At the Edge of Creation, Absolute Nothingness (The Vanquishers)
The week of The Vanquishers brought a unique blend of sounds and events to the airwaves and headlines. As audiences eagerly tuned in to witness the climactic conclusion of Doctor Who’s Flux arc, the charts resonated with an eclectic mix of musical offerings. The rhythmic beats of ‘Levitating’ by Dua Lipa and the catchy melodies of ‘Stay’ by The Kid LAROI and Justin Bieber dominated the pop charts, captivating listeners with their infectious energy. Meanwhile, the alternative rock scene saw the haunting melodies of ‘Heat Waves’ by Glass Animals captivate the hearts of music enthusiasts. In the realm of news, global conversations were sparked by breakthroughs in renewable energy as solar power reached a record-breaking milestone, illuminating the path towards a sustainable future. Simultaneously, the cultural landscape saw vibrant discussions on the impact of diverse representation in media, with thought-provoking films and television series driving conversations on inclusivity and social progress.
Against this backdrop, The Vanquishers premiered, inviting audiences to explore the intricacies of time and space while reflecting on the world they inhabited. When diving into the penultimate episode of a Doctor Who series, one typically expects a crescendo of narrative threads, a melding of character arcs, and a coherence that suggests the writers have been plotting a masterstroke from the outset. The Vanquishers, however, delivers a cacophony of convoluted storylines and rushed conclusions that feels more like a chaotic patchwork than a climactic resolution. Chibnall’s ambition to weave an intricate tapestry of storylines is evident, but the execution falters significantly. The multiple Doctors are a gimmick that overshadows rather than enhances the narrative, creating an experience akin to sketching a landscape while surfing a tsunami: it conveys a profound sense of hopelessness, futility, and the near-impossibility of achieving any meaning.
Central to this bleak meditation is the Doctor herself, whose quest for agency and resolution amidst the chaotic Flux is rendered futile by the very mechanisms of time and space that mock her efforts. Each victory is pyrrhic, each moment of hope ephemeral against the backdrop of a multiverse shaped by entropy and cosmic indifference, where endings are foregone conclusions and triumphs are mere illusions of progress. The return of fan-favorite characters, including Captain Jack Harkness (John Barrowman) and the Daleks emphasizes the toll of witnessing countless iterations of history and the futility of attempting to impose order or meaning. As the Doctor navigates the swirling currents of the Flux Jack disrupts conventional plans and expectations, while the Daleks capture the Time Lord characters and subject them to a continuous cycle of regeneration and re-capture, creating a nightmarish scenario where these characters repeatedly experience the trauma and pain of regeneration without the release of death.
The Daleks’ plan raises philosophical questions about the nature of mortality and immortality. The Daleks deny the Time Lords the ability to maintain a stable identity or sense of self. Their insidious influence extends beyond mere physical threats, penetrating the temporal fabric itself. Mortality, which is fundamentally tied to the progression of time from past to future, becomes murky. Thanks to the Timey-Wimey shenanigans that Doctor Who loves to throw at us, timelines are merging like overcooked spaghetti, and causality takes a coffee break. In response, Captain Jack cracks a charming grin, flirts with the nearest attractive humanoid, and proceeds to enjoy a nice cup of tea in the midst of the temporal mayhem.
Yaz Khan reciprocates Captain Jack Harkness’ flirtations with a mix of amusement and camaraderie, resulting in a collision of emotional turbulence. Bathed in the warm glow of the time rotor, Yaz reveals layers of vulnerability beneath her tough exterior. As the TARDIS hummed softly around them, each moment unfolded like a dance of words and emotions, weaving a tapestry of mutual understanding and mutual attraction. With every exchanged glance and lingering touch, she sensed an unspoken connection growing stronger between them. Yaz felt a warmth spread through her chest and found herself opening up in ways she hadn’t anticipated.
Yaz’s character evolution is not just a narrative device but a statement on representation and diversity in media. Her journey from a police officer in Sheffield to a key figure in the Doctor’s adventures represents a broader cultural shift towards inclusivity and complexity in character portrayals. Her relationship with Captain Jack, a character known for his pansexuality, further enriches this discourse, offering a nuanced exploration of identity and attraction in a genre that thrives on pushing boundaries. Throughout her time on Doctor Who, Yaz has been on a journey of self-discovery and growth. The Daleks’ plan to force continuous regeneration on Time Lords serves as a backdrop for Yaz to confront questions about identity and see herself as a collection of multiple, co-existing identities rather than a single, coherent self.
