#mouri

Kogoro: "Except for me."

I'm fucking ready for the lore dump!

It creates an aesthetic and a vibe that is just so interesting to me, particularly in Death Comes to Time. I feel like so often, in media, when science fiction and fantasy are merged it’s the fantasy that sort of takes over as the dominant genre everyone sees, but it’s different here. The science fiction still stands proud and strong while the fantasy adds this mist around the science fiction. A fog that almost stays at ground level, just making everything a bit more mysterious, a bit hazy in the background. It’s a blend I absolutely adore.

Thinking about it now, I think it’s why I love the Mouri and the Temple of Atropos from Flux so much too. Of course, it’s not the same level as Death Comes to Time, but it does add a fantasy element that brings back some of that mysterious fog to it all.

It makes me wish the Time Lords could’ve become that in New Who. Perhaps instead of bringing Gallifrey back it was discovered that, like the Daleks and their Genesis Ark, there was a group of Time Lords who had escaped the Time War and were hidden away somewhere waiting for their moment to return. Or maybe it wasn’t a life boat, but an ancient prison. Sent away into the Void and now returning through a weakness in space and, upon realizing they are the only Time Lords left in existence (apart from the Doctor and sometimes the Master) they take it upon themselves to be a new High Council.

There’s only 10 of them or something, and all of them are criminals of high threat for one reason or another, and their egos have grown and their minds have broken due to all that time imprisoned that they become more like the mysterious and eerie Time Lords of War Games and with a bit more of a fantasy edge like in Death Comes to Time.

So, um... remember the Ux? From Battle of Ranskoor Av Kolos (you've probably seen this written in a variety of creative ways over the last few years)?

The Ux have the power of telepathic dimensional engineering, which, according to Yaz's Case Files, means they can affect the shape of the universe by thought and create pretty much anything just by thinking about it.

In Once, Upon Time, during the Siege of Atropos, we learn that the planet Time was created to anchor the thread of time, to subdue the wild time. There was a battle between the primordial forces of Space and Time in these Dark Times, with Time being Chaos and Space some kind of Order, cemented by this anchoring of linear time which marked the end of the Dark Times.

This is, of course, a great feat. Swarm tells us as much:

Time shall never surrender to Space. No planetary mass, however sophisticated, can imprison the force of Time. This planet, this construction, is not just a fallacy. Not just futile hubris. It is heresy.

Whoever did this (Rassilon), must have had help from sophisticated dimensional engineers to create Time (the planet), so I'm thinking the Ux (probably not Delph and Andinio, perhaps even the original) were involved in the creation of this heresy, and the physical side of the anchoring of the thread (with good ol' Rass and Omega being the designers). They're as much Space Lords as this group of shobogans gained the right to call themselves Time Lords.

oThen Awsok tells us this:

The damage to time is already done. As intended. [...] The Flux event was spatial. But it was possible it wouldn't be enough. The Ravagers, Swarm and Azure, are rare and useful creatures. Now they have been reintroduced. Think of them as a temporal poison, or contagion. [...] This universe is over, Doctor. [...] The Flux wasn't an accident. It wasn't a naturally occurring event. It was made. It was placed.

So someone is very intent on undoing what the Time Lords accomplished. This universe was made in their ontological image, and someone is making sure to retrace their steps backwards; releasing the Ravagers, damaging the Mouri... and if it really was the Flux that caused the damage on Time, it must have been something at least as powerful as the Ux...

We know that the Ux were used before, and that they're searching for their Creator mythic figure. Aswok, from the way she speaks to the Doctor, in equal parts superior and equal, seems to be a being from her original dimension, alien to this universe that is ending, and that the Doctor loves so much.

So maybe it's them using the Ux to make the Flux, to sort of mock the Time Lords and their creation. Either that or the Ux are going to be used to undo this sort of Battleword (Marvel's Secret Wars) universe we saw last night. Probably both.