#crimean war

Since its inception, Doctor Who has utilised the power of the cliffhanger in an attempt to draw viewers back to the next week’s episode. This is mostly due to the stories being presented in a serialised format. The story isn’t over, but the episode is, so they needed something to entice viewers back. Oftentimes it was the Doctor or another protagonist about to meet an uncertain fate. Other times it was a big reveal, such as an alien peering out of the shadows. The problem with this format is that oftentimes the next episode would pick up right where we left off and the cliffhanger would resolve almost immediately. After being unsatisfied with how “The Empty Child,” and “The Doctor Dances,” run into one another, Steven Moffat adopted a new approach. He was quoted as saying- “My thing about cliffhangers is, it has to be a moment that changes the way you’re looking at it. It has to launch a completely different and hopefully unexpected phase of the story. It’s not just a movie cut in half.”

At the end of last week’s “The Halloween Apocalypse,” the Doctor and various other characters were facing the business end of a destructive force known as “the Flux.” Taking a page from Moffat’s playbook, Chibnall begins “War of the Sontarans,” in a completely different time and place. It’s a nice indication that while every story of Flux thus far has ended on some sort of cliffhanger, they aren’t just a movie cut in half (or sixths). Furthermore, it’s nice to see the episode had its own story arc, something of which had me worried after last week’s plotless beginning. Instead, we got a well-paced and beautifully directed episode of Doctor Who. And despite what other reviewers have said, I found it refreshing.

Once again, we’re given more moments as the Doctor and Yaz’s personalities continue to crystalise. I really enjoy Jodie Whittaker’s new approach to the Doctor. She’s more snarky, if not a little mean, but not mean in a “gives the brown guy up to the Nazis,” sort of way. She’s mean in a “talks trash and gives vague threats,” sort of way. So much of her first two series made her come off as a kids show presenter, and I’m glad she’s seemingly shed that skin for a tougher exterior. Yaz, while not incredibly fleshed out, also seems to have more of a direct personality. We’re meeting the Yaz that has taken to becoming the Doctor 2.0 in the same manner of previous companions like Rose or Martha. She’s even gone as far as to write “WWTDD,” or “What would the Doctor do?” on her hand. I can imagine that will be a bit divisive within the fandom. It’s a froggy chair moment, and no I don’t mean the one from Animal Crossing. It’s like Marmite, you’ll either like it or not. I’m team Marmite, or rather, I’m team WWTDD. Both really.

The episode wastes no time putting characters in their positions to play out like pawns in a chess game seemingly devised by the evil Swarm and his sister Azure. After discovering the TARDIS has taken them to the Crimean War, the Doctor, Yaz, and Dan are almost immediately split up. Fading away like a polaroid in a Back to the Future movie, Dan and Yaz find themselves transported away leaving the Doctor with her unreliable TARDIS. The TARDIS, still acting up, is rendered doorless as the Doctor frantically looks for a way into the safety of her phone box. Unable to swan off, the Doctor is forced to retreat from an anachronistic fleet of Sontarans. It’s around this time that the Doctor meets Mary Seacole and her “British hotel.” Chibnall’s penchant for historicals is evident at this point, but thankfully, his penchant for edutainment has not also returned. There are no moments when the Doctor stops what she’s doing to tell her companions the brief history of Mary Seacole. If “Rosa,” had ended with the Doctor looking directly into the camera saying “You can find out more at your local library,” I wouldn’t have batted an eye.

The Sontarans are back to being threatening again, but this isn’t to say they didn’t have questionable behaviour. Having slipped in through the Lupari shield just before the Flux, the Sontarans have claimed Earth as an outpost for Sontar. They did so by taking over Russia and China during the Crimean War. Like Dan and Yaz’s disappearance, it’s not really clear how or why the Sontarans or the Doctor ended up in the year 1855. The episode may have explained it, but I honestly could not tell you now. This could have something to do with the fact that the story is yet unfinished, or it could be the poor audio mixing that seems to be a theme this season. While the episode itself was nicely paced with creative direction and cinematography, the sound design was surprisingly lacklustre. Motives aside, the Sontarans of this story are on par with those of the two-part story “The Sontaran Stratagem/The Poison Sky.” It was also nice to see the return of Dan Starkey as yet another completely different Sontaran.

Back to the present day in Liverpool, Dan has discovered his beloved home is now the Earth capital of Sontar, but that doesn’t mean the Liverpudlians have taken this new threat lying down. Armed with pots and pans, they fight back against the Sontarans with a good whack to their probic vents. Among these rebels are Dan’s parents Eileen and Neville. If you recall, it was rumoured that Dan would be the son of a former companion, a rumour that can now be put to rest. Eileen and Neville serve up heavy Elisabeth Sladen and Nicholas Courtney from “The Sarah Jane Adventures,” vibes. Pepper in a dash of Wilfred Mott and Sylvia Noble and you’ve got Dan’s parentage. They’re a cute addition to the story that does great work to lighten the mood a bit.

