Warning: This article contains spoilers for Doctor Who: Flux episode 4.

Doctor Who: Flux's Division retcons are beginning to hurt the story and show overall. Introduced in Doctor Who season 12's flashbacks, the Division are tied to the Timeless Child retcon. According to Doctor Who season 12, episode 10, the Division are a covert organization formed by the Time Lords to protect Gallifrey's interests. They recruited the pre-William Hartnell Doctor as one of their operatives, sending them on missions throughout time and space. Jo Martin's Forgotten Doctor worked for them for quite some time, and it's possible other incarnations of the Doctor were Division operatives as well.

At first, the Division seemed to be an ancestor of another Time Lord black ops group from the classic Doctor Who series, the Celestial Intervention Agency, who secretly pursued Gallifrey's interests in the universe in spite of the Time Lords' policy of non-intervention. But Doctor Who: Flux has revealed they're far more than that; it opened with the Doctor pursuing Karvanista, who she believed to be the last surviving Division operative. Doctor Who season 13, episode 4 has gone one step further, though, revealing the Division is not defunct as the Doctor believed. Rather, they've been active all this time - and they're a far more significant power than the Doctor had previously believed.

Related: What Happened To The Doctor At The End Of Flux Ep 4 (Not A Weeping Angel)

Unfortunately, the change in scale means the Division sits uncomfortably with Doctor Who lore - and may in fact be more problematic than the controversial Timeless Child retcon. Current showrunner Chris Chibnall appears intent on rewriting Doctor Who's history, but it's not clear this is going to work out at all well. In fact, it appears it may create a number of problems.

Doctor Who: Flux Episode 4's Division Retcons Explained

Doctor Who Weeping Angel Vision

Doctor Who: Flux episode 4 saw the Doctor communicate psychically with a rogue Weeping Angel who had possessed a human being. The creature revealed it used to work for the Division, just as the Doctor did. "Division uses everything and everyone," it explained. "Every species. Every world. Every moment. They are everywhere, present and unseen. Division is unstoppable." The Division may have started on Gallifrey, but according to the Weeping Angel, it employs operatives from every species in the universe - which explains why one Time Lord Division agent was leading a squad of Judoon in Doctor Who season 12. The Doctor may have thought Karvanista was the last surviving Division agent, but in reality, the organization has operatives scattered throughout time and space, in every moment of every world's history. They may have started off as a "Division," but they're now a ubiquitous presence in the universe.

The Division is particularly interested in the Doctor. They know her pre-Hartnell Timeless Child past, and she worked for them on countless missions - including one to Doctor Who's Temple of Atropos, where she battled Swarm and Azure the first time. Episode "Fugitive of the Judoon" revealed Jo Martin's mysterious Forgotten Doctor eventually fled from the Division, and it seems they've been hunting the Doctor ever since. This may well mean there's a reason the Doctor has always been on the run, unable to settle in any one place; a subconscious knowledge she's being hunted, and can't stay on any one world for too long lest she is found by the Division.

The Division Doesn't Quite Fit With Doctor Who Continuity

The Doctor walking away from Gallifrey in Doctor Who

All this does raise some difficult problems, however - because there have actually been several occasions where the Doctor settled down in one place for quite some time. William Hartnell's First Doctor lived on Gallifrey for centuries before leaving the planet with his Type 40 TARDIS, Jon Pertwee's Third Doctor was exiled to Earth for years, and Matt Smith's Eleventh Doctor defended Trenzalore for 900 years. If the Division really is all over space and time, and if they really have been searching for the Doctor, then they should really have found previous versions - whether on Gallifrey, Earth, or Trenzalore. Even stranger, the Doctor has twice been placed on trial by the Time Lords, and the Division could easily have swooped in to quietly pick him up on either occasion. None of it makes sense from a logical storytelling perspective.

Related: Doctor Who: Jodie Whittaker Just Repeated A Classic Third & Tenth Doctor Mistake

The only possible explanation is that the Division and the Time Lords must have parted ways. That would explain why the Doctor could grow up on Gallifrey again without Division interference; it's also possible the Time Lords protected Earth from the Division during the Doctor's exile, and amusingly this could even be used to explain away amusing dating errors during Pertwee's Earth exile. Meanwhile, some of the Doctor's other adventures, such as his 900-year defense of Trenzalore, could simply have been too public for the Division to interfere.

The biggest problem of all, however, lies in making this fit with Doctor Who's legendary Time War. As the Gelth explained in the episode "The Unquiet Dead," the Time War between the Time Lords and the Daleks ravaged the entire time-space continuum. "The whole universe convulsed," the Gelth declared, and the Doctor didn't correct them. "The Time War raged. Invisible to smaller species but devastating to higher forms." An organization like the Division, spread throughout time and space, would have been caught in the crossfire and almost obliterated. At the very least, the Time War would have forced the Division to begin acting in the open, if only in an attempt to bring the conflict to an end. That patently never happened, because the Doctor was on the front lines of the Time War, and the War Doctor would surely have crossed paths with the Division.

The Timeless Child retcon was controversial enough, fitting with classic Doctor Who even if it didn't quite gel with the modern Moffat-Davies era. But the Division is a retcon on an even greater scale, with Chibnall writing a new force into the history of the universe, a power that seems to rival the Time Lords themselves. Doctor Who's canon has never been big on continuity, but there's never been a retcon quite so significant as this before. It will be fascinating to see how Chibnall wraps his story up; hopefully, Doctor Who: Flux episode 5 will see the Doctor confront the Division, learning the full truth rather than just hearing a few words from a Weeping Angel. At the moment, the jury's out as to whether it's possible to make the Division retcon work.

More: Doctor Who Reveals Where The Ruth Doctor Fits Into The Timeline

Doctor Who: Flux releases new episodes Sundays on BBC and BBC America.