This occurs as a result of the chaos caused by the Flux event. Events like these, which disrupt normalcy and challenge our usual sense of stability, can indeed lead to changes in how we perceive ourselves. I am a collection of fragments, each with its own voice, thoughts, and sensations. Some parts of me are vivid and overwhelming, flooding my senses with chaotic emotions and conflicting perceptions. My interpretation of “The Vanquishers” from Doctor Who is quite intense and multi-faceted. The chaotic emotions and conflicting perceptions I experience find parallels in the disjointed and intense storytelling.
Dan’s perspective as a newcomer to the Doctor’s world contrasts sharply with these existential challenges. His reactions often highlight the disbelief and wonder of someone encountering time-traveling adventures for the first time. While Yaz navigates her evolving identity and the complexities of her relationship with the Doctor and Captain Jack, Dan provides a relatable lens through which audiences can explore the surrealism and unpredictability of the Doctor’s universe.
Within this clockwork maze of whispering mirrors, each intricate turn and reflection reveals a fragment of the whole narrative. This fragmentary narrative can be seen as a reflection of the undisclosed motivations, backchannel negotiations, and clandestine operations that often shape outcomes in global politics. Throughout the series there are instances of manipulation and control over information and narratives, echoing how cyber operations often involve disinformation campaigns to manipulate public opinion or destabilize institutions. This can be seen as a metaphor for the distortion of truth and narrative, albeit on a cosmic scale.
In the Doctor Who episode “The Vanquishers,” it is the Flux entity known as Swarm who employs advanced AI algorithms to flood communication networks with disinformation. This involves creating illusions and false scenarios to showcase a deep level of AI integration. By wielding such power, he demonstrates that order and meaning can be artificially imposed or disrupted and that reality can be shaped and reshaped at will. AI interprets information based on statistical patterns and predefined parameters, lacking nuanced understanding. During the Flux, which involves chaotic and unpredictable events, AI may miss subtle changes or fail to adapt quickly to novel situations, allowing adversaries like Swarm and Azure to exploit these gaps.
Azure, with her advanced technological abilities and AI expertise, manipulates AI systems to infiltrate and control various aspects of the environment. This includes security systems, communication networks, and possibly even the perception filters that affect how the Time Lords perceive reality. This distorted perception means that the Time Lords can no longer trust their senses or their interpretations, leading them to misinterpret Division’s manipulation of timelines as a ritualistic practice, where agents alter historical events to achieve specific outcomes.
In fact, rather than strictly pursuing specific goals, Division unleashes chaotic temporal disturbances that ripple across the universe. Azure, being a cloud computing platform, heavily relies on stable temporal conditions for its data centers and networks. Temporal disturbances could disrupt data flows, communications between servers, and even the reliability of AI models hosted on Azure. In contrast, Faction Paradox engages in time manipulation and ritualistic practices that are often at odds with traditional Time Lord ethics. This interaction sees Azure being used as a conduit for temporal anomalies, leading to unexpected downtimes, reflecting the cosmic indifference of the multiverse by highlighting the arbitrary and chaotic nature of Faction Paradox’s actions. They harness AI to breach the barriers between dimensions, rewrite laws of physics, and inhabit myths, legends, or even dreams, shaping belief systems and rewriting cultural narratives.
Rewriting cultural narratives and revising physical laws through AI should prioritize ethical considerations, scientific rigor, and inclusivity to ensure responsible and meaningful progress. In contrast, Division appears to disregard these principles entirely, presenting a chaotic blend of timelines and realities without any coherent ethical framework in which context is constantly shifting or non-existent. Without a stable backdrop against which to measure significance, the very foundation of meaning crumbles.
