The Star Beast
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30 November 2023 at 12:45 #74715
hello everyone!
I still need to do a sober re-watch of the episode, though I loved it not sure how much detail I remember.
There are some things I really, really loved. The pronoun scene (my sibling is non binary, and, yup), and little things like Shirley Anne Bingham very much on screen moving her legs somewhat (it’s amazing how many people still give people weird looks if they show any mobility of their limbs whist in a wheelchair). I think if I was in Unit much as I’d like the extra armoury I’d be putting in a request form for hovering Dalek technology though. I enjoyed guessing the Meep was evil, and you’ve got to give the smaller children a few nightmares…
less sure about the damage to the streets just getting healed up. I didn’t mind London Town as I’ve come across it in the odd 19th century context (though that doesn’t mean it’s not an Americanism of course) and it rings a bell from older Ballards. Also wasn’t there a London transport campaign that used it?
I’m kind of… trying not to look too much for through lines. I always found RTD seasons to be rather loosely tied together, so I’m reminding myself this isn’t a Moffart Narrative Mystery. But I do feel this is supposed to be a trilogy and it ought to work as a trilogy (but that, rather than a very long somewhat episodic single story).
I’m still intrigued as to why (apart from the obvious) Ten again? I wonder how the combined memories of Eleven, Twelve, and Thirteen will affect Fourteen? The main thing he left undone was, well, Donna, is that sorted now? Will we see more of her daughter? Will we see Wilf? But see paragraph above. Using an 80s storyline is a great touch, and I’m hoping we get lots of references back – this episode has beautifully, I think, returned us to the RTD days – but this are the 60 years specials after all. And I think it did it very well here – I gather that having read the comic might operate as something of a spoiler, but people who had got the satisfaction of inside knowledge. It didn’t really matter how quickly you guessed that he wasn’t a nice, friendly little Meep, because the tension was really about Donna (even if that was rather more of a how than a will).
Regarding Rose’s name, I’d think, like @mudlark, it’s probably a case of Doctor memories. Or even as simple as, she’d heard from childhood that Donna would have named a daughter Rose. And as it’s a nice name and as it turns out Donna did have a daughter… if anything, new Rose makes old Rose seem less likely to me. I feel like we’ve got the tribute to the character. Obviously the Doctor-Donna storyline is the metacrisis-Doctor, and there’s some interesting stuff that can be done there but… again, we’d spend too much time in RTD’s original run.
(there’s been a lot of online talk about the binary-binary-nonbinary thing, and whether Rose is non-binary as in femme non-binary, or if she’s binary trans but non binary as in she represents a third factor – Donna-Doctor-Rose, or whether its simply that the existence of a gender-spectrum/scale even when someone crosses over from one side to a distinct other side, it contradicts simplistic binary thinking, which I’d need to think about a bit more but the latter doesn’t quite work with the fluidity of the Timelords…)
30 November 2023 at 22:16 #74717I liked this episode a lot if only for being a very well-handled adaptation of the comic storyline, but I didn’t love it the way the crowd around me at the Chicago TARDIS screening seemed to (same day). I agree @miapatrick that the streets just mending up was contrived! Also, a little of the increasingly slapstick comedy involving Donna and her family goes a long way for me personally – I’m more a Moffat person (and specifically 12’s era) than RTD though anyway. That said, the new characters were likable, especially Rose Noble, and given how much was being tackled in less than an hour, it was quite efficient in getting all the pieces in place. Looking forward to the next two specials at any rate, but they have a tough act to follow on Rachel Talalay’s direction here.
Chalk me up as one who wonders how well this will play to any Who-newbies who see this via Disney+ though. It will be interesting to see how the international reception of these specials pans out, and what that will mean for the fanbase going forward. A big influx of newbies? Lapsed fans coming back and sticking around for the 15 era?
1 December 2023 at 06:36 #74718Good to be back – I’ve been away cleaning the bath. It’s a big job, and you know how it is when that last bit of scum won’t go. Thankfully I managed to get Iain Duncan Smith out of the door eventually.
To the episode:
A bit of a curate’s egg for me. I got a Christmas special vibe from it, and they are not my favourite eps. Caveat: I’ve only watched it once, and – weirdly – generally prefer eps. on a second viewing.
Good to see the band back together. Some good humour, and some great visuals. New TARDIS is a big plus, although very bright. I liked the new Sonic Wand functionality, although wondering how outlandish they will go with it, and how much the stories will be driven by previously unknown sonic abilities.
