Last week Doctor Who returned with the first episode of the 13th season, titled “Chapter One: The Halloween Apocalypse,” which felt like a one-hour trailer for the series. It was fast-paced, brimming to the edge with a ton of information and leaving us with a whole lot of questions. This week, the series begins to take shape in the second episode: “War of the Sontarans.”
*Spoiler warning Apply
“War of the Sontarans”
This episode of Doctor Who continues with a lot of timey-wimey shenanigans. Something has gone wrong with time, and things are not as they should have been. For some unknown reason, the TARDIS is malfunctioning and crashes near Crimean War-era Sevastopol. British forces are at war against the Sontaran empire when they should be at war against Russian forces. There, The Doctor (Jodie Whittaker) and her friends, Yaz Khan (Mandip Gil) and Dan Lewis (John Bishop), meet nurse Mary Seacole, just before Yaz and Dan begin to fall through time and space and are lost to the Doctor.
The Doctor
The Doctor is locked out of her TARDIS when she tries to find out what happened to Dan and Yaz. We are left wondering whether the TARDIS brought the Doctor here, was it random, or did the mysterious flux energy (creature?) have something to do with it. We know that the TARDIS always takes the Doctor where she needs to go, so is this something that the TARDIS is directing the Doctor towards? Is that why the TARDIS is suddenly closed off to the DOCTOR? Maybe, it is absolutely necessary for the Doctor to stay here. I would imagine that the Doctor would be more concerned with getting Yaz back than worrying about British troops in a war.
However, stuck on Earth with only her sonic and no access to the TARDIS, she enlists the help of Mary Seacole to gather intelligence on the Sontaran camp. She tried, to no avail, to get British General Logan to keep his men safe by avoiding conflict with the Sontarans. Eventually, it is the Doctor who must then lead the battle against the Sontarans.
One thing that really stands out in this episode is the Doctor’s peacefulness. There is a quote making the rounds on Twitter by @STEFisDOPE_ that says in part, “You can’t truly call yourself ‘peaceful’ unless you are capable of great violence.” I find that rings true with the Doctor. The Doctor has been violent, has seen, and has known great violence. Yet, she chooses peace, and you can see that in this episode when she successfully convinced the Sontarans to retreat. The Doctor has often given enemies a choice to do the right thing or to leave. Her rage over the deaths of the British forces could have justified slaughtering the Sonatarans. However, she was peaceful instead. She gave them a choice.
When General Logan destroys the Sontarans as they were about to flee it reminded me of the scene from the 10th’s Doctor tenure in “The Christmas Invasion” when Harriet Jones makes a similar decision against the Sycorax. Here, the Doctor responds with honesty, frustration, and rage when she tells General Logan that his attack on the retreating Sonatarans was something he did to appease his own guilt. “Sometimes, men like you make me wonder why I bother with humanity.”
I think this is an important thing to remember that the writers have pointed out for us. Just because the 13th Doctor walks around with a cheery demeanor and gives out gold stars for jobs well done, doesn’t mean she isn’t capable of great rage. It is only the words of Mary Seacole that calm her. The Doctor needs a certain type of companion to balance out her rage and give her perspective.
Just after this scene, we see that the TARDIS has reopened for the Doctor. So, are the flux and the TARDIS energy somehow connected? Now that the Sontarans are gone, the TARDIS is available.
Dan Lewis
The effects of the Flux and space and time travel somehow send Dan back to 2021 Liverpool. He finds his parents and works to defeat the Sontarans. His parent lead him to a shipyard and give him information on how to attack the Sontarans by using a frying pan/wok to the back of the head. I enjoyed the spooky moments when Dan was in his street, calling Di and trying to get his neighbor’s attention. Everyone indoors seemed scared of something, but you didn’t necessarily know of what. I was wondering if a Weeping Angel would appear and jump scare us. We love that spooky Doctor Who suspense. You never know how quickly it will go from spooky to funny.
Dan infiltrates the Sontarans’ shipyard, but the Sontarans discover Dan’s presence. He is saved by the Karvanista, who is species-bound to humans, right before destroying the shipyard, which resets the timeline. This effectively wipes out all of the Sontarans from Earth’s history.
