An Autist Reviews: The Halloween Apocalypse (NuWho Series 13: Flux - Chapter One)

*All Reviews Are Spoiler-Free Aside From Any Spoiler Sections*

*This is a bare-bones/lite review made after only a single viewing. (Hence there not being any replay rating)*

The Doctor said she wanted to see a man about a dog. But it turns out that that man WAS a dog, and now the universe is ending. Something called the Flux has been unleashed, Weeping Angels are on the move, Swarm has been freed, a race of dog people have embarked on a dire mission, The Doctor is definitely hiding something from Yaz, and the Sontarans are preparing to take advantage of the chaos. Something big is beginning, and it somehow involves a man named Dan.

So, one thing needs to be made clear at the start of this review: This series of Doctor Who is serialized. It’s not episodic. So this episode starts a LOT of plot threads and closes absolutely none of them because they are going to be closed in future episodes. I fear that a lot of people are going to be upset about this though, which is frankly going to be infuriating. But, moving past that, this episode was astonishing! The worst part of it was the dialogue and quite frankly that is solely because I think the direction wasn’t the best, so a chunk of it felt pretty stunted. The story itself though, or the pieces we’ve had so far, are brilliant, and it sets up so much and we even get some payoff already with the Weeping Angel part of the story. This was the best-paced episode of Doctor Who since Chibnall began as showrunner and to add on to that, the pacing is probably the best in all of Doctor Who up until this point, which is a pretty big win for Chibnall thus far. The exposition has some issues, but those are mostly from the acting, which really isn’t even that bad; outside of that, the only poor exposition really comes from Vinder looking at a screen and talking about it, which I just didn’t really like all that much. I will say, people who don’t like people telling other people about things will probably hate this episode, which is funny because very little of it is actually exposition. The ending of the episode literally only had one thing holding it back: I could barely hear the Doctor over everything else. It was well done, but it was just too hard to hear if you ask me. Now, moving on to the acting, which, as much as I have bashed it here, isn’t actually bad.

The best acting this episode, hands down, comes from Swarm who at no point has a single bad line, but talking about the bad guys more, the Sontarans are on point, as expected, Karvanista is just hilarious and yet also intimidating and Swarm’s sister is pretty decent, even if I find her early acting rather meh. Moving on to the side characters: It’s not easy to act like you’re being dragged against your will by your own body, and yet one of the characters did it, another was clearly very scared and not really attached to reality I think, and that was just brilliant and terrifying to watch. Further, Vinder is absolutely incredible, he reminds me of so many other incredible characters and I just can’t wait to see where he goes. All the other minor characters (as far as we know right now) are basically perfect. The main characters sadly aren’t as good as the rest of the cast. No one person is really dragging them down, either, I just think the director wasn’t doing the best job handling the new TARDIS fam. The Doctor is basically the best, but she still has plenty of issues, Dan comes next having absolutely incredible acting with issues actually seeming to find their way into the acting a way where I can't actually tell what was wrong with it, and then Yaz brings up the rear, but she’s still fantastic, even if she does have a good number of iffy lines.

Finally, we come to the effects, and boy is this episode full of them! The music is fucking incredible. Cheers to Segun Akinola for his incredible score! It hits every note perfectly, I just wish it were that little bit more noticeable at times. The voice effects for this story are a little weird because I literally only recall 2 voice effects clearly. The Doctor speaking from off-screen in such a realistic way that I thought I was hearing my mother’s TV through my phone (we watched together, it was lovely), and then the end; I don’t even know if the Doctor sounding so quiet at the end counts as a voice effect, but I need to lump it in somewhere, so here is where it goes. The computer effects are fantastic. I literally only HATE one computer effect in the entire thing and I don’t even know if it is a computer effect, but I need to put it somewhere and it really pissed me off. This one effect I hated was the… I guess drone shot towards the museum near the beginning when we’re introduced to Dan, because it looks like someone is just shoddily zooming into a picture of the museum, and it frankly looks like shit. Almost every other effect is incredible, from entire CGI worlds to beautiful space shots to people being disintegrated by Swarm, to the Flux destroying everything, it’s all beautiful and it all fits into the distinct style of 13’s era which is just beautiful and lovely to see. There are, sadly, many weird warp effects and such that are applied to scenes throughout and I hate them, I always have, I think they are very hard to do right and I don’t think that they have been done right throughout the entirety of 13’s era, with here being no exception. The practical effects are all beyond stunning, from explosions to the TARDIS leaking some weird-looking sludge, all the practical effects are just beautiful and perfect. The costumes and makeup are also incredible, and honestly, Karvanista looks so much better in motion than I thought he would, same with the Sontarans. The Weeping Angels and Swarm and his sister are also absolutely stunning, but there was never any question about that. I honestly love the horrific look of Swarm more than I even thought I would, I even hate his stupid fucking nose, but not because it’s dumb looking, but because it’s so fucking horribly fucked up and wrong looking, which is definitely intentional. All in all, costumes and makeup are 10/10 easily! The sets are also easily 10/10, with all of them looking perfect, clean when they need to and trashed and old and broken down when they need to. Every set is clearly crafted with love and I can’t wait to see more of them! The action is next, which, like the previous two categories, is an easy 10/10. There isn’t a single bad bit of action in the entire episode which is frankly nothing short of a miracle considering how much insanity there is going on in it. The cinematography really only runs into problems when it makes weird cuts for no seemingly good reason and at the aforementioned point where it seems like the editors just zoomed into a picture to mimic a drone shot and/or did a very bad drone shot. Aside from those very rare problems though, the episode is shot so beautifully that it honestly makes me wish I could watch this in a damn theater! The sounds are last, and since I’ve already decided that the Doctor being quiet at the end falls on the shoulders of the voice effects category, that only affects this one a little, especially because of how incredible the sound design of this episode is! I mean, every little detail is thought of and every effect sounds utterly perfect, period, end of story. With that run of compliments done, how about we get into my closing thoughts?

I will be watching this episode again at the 8pm airing with my other mother, it will surely be incredible, and I think that my sheer joy at the prospect of watching it a second time in the same freaking day tells you all you need to know about my feelings towards this episode. If it weren’t for the iffy acting throughout, I would give this episode a 10/10, because it is frankly fantastic. It’s well written, it sets up so much incredible stuff, the bad guys and side characters are all pretty darn great, and every effect is beautiful and more stunning than you could ever imagine. This is Doctor Who at, nearly, its best, and I can’t wait to watch the rest of this series, because it is going to be good, I can tell already. Happy Halloween all, I’ll see you again next week.

Total - 9

Plot - 9

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Story - 10

Pacing - 10

Dialogue - 8

Narration - NR

Exposition - 9

Enjoyment - 10

Twist/s - NR

Resolution/s - NR

Ending/s - 9

Acting - 9

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MC/s - 8

SC/s - 9

BG/s - 10

Narrator/s - NR

Effects - 9

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Music - 9

Voice Effects - 7

Computer Effects - 8

Practical Effects - 10

Costumes/Makeup - 10

Sets - 10

Action - 10

Cinematography - 9

Sounds - 9

Replay - NR

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Re-Enjoyment - NR

New Details - NR

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