The plot was a little bit underwhelming, and the resolution was classic RTD handwaving and vibes. I’m thinking of this as, essentially, an hour-long expositional episode before the real fun starts.
I have to say I was somewhat concerned when I first heard the RTD was returning and then Tennant – it seems like maybe the BBC had pressed the panic button. My concerns are allayed atm, although I would have liked 14 to be less like 10.
I’ve seen lots of comments elsewhere that fall into two categories: “preachy rubbish” or “best episode ever”. My 2c: I thought the non-binary, non-binary, non-binary bits felt pretty natural, if not a little clunky in places. They served the story though, and that’s a big plus for me. And, I think there is a huge relief that we are not in the Chibnall era now, and I suspect the some of the collective praise is reflective of that. (actually that was more like my 1.5c). As expected, it’s good to get some nuance on here.
A couple of Qs:
Was that Avengers Tower thing the new UNIT HQ?
I may have missed a bit, but didn’t Donna talk to 14 about his regeneration prior to her knowing it wasn’t 10?
1 December 2023 at 10:38 #74719And one comment on the terminology (@miapatrick may be interested):
There’s a British song from the 1940s called “Maybe Its Because I’m a Londoner” that contains the lyric:
“Well, maybe it’s because I’m a Londoner
That I love the London town”So “London Town” is British English it seems.
Unlike the “cover my six” line that, along with “I’ve got eyes on….<person / thing>”, immediately indicates a US (influenced) writer.
Happy to help…..
1 December 2023 at 11:42 #74720safe to say lots of Brit songs use the form ‘London Town’ sometimes to rhyme or scan no doubt, sometimes as a regional dig at parochial insular London. RTD might be making the latter point (well we certainly ain’t in Cardiff or Sheffield anymore, Toto!) otherwise the real question is why should he use the phrase? No one says ‘London Town’ from day to day.
I think it’s a bit like ‘Gotham City’… there’s a comic strip element creeping in. And I think it’s a little bit meta too. And it’s a form of lampshading… look at me, look at my clunky tongue in cheek language and improbable representation of Britain created to serve the story.
As the Dreamlord might say; ‘it’s a story…’
1 December 2023 at 11:52 #74721No one says ‘London Town’ from day to day.
Where I’m from (not London), we used to use the expression “I’m going out in Town” or “going up to Town” when this in fact meant going into the city, so it’s not as uncommon as you might think.
I’m a little surprised people found it so jarring – it’s not as if someone said “Cor lummy, that’s a right pickle and no mistake”, which is certainly in Mary Poppins territory.
1 December 2023 at 13:50 #74722@whohar oh thanks for the ear worm!
1 December 2023 at 14:42 #74723I hereafter declare the ‘London Town’ a rabbit hole. I’ll be putting out cones and yellow/black tape and email the council.
1 December 2023 at 16:49 #74725Yes, we have strayed into nit-picking territory and I vowed I wouldn’t do so, at least for this episode, but once tempted I’m afraid I find it hard to resist, so forgive me if this once I ignore the cones and warning tape and dive into the rabbit hole. Then I will go away and sit quietly in my corner.
It’s the London Town in this particular context which grates on my English ear. As @whohar says, and I noted earlier, people, especially in the Home Counties, will talk of ‘going up to Town’ and people might also talk of ‘spending an evening on the Town’, but the ‘London’ in such instances would be tacitly understood, never stated. They would usually if not always be referring to the West End (shopping, theatre etc) or the City aka the Square Mile (finance and business), or perhaps Westminster (Parliament, Government offices etc). These are pretty much the areas which constituted the whole of London in the later eighteenth and early nineteenth century, when it extended beyond the medieval city but before its rapid expansion to engulf all the surrounding villages and towns, so ‘London Town’ as an inclusive term might then have been in common use. Now it would be just London, or Greater London according to context unless you were in London itself, in which you would might refer to a particular district or borough.
But when I started thinking about it, it seemed even odder. The Doctor refers to the use of the Dagger drive destroying 5 square miles, or the whole of London Town and 9 million people. Five square miles is indeed the approximate area, give or take a square mile, of the City and West End, but in no sense the ‘whole of London’, and 9 million people is the population of Greater London which is approximately 607 square miles in area. The Doctor first bumps into Donna in Camden Market and later tells Shaun Temple he needs to go North, so the crash/landing site of the space ship and the centre of destruction is not even in London town in the old sense.
