The Vanquishers (TV story)

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The Vanquishers, prefixed in the title sequence with Chapter Six and, in other sources with Flux, was the sixth episode of series 13 of Doctor Who. It formed the sixth and final chapter of the six-part serial Doctor Who: Flux.

It brought an end to the storylines of the Ravagers, and saw Inston-Vee Vinder finally reunited with his pregnant wife, Bel, after they spent most of the series looking for one another.

It was the first televised story to see the Doctor coming face to face with the embodiment of Time, although such a thing had previously been presented in the Virgin New Adventures novels.

The episode gave a similar ominous warning of impending doom for the Thirteenth Doctor, as had been previously given to the Tenth Doctor in the 2009 special Planet of the Dead.

Synopsis

Split across three realities, the Thirteenth Doctor has more than one problem to solve. The Division's base, way out in the Void, has been taken. Some unlikely allies have joined together, hoping to find victory in Earth's final hour. The Grand Serpent has been making plans, and the Doctor's oldest enemies hold the key to the Doctor's past, poised on handing her their final retribution.

Tunnels beneath the Earth lead to all kinds of places in space and time. As the final Flux event approaches, which door leads to victory? Last call before the end. It's time for contact.

Plot

The Doctor runs from Swarm, taking Tecteun's Ood with her. Swarm and Azure chase after the Doctor but the Doctor takes off her conversion plate just as Swarm touches her, causing her to be split into three parts between various locations: the Divison spacecraft, the Lupari ship, and the Liverpool tunnels.

On the Division spacecraft, Azure opens the fob watch to return the Doctor's missing memories to her, but the Doctor refuses to see them. Azure reveals that their plan is to take control of the Flux and control it to be a repeating time loop of endless destruction. The Ood attempts to slow down the effect of the Flux.

In the Passenger, Vinder and Diane disrupt the internal systems allowing them to escape but still leaving them stranded in another unknown environment.

Yaz, Dan, Jericho, and Williamson take out the first wave of Sontarans with lightning from one of the tunnel doors before traveling to the present through another. They meet up with Kate Stewart who is leading a resistance against the Sontaran invasion. Having discovered one Sontaran's weakness for their love of Earth chocolate, the Doctor makes a deal with them, of chocolate in exchange for two human psychic operatives, Claire and Jericho, who will help them find the coordinates for the final Flux event to reach Earth.

On the Lupari ship, the Doctor pilots it away from the shield formation to crash into the Dark Energy Camera in Chile where the Sontarans have set up base. They are stopped by a force shield and are captured, just like the Doctor intended. As they are held in a cell on one of the Sontaran ships, Karvanista reveals to the Doctor that during her time working for the Division, he was her companion, but cannot say more about it as the Division put an implant in his brain that would kill him if he spoke of their time together. As the Doctor is taken away for interrogation by the Sontarans, they tell Karvanista that all of the Lupari were destroyed by the Sontarans. During interrogation by the Grand Serpent, one of the Doctors travels in the TARDIS and frees herself while also trapping the Grand Serpent with his own torture device. At the same time, Bel downloads transmissions from the Sontaran ship.

The transmissions reveal the Sontarans offering an alliance with the Cybermen and Daleks. In reality, the Sontarans are using the guise of a peace alliance in order to sacrifice them to slow the Flux, thus vanquishing their enemies while they remain safe behind the Lupari shields. Claire is able to escape the Sontaran ship, but Jericho is not. The Doctor also manages to rescue Vinder and Diane, who share a happy reunion with Bel and Dan. In a turn of plans, the Doctor reforms the Lupari shield behind the Sontarans instead of in front of thus leaving the Sontarans and Jericho to be consumed by the Flux along with the Daleks and Cybermen. Some of the Flux makes it past the shield, so the Doctor uses the Passenger, a source of endless matter, to absorb the Flux remnants.

Azure and Swarm bring the Doctor to Atropos to sacrifice her to Time, but since the Flux was destroyed thus failing to free Time, Time destroys them. Time lets the Doctor go but forebodingly warns her that the end is coming for her before reunifying her. In the Liverpool tunnels, Kate and Vinder strand the Grand Serpent on a small asteroid through one of the doors. Vinder and Bel decide to travel with Karvanista. Back in Liverpool, Dan invites Diane to go for a drink with him, which they were unable to do due to what had happened. However, Diane, due to her experiences, turns down the offer. The Doctor invites Dan to join her and Yaz on their travels. The Doctor deposits the fob watch containing her lost memories into the TARDIS interior, telling it to hide it until she really asks for it.

Cast

Uncredited cast

Crew

General production staff

Script department

Camera and lighting department

Art department

Costume department

Make-up and prosthetics

Movement

Casting

General post-production staff

Special and visual effects

Sound



Not every person who worked on this adventure was credited. The absence of a credit for a position doesn't necessarily mean the job wasn't required. The information above is based solely on observations of the actual end credits of the episodes as broadcast, and does not relay information from IMDB or other sources.


References

Individuals

Story notes

Ratings

  • Overnights: 3.58 million[3]
  • Consolidated: 4.61<Ø million[4]

Filming locations

to be added

Production errors

If you'd like to talk about narrative problems with this story — like plot holes and things that seem to contradict other stories — please go to this episode's discontinuity discussion.
  • When the Doctor speaks to Yaz as Dan leaves to find his bedroom in the Doctor's TARDIS, Dan can initially be seen walking up the steps to the corridor but disappears when the camera zooms in on Yaz.

Continuity

Home video releases

DVD releases

to be added

Blu-ray releases

to be added

Digital releases

to be added

External links

Footnotes

  1. This episode was also simulcast on BBC America, as well as other networks.
  2. 2.0 2.1 Time appeared by borrowing the New Swarm's form, and, later, the Thirteenth Doctor's; the performers were not credited separately for these roles, but simply for Swarm and the Doctor respectively.
  3. https://www.doctorwhonews.net/2021/12/ratings_latest.html
  4. https://www.doctorwhonews.net/2021/12/series_13_ratings.html