#dw the flux

[rapha-reads]

Wait. Saw someone in the tags of that Jacob Anderson as Inston Vee Vinder gifset say that they thought Vinder was the Doctor's father (and therefore Bel who is pregnant during Flux their mother). Wait. It kinda could make sense? We don't know much about the civilisation Vinder and Bel come from except that it's an old, bureaucratic and unstable one that got decimated by the Flux + Vinder appears through a wormhole in the Power of the Doctor episode (when Thirteenth regenerates). And the Timeless Child is found under a wormhole. Imagine the little family of Vinder, Bel, their child going to explore wormholes, getting lost through time (the association wormhole/time travel is an old one) and Vinder and Bel getting lost/dead/etc trying to find their way back and only their child survives. And because the child was exposed to wormholes since their birth or maybe the people Vinder and Bel come from have some particularities but that's why the timeless child has regenerative powers. And maybe that's why Thirteenth comes across both of them during the Flux despite all probabilities, because they're her parents in the future that is her past and the fabric of space-time continuum knows they have to survive and the best odds of survival are with the Doctor. And maybe that's why Vinder comes across the Doctor once again when he's starting to explore wormhole technology, because the universe knew he needed the Doctor's saving and expertise to lead him to continue his exploration and along the line to the timeless child.

I'm way too tired to make it more logical but there's something to explore here. And in any way, I would very much love to see more of Vinder and Bel in future episodes.

[bnxxshthealien]

yknow i’m just happy to know that the oodsphere survived the flux

[doctor-the-13th]

I know we all love it when the Doctor gives speeches, but Thirteenth being too distracted to even finish one feels more in character for the Doctor.

[the13thh0ur]

Yaz, absolutely cackling after Dan has fallen face-first down below.

[spirantization]

the doctor: 🥺🥺🥺 by any chance do you happen to know anything about my life since we've been separated? maybe? i might want to talk about it, but only if you know every single detail already. if that were the case i would consider opening up. oh no? you don't? that's not a problem. i'm sure wallowing about it for the next million years won't be too bad.

[dandelionjack]

ncuti gatwa wear the orange spacesuit in s2/15 fifteenth doctor put the orange spacesuit on for a mission challenge it’s a rite of passage it’s important. wear that orange thang and watch your life slowly fall apart around you

[olympain]

It's over, Doctor. It has been ever since we let a virus into the experiment.

[mndvx]

DOCTOR WHO: FLUX Chapter One: The Halloween Apocalypse written by Chris Chibnall | directed by Jamie Magnus Stone ››› Jodie Whittaker as The Doctor

[the13archives]

It’s been a long day and we know everyone is going to process these events a little bit differently. Here’s a message from the Thirteenth Doctor, for anyone who might need it right now 💙💙

We’ve decided to still post Flux 2.0 fanworks tomorrow in case anyone needs a distraction. We post to Ao3 at 11am GMT/6am EST ✨

If you’re feeling helpless and would like to put some good out into the world, this project is raising money for the Congo and hurricane relief in Asheville, NC. All digital downloads, and we have donation options as low as $1. The link is in our pinned post 🫶

[causalityparadoxes]

Re the Doctor talking about destroying half the universe. Was the Flux never undone? Did I misremember it as being undone? Like it just happened. Half the universe poof, gone forever.

SPEAKING of destroying half the universe. Was the destruction of half the universe in the 4th Doctor episode, Logopolis, ever undone either? Cause if Nyssa's home planet stayed destroyed, then I dont think it was.

Sooo.... if the Doctor destroyed half the universe...

And then later destroyed half again...

Has the Doctor destroyed 3 quarters of the total universe? Because damnnnn, picture of their face next to genocide in the dictionary indeed.

[rapha-reads]

Things that will always leave me a bit frustrated: how the first episode of The Flux is really solid, laying down some fascinating storylines, and yet the rest of the series don't go all the way to it.

I really think Chibnall should have dropped the Sontaran part, though meeting Mrs Seacole was nice. She was interesting, the Sontarans are boring and a waste of time.

And less Sontarans mean more Vinder, Claire and especially a satisfying end to Swarm and Azure.

I'm not disliking the entire series 13, because overall it has really good parts, but only taken separately. As an ensemble, a continuous storyline, it leaves too many things unresolved, and not in the fun, "imagination is your power", way, but in the frustrating, "what does it even meaaaaan" way.

Here's hoping RTD gives us some closure, the way Moffat did for some things started before he got in the chair. Though with the way series 14 is being branded as "season 1" (uuuugh *spits*), a soft reboot... Welp. We shall see.