As @ps1l0v3y0u says, and as I suggested in an earlier post, it could well all be just an RTD tease.
1 December 2023 at 16:59 #74726less sure about the damage to the streets just getting healed up.
Yes, I baulked a little at that. It is one thing to halt the ongoing damage by aborting the spaceship’s take off sequence, but how would that that magically cause the riven streets to seal up? It was one of the minor nits I was determined not to pick, but now that you mention it ….. 🙂
2 December 2023 at 05:48 #747282 December 2023 at 09:32 #74730😀 But was it not The Phantom Raspberry Blower of Old London Town? I rest my case.
While I’m here, I second @miapatrick in thanking you for the ear worm. And now I keep seeing an old B&W TV screen and an unfeasibly elderly police sergeant (same tune, more or less)
2 December 2023 at 17:23 #74739Hi all,
I don’t have many new things to add to everyone’s thoughts on this return for Ten-nant.
I liked it, I liked a family (as opposed a “fam”), way Donna’s mum’s concern at not wanting to get things ‘wrong’ in terms of how to speak to or about Rose (showing how clearly it’s far more important how one *feels* about such things).I noticed that the never-wanting-to-promote-themselves legends of comics Mills and Gibbons were credited and regarded (I grew up on 2000AD and so love both).
so, nothing really to add except its lovely to be back on this forum and see/hear so many people I know and so many I don’t and looking forward to know.
I see that an enemy in one of the next episodes concerns a “toymaker”.
I note that Disney are now a financial backer.
Doctor Who is a toymaker’s dream.
Tie-ins and die-casts.Doctor Who – always nibbling on the knuckles that both feed and cuff it!
😀
2 December 2023 at 17:31 #74740btw – I read that Star Beast as a comic pre-dated E.T. but I wonder if it’s pre-dating of Gremlins is even more interesting.
But if I’m honest, I’ve nothing to add to that comment as I haven’t really thought about it.
And its hardly as if 2000AD didn’t leap onto the ET bandwagon (though by giving it to Alan Moore they ended up with ‘imagine ET but landing into The Boys From The Blackstuff’)
😀
3 December 2023 at 06:07 #747483 December 2023 at 11:31 #74755Granted, and I will allow that, his mind distracted by the urgency of the moment, he can be forgiven some confusion between old London, or even modern central London, and the whole of Greater London with it’s vastly larger population.
Under no circumstances should this be taken as evidence that age = senility 🙂
8 December 2023 at 11:45 #74850We are currently watching Voyage of the Damned and Mr Copper says they are visiting “Old London Town” so it is a Dr Who reference. And of course it is on the visit to Old London Town the Doctor meets Wilf for the first time.
Cheers
Janette
8 December 2023 at 16:47 #74851remember… Mr Copper’s degree in Earthonomics came from Mrs Golightly’s Happy Travelling University and Dry Cleaners.
9 December 2023 at 04:25 #74867@janetteb I am just starting my annual Xmas Who watch so I will keep my eyes open for that line. I like Voyage of the Damned but it does have a high body count for Xmas. I wish I had one of those host angel things for a creepy tree topper to go with the Dalek ornament my daughter knit for me.
Now off to watch the 10th Doctor sleep through most of the episode only waking up to save Rose from a killer tree controlled by scary Santas. Hey we’ve all had Christmases like that and like most of us all he needs is a cup of tea.
stay safe
9 December 2023 at 10:52 #74868VotD must be a top 3 Christmas special. Titanic, Poseidon, Aliens, Robots of Death, ‘Keel him!’…
Love it
I assume the Host represent parallel cyber evolution. They are really extraordinarily similar to the SVs, Vs & D’s that Taren Capel liked to inject with gigantic glowing red syringes. Or the Titanic was a time ship…
Oh for a return to Androzani! Or a prequel. I have read somewhere that it was supposed to be from the same era as the RoD civilisation. Meet the young brilliant Sharaz Jek and creepy yuppy Morgus. Maybe program police robot D84 so it can survive a deactivator blast.
