#the halloween apocalypse

In the past twelve days since my last update, I have been dancing around the idea of writing a follow-up article. While I think it was fairly obvious how I felt leading up to series thirteen, I felt as though I hadn’t quite captured what I was trying to say. To be honest, I didn’t enjoy writing about how unenthused I have been for more Doctor Who. It’s not a great feeling, furthermore, I dislike the idea of adding to the vitriol on the internet. Despite my reservations, I kept coming back to one question- what if we’re wrong? What if all of this is leading somewhere exciting? Ultimately, I decided against the article as I felt that it would not be long enough to justify writing it. But the question persists. It wasn’t until last nights episode when I finally was able to put into words what’s been bugging me- one of Chris Chibnall’s biggest failings is also the thing that keeps me returning.

“The Halloween Apocalypse,” starts with a bang. I want to say that upfront. I loved the Doctor and Yaz’s banter. Both Whittaker and Gill seemed to be having a great time. The special effects were pure cheese like something from a Power Rangers episode, and I appreciated the effort. Seriously, I loved how dumb it was. Because first and foremost, the one thing I’m looking for from Doctor Who is that it be fun. The Doctor and Yaz hanging over a pit of acid is daft, and cute, and fun. I also liked that the Doctor even somewhat planned everything to the point of setting up a trampoline to catch her and Yaz. That moment gives the Doctor some agency and makes her feel a bit crafty and for lack of a better word- Doctory. 

I also really loved seeing Yaz with some much-needed personality. It almost illustrates immediately that maybe three companions was too many. Since we last saw her, Yaz has been given a little bit of a shot in the arm. She’s no longer with the police, and she’s fallen into a groove as a companion. I was reminded of Rose’s character arc wherein she goes from a young shopgirl to a Doctor in training. Yaz is shown punching buttons and giving directives. There seems that she has been given a more definitive character, and I am hoping that it doesn’t disappear in chapter two like Ryan’s dyspraxia. If it can remain consistent, I will be very excited.

Along with Yaz’s characterisation, it feels as though we’re finally seeing Jodie Whittaker’s Doctor take a little more form. I liked seeing her being a bit more assertive and comfortable with herself. There was a bit where her weird morality comes into play where she talks to Yaz as though showing her wondrous things excludes her from having to be honest. It felt a bit like when the Doctor failed to meet even the most basic of requirements for comforting a friend afraid of having cancer. But on the other hand, it reminded me a bit of moments when the Tenth Doctor threw his weight around and acted selfishly. I’m ok with the Doctor not being a great person, so long as the writing understands the implications. This seemed ok to me.

The problem I had with this episode, I now realise is the problem I’ve had with all of Chris Chibnall’s era of Doctor Who- there’s not a lot of resolution to be found anywhere. Clearly, the first episode of a greater six-part story is allowed to end on a bit of a cliffhanger, but on its own, very little happens. It’s a lot of set-up for chapter two. I only hope that chapter two isn’t, in turn, a lot of set-up for chapter three. You see, we’ve been given a lot to go off of, but very few postmarks that allow us to trace our journey. Yes, we’ve met the Ruth Doctor, but who is she? Is she even actually the Doctor? The way in which the Doctor side-eyes her in “The Fugitive of the Judoon,” makes me wonder if she might not be the Doctor. Everything thus far has been a lot of promise, with not a lot of payoff. We should have learned more about the Ruth Doctor by the end of series twelve, but we were only left with more questions.

Not even the resolution of “The Timeless Children,” elucidated much for us as the audience. Nothing about the storyline played into the action beyond being an info dump. Compare this to the end of series four. Throughout all of series four, we’re constantly hearing about planets that have gone missing. It’s such a basic science fiction trope that you’d barely even notice it as it’s happening. Of course, the Adipose breeding planet went missing, that’s the kind of thing that happens in sci-fi. Davies took this basic trope, seeded throughout series four, and built it into one of the best series finales. Not only had these planets gone missing, but they were also being used by the Daleks to create the reality bomb. The most the Timeless Child does to inform the story is to give the Master motivation to destroy Gallifrey. Knowledge gained in this way doesn’t further a plot, it just vomits information at us.