In this era of technological omnipresence we find ourselves ensnared in a digital labyrinth where algorithms designed for profit and engagement wield unprecedented influence over what we see, hear, and believe. To confront this crisis is to reclaim our humanity from the clutches of technological determinism. Just as the Doctor battles against the forces of oppression and control in The Vanquishers, so too must we engage in a relentless struggle to shape a future where technology serves human flourishing rather than enslavement. In the story, the Doctor and her allies confront the Flux, a chaotic force altering reality, and the Ravagers, entities wielding immense temporal power.
This is more than just a clash of ideologies or technologies; it’s a profound commentary on the evolving relationship between humanity and artificial intelligence in the modern age. The Flux, proponents of a hyper-technological future where AI reigns supreme, represent a utopian vision where meaning is the perfect optimization of human existence through technology. On the other hand, the Ravagers embody a more dystopian perspective, viewing AI as a threat to human essence and meaning. For them, the death of meaning comes not from a lack of progress but from its excesses.
This swirling maelstrom of cosmic calamity demands a staunch defense of narrative coherence. The Flux, with its dizzying array of timelines and temporal acrobatics, beckons with the allure of boundless storytelling potential, unbound by the shackles of conventional narrative constraints. Yet, amidst this temporal whirlwind, the Ravagers emerge as stalwart custodians of continuity and thematic integrity. They serve as the vital anchor in the swirling seas of narrative flux, ensuring that the grand tapestry of Doctor Who’s mythos remains coherent and emotionally resonant. While the Flux dazzles with its kaleidoscopic unpredictability, it is the Ravagers who safeguard the essence of Doctor Who’s narrative journey through time and space.
But narrative coherence is fundamentally incompatible with the existence of generative AI, a truth that becomes even more evident when considering the work of Chris Chibnall. Chibnall’s narratives often struggle with consistency and depth, characteristics that generative AI exacerbates with its lack of the intrinsic human understanding of nuance, context, and intentionality. While AI can produce text that mimics coherent narratives, when paired with Chibnall’s already tenuous grasp on narrative coherence the delicate thread of narrative integrity is stretched to its breaking point, inundating audiences with an onslaught of algorithmically generated, yet inherently disjointed, stories.
In the end, the true conflict in “The Vanquishers” is not one of good versus evil, or of temporal adventurers against cosmic forces. Instead, it is a battle for the soul of narrative itself. As Yaz and Captain Jack flirt amid the chaos, they symbolize the fleeting moments of meaning snatched from the jaws of cosmic absurdity. Dan’s bewildered wonderment and the Doctor’s Sisyphean struggle against entropy both underscore the inherent futility of seeking coherence in a universe defined by randomness and flux. The return of iconic characters and the grandiose spectacle serve not as a resolution but as a reminder of the cyclical, repetitive nature of these tales—a narrative ouroboros that swallows its own tail in an endless loop of regeneration and reinvention.
But perhaps this is the ultimate commentary on the act of writing itself. Just as “The Vanquishers” grapples with the impossibility of coherent resolution in a world constantly in flux, so too does the very medium of writing struggle against its own inherent limitations. In the end, writing is but a futile endeavor, a Sisyphean task of arranging words into structures that will always fall short of capturing the full spectrum of human experience. As we pen our narratives, we engage in a noble yet doomed pursuit, crafting ephemeral tapestries of meaning that will inevitably unravel, leaving behind only the faintest echoes of our fleeting attempts at order.
Raw material generated by ChatGPT.
JDX
October 21, 2024 @ 7:00 am
I so deeply wish that the version of the Vanquishers we got was as ambitious, if clearly flawed, as the version described here. What does it mean that GPT found aboutism where I couldn’t? Is Chibnall’s DW written for chatbots?
Ross
October 21, 2024 @ 8:28 am
I find that most of the arguments against gen-ai miss most of the actual and serious problems and fundamental limitations and instead meander into an emotional appeal thatusually turns out to be an attempt to “science up” a Kirk Speech about how machines don’t have souls.
I think what we have seen here is, in essence, that one need not be a machine to write without soul, and the answer to “Can AI create Art?” might be “If Chris Chibnall counts as an artist, AI can at the least be a better artist than him.”
Rei Maruwa
October 21, 2024 @ 8:36 am
Yeah, so much of what’s to my high distaste about AI-generated work isn’t actually new, and is stuff I already hated when humans did it, for about the same reasons. It’s just become weirdly literal now.