Anyway, glad to know someone else enjoys a Christmas binge. Bring on The Snowmen, Last Christmas, The Husband of River Song and even Dr Mysterio
9 December 2023 at 13:34 #74879I would say the Host robots are more reminiscent of the Robots in the Tom Baker Robots of Death in fact they look very similar facially except the robots in Robots of Death were metallic Green as opposed to the golden angels
14 December 2023 at 03:26 #75008I’d been meaning to come back to this story for a while, and then Tuesday saw the sad news that Ian Gibson, noted comic writer and artist had passed away. I’d touched on his and Alan Moore’s Ballad of Halo Jones in a blog I’d done for our retrospective of the 2007 episode Gridlock and its relationship to the comic 2000AD. I thought I should change what I was intending on writing and take another approach.
In truth I would have liked to have done something similar to that blog with blended graphics to illustrate certain points, but to be frank I don’t have easy access to the same resources as I did back then.
But I think with that generation of writers entering their seventies we should really take the opportunity to pay some dues. So, if you’re ready for a long read – time for a simple question:
14 December 2023 at 03:33 #75009Why adapt The Star Beast?
The story was written in the first year of Doctor Who Weekly in 1980. Very different times. I was 10 for a start! Living in the industrial Midlands in a mining town.
Obviously @jimthefish has talked enthusiastically about the production transition from comic to screen and I share his awe. 10 year old me would have been amazed. I’m not going to talk about that aspect, it’s more about the peripheral details and ‘feel’ of the comic book story. It also deals with representation. @juniperfish and others have talked about representation for the Trans community with Rose, but the original Comic also tackles some representation issues.
I’ve mentioned elements of The Star Beast before. In 2016 I wrote that I didn’t recognise the term Soap Opera as valid criticism and explained why in relation to the history of Doctor Who. I included The Star Beast as an example of Doctor Who that was much more progressive than, say, much of the early to mid eighties run of Doctor Who on TV.
Largely, during the 70s and 80s much of TV had a distinctive ‘Middle Class’ feel. I pointed out that the main place you’d hear a working class accent was a soap like Coronation Street. The fact that this middle class attitude extended to Doctor Who isn’t that contentious. Especially when stories were set on Earth. All those quaint picturesque villages next to suspicious barrows, standing stones or secret government facilities? Working class characters seemed restricted to tramps, poachers, gamekeepers and comedy Welsh miners. Not great representation is it? At least we had Sergeant Benton, I suppose.
Enter Pat Mills, comic writer, who certainly didn’t think this was great. Pat was in his late twenties, had been into punk music and was very socially aware. Very interested in representation of class and race. He wanted to base a story in the ‘real world’. Talking it through with Dave Gibbons, artist, they decided to set it somewhere everyone would immediately recognise as ‘working class’. That’s right – they used Coronation Street as the basis for the fictional town of Blackcastle.
That’s genius. The introductory panels showing Fudge and Sharon walking in school uniforms through streets of Victorian Terraced houses. The strange skeletal structures of industrial buildings looming in the background. Litter blowing about. A scene those living in the industrial areas of the UK would easily recognise. Fudge – excitable, going on about spaceships. Sharon – more subdued, assuring him that sci-fi will rot his brain.
It’s strangely similar to the approach used by RTD in 2005 to indicate the class of the Tyler family. In the space in between 1980 and 2005, some git had invented EastEnders as the BBC answer to Coronation Street, and the Powell Estate drew on EastEnders style in much the same way.
Much as Jacquie Tyler is functionally an EastEnders character, when you meet Fudge’s mum in Star Beast, she’s functionally Hilda Ogden from Coronation Street. Apron, hairnet, chain-smoking. The humour in these scenes is quite Pythonesque/Douglas Adams.
Moving on, remember Trinity Wells (the American newsreader from 2005-10)? The one who’d explain the wider ramifications of a story? In The Star Beast it’s actually Angela Rippon on TV, telling you that UNIT forces are deploying to support the local troops and other little details. It’s bizarre that before this, the TV show had never really used the TV medium in this way to expand a story.
It’s also very cute with Pop Culture references, something the TV show at the time didn’t really do. For example, A Wrarth surgeon, asked to implant a bomb in the Doctor, is revolted. “His Skeleton is on the inside…..I’m a surgeon, not a vet!!”. Hey, at 10, I could spot a Star Trek gag.
At one point the Doctor, Meep and Sharon escape the Wrarth by jumping onto a double decker bus. I mean, the Doctor. In an adventure on a bus! Who would be crazy enough to think that up (looks pointedly at Planet of the Dead). Tucked away in the corner of the bus is a chap looking panicked. The thought bubble reads “Oh no, Please don’t let them sit next to me”! It’s actually a comedian called Jasper Carrott who was very big at the time. He had a routine asking “why does the nutter on the bus sit next to me”. It’s a pop culture joke and Celebrity cameo rolled into one. All flavors of awesome.
