{"id":7940,"date":"2021-11-28T20:20:07","date_gmt":"2021-11-28T19:20:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.radiotimes.com\/?p=1521435"},"modified":"2021-11-28T21:02:15","modified_gmt":"2021-11-28T20:02:15","slug":"doctor-who-survivors-of-the-flux-review-jericho-yaz-and-dan-provide-great-entertainment-in-phileas-fogg-mode","status":"publish","type":"rss_feed","link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/radiotimes\/rss_feed\/doctor-who-survivors-of-the-flux-review-jericho-yaz-and-dan-provide-great-entertainment-in-phileas-fogg-mode\/","title":{"rendered":"Doctor Who \u2013 Survivors of the Flux review: Jericho, Yaz and Dan provide great entertainment in Phileas Fogg mode"},"content":{"rendered":"

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By Patrick Mulkern\n \t\t<\/p>

Published: Sunday, 28 November 2021 at 12:00 am<\/p>

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<\/div> 4.0 out of 5 star rating<\/span> <\/span> <\/div> <\/div>

Chapter Five screams \u201cpenultimate\u201d. It\u2019s nowhere as exciting as Chapter Four but it does advance the Flux storyline and Chris Chibnall\u2019s wider myth-making scheme, while showing Grandmaster Chibs placing characters in key positions on his multi-dimensional chessboard, poised to make his last moves.<\/p>\n

Among several holding patterns, the most impressive is \u2018Around the World with Professor Jericho\u2019, who is in full Phileas Fogg mode with his companions Yaz and Dan. To be fair, it\u2019s more sharp-as-a-tack Yaz (Mandip Gill) and her blundering associates Jericho (Kevin McNally) and Dan (John Bishop). Stranded in the early 1900s, the trio are doggedly pursuing a vague directive from the Doctor, which leads them from Mexico to Constantinople to Nepal to the Great Wall of China, and thence back to Liverpool (looking spectacularly un-sooty for 1904). The joke\u2019s on them; they could have stayed in Blighty.<\/p>\n

Lots of fun is had along the way, with counterweight-pulley pratfalls in an Aztec tomb (surely a little nod to the pulley system made by William Hartnell\u2019s Doctor in The Aztecs<\/a>, 1964); a mickey-taking hermit halfway up the Himalayas; the graffiti-message-across-time daubed at the Great Wall; and Dan getting ribbed for being repetitively Scouse. The time-hopping tunnel-builder Joseph Williamson falls into place, too. On an ocean liner, there\u2019s also a tender moment when Yaz watches her Doctor-hologram for clearly the umpteenth time and we observe how much she adores and misses her friend.<\/p>

The Time Lord, meanwhile, overcomes last week\u2019s cliffhanger \u2013 petrification into Weeping Angel \u2013 with remarkable ease, while the Angels themselves are fast dispensed with like last week\u2019s cat litter. Beyond our universe, the Doctor is in the company of an Ood and that mysterious taunting figure from Chapter Three. \u201cI\u2019m the one who found you,\u201d she now chooses to reveal. \u201cI brought you to Gallifrey and raised you. I am Tecteun. The woman you used to call \u2018Mother\u2019.\u201d These exposition-laden moments, teasing about the Doctor\u2019s origins, are altogether less tedious than equivalent scenes in The Timeless Children<\/a> \u2013 and gain import and grandeur in the hands of Barbara Flynn and Jodie Whittaker (both magnificent). Flynn is so fabulous as Tecteun that I flinched when that camp swine Swarm swanned in and, with a stroke of his glove, made her \u201csashay away\u201d.<\/p>\n

Not content with expanding the Time Lord\u2019s backstory, Chibnall wades into Unit\u2019s already messy timeline\u2026 and muddies it further. In his new potted history, the United Nations Intelligence Taskforce (latterly Unified Intelligence Taskforce) has been malignly influenced by the Grand Serpent aka Prentis (Craig Parkinson). Far more menacing than in Chapter Three, he\u2019s been bumping off big wigs for decades, although it isn\u2019t clear how his sickening serpent gets inside his victims to begin with. Also, how did Jon Pertwee\u2019s exiled Doctor never bump into Prentis during his many years at Unit or spot the fully functioning Tardis they\u2019ve mothballed? In a sweet, fleeting aside, circa 1967, the man who would become the Brigadier is heard off-stage (a snippet of Nicholas Courtney<\/a> from Terror of the Autons<\/a>). But surely he could never have served as a corporal, as described; Lethbridge-Stewart was always officer material.<\/p>\n

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BBC<\/i> <\/span>\n<\/div>\n

Prentis\u2019s encounter with the Brig\u2019s daughter, Kate Stewart, shows what a shrewd operator she is \u2013 and Jemma Redgrave is on redoubtable form, returning for the first time since The Zygon Invasion\/Inversion<\/a> six years ago. I was dismayed when Chibnall summarily terminated Unit in 2019\u2019s Resolution<\/a>. Especially because he had told me in 2012<\/a>: \u201cAs a writer, you\u2019re eternally grateful to everyone back in 1968 who came up with that idea because it\u2019s a brilliant storytelling mechanism. Unit is embedded into the family history of the show.\u201d Now the time is ripe for Kate and Unit to regain their former status \u2013 and save planet Earth.<\/p>\n

In further Chibs chess moves, Vinder is paired up with Dan\u2019s date Diane inside a Passenger, while Bel is \u201chyperjacked\u201d by Dan\u2019s dog-man Karvanista. Earth has become \u2013 as ever \u2013 the focus in the universe for ultimate destruction by the Flux, the Division and marauding Sontarans. And, of course, in another dimension the Ravagers are dangling the Doctor\u2019s lost memories in a fob watch. Are we all keeping up\u2026? Is everyone poised? Only one more Chapter to go\u2026<\/p>\n