Village is a pretty good episode that has very little to do with the Flux.
Admittedly, I’m a shoe-in for anything set in the 60’s, and Claire’s mod earrings and makeup is nothing to sneeze at, but this episode also features some of the strengths of the Chibnall era. Big creaky houses and mysteries, quietly strong characters, negotiations and betrayals, have all become hallmarks of the 13th Doctor. Part of it is that the hour feels pleasantly stuffed with characters and plot, unlike other episodes that are either overreaching or undercooked (happy Thanksgiving, Americans), leading to endless repetition.
The Angel that stole the TARDIS at the end of the last episode takes the crew to a small Devon village in 1967 where everyone is quietly disappearing and the stone markers in the graveyard are slowly multiplying. Claire, who ran up to the Doctor in the first episode, has been trasported back to the 60s and is undergoing brain monitoring by professor Eustasius Jericho. (Why she has agreed to do this is unclear but my guess is mid-century boredom.) Claire sees things in the future, which I guess is an accepted human trait now, and has seen a Weeping Angel in a vision, allowing the Angel to take root in her brain. That Angel is being tracked down by THE DIVISION (dun dun dun) and so a horde of other Angels are closing in on Claire to try to get at their bounty. Along the way, why not wipe out a community? They send villagers from the 60s back to the 1901, and because there’s an Angel back then too, many of the villagers get attacked again, for a final time. Touch an Angel once, get your time potential stolen; touch an Angel twice, crumble into stone. So the Angels in 1967 clear out a village, sending everyone back to 1901, and then clear out the 1901 village again. Because, you know, a quantum-locked alien’s gotta eat.
This is bad news for Dan and Yaz, who in their search for a missing 10 year old girl, get taken with the other villagers back to 1901. Unlike Amy and Rory, my guess is the Doctor will actually go back for them. Which I guess brings me to the question of how Angels gather the future lived energy from time travelers? But whatever, they’re wonderfully creepy again. I could have done without a lot of the “don’t blink” repetition, and there are certainly plot holes big enough for a kiddie pool but it wouldn’t really be Doctor Who without. The Rogue Angel makes a trade with the DIVISION (dun dun dun) Angels and bargains freedom for…the Doctor. Because the Doctor is number one most wanted on the DIVISION (dun dun dun) list and even though the….organization is everyone and everywhere, tracking all of time and space, the Doctor is only finding this out now. I smell a set up. The D…the DIV (dun) is absolutely a thing that just inserted itself into the timeline out of the blue. I bet it’s like…five years old, technically.
The Flux chapter happens on the edges of the story, through Vinder and Bel. Bel lands on a planet, witnesses a huge massacre, and leaves. Vinder picks up her trail an unspecified amount of time later. The glitter villains are using the Flux survivors as fuel for passengers. Nothing revolutionary, but I was excited to see more of the post-Flux survival universe and I’m appreciating getting to know Bel and Vinder as separate characters as well as how their interactions are handled. They feel like two people in a relationship instead of the relationship being the definitive thing about them.
It’s clear this season is having the Doctor go all in on revelations about the DIV (dun) and her backstory and that it’s going to tie into the Flux somehow. After this episode I’m curious about how that will happen. Is the Flux a spacetime event orchestrated by the evil organization? There are two left to episodes to find out and I feel like the next one will be exposition heavy.
Notes:
- some would say having a WWII vet who liberated Belsen is too easy a shortcut to having a Good and Strong character and I would say those people don’t deserve Doctor Who OR Eustacius Jericho, a goddamn delight
- oh and the village is quantum extracted from time and space. does that mean it’s safe from the Flux? my original theory for the episode was that the Angels had done the extraction to warn or protect the Doctor in some way
- all these excellent side characters (some of whom are white males!) just highlight how unneccesary Dan is and how weak his characterization feels. but hey, he’s funny
- on Nov 25th a British MP said the Doctor being a woman leads to young men committing more crime and the Doctor Who fandom + online response just had a ton of fun with that
- next week: Dan’s episode numbers will be short but time in the company of Team TARDIS will be pretty long
buy me a holiday coffee!