STATE OF FLUX

“WE WENT WITH THE BLOWING UP THE UNIVERSE STRATEGY,” REVEALS CHRIS CHIBNALL AS DOCTOR WHO RETURNS WITH A REALITY SHAKING EPIC

- NICK SETCHFIELD

ONE WORD. GO ON, sum up series 13 of Doctor Who in just one word. “Emotional,” ventures Mandip Gill, returning as Yaz. “Unsettling,” adds Thirteen herself, Jodie Whittaker. “Adventure,” says newcomer Jacob Anderson, alias Vinder.

“Complete,” weighs in John Bishop, another addition to the TARDIS crew as Dan Lewis.

Showrunner Chris Chibnall considers his options. “I’m going with massive. That’s all I’ve got. I’ve got nothing left. I’ve got like the last bit of paper in the hat!”

Chibnall is famously guarded when it comes to the TV institution that’s been under his watch for the past few years. He doesn’t so much keep his cards close to his chest as surgically implant them beneath the skin. Thankfully he offers more than a solitary word when it comes to Doctor Who: Flux, the six-part run of adventures that launched this Halloween. Pitting the Doctor against “her biggest, ultimate terror”, it’s an epic, format-breaking serial storyline that’s been created in the face of the pandemic.

“It changed everything, really, from start to finish,” says Chibnall. “We knew we had to reinvent and reimagine the show to deal with the production implications of Covid. So there were two ways we could go – we could go with lots of little stories set in a room with two people, or we could blow up the universe in episode one and then go from there. We went with the blowing up the universe strategy.