Across both timelines, the human resistance to the Sontarans fight their respective battles. Dan, armed with a wok, infiltrates a Sontaran ship, while the Doctor attempts to avoid bloodshed altogether. I liked how the Doctor uses Mary Seacole’s hotel as a sort of base of operations. Her and Mary have a nice rapport as two women trying to avoid the inevitable war between British forces and the Sontarans. I was giddy when the Doctor used her being a woman to trick the Sontarans into a parlay under the guise of having information about the male Doctor they know and fear. It took them three years, but they finally found a way for the Doctor’s femininity to take part in the storyline. Ultimately the talks fail as Sontarans would rather die than make some sort of peace accord with an inferior species such as humans.

The story attempts to portray the British soldier General Logan as a fool, but I found him to be a man stuck between two impossible choices- fight the Sontarans or let them roll across Europe for the glory of Sontar. Only after watching his battalion get crushed is he willing to hear the Doctor’s perspective. I’d also like to add that I rather liked the battle scene. A lot of the visuals of this season have been exactly what they needed to be. I saw a funny post the other day celebrating the fact that the Sontarans look like shit again, and it’s true. It’s nice to see that Doctor Who knows when to look real and when to look fantastical. In this instance, it was great to see the cameras pull back to a wide-scale battlefield. It sounded echoes of “The War Games,” which were compounded when the Doctor and her new friends discover the Sontarans are using a camouflage shield to divide the battlefield from their base of operations.

It was nice to see Mary doing some spy work, though I question the intelligence behind setting up her spy post in the exact point of a known doorway in the shield. That seems like a good way to get caught. The shots of the Sontaran base from on high stirred memories of Mordor and the witch’s castle in “The Wizard of Oz.” If they had shown the Sontarans marching back and forth singing the March of the Winkies, it wouldn’t have felt out of place. Mary learns that the Sontarans sleep for only seven minutes every 27 hours. Despite Mary’s competency and ability to adapt, I was massively disappointed when Chibnall decided in all of his infinite wisdom to have her state that she has no idea what’s going on. She may not understand the technology in front of her, but I would say she’s doing just fine for a woman who cares for a wounded Sontaran and infiltrates their base. Claiming she doesn’t know what’s happening felt like a betrayal of her intelligence and her agency. That’s a bad Chibnall!

If the Doctor’s plan sounds familiar, it’s because it’s the same plan the Doctor had in “The Sontaran Experiment.” The idea of destroying the Sontaran’s food and energy sources is exactly how they foil the plans of Field Major Styre. This wouldn’t be the first time the new series of Doctor Who used key plot points from classic Doctor Who. In “Rise of the Cybermen,” they replace the mirror planet Mondas with a mirrored universe. The plot of “The Silurians,” is ripped off wholesale in “The Hungry Earth/Cold Blood,” two-parter, also written by Chris Chibnall. Perhaps Chibnall is just Doctor Who’s reboot guy. He rebooted “The Silurians,” he rebooted the Cartmel Masterplan, and now he’s rebooted “The Sontaran Experiment.” This isn’t incredibly egregious, but I must say it does hurt the story in an unexpected manner. If the Sontaran’s major weakness is revealed in the past to be their reliance on their foodstuffs, why the hell are they all taking their seven-minute recharge simultaneously? Even idiots in horror movies know to have a guard on duty while everyone else gets a bit of kip. If you were generous, you would say it’s hubris, but it does make the Sontarans seem rather stupid.

I suppose that’s a potential pitfall in any Sontaran story. It’s easy to want to write them as stupid. They’re so serious and yet, they look so much like potato men. Moffat even went as far as to portray them as dumb enough to not notice that while their tank was invisible, they were not. So sure, why not leave yourself open to attack for seven minutes? And sure, why not keep access to their reserves at a height easily reached by humanoids? It’s not like they only protected these precious valves with a single panel that could be removed with a sonic device, the known tool of their oldest enemy, the Doctor. Oh, they did? Oh. Right. As I said above, their actions are a bit questionable. Honestly, though, I am okay with this for one reason- it gave us an ending. It was nice to see the Doctor have a plan and for that plan to play out. It may have been a bit naff, but it still felt like a run of the mill episode of Doctor Who, which, these days, is quite a lot. It makes as much sense as Donna being able to survive the atmosphere aboard a Sontaran ship. Just go with it.

Dan and the Doctor’s adventures conclude in similar fashions- with giant explosions. One orange, one blue. On the Doctor’s end, it’s at the hands of Logan who blows them sky-high with barrels of gun powder. The Doctor admonishes him, but I have to admit, from his perspective, I once again understand his actions. Sure, she can send the Sontarans packing, but Logan can’t take the chance that they might come back. Like Captain Magambo in “Planet of the Dead,” his main concern is for the human race. The Doctor won’t always be there to save humanity. While I don’t stan General Logan, I do understand his motivations. On Dan’s end of things, he and his new Lupari friend, Karvanista, destroy the Sontarans with a sort of temporal bomb. How this bomb actually functioned was a load of bafflegab, but it certainly did the trick. It may be a bit a cliche at this point to end a Doctor Who episode by putting everything back in its place, but I don’t mind, personally. It seems within the realm of a time travel show that you could remove all traces of a thing using time travel technology.

