Warning: contains spoilers for Doctor Who: Flux ‘The Halloween Apocalypse’

Why did the Doctor travel half the universe to, as she told Yaz, “see a man about a dog”? Firstly, because the Doctor is more evasive than a mid-scandal cabinet member at a press briefing and refuses to confide in the people who regularly risk their lives by her side, and secondly, because the Doctor enjoys making dog-related jokes at the expense of new alien Karvanista. (See also: “I’ve got a bone to pick with you.”)

Not a dog

Karvanista may look like a dog, sniff things inquisitively like a dog and have decorated his ship with a canine tooth motif (sharp pointy hooks everywhere. Health and safety must not be big with his kind), but he is not a dog. He’s clever, dangerous and a Lupa of the alien race Lupari – a name that, come to think...