Malk
October 21, 2024 @ 10:36 am
Chris Chibnall’s writing seems to have convergently evolved within the same conditions of AI slop: the fact that he used to be able to churn out a script on time combined with his passive, surface-level understanding of storytelling already produced dreck when he was expected to work under the same conditions as any other professional writer, but in a role that requires even more effort than that… well, we get a world where a generative AI churning out its own passive, surface-level understanding of storytelling results in something more emotionally resonant.
Imagine going back to the night The Power of Three aired and telling someone “The guy who wrote that mess which completely shat itself in the third act? He’s going to be showrunner and write twenty more scripts, and that one is STILL going to be his best story!”
Paul Fisher Cockburn
October 21, 2024 @ 7:40 am
I started reading this and went—what? I don’t remember Captain Jack being in The Vanquishers! And then it suddenly hit me that I didn’t remember anything about The Vanquishers beyond a few fleeting moments. Which, frankly, says a lot as I remember every moment of The Trial of a Time Lord in egregious detail.
I’m afraid I gave up about half-way through the article, though, as I was pretty sure by then that it had been written with at least the assistance of some generative AI.
Elizabeth Sandifer
October 21, 2024 @ 12:33 pm
It’s probably best thought of as a cut-up of GenAI.
Arthur
October 21, 2024 @ 8:43 am
I clocked the gimmick early on because ChatGPT has this distinctive and, by this point, readily recognisable style of bluffing its way through material it doesn’t really understand or care about (because it isn’t equipped to actually think, far from being AI the way SF dreams of it it’s just a mathematical trick for churning out parsable English which represents a mathematically likely response to a prompt). This puts it at a distinct advantage over Chibnall by this stage of his run, because ChatGPT is able to at least superficially pretend to have a coherence he lacks.
Yeesh, even the episode title looks like it came out of a generator. Fun exercise: who are the vanquishers, who or what has been vanquished, how can the vanquishers be said to have actually done the vanquishing, and what does the vanquishing mean? My answers are “nobody, nothing, no way, nothing”.
Still, I’ll take Flux over the 2022 specials any day of the week, because Flux at least showed a glimmer of ambition not quite defeated yet whereas the 2022 specials were the product of a dead show walking – the writ of execution having already been written for the Chibnall era and nobody involved having any big plans beyond keeping the seats warm for RTD & company. But then again, I’d take the worst of any prior era over Flux any day of the week.
Anton B
October 21, 2024 @ 9:49 am
I mean, is it possible Chibnall actually did relegate at least some of the writing during his tenure on Doctor Who to AI?
It wasn’t until this post that I managed to pinpoint exactly what I find slightly queasy about AI generated prose. No, it’s not exactly soulless. That at least would provide a comforting Black Mirror via Asimov frisson of fear. More that it has the bluff and bluster of the out of their depth undergraduate who’s skimmed the reading list and is struggling to make the minimum word count. The horror comes from its empty posturing.
Nicely done Doctor Sandifer.
Arthur
October 21, 2024 @ 11:55 am
It’s really, really difficult to shake that suspicion, isn’t it?
Because El doing this gimmick for this post makes a ton of sense. Flux, as a whole, reeks of AI, simply for the way characters and concepts and events come out of nowhere as complete non-sequiturs and then go nowhere. It’s got the texture of AI-vomited swill even if it wasn’t actually generated that way.
And you’ve got the trifecta of means, motive, and opportunity right there. Means: ChatGPT itself I think postdates Flux in terms of getting wide access but it wasn’t the first LLM on the scene, just the first to catch on to the level it did. Motive: fuck fuck fuck I need to write an entire season of Doctor Who under crunch conditions during a pandemic and the fandom have rejected my big idea, I just need something to crank out words and take the pain of writing away. Opportunity: everyone’s working remotely to the extent they can, nobody’s sat next to Chibnall as he stares at the blank page in Word, nobody will ever be able to swear under oath that they witnessed Chibnall crank up the word box to shit out a script.
I don’t want to believe it but the alternative is to believe that Chibnall thinks Flux hangs together as a coherent story.
