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So after the audio hallucination of Scherzo, where time and identity twisted like a Dali painting, I braced for more cosmic art-house. What I got instead was the Divergent Universe’s answer to paint-by-numbers. The Creed of the Kromon is the cosmic equivalent of buttered toast. Bland. Safe. Predictable. It’s like someone looked at the Divergent Universe and thought, “Yeah, it’s wobbly and odd, let’s paste a bureaucracy on it and call it dinner.”
The Doctor and Charley wind up on Eutermes, a trying-too-hard desert planet run by giant ant-people who recite hive-mind doctrine like they’re auditioning for a sewer-theme play. The Kromon? They talk about caste systems and obedience like committee members at ant society meetings. Their menace factor? Vogon bureaucracy in a shell, preaching hive-mind economics like they’re auditioning for corporate overlord roles. Ugh.
Charley does her thing. That thing where she shrieks “Doctor, help!” on replay like IKEA furniture instructions. C’rizz shows up—your new Divergent companion. He’s got chameleon skin and the personality of damp cardboard. His backstory? Wife turned ant queen, he kills her offscreen for sympathy points. Surprise: Women-in-Fridge syndrome activated. As for personality, those hints exist—you’re just told he’s deep, not shown.
The sound design tries — you can hear ants slurping grubs and chomping on water—but it just becomes nauseating sludge. And the Kromon “villain training manual”? Half-assed corporate analogies with none of the bite.
The Doctor actually builds the Kromon a rocket, only for it to explode—because narrative engineers can’t resist deus ex machina. Then they starve the water supply, kill the queen eggs, and voilà, genocide without moral qualms. No grief, no reflection—just rinse and the remaining ants expire, because hive mind. Charley’s shower in restorative root-water reverses the body horror; she wakes up unscarred, probably humming. C’rizz joins them, blinking a lot, and the Kro’ka warns the Doctor: “He’s broken.” Good. Enough said.
Themes? Structure ratchets down identity vibes from Scherzo and replaces them with “evil insects vs humans,” capitalist hive allegory, and companion in inert-model mode. The notion of the Doctor stuck without time is squandered on bureaucracy and grub chewing. It’s like a macroeconomics lecture disguised as sci-fi, but with none of the dramatics or insight.
Reviews called it dull, uninspired, even torture for ears. They weren’t wrong, this is essential only to meet your future companion, and a slog sat between the roaring highs of Scherzo and Natural History of Fear. One reviewer called it “probably the biggest downgrade in Doctor Who’s history.” I don’t disagree.
Final Verdict:
It’s not actively hateful, just painfully mediocre—and that’s worse. A letdown in a universe that promised relentless oddity. Divergent Universe deserves weird. This is just… ants.
Rating: 2 out of 5 whatevers.