Doctor Who: Flux Episode 3 Timeline Explained In Order
The timeline of Doctor Who: Flux episode 3 was told out of order – here’s how it unfolds in chronological order. The cliffhanger ending of Doctor Who season 13, episode 2 saw the Doctor and her friends discover the Temple of Atropos, which appeared to control the flow of time in the universe. Swarm and Azure had apparently wreaked havoc at the Temple of Atropos once before, and now, freed from captivity, where they had been imprisoned since the dawn of time, they returned. Swarm and Azure placed Yaz and Vinder at the heart of the Temple of Atropos, potentially exposing them to the flow of time in place of powerful beings called the Mouri.
The consequence was a time storm, and the Doctor placed herself at the center of it. But showrunner Chris Chibnall chose to employ a very different narrative technique for Doctor Who seasons 13, episode 3, telling the story out of sequence and hopping around the timelines with impunity. As he explained in an interview with Doctor Who Magazine, “In terms of form, and structure, I would say the storytelling – especially in Chapter Three – does take the show in a new direction. It’s very ambitious, and it credits the audience with sophistication and intelligence. This is something we always do, but with this, it’s very much asking you to trust the show and go on a ride. As with a lot of television now, it credits the audience with a degree of patience – that they’re not going to know quite what’s going on.”
The out-of-sequence narrative is an intellectually challenging one, the kind of time-wimey storytelling Steven Moffat was so fond of, and it mostly works. Still, given all the twists and turns, it’s quite easy to miss a lot of the details. Here’s how Doctor Who: Flux episode 3’s timeline stands – in actual order.
The Doctor Jumps Into The Timestorm
The story of Doctor Who season 13, episode 3 both begins and climaxes on the planet Time, a world the Doctor believes should not exist. The Doctor realizes there is no way to save Yaz and Vinder from the time storm, but two of the Mouri platforms are free, so she pushes Dan into one of them and then leaps onto another. That means the Doctor and Dan enter the time storm as well, but of course, the Doctor has a lot more experience with the time vortex than her friends, and physiology that absorbs temporal energy – she taps into the power of the time-space vortex with each Doctor Who regeneration. The Doctor can manipulate the vortex, hiding her friends in their timelines to keep them safe (and Vinder as well, who she’s only just met). Unfortunately, there’s a limit to even the Doctor’s ability to navigate the vortex, so she finds herself entering her timeline as well. All begin to experience flashes of their past (and, in one case, their future), although their minds rebel against the experience and keep placing their fellow time travelers in their memories, triggering a great deal of confusion.
The Doctor’s Pre-Timeless Child Timeline Revealed
Doctor Who season 12 revealed everything the Doctor thought she knew about herself was a lie. She is not a Time Lord; rather, she is the Timeless Child, a being who potentially predates the universe itself, and whose memories were erased by the Time Lords. She even encountered a previous incarnation, Jo Martin’s “Forgotten Doctor,” who worked for a Time Lord organization called the Division. The Doctor found herself transported back into her past, in Doctor Who: Flux episode 3, experiencing the Forgotten Doctor’s past mission to Atropos on behalf of the Division. It seems the Division had created the planet Time in an attempt to bind time and space together, bringing order to the universe and securing the potential for Gallifreyans to become Time Lords. Swarm and Azure opposed this, and attempted to destroy the Temple of Atropos; the Doctor led a Division response against them, transporting the Mouri into their places to control the flow of time and capturing Swarm and Azure.
Yaz’s Timeline Explored
Yaz, for her part, began to relieve minor moments of her life – a night on patrol as a police officer, and a day playing computer games with a friend who wanted to become good at them to impress a guy. Unfortunately, the temporal energy associated with the time storm drew a predator, one of Doctor Who’s Weeping Angels, which began stalking Yaz – apparently to place itself inside her mobile phone, so it could try to get into the TARDIS. The Weeping Angels are time-sensitive, and it seems this particular Angel complicated the Doctor’s plans by trying to block her from reaching Yaz.
Dan Relives His Past – And Possibly His Future
Dan’s experiences are even more confusing, which makes sense; he’s a lot newer to time travel. Dan initially finds himself submerged in his past, spending time relaxing with Diane; it’s a smart way of reminding viewers who Diane is and establishing how much she means to Dan, given she was captured by Azure in Doctor Who seasons 13, episode 1, and became a hostage. Unlike Yaz, however, Dan appears to then have a brief experience of his future, running through the Williamson tunnels in 1820 alongside eccentric philanthropist Joseph Williamson. He further began seeing particles of the time force, fragments of temporal destruction, spreading throughout the universe.
Finder’s Past Explained
Jacob Anderson’s new Doctor Who character Vinder has been something of a mystery until now, but Doctor Who: Flux episode 3 relives his backstory by forcing Vinder himself to relive it. It seems Vinder was an officer of the law in the distant future, promoted and assigned to protect a major political leader called the Grand Serpent after an act of heroism. Binder learned just how corrupt the Grand Serpent was, and attempted to expose this corruption only to be reassigned as part of a cover-up, reduced to manning an observatory light-years away from his homeworld. This, of course, is where Doctor Who season 13, episode 1 first introduced Vinder.
The Doctor Strikes A Deal With The Mouri
The Doctor finds herself periodically drawn back into the time-space vortex, and while there she confronts three representatives of the Mouri. She hits upon a plan, replicating her past victory against the Mouri of Atropos by repeating it in the present – getting the Mouri to transport themselves back into the Temple of Atropos to control the flow of time once again. The identity of the Mouri remains a mystery; they are presumably powerful beings who are allied to the Gallifreyans, and who agreed to play a key role in binding the laws of time and space together. They choose to do so again, and the Doctor experiences one last vision; this time she appears to have been plucked out of the universe itself, confronting a mysterious woman who claims to be responsible for the Flux.
The Aftermath Of The Flux
With the disaster abated, the Doctor returns Vinder to his homeworld – only to find it had been destroyed by the Flux. Doctor Who season 13, episode 3 is punctuated by several scenes featuring a character called Bel, who is traveling the universe in search of her long-lost lover; it turns out this is Vinder. Bel’s quest takes her through a universe in chaos in the aftermath of the Flux, with Daleks, Cybermen, and Sontarans rising in power and influence. Interestingly, this same version of the Cybermen appeared in Doctor Who season 12 and was supposed to exist toward the very end of time. This suggests that, although Vinder’s experience of the Flux was told simultaneously with its threatening Earth in the 21st century in previous episodes, in reality, multiple Flux events are happening throughout time. Doctor Who’s narrative has had more time-wimey elements to it than viewers realized all along.