*Here there be spoilers.*
Last week, I looked at the main plot stuff of “The Vanquishers.” Today, I want to focus more on the character stuff. Digging deeper into the Doctor, Yaz, and Dan in series 13.
We’ll start with Dan, who’s making a tricky showing as a companion over the course of these six episodes. I get that it’s not unusual for Doctors to get separated from their companions, but Dan spends most of the season apart from the Doctor. She and Yaz “rescue” him from Karvanista in “The Halloween Apocalypse,” after which he boards the TARDIS as the Flux ravages the universe. But then, he keeps getting shunted away. Whether it’s due to a TARDIS malfunction, a timestorm, or a Weeping Angel, he spends a solid four episodes barely ever in the same time and place as the Doctor. By the time the crew reuinites in “The Vanquishers,” he knows Yaz and Professor Jericho way better than he’s ever known the Doctor. At this point, it still feels a little weird to consider him an actual companion. I know that the classic series features plenty of companions who just accidentally get swept up with the Doctor, but the new series has focused a lot more on choice: the Doctor choosing the companion, inviting them along, and the companion deciding to accept. Dan doesn’t get that moment until the very end of the season. It makes me wonder what his dynamic with the Doctor will be like in the 2022 specials.
I’ve already said in my episode reviews that Yaz has leveled up this season. She’s always been tough, competent, and brave, and she’s increasingly shown herself to be someone who’ll jump into the fire for the Doctor, but in the time since Ryan and Graham left, she’s acquired all kinds of new skills that come in handy on their travels. They’re especially useful since she, like Dan, is separated from the Doctor for most of the season. With all her knowledge and experience, this puts Yaz in a good position to hold her own when the group is scattered and to hold it down with Dan and Professor Jericho after they’re stranded in time by the Angels. She’s a little bit Doctor, a little bit Indiana Jones, and all Yaz, and she can look after herself!
So, while Yaz doesn’t need the Doctor around as much this season, it’s still a bummer that they spend so much time apart. Because in the few interactions we do get between them, along with the lovely scene in “Survivors of the Flux” of Yaz replaying the hologram message the Doctor left for her, it’s seeming more and more likely that the show really is intending to “go there” with the Doctor/Yaz. Now, what that would meaningfully look like is still up for grabs—new Who has undeniably done romance, but it’s never looked like a typical ship. Even if the Doctor and Yaz were by each other’s side the whole season, I doubt they’d have been portrayed as “going out.” But still, there are only three episodes left with Thirteen, so if the show is planning on a climactic kiss or an unspoken declaration of love, there’s not a lot of time. I don’t know if Yaz is going to stay on as a companion after the regeneration; if she does, she certainly could continue wherever things are going between her and the Doctor, but if Fourteen is a man (which seems more likely than not,) it would feel like a bit of a copout if the show holds back on Yaz and the Doctor until they’d be an opposite-sex pairing.
Then, of course, we have the Doctor. She’s been through a time of it this season: her companions frequently scattered to the winds, the desperation of trying to keep the Flux from destroying what remains of the universe, and the accumulating clues and hints to their lost past, from the Doctor’s time with the Division and the forgotten lives they’ve lived. The Timeless Child/Division stuff hangs over her all season long, and you can tell it’s throwing her off. She’ll risk a lot for the sake of a few crumbs of Division hints, and that can make her take her eye off the ball of the more pressing matters at hand. In the end, though, the universe comes first, as it always does, and she pulls it out for the big save, reuiniting with her friends and saving what’s left of the universe.
By far, the Three Doctors bit is my favorite part of the finale. When a freak quirk of time, technology, and Swarm collide, the Doctor is split into three consciousnesses. This turns out to be quite handy when the universe is in danger in imminent destruction, as there’s a lot to be done and three Doctors are better than one. So, while one Doctor remains trapped outside the universe with Swarm and Azure, confronting Time, another hooks up with Karvanista and Bel to take on the Sontarans and a third gets back together with Yaz and Dan. When Thirteen-Two and Thirteen-Three team up, it’s even better, with all kinds of delightful Doctory banter and technobabble being traded back and forth as the others look on, stunned.
More Doctors is pretty much always better. I’ve spoken numerous times about how the story quality of a multi-Doctor story often leaves plenty to be desired, but multi-Doctor interactions are always splendid. This is one of the rarer cases, in which the Doctors interacting are the same Doctor (and not even the same regeneration from different points in her timestream—this is three of the same Doctor split off from the same moment.) That means there’s less of the bickering and squabbling that often results when different Doctors get together – looking at you, Two-Three and Ten-Eleven! – and more mutual admiration and fun. Less “The Day of the Doctor,” more “The Almost People.” Jodie Whittaker clearly has a blast with it, and I enjoyed every moment.
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