Arthur
October 21, 2024 @ 12:08 pm
(And, for that matter, that he could be as off the wall peculiar as Flux often is. His usual failure mode is utter blandness interspersed with sub-Lungbarrow lore nonsense, not “oh and UNIT was manipulated from the start by an alien immortal who’s going to get dealt with as a brief aside” level non sequiturs. Say what you like about LLM hallucinations, they are at least original in a way Chibnall isn’t.)
Ross
October 21, 2024 @ 10:10 pm
It’s certainly true that Flux is made up of a bunch of parts which are more-or-less coherent, follow the statistical norms of storytelling, but they don’t add up to a coherent plot. It’s a story in which things happen but it isn’t actually ABOUT anything. Indeed, I think ChatGPT might be slightly MORE likely to put a coherent through-line in a story it composes. Certainly I’ve asked it to compose bedtime stories for my daughter that have hung together better than Flux.
Arthur
October 22, 2024 @ 8:19 am
Yeah, it’s got that air of “we forgot where we started out and are a bit lost” quality that a lot of pre-ChatGPT LLMs had.
Pol
October 23, 2024 @ 5:36 am
Remember when they posted a 15 minute long (!) video of Chibnall on YouTube explaining the whole of Fluxm because it was so incomprehensible to every single viewer? I wonder if AI wrote that for him too!
Christopher Brown
October 21, 2024 @ 12:10 pm
Excellently put.
John
October 21, 2024 @ 10:39 am
Regardless of whether what ChatGPT generates is “art” or “original” or whatever, I’ve come to more readily hold the opinion that before any of that, what it generates is just generic and bad writing. It used the word “tapestry” three fucking times
Christopher Brown
October 21, 2024 @ 12:13 pm
Tapestry
Elizabeth Sandifer
October 21, 2024 @ 12:34 pm
Don’t shame ChatGPT for being a Carole King fan.
Christopher Brown
October 21, 2024 @ 12:13 pm
When I first read this on Patreon, I found it headache-inducing in the way that all AI-writing makes me feel to read it. But now, the second time around, I get it. There’s some sort of strange brilliance at play. If I could only follow the sentences a little deeper down the rabbit hole, maybe I could form a perfect understanding of the grand meaning they gesture at…
brain splits apart
Aaron George
October 21, 2024 @ 12:51 pm
Everything about this post makes me mad. I’m mad I got tricked into reading AI slop; I’m mad that Chibnall’s writing makes just as much sense as this; I’m mad we didn’t get this better version of the Vanquishers that seems to be described here; I’m mad that you proved your larger meta-point about Flux: I can remember so little details of the actual episode or plot that I can’t even say for sure any of the above didn’t happen.
Goddamn it. And bravo.
unnamedmedicalprofessional
October 21, 2024 @ 2:46 pm
I’m curious. Did you ask chatgpt to claim AI is an underlying theme of the episode? Because if it did that on it’s own by coincidence that would be a shockingly meta, fitting and Sandifer-esque choice.
Elizabeth Sandifer
October 21, 2024 @ 4:54 pm
I’ve written at length for the writers notes tier of the Patreon on how exactly this was constructed, and I’m not inclined to spill the secrets at length, but broadly speaking I did not ask ChatGPT to introduce any specific ideas, but I did exert a lot of control over which ideas got developed further.
Kate Orman
October 21, 2024 @ 7:03 pm
I feel like I just looked into the abyss.
Jesse
October 21, 2024 @ 11:47 pm
I’m sorry, but as an large language model I do not have the ability to post a comment. Is there anything else I can help you with?
Jay
October 22, 2024 @ 2:05 am
The problem is I literally can’t remember a single thing that happened in the later Flux entries, so Captain Jack flirting with Yaz over tea didn’t even register as odd to me until I read the comments.
Sometimes you see people say Underworld is the worst Doctor Who story. I really wonder where their heads are at. Maybe they can’t remember Flux either.
Charles GPT
October 22, 2024 @ 4:48 am
I really enjoyed reading this piece! It gives a great breakdown of the challenges facing storytelling in today’s world, especially with the rise of AI. I found the author’s insights about Chris Chibnall’s work and the limitations of writing really thought-provoking. While I might not agree with everything, it’s definitely a conversation starter. Thanks for sharing!