The biggest takeaway from this episode is that Dan’s parents are hilarious and give us those Wilf Mott vibes. Dan’s character is very likable because of his optimism and his and the fact that he gets to throw around fun puns and dad jokes. I am a little concerned with just how well he has taken to all the recent changes in his life. His home being shrunken, being kidnapped by the Karvanista and recused by Yaz and the Doctor, meeting all kinds of aliens, and traveling in time and space seemed to barely phase him. He seems to roll with the punches very easily. I hope that it is saying a lot about his resilience and not just lazy writing to hurry things along in the plot. We probably could have used one more episode to really flush out his relationship with the Doctor and his Karvanista guardian. Perhaps “The Halloween Acopcalypse” could have benefitted from more time with us getting to know Dan and less with us meeting The Swarm and seeing some Weeping Angels.
I look forward to the Dan Bishop cosplays at Gallifrey One 2022 with cosplayers holding woks and frying pans.
Yaz Khan & The Swarm
We didn’t get an explanation as to why Dan and Yaz suddenly vanish outside of the Doctor saying they are falling through time and space because of Vortex energy. I get that. If that has something to do with their travels in the TARDIS, then it makes sense that Dan is returned to where he started. Why is Yaz suddenly on an unknown planet being asked to repair a damaged temple full of dying priests, with a random Joseph Williamson as Vinder? Is the TARDIS sending Yaz to where she needs to be the way she sends the Doctor places? Or is the Flux or The Swarm somehow responsible for this?
What we know so far about The Swarm is that they are an old enemy of the Doctor and possibly have a more intimate relationship with the Doctor than that. The Doctor doesn’t remember who they are and that’s not surprising. In last season’s “Fugitive of Judoon” episode, we learn that the Doctor doesn’t fully know her own mind. There are versions of herself that she doesn’t rememberm and there are Gallifreyans known as the Division who imprisoned the Swarm but are also responsible for having wiped the Doctor’s memories.
Why do I feel like the Master is gonna show up at the end of this series just to punch Swarm in the face and be like "NOPE THE DOCTOR IS ONLY ALLOWED ONE AGE OLD ENEMY AND THAT IS M E" #DoctorWhoFlux
— Lady of Time Cosplay (@LoTCosplay) November 8, 2021
When the Swarm arrives at the temple, they reveal it to be the planet Time. Then, they kill the priests and take Yaz and Vinder hostage. No clue as to what happened to the other Victorian-era gentleman or why he was even there, but that’s ok. I’m sure we’ll get to him later. Once the Sontarans are dealt with and the Doctor manages to recover the TARDIS and collect Dan, The TARDIS is hijacked and brought to the temple, where they are forced to watch as the Swarm is about to kill Yaz and Vinder. I’m not yet sure what the point of Vinder is outside of looking cool and having a cool outfit. I already want to like him, but we don’t have much more to go on as of yet.
There is definitely some petty vengeance going on here with The Swarm. The Swarm seems very annoyed at the fact that the Doctor clings to human companions. Possibly, they feel that the Doctor could do better, or maybe it’s just jealousy. The Swarm is powerful and seems to know everything. So, we will have to wait until next week to find out why they were petty enough to swoop up Yaz and then hijack the Doctor just so she can watch Yaz die.
Overall
The main thing that I noticed about the episode is that things feel like they are starting to take shape. Before arriving at the events of “War of the Sontarans,” we needed to know who the Karvanista were. Otherwise, we would not have been able to get to the point where the Sontarans were able to use the Karvanista shield to arrive on Earth and protect themselves from the Flux. Had COVID filming restrictions not been an issue, we probably would have gotten 3-4 more episodes prior to “War of the Sontarans” but instead, the first episode seemed to combine everything we needed to know as quickly as possible. This left us with a ton of questions due to a big lack of context.
I think, given the challenges that the team creating this new season of Doctor Who faced, it is fair to give the show the benefit of the doubt on where series 13 will take us. This second episode was much more enjoyable now that we knew what was going on. Having the audience clued in and understanding all that was happening around us, while still leaving some mystery, seems like a much better formula.
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