The first 2 chapters of Flux seemed not too bad at first and only look worse to me once the whole story is finished. This third chapter though was where I could see the flaws starting to overwhelm the story even on first viewing.
This is a total hot mess, in my opinion. Chibnall seems to want to emulate Moffatt era stories like The Wedding of River Song where every conceivable idea that popped into Moffatt's head got thrown into a convoluted jumble. But even though I rather disliked the most chaotic Moffatt stories, Chibnall manages to make his story even more incoherent and even more ridiculous.
I am definitely extremely analytical, I cannot help that, but I am not a negative nitpicker, I am open-minded, endeavour to be fair and always try to look for positives. And there are positives I give credit for in this episode:
Great looking photography, costumes/make-up and effects.
Good music and acting.
Some initially intriguing aspects (although they end up disappointing).
A few decent moments of drama.
The negatives though are many and various:
The escape from the previous chapter's cliffhanger is silly.
There is very messy, convoluted storytelling with lots of jumping around. If this turned out to have logical explanations and good conclusions that would be far more forgivable but all the numerous threads go nowhere and mean this is simply a needless, incoherent concoction. All style and no substance.
The Joseph Williamson thread is pointless and silly.
The whole Atropos/Time/Mouri aspect is a nonsensical mess.
Bel and Vinder's story is totally not needed and cheesy.
The Passenger idea is weak and unexplained.
The Grand Serpent is just thrown in as yet another unnecessary element.
Dialogue is clunky.
Bel's baby monitor thing is stupid.
It all too often makes me cringe. I feel so so sad that all my hopes and expectations were being flushed away. I had defended Chibnall to the point of arguing and blocking people online as I felt he deserved a fair, open minded audience and time to tell his era's story. I stand by that but I started to feel he had let me down with this. I really feel he was out of his depth and throwing dozens of ideas at a wall to see if any stuck. He could have made a simple, fun 6 part story or a complicated 6 part explanation of his Timeless Child/Division ideas. Either could have worked. But instead he just made up dozens of new unfinished ideas and chucked them all in willy-nilly with no decent endings being worked out.
This particular episode is one of my least favourites of all time, sadly. A really incoherent jumble and pretty boring in my view too. Of the episodes remaining of Flux there were unfortunately equally flawed episodes to come but thankfully the next episode turned out to be a sudden high point of excellence amidst a very disappointing series. It was an enormous improvement.
The cliffhanger of this episode has Weeping Angels taking over the TARDIS. That begs the question "how can they do that?" However, it is undoubtedly exciting and powerful and effectively sets up the brilliant next episode so I give some credit for an impactful cliffhanger.
My Rating: 3/10.
Series 13 Episode Ranking: 5th out of 6.
This is a total hot mess, in my opinion. Chibnall seems to want to emulate Moffatt era stories like The Wedding of River Song where every conceivable idea that popped into Moffatt's head got thrown into a convoluted jumble. But even though I rather disliked the most chaotic Moffatt stories, Chibnall manages to make his story even more incoherent and even more ridiculous.
I am definitely extremely analytical, I cannot help that, but I am not a negative nitpicker, I am open-minded, endeavour to be fair and always try to look for positives. And there are positives I give credit for in this episode:
Great looking photography, costumes/make-up and effects.
Good music and acting.
Some initially intriguing aspects (although they end up disappointing).
A few decent moments of drama.
The negatives though are many and various:
The escape from the previous chapter's cliffhanger is silly.
There is very messy, convoluted storytelling with lots of jumping around. If this turned out to have logical explanations and good conclusions that would be far more forgivable but all the numerous threads go nowhere and mean this is simply a needless, incoherent concoction. All style and no substance.
The Joseph Williamson thread is pointless and silly.
The whole Atropos/Time/Mouri aspect is a nonsensical mess.
Bel and Vinder's story is totally not needed and cheesy.
The Passenger idea is weak and unexplained.
The Grand Serpent is just thrown in as yet another unnecessary element.
Dialogue is clunky.
Bel's baby monitor thing is stupid.
It all too often makes me cringe. I feel so so sad that all my hopes and expectations were being flushed away. I had defended Chibnall to the point of arguing and blocking people online as I felt he deserved a fair, open minded audience and time to tell his era's story. I stand by that but I started to feel he had let me down with this. I really feel he was out of his depth and throwing dozens of ideas at a wall to see if any stuck. He could have made a simple, fun 6 part story or a complicated 6 part explanation of his Timeless Child/Division ideas. Either could have worked. But instead he just made up dozens of new unfinished ideas and chucked them all in willy-nilly with no decent endings being worked out.
This particular episode is one of my least favourites of all time, sadly. A really incoherent jumble and pretty boring in my view too. Of the episodes remaining of Flux there were unfortunately equally flawed episodes to come but thankfully the next episode turned out to be a sudden high point of excellence amidst a very disappointing series. It was an enormous improvement.
The cliffhanger of this episode has Weeping Angels taking over the TARDIS. That begs the question "how can they do that?" However, it is undoubtedly exciting and powerful and effectively sets up the brilliant next episode so I give some credit for an impactful cliffhanger.
My Rating: 3/10.
Series 13 Episode Ranking: 5th out of 6.