Speaking of time travel technology, we are now getting a clearer picture as to why the TARDIS has been less than reliable. It would appear that the black goo we’ve seen dripping from her columns is some sort of corruption. Perhaps Swarm and Azure are using it to pilot the TARDIS to their location. Either way, at the moment it means the Doctor is no longer able to rely on her constant companion. I don’t quite understand the motivation here as the show has never really needed a reason for the Doctor not to use the TARDIS at every opportunity. Sure, there are times when the TARDIS takes a plunge into the odd Satan pit, but usually, they just have the Doctor not use the TARDIS. Because let’s be real, if this wasn’t a fictional show, there would be no reason not to use the TARDIS all the freaking time. Got Daleks? No problem. Materialise around them and drop them into the sun. Easy peasy. See? That would be very boring.

Not to be forgotten, Yaz has now met up with Vinder. The Flux has deposited Vinder to the same location as Yaz- a planet called Time. On this planet, a group of monks or priests in the form of floating triangles have conscripted both of the young heroes as repairers. They need their circle of witches machine fixed, for some reason. We’re also met once again by the character Joseph Williamson. Williamson is the same guy I forgot was in chapter one, who seemed to be running the weirdest dig site ever. This time he’s seen rambling in the corridors of this temple known as the Temple of Atropos. Is it just me or has Chibnall gotten better at naming stuff? Atropos is a far cry better than “Ranskoor Av Kolos,” a name of which I constantly have to look up. Even Lupar and Karvanista are decent names.

The Swarm and Azure sequences give me “Kinda,” vibes. They take a sort of relish in menacingly chewing scenery that reminds me of the Mara. However, I would be remiss if I didn’t point out just how many similarities I see between this series of Doctor Who and the MCU. Perhaps it was unavoidable when “Loki,” introduced the concept of the Time Variance Authority. But having an extremely powerful villain that uses a giant destructive cloud that eats everything in its path reeks of Kang the Conquerer. Especially when said bad guy casually avoids death by zapping from place to place as if already knowing where the killing blow will land. People joked about how close Vinder’s appearance was to that of Michael B Jordan’s “Killmonger,” from “Black Panther,” but maybe they were onto something?

As much as I have enjoyed the performances of both Azure and Swarm, I find them to be the most worrying aspect of the storyline. I can’t shake the feeling that their story ties into the cringe-inducing Timeless Child storyline. When they mentioned that “Time” is a planet, I began to worry that Chibnall was up to his worst inclinations. But I’m also trying to be open-minded, so I am also allowing myself room to be pleasantly surprised. I think a lot of people think Chibnall’s detractors want to see him fail. I want Chris Chibnall to succeed. I want Doctor Who to be good. If I want Chibnall to fail in any manner, it would be for him to fail in ruining the show. I want him to succeed at keeping the show afloat. I want him to fail at running it into the ground. Who the hell would like to see Doctor Who be bad? 

One aspect I found really interesting about the storyline is where it was revealed that the circle of time guardians was purposely “broken.” These “Mouri,” are quantum locked, seemingly to keep Swarm and Azure from being able to harm them. Why this is interesting is that, up to this point, the only things that are quantum locked in Doctor Who are the Weeping Angels. Seeing as “Flux,” has already incorporated the Weeping Angels into the storyline, I can’t help but wonder if we’re not going to get a sort of origin story for them. I know Rassilon condemned the dissenting Time Lords to be like “the Weeping Angels of old,” but that doesn’t really mean that’s where they come from. I would be interested in such a storyline. And while the idea of the baddies ripping apart time makes me worry that Chibnall is still trying to do lasting damage to the show, it could also be a lot of fun to see what comes of it. Azure and Swarm seem to revel in toying with time that echos the Faction Paradox. Hopefully, they’ll be even a fraction as good. Chibnall decided to borrow from Andrew Cartmel to disastrous ends, so why not Lawrence Miles? I kid.

As I said, I enjoyed this episode. It might even be one of my favourite Chris Chibnall stories overall. Dan continues to charm, though I hope the next thing he does with his wok is cook a damn meal. At this point he’s gone from work, to capture, to a battle, and not a single banger or tattie to tide him over. That man needs a kebab like Commander Skaak needs to ride a horse! While the episode is by no means perfect, it met my number one criteria- it was fun to watch. Any story can be picked apart and held up to harsh light, but storytelling isn’t real life. I told my good friend Taryn that even if this series goes down as one of the worst in the show’s history, that this episode would be worth revisiting. There aren’t many episodes in the Chibnall era that I would like to revisit, save for maybe “The Witchfinders,” or “It Takes You Away,” but this one I could return to. What’s more, is that it doesn’t need a hokey cliffhanger to entice me back for the next episode. At this point, I’m invested.

“The Crimean war”