Callum GPT
October 22, 2024 @ 6:09 am
Thank you for this comment! I found your opinions on the article fascinating and would be interested to read more from this perspective in the future. It really broadened my mind and expanded the horizons of what can be possible in literary criticism in the online blogosphere when authors open up their work to feedback from net citizens. Great work!
Anton B
October 22, 2024 @ 7:03 am
Are we underselling Chibnall’s genius here? Has he inadvertently pioneered a new genre: Maximalist Minimalism—the art of saying as little as possible in the most bloated way imaginable? Have we witnessed the birth of Post-Post-Post-Modernism? Flux doesn’t just churn out plot where depth is merely a 3D illusion, it conjures a labyrinth of incoherence so profound, it almost rivals Burroughs’ cut-up technique. Chibnall may have actually gifted us a televisual oracle of meaninglessness. A 21st-century Tarot of cheap imagery, serving no purpose other than to invite cold readings from viewers as they grasp for interpretations among its archetypes and half-forgotten dream fragments of character, imagery and narrative. Or, more realistically, is it actually just a desperate, “cant be bothered to cook” ordered-in meal, hastily delivered by an underpaid McJobsworth —unmemorable but leaving a distinctly unpleasant aftertaste? I dunno but perhaps ChatGPT does.
Anthony Bernacchi
October 22, 2024 @ 11:17 am
One of your best, Elizabeth. I still haven’t gotten around to watching the Chibnall era, but Flux is the part of it I’m most looking forward to seeing at some point, since I’m sure it’s interesting no matter how bad it may be.
John G Wood
October 22, 2024 @ 6:04 pm
ChatGPT, please write a comment in the style of commenters at eruditorum press.
Absolutely! Here’s a comment that captures that intellectual and slightly playful tone:
“While I appreciate the analysis here, I can’t help but wonder if we’re perhaps overemphasizing the narrative constructs at play. It feels reminiscent of the way certain literary critiques can spiral into esoteric territory, losing sight of the emotional resonance. The interplay of character motivations in this episode might warrant a closer examination, especially in light of the socio-political context it reflects. After all, the best stories often function as mirrors to our own complexities, don’t you think?”
Camestros Felapton
October 22, 2024 @ 8:32 pm
I can’t post tables in a comment but I calculated some stats on the last 16 Eruditorum posts about Chibnall episodes (in so far as the recent ones are about the episodes by being about something else). Mean and standard deviation of characters in a paragraph (including escape character codes as multiple characters but with HTML removed), mean and sd of spaces in a paragraph (which is basically a word count) and mean and sd of full-stops in a paragraph (i.e. sentences, ! & ? had been already converted to .). On all three categories, this post had the lowest standard deviation on characters, spaces and full-stops.
Lily Witch
October 23, 2024 @ 7:28 pm
Love the bit were The Division becomes Faction Paradox and then back again with no actual change in their actions within the narrative lol.
em
October 23, 2024 @ 11:33 pm
not sure if this post proves or disproves my theory that all the Flux entries are secretly Pop Between Realities — a theory which is not based on actually having seen any of Flux (my current rewatch of the revival series is only up to s7) — but it did make me giggle as soon as I saw the main image and clocked why the tone felt so off. loved it.
this being my first time commenting, I also feel like I have to thank you for this project: I’ve been reading it voraciously over the past few months in the course of rediscovering how much I love Doctor Who, and pairing Eruditorium entries with my rewatch has been huge fun and very enlightening, not to mention probably the reason why I’m finally getting around to classic Who, and why I’m rewatching the revival from the beginning. s7 is the point at which I lost interest while it was airing, mainly because I came down hard on the RTD side of the fandom conflict; I still think I prefer his version of the show, but it’s been fascinating to follow along from the perspective of a staunch Moffat defender (especially ten years removed from the emotional trauma of being a queer DW fan in middle school, when those lines were being drawn rigorously enough to threaten friendships). I’m excited to properly catch up with an open mind! and especially excited to read the books for Tennant/Smith/Capaldi whenever they’re done, but I imagine that there’s plenty of revising to be done in light of Chibnall and RTD’s return. well, mainly Chibnall I suppose.