[universe-on-her-shoulders]

The Doctor: I am life

The ghosts of every race he's committed genocide on:

[doctor-the-13th]

Not them wasting time bickering like an old married couple while seconds away from plummeting to their deaths.

[13thdoctorposts]

Hold on to that hat. 🤣

thirteen’s era appreciation: 230/?

[spirantization]

"Wild Blue Yonder" dealt with some of the emotional fallout of the Flux, so I want to rewind a bit and look at what that means for the Doctor.

I know that the Timeless Child and the Flux are contentious topics. I'm not here to argue either way. But now those storylines have decisively not been retconned, and with both of these fresh in my memory, I feel the need to offer some context for anyone who may not have seen it, and to recontextualize it for myself and anyone who has.

NotDonna: You don't know where you're from. The Doctor: How do you know that? How does anyone know? How does Donna know?

In "The Timeless Children", we find out that the Doctor was discovered as a child alone under a wormhole, and adopted by a woman named Tecteun. There was an accident where the Doctor fell from a cliff and regenerated, and subsequently Tecteun performed "experiments" on them to try to understand regeneration. The show minces words about this but she killed a child a whole bunch of times is what happened. Her experiments created the Time Lords and allow them to engineer their regeneration properties. The Doctor has no memory of any of this, and only finds out via the Master and information stored in the Time Lord Matrix.

The Doctor, predictably, doesn't tell anyone about this revelation. She makes a speech to the Master about how this makes her more, we get a single shot of her looking a bit tired in the TARDIS, then she immediately gets thrown in prison.

Ultimately, the Doctor doesn't know where they're from or who their parents are. And the very fact that they're not from Gallifrey is information that no one in the universe should have. Everyone who knew is now dead.

NotDonna: I saw it in your head. The Flux. The Doctor: It destroyed half the universe because of me. We stand here now, on the edge of creation, a creation which I devastated, so yes I keep running, of course I do! How am I supposed to look back on that? NotDonna: It wasn't your fault! The Doctor: I know!

A fun fact about the Flux is that the Doctor did not cause it. So why does he blame himself? Because the person who caused the Flux was Tecteun.

The reason why Tecteun wanted to destroy the universe is because the Doctor interfered with things too much. Too much morality. Too inspirational to people. She calls them a virus. So her solution to the problem of the Doctor is to destroy the universe, with the Doctor inside, and take her ship to a different universe to start fresh. She also was the one to steal all the Doctor's memories of previous lives in the first place. She's dismissive and patronizing and clearly does not care about the Doctor on an emotional level at all. Tecteun is a piece of work, and the implications of her actions and how they've shaped the Doctor have the potential to go deep.

Thirteen doesn't get too much of a chance to react to any of this, because there is plot going on. And shortly after they reunite, Tecteun gets killed by a different villain. So there was no emotional closure in the moment, and there's now no possibility for the Doctor to make sense of her actions. The Doctor does not tell any of her friends about any of these events. She keeps promising to tell Yaz but does not.

"Wild Blue Yonder" is the first time we, as the audience, hear the Doctor discuss the Flux. And their perception of events is skewed at best. The Flux wasn't caused because the Doctor made a mistake and a lot of people were killed, which is what you can argue for many other situations. The Flux and the devastation of the universe was caused by their mother, who promptly turned around and told them it was their fault for being such an interfering nuisance. We know that the Doctor is often an unreliable narrator, but this is beyond that. These are the words of an abused child who has internalized the narrative that the abuse was their fault.

So the Doctor being able to talk about this with Donna, who has seen what happened, who knows him, and tells him that it's not his fault — it means so much to him. He wants it to be her so badly. And then NotDonna laughs in his face. You can see the devastation. He thinks for one moment that he can finally talk about this with his best friend, and it's snatched away from him. He gives himself a moment to break down in the corridor, and then you can see the walls rebuilding as he suppresses it all again.

At the very end of the episode, back in the TARDIS, he's trying very very hard to be nonchalant. I'm curious. The NotDonna could remember all these things that happened to me while we were apart. Can you? Just wondering. Things happened, but I'll be fine. In a million years. It's not a joke.

He wants so badly to be able to talk about this. You can see it in all the lines of his body language. He's keeping himself together but is prepared to fall apart in an instant. He doesn't want to actually tell anyone, but if Donna just magically knew already, and could tell him it wasn't his fault — well, that would make the world of difference. But she doesn't know, and he can't bring himself to tell her. And so the cycle continues.

[acetheta]

when i see things like this i just laugh cause like. babes did we watch the same show