I feel like a lot of Chibnall’s writing would go over better if he gave the audience more moments of resolution. It reminds me a lot of Trenzalore, a concept drawn out by Steven Moffat to the point where it became more annoying than intriguing. Just tell the story you want to tell, stop implying that we’ll get there someday. Davies wasn’t afraid of peppering in clues or hints, but they all led to a finale. Both Moffat and Davies understood that while you could tell an overarching plot, each individual episode had its own sort of arc. They would leave room for further intrigue, while still giving us clear resolutions to individual episodes. In this way, the structure of “The Halloween Apocalypse,” worries me. It’s about the dissemination of information. I mentioned in my last article that I figured one episode would be the Weeping Angels episode, and one would be the Sontarans episode, and while they would be a part of a greater story, they would also stand alone as individual stories. What we got instead was an hour of set-up. I was looking forward to a spooky Halloween episode filled with Weeping Angels, but instead, we got a glimpse at the Weeping Angels and a mountain of exposition.

This seems to be a recurring problem in Chibnall’s writing. Not knowing when to give information. Not knowing when to let something be its own story. Take “Revolution of the Daleks,” for instance. We get a pretty good concept of the UK government using Daleks as the police and another good concept of the Doctor’s prison break. Both concepts could have been an episode on their own, but are instead dropped together in the same story. The consequence of which is that neither story is properly explored. “The Halloween Apocalypse,” suffers from this lack of breathing room. So much information is dropped up front that by the end, you feel more overwhelmed than informed. And look, I get it, if you’re constantly being called the boring guy, you would want to put as much excitement and promise into that first episode as possible. That’s totally fair, but I know I’m not the only one who felt overwhelmed by the info dump. The fact that the sound mixing was muddy didn’t help either.

The closest thing we’re given to a plot is in the form of newcomer Dan’s run-in with Kavanista, a Lupar soldier who could best be described as a Chewbacca-spaniel. The Doctor and Yaz have been pursuing him so the Doctor to could learn more about her past. As it turns out, Kavanista’s mission is to rescue Dan from the Flux, a devastating force in space, threatening to wipe out the entire universe. The Lupar race is evidently a kind of companion race to humanity, and each of them has been assigned a human to protect from the Flux. Their big plan is to wrap the planet earth in a network of ships like they were the Nova Corps. I think. Don’t quote me on that. How their ships could handle the Flux where whole planets failed is anyone’s guess.

My current theory is that the Flux is somehow related to the new baddies in town- Swarm and Azure. As villains go, they’re not bad. There’s not a lot to go off of this early. Swarm has been imprisoned since the beginning of time but has spent the entire time planning and growing. He reveals himself to the Doctor while revelling in the fact that she doesn’t remember them. One can probably assume that he’s the reason the Doctor doesn’t remember being the Ruth Doctor, which is not exactly exciting as it all ties back to the Timeless Child, a storyline in which I have consistently shown very little interest. My initial reaction to Swarm and his sister Azure is that they feel a lot like Chris Chibnall took Tzim-Sha and mashed him up with the Eternals from “Can You Hear Me?” Swarm stands out, however, due to the strong performance given by Sam Spruell.

Throughout the episode, I was struck with the feeling that Chibnall was trying to evoke the experience of a classic Doctor Who serial. Oftentimes, classic serials would opt for a cliffhanger episode leading into the next. You could go a whole six weeks for certain elements to resolve. The difference is that the old serials didn’t also drop close to every possible story arc in the first episode. They allowed the story to tell itself slowly, over time. I’m willing to give that a lot of good faith, however, mostly due to the reasons I’ve already stated above. The main reason is that it’s only chapter one. That being said, I would have liked to have seen some of these story elements spread out a little more. Even “Game of Thrones,” with its many characters and plotlines took the time to parse out the information. As I said, I hope episode two is allowed to be a story arc on its own.

