Synopsis
In the Crimean War, the Doctor discovers the British army fighting a brutal alien army of Sontarans, as Yaz and Dan are thrown deeper into a battle for survival. What is the Temple of Atropos? Who are the Mouri?
Last week’s episode of Doctor Who: Flux saw the Doctor (Jodie Whittaker), Yaz (Mandip Gill), and Dan (John Bishop) facing certain doom as the destructive Flux rushed toward the TARDIS. So, how do you follow up that kind of a cliffhanger? With a war, some Sontarans, and a trip to a mysterious temple on a planet that shouldn’t exist. For me, “War of the Sontarans” never quite reached the heights that “The Halloween Apocalypse” did. With much of the action split across three eras in time, our core trio is separated and the Sontarans’ threat is never fully realized. However, there’s a lot about the episode that works exceedingly well.
Picking Up Where We Left Off
“War of the Sontarans” picks up shortly after “The Halloween Apocalypse,” with the Doctor, Yaz, and Dan waking up on a battlefield in the middle of the Crimean War. The trio is unsure how they arrived, and are almost immediately separated due to some kind of time fluctuations almost certainly caused by the Flux. The Doctor remains in Crimea, where she quickly learns that the British aren’t fighting the Russians, as history suggests, but are instead fighting an invading Sontaran war fleet. Meanwhile, Dan appears in modern-day Liverpool two days after Halloween. And he discovers a Sontaran Warfleet near the docks, planning an invasion spanning all of Earth’s history. With the Sontarans on the verge of war, it’s up to the Doctor and Mary Seacole (Sara Powell) and Dan and his parents (Paul Broughton and Sue Jenkins) to put a stop to the invasion before it can properly begin.
I understand the idea behind having the Doctor and Dan fight the Sontarans in two different time periods, making the episode both a celebrity historical and a modern-day alien invasion. But in practice, “War of the Sontarans” doesn’t do justice to either. As a historical, it only briefly explores Mary Seacole’s life. And it explains even less about the Crimean War. In fact, without Mary Seacole, this could’ve been any historical war. And As for the modern-day part of the episode, there’s just not enough time spent with Dan, his parents, and those Sontarans to get a good sense as to what their plan is. In fact, for an episode named after the Sontarans, they don’t have the impact they should. Splitting them up between the two time periods robs the story of the immediacy of a Sontaran threat. And the logistics behind their plan never really make sense.
A War in Two Eras
However, the episode does largely work. The Sontarans are at their creepiest during the Crimean War scenes. Sure, there are moments of brevity. But the battle between the Sontaran Army and the British Army is haunting in a way that few Sontaran stories usually are. Plus, the Doctor and General Logan’s spikiness adds a lot of tension to the episode – especially when the two finally confront the Sontaran leader (Jonathan Watson), resulting in the total massacre of the British soldiers. Similarly, Sara Powell is excellent as Mary Seacole – though, I wish the episode had delved a bit deeper into her story. While the Sontarans’ ultimate defeat – spread across the two timelines – feels a little convenient, it still works pretty well.
The modern-day bits hold a lot of the episode’s comedic relief. While the Sontarans don’t feel particularly threatening here, it is a lot of fun watching Dan and his parents take them down with nothing but a frying pan. And speaking of Dan’s parents, I adore his relationship with them. Dan continues to have this wonderful everyman quality about him that makes him so endearing. And I love how quick he is to just accept whatever weird stuff is happening around him. Plus, the return of Karvanista (Craige Els) is both delightful and beneficial to the episode’s climax. His rapport with Dan continues to be a source of utter joy, and I love seeing him. So, while I think the episode would’ve been better had the Sontaran threat been restricted to one time period, it’s hard to suggest what we got wasn’t fun.
A Temple on Time
Meanwhile, Yaz and Vinder (Jacob Anderson) both end up in the Temple of Atropos on the planet Time. One of the temple guards, a floating triangle named Priest Triangle (Nigel Richard Lambert), leads the pair to a room holding the Mouri. As Priest Triangle describes it, time is a destructive force that must be contained. And the Mouri, a race of quantum-locked beings, have previously contained it. Until two of the Mouri were damaged recently (by the Flux?). However, neither Yaz nor Vinder have any clue how to repair the Mouri. So, it’s a stroke of luck when Swarm (Sam Spruell), Azure (Rochenda Sandall), and their new friend, Passenger (Jonny Mathers), arrive on the scene, right? Maybe not, since the three appear to have quite the sordid history with the Mouri, going so far as to destroy one of the remaining Mouri. It’s all a little vague, though.
And this sense of vagueness continues when the Doctor and Dan (now reunited) arrive and find that Swarm and Azure have replaced two of the damaged Mouri with Yaz and Vinder. I get the need to continue setting up the overarching storyline. And I understand that it’s too early to offer any concrete answers just yet. But all of this vagueness does grow grating – especially when it prevents Yaz and Vinder from being proactive parts of the story. These new questions are intriguing, and I’m curious to see how the Doctor saves Yaz and Vinder after Swarm appears to blast them with the “full force of time” in the episode’s cliffhanger. But I do wish Yaz and Vinder had played a bigger role in this episode than they did.
Final Thoughts
On the whole, there’s a lot to like about “War of the Sontarans”. It’s a well-paced, tense episode that delivers the most threatening Sontarans in recent Doctor Who memory. The titular war is shown in a surprisingly realistic, almost brutal way. As brutal as Doctor Who could realistically get, of course. A lot of the character work is similarly solid. It’s nice seeing Yaz continue to take charge of situations in the Doctor’s absence. And Dan’s scenes in modern-day Liverpool continue emphasizing his readiness to help people, no matter what the cost. I just really wish our core trio hadn’t been separated so quickly after they were thrust together. I mean, they were only together for a few minutes in last week’s episode, so I really wish we could’ve seen their dynamic together develop this week.
But still, this is an ongoing storyline, and we’ve got another four episodes to go. There’s a lot of room to see the Doctor, Yaz, and Dan grow together as a group in future episodes. And I’m looking forward to it. I’m also hoping we start getting a few answers as to what, exactly, is going on soon. And it looks like we might, given this week’s cliffhanger. So, as the second part in a six-part story, “War of the Sontarans” does everything it needed to do. And it even had a fairly stand-alone story with the Sontarans. So, that’s fun. While I didn’t enjoy it quite as much as I enjoyed last week’s episode, “War of the Sontarans” is an undeniably solid episode of Doctor Who.
Rating: 4/5
New episodes of Doctor Who: Flux premiere Sundays at 8 pm on BBC America.
Bonus Questions and Speculation
- What’s going on with Joseph Williamson (Steve Oram)? Of the subplots introduced last week, his is the only one touched on this episode. But how did he end up in the Temple of Atropos? And why didn’t he seem as surprised as he could’ve been when learning time’s going funny?
- Have Swarm and Azure met Yaz before? Or are they just able to perceive time in a more non-linear fashion than the Doctor and her friends?
- The Mouri remind me a lot of the Weeping Angels. Both are quantum-locked creatures. And both have a weird relationship with time. Could there be more of a connection there?
- And what’s up with that black and white vision the Doctor had at the beginning of the episode? Are we gonna get some more hidden memories (along the lines of the Brendan memories in “Ascension of the Cybermen”)?
Part-time writer, part-time theatre nerd, full-time dork.
