Sarah owns and runs the Elf Storage facility, and Nick is a customer who visits his unit every year on New Year’s Eve. This year, however, their night turns out to be a little different than planned.

Be careful what you ask for. Critics of Flux’s multiple, crashing storylines (and not all them satisfactorily resolved) now have a single storyline to contend with, and more than that, it’s repeated over and again.

For a show that has time travel as a key part of its DNA, it makes sense that a repeating time loop should eventually be used as a plot on Doctor Who. And it’s a short loop too – none of that Groundhog Day ‘living an entire day’ requirement – the ten minute loop dropping a minute every time that it repeats.

New-look Executioner Daleks are a welcome addition to the Dalek arsenal, and it’s great to have the RTD bronze models as the base design. There’s also some fun lines, from Nick Briggs coving the Daleks and stating ‘I am not Nick’, to Aisling Bea’s ‘Oh my giddy aunt’ and a very interesting variation in the meaning of ‘Exterminate’.

The aforementioned Bea and Adjani Salmon make for a fun bickering couple as Sarah and Nick, and theirs isn’t the only potential pairing up in the episode. But if I’m going criticise one element of this episode is that it doesn’t feel like much of an event. I’m pragmatic enough to recognise the COVID restrictions that forced changes to the way that shows are made, but this warehouse-bound yarn just felt like the money ran out.

Verdict: A fun, simple fusion of rom-com and time loop, but I was more excited by what I saw in the throw forward than anything in the preceding hour. 7/10

Nick Joy