, I like
Vinder. Glad we’ll get to see more of
him.
Lovely split screen of Bel and Vinder vowing to find one
another.
And back to the Angels fucking with Yaz
The Angel’s have taken control of the TARDIS
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