Doctor Who Flux: The Division Explained (In Detail)

Doctor Who: Flux episode 5 has finally explained the Division – and it’s secret connection to the Timeless Child and the Doctor’s origin.

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Warning: This article contains spoilers for Doctor Who: Flux, episode 5.

Doctor Who: Flux has finally revealed the truth about the Division, the Doctor’s mysterious enemies from outside time. Current Doctor Who showrunner Chris Chibnall is determined to rewrite the show’s lore, and his Timeless Child retcon lies at the heart of this. Doctor Who season 12 revealed the Doctor is not a Time Lord at all; rather, she is the Timeless Child, a being who originates from beyond the universe and who became the base genetic code for all Gallifreyans who live within the Citadel. It’s the biggest change in the Doctor’s status since the Time Lords were introduced in 1969’s “The War Games.”

The Timeless Child twist has been controversial, but Chibnall has chosen to double down on it. Doctor Who season 12’s finale saw the Doctor glimpse memories that had been buried deep within the Matrix on Gallifrey, memories that had been erased from the Doctor’s own mind, with Doctor Who season 13 revealing more of her history. One of these reveals was that, as Gallifreyan society developed, some sort of covert organization had been formed known simply as the Division. The Doctor had worked for the Division once as a field agent who traveled the universe but ultimately went rogue, rejecting the Division’s philosophy. Believing the Division held the secret of her past, the Doctor began to seek them out. That seems to have led to the Flux, with the Division deciding to destroy the universe.

The Doctor’s quest came to an end in Doctor Who: Flux episode 5, in which she was transported to the Division’s headquarters by the Weeping Angels. She came face-to-face with the current leader of the Division, Tecteun, the ancient Gallifreyan explorer who had discovered the Timeless Child over a billion years ago. There, the Doctor finally learned the full history of the Division.

The Division Began On Gallifrey – But Outgrew The Time Lords

The Division began with a Gallifreyan explorer named Tecteun, a pioneer of space travel who burned with a passionate desire to explore the universe. She stumbled upon a mysterious structure beneath a gateway to another universe, and at the foot of this structure she found a child alone and abandoned. Tecteun adopted this girl as her own daughter, and they returned to Gallifrey – and then, one fateful day, the child suffered an accident that should have been fatal. Instead of dying, she regenerated, the first regeneration to happen on Gallifrey. Fascinated, Tecteun began to experiment upon her daughter – who then became known as the Timeless Child – and discovered how to duplicate her power of regeneration. Like the Timeless Child, Tecteun became an immortal; she granted the same power of regeneration to every Gallifreyan within the Citadel but chose to impose a regeneration cap upon each future Time Lord that neither she nor the Timeless Child possessed.

The people of the Citadel were gradually transformed into the Time Lords, and they swore to a policy of non-intervention. But Tecteun and some allies among the Time Lords still wanted to explore the universe, and further, they believed it was their right to shape and control it. They formed the Division, a group that began on Gallifrey but that would grow beyond the Time Lords – and that would ultimately outlast them. The Timeless Child – who would go on to become the Doctor – was one of the Division’s agents.

The Division Ended The Dark Times & Created The Rules Of The Universe

Classic Doctor Who frequently referenced the so-called “Dark Times” when the universe was young, a period of universal history where the very laws of nature were chaotically disordered. According to Doctor Who: Flux, the Division entered into an agreement with an alien race called the Mouri to bring order to chaos. The Mouri constructed the Temple of Atropos on the planet Time, and the Mouri who were installed within the Temple were responsible for controlling the flow of time. The Mouri are the ones who bound time and space together, creating the constant universal rules of our world and bringing the Dark Times to a close.

The Division took advantage of this new stability, expanding across time and space, recruiting agents in every time period and from almost every race. The name became symbolic of their mission, because every person who became part of the Division separated themselves from the interests of their own race, their own family, their own people; they became an agent of cosmic order, striving to maintain the Division’s interests and fulfill the Division’s goals. It is apparently possible to leave the Division; Karvanista is a former Division operative. But it seems to happen rarely, and often the people who try to leave wind up on the run; Jo Martin’s fugitive “Forgotten Doctor” is a case in point.

The Division Erased The Doctor’s Memories

Even the Doctor could not escape the Division forever, and she was captured in the end. Rather than execute her, Tecteun stripped the Timeless Child of her memories, forced a regeneration into an infant form, and had the child returned to Gallifreyan society. The so-called First Doctor had no idea who he truly was; he didn’t know he had already lived through a billion years of Time Lord history. But still, the Doctor’s core character remained, and ultimately drove him to leave Gallifrey and become a wanderer, an adventurer in time and space. Some Doctors appear to have sensed the truth about themselves, with memories leaking through – Sylvester McCoy’s Seventh Doctor knew he was “more than just a Time Lord,” although he doesn’t seem to have known his true nature as the Timeless Child.

According to Doctor Who: Flux episode 5, Tecteun – who became leader of the Division – came to regret releasing the Doctor into the universe. Every incarnation of the Doctor inspired hope wherever they went, and by doing so they led to changes – sometimes small ones, but they always rippled on, affecting the Division’s plans. No doubt this culminated in the Time War itself; presumably, the Division engineered this conflict, perhaps as an attempt to prevent other temporal powers from discovering their existence. The Doctor, of course, ultimately intervened in the Time War, and the War Doctor was the one who brought it to an end – a climax very different from anything Tecteun would have intended.

The Division Decided To Destroy The Universe

In Tecteun’s view, the Doctor’s influence upon the Division’s timeline in Doctor Who – the hope she introduced across time and space – was impossible to control or predict. Tecteun had already discovered the existence of other universes, including the one the Timeless Child originated from, and the Division’s headquarters had been moved to the void between universes. Considering this universe a lost cause, she resolved to destroy it and move on to the next one. The Flux event was artificially induced to destroy space, while Swarm – who had almost sabotaged the Division’s attempt to bring the Dark Times to an end a billion years ago – was freed as a temporal threat. Tecteun had begun as an explorer, but her desire for exploration had gradually been transformed into a longing for control. If she was not able to control the universe, she would destroy it – initiating the plot of Doctor Who: Flux, which has irrevocably changed the canon forever.

Link Source : https://screenrant.com/doctor-who-flux-division-explained/