Doctor Who: Flux – Chapter Two: War of the Sontarans Review

“The Halloween Apocalypse” ended on a hell of a cliffhanger with the Doctor and her companions facing inescapable danger. It was an episode to hook audiences and “War of the Sontarans” had to keep them interested.

The Doctor, Yaz, and Dan have survived the attack by The Flux but wake up in Crimea in 1855. They soon discover history has been rewritten because the British were at war with the Sontarans instead of the Russians. Even worse because of the time energy Yaz and Dan end up getting teleported to different locations in time and space.

“War of the Sontarans” has a 7.8 rating on IMDB at the time of writing, making it the best-rated episode during the Chris Chibnall era, so far. I agree with that assessment. It took what worked from the previous episode and improved upon it. “The Halloween Apocalypse” was a busy episode and so much was going on it was hard to keep up. “War of the Sontarans” was a more focused episode.

“War of the Sontarans” was split into three main storylines: the Doctor was trapped in the Crimea, Dan was in Liverpool where The Sontarans had conquered the city, and Yaz ended up on a planet called Time. The Doctor and Dan’s stories were interlinked because they were both trying to figure why The Sontarans were on Earth and what their plan was. All three had a task to complete: The Doctor was trying to stop the British from going to battle with The Sontarans, Dan tried to infiltrate the Sontarans’ base on Liverpool Docks, and Yaz had to figure out how to fix the temple on Time.

“War of the Sontarans” opened a lot like the Loki episode “Journey into Mystery.” Both followed episodes where the main characters were seemingly killed, but they wake up in a wasteland. The Doctor and Loki were trapped, and they figure out a way to escape so they can stop the greater threat.

The Sontarans’ role in the episode was similar to the Cybermen in the Series Two finale. At the end of Series Two the Cybermen used the portal made by the Void to invade Earth. The Sontarans used the Flux to invade Earth –they were just opportunists, not the main villain. They worked as an episodic threat. They did have a good idea for a villain plot – they wanted to go back in time to rewrite Earth’s history and feed on humanity’s conflicts. The Crimean War was a pilot scheme for the Sontarans.

An issue with Whittaker’s Doctor has been a lack of characterisation. She often came across as moralistic and fast-talking but lacked any real personality. Whittaker felt more like The Doctor in this episode. Whittaker kept her manic energy like when she interacted with Mary Seacole (Sara Powell) and General Logan (Gerald Kyd) but wasn’t an oddball like she had been. The Doctor had to use her brain to stop the Sontarans. When she chastised General Logan it was like when the Tenth Doctor condemned Harriet Jones in “The Christmas Invasion.”

Yaz’s storyline seems to be the one that’s going to play a more important part in the series’ arc. She met Vinder (Jacob Anderson) who the marketing material has been promoting heavily. Yaz and Vinder were asked to fix the temple because time has been broken and they had to face Swarm (Sam Spruell) who wants to use the temple for his own devices.

Yaz’s storyline leaned into sci-fi-fantasy and had the qualities of Moffat’s run. It was building on a wider world by showing time being controlled by an ancient race. It’s a great hook because I want to know what happened to the temple and why this caused a deadly space cloud.

“War of the Sontarans” did have a camp energy to it. This was an episode where Dan and his parents were able to knock out Sontarans. Swarm and his sister were wonderfully cheesy characters who enjoyed cackling and the actors were having a blast as the all-powerful villains.

“War of the Sontarans” manages to work as a standalone story within the wider arc and The Doctor got to shine for once. It manages to be an entertaining piece of sci-fi TV.