Speaking of Game of Thrones, one of the elements that worked the least for me was the inclusion of the character Vinder. From the space station “Rose,” Vinder is either stranded or maybe even exiled from his people, out in deep space. Vinder’s main role in the story is to passively watch as the Flux passes through and destroys planets in its wake. This is all fine and good, but I couldn’t for the life of me understand how fast the Flux moves. It appears to be engulfing planets around Vinder left and right, but never really encroaching on him or the space station. Vinder’s actual location in relation to the Flux is never quite clear. You think at times that he is about to die, but then the Flux seems lightyears away. Yet simultaneously it destroys planets all around. It reminded me a lot of when Whittaker’s Doctor bumps her hip to send her sonic screwdriver inexplicably into her hands, defying all laws of physics. The portrayal of Vinder and his position in relation to the Flux is poorly defined. I’m not even sure when or where Vinder is, but hopefully, that will come with time.

Judging by the movement of the Flux and the size of the universe, the human race has anywhere between 5 minutes and 75 billion years before it utterly annihilates the earth. It’s hard to tell, because, you know, space is massive. The Doctor pilots her TARDIS to Halloween, the day on which the Flux arrives to Earth. This comes after some weird behaviour on the TARDIS’ behalf. I really like the idea that the TARDIS is possibly dying. That’s a very cool concept for a story. My only fear stemming from that storyline is that they may use it as an opportunity to replace the TARDIS. Why this worries me (beyond the fact that the TARDIS is an institution and a character in her own right), is that I’m nervous they’re going to use this as an opportunity to replace the blue box. There have been really dumb rumours that they may change the police box because police aren’t that popular these days. Doing so would not only fix a problem that never existed, but it would also be the ultimate act of performative wokeness. Seriously, nobody wants that. The part of that storyline that is interesting to me is in seeing how the Doctor might save the TARDIS. It’s ok to put the TARDIS in peril, but at the end of the day, it’s not ok to kill her. Even Steven Moffat knew he couldn’t actually say the Doctor’s name. Some things, no writer has the right to change.

Next week is looking like it’s going to be the Sontaran episode. My hope for stand-alone stories may yet be fulfilled. Though we didn’t get our spooky Halloween episode, which was a major disappointment, we may still get some good self-contained episodes. As an American, I have always wished they would do a Halloween episode. I figured it would never happen as Halloween isn’t as big a deal here in the UK. It’s funny how Chris Chibnall seems to give me things I’ve wanted to see in Doctor Who, but his execution is so often lacking. I was hoping that they were going to try and add a little menace to the Sontarans, but instead we got more of the painfully unfunny humour about their appearance from the Moffat era. Sigh. You would think a Sontaran would wear his battle scars like a badge of honour, but here it’s a source of derision. It’s a disappointing choice, that, but I guess he’s trying to lean into what’s popular.

There’s a lot of setup in this story, culminating with the Doctor looking deep into the Flux, about to die inside an unreliable TARDIS. It’s not a bad place to be considering my attitude leading up to the episode. Obviously, some of my previous concerns remain, but most importantly, I had fun. Watching the Doctor and Yaz hold onto rockets like witches on brooms was a genuine delight. I also loved the Doctor hitting the Flux with the might of the time vortex only for it to do nothing. It nicely illustrated the inherent threat of the Flux. While I’ve not said much about him, Dan is a very sympathetic person. John Bishop’s accent may be a bit of a put-on, but he’s so damn charming that I hardly care. Lots of the acting was very strong. Much like Bradley Walsh, I feel as though both John Bishop and Sam Spruell are going to elevate what is on the page. This is a better place than where a lot of people are with the show at the moment. My friend Taryn told me that the only solace she has in the Chibnall era is that now there is an end in sight. She compared it to waking up three-fourths of the way into surgery and thinking “Well, at least it’s almost over.” It hurts, but it won’t hurt forever. For me, however, the most notable difference between my feelings before and after this episode is that now, I’m actually looking forward to the next one. Considering my pessimism just twelve days ago, that’s a hell of a turnaround.