All this before you get to the fact that Sharon is black. She’s a black teenager with issues in a working class environment. Whose loneliness and empathy make her think she’s forged a bond with the Meep only to discover he’s a hate filled narcissistic xenophobe. How woke! Sorry, this predated casual usage of that term by some time. In fact it predates ‘politically correctness gone mad’ by some time as well.Let’s sum up. Back in 1980 Star Beast used the conventions of Soap Opera to tell an allegorical tale of Tolerance V. Intolerance that was fast paced, funny, nodded to the pop culture that kids were consuming and set in what to many was their world. That’s not bad. It took TV 25 years to really catch up.
I’m not accusing RTD of stealing or anything ridiculous like that. He would have been 15 at the time. I bet ‘being in charge of Doctor Who’ didn’t even occur to him back then. He also added a considerable amount of character work and other tricks he’d developed over the years to his mix. When he says he genuinely loved this story I don’t think was lying. Maybe the similarities have been pointed out to him over the years and this was an opportunity to say thank you. Let’s face it – that credit to Pat and Dave on the bottom on the intro screen was well deserved.
We never got Sharon’s story as envisaged by Pat Mills. He and writing partner John Wagner stopped working for Marvel not long after this story. Dave Gibbons followed months later. Marvel had promised them a modicum of control of how reprints would be used and went back on that promise. Firstly reprints in the UK, and then runs of the first few stories in the United States in Marvel Premiere (#57 was the first one I think).
Marvel in the US had realised that the weird property their UK guys had obtained was actually being talked about in comic shops as PBS were showing it. The reaction trial in Marvel Premiere was strong. Comics readers in the states liked the humour, weirdness and loved Gibbons art which was different to what they were used to. A US Doctor Who comic was started. The first story? The Star Beast.
At best estimates, between Doctor Who Weekly, The US Marvel run, Graphic novel collections by Pannini, IDW and Marvel themselves, Star Beast has been reprinted at least 1.6 million times. In contrast, the most well respected New Adventure novel, Human Nature, only ever got a run of 35,000 copies. As soon as those set pictures leaked #beepthemeep trended worldwide on social media. How bizarre is that?
So I’m glad the BBC did the right thing and got Pat and Dave involved at the filming, treated them well, gave them credit and invited them to the premiere. As Dave has said “They even paid us, which they didn’t have to do”. Not all artists and writers who have worked for Marvel have been even that lucky.
14 December 2023 at 12:22 #75011That’s a really interesting, informative, and well written piece. Thanks.
Lots of gems of info in there; the Jasper Carrott – Doctor Who link seems like it should be an obscure pub quiz question (or perhaps a Q in T’Other place’s Thursday Quiz – run, if you weren’t aware, by the G’s #1 Doctor Who fan Martin Belam.)
The point you made about class representation is well made here. I’ve just read @jimthefish ‘s substack article on the politics/representation in DW, I am thinking that “poor people” are another demographic that have traditionally been badly represented in (recent) television, so kudos to Who for bucking that trend somewhat.
And there’s a broader issue in that poverty is a discriminator that is not talked about in the wider media (although the G did have a piece a few months ago), and is as significant in some cases as gender or racial discrimination.
But I am getting a bit heavy for this thread perhaps….
14 December 2023 at 18:21 #75013@phaseshift – Oh that’s lovely background on the comic story of the Star Beast (I’ve never read it).
The new version of Doctor Who Confidential is called Doctor Who Unleashed, available on IPlayer, one episode of “behind the scenes” for each of the specials. In The Star Beast associated one, David Tennant meets Dave Gibbons and Pat Mills on set and gets them to sign his original Beep the Meep comic, which he’d kept all these year – give it a watch – happiness all round.
On class and Doctor Who, I watched a great For The Love of Sci-fi panel with Christopher Ecclestone and Billie Piper (it’s really recent – 2023) speaking about their time on the show, and Ecclestone talks a lot about being working class and entering the world of acting. They also discuss the snobbery (and frankly, hate, in some corners of Who fandom) Billie Piper encountered when it was first announced she would play Rose (Ecclestone implies some of that was class snobbery and I’m sure he’s right):
(I’ve forgotten how to embed video here, but this is the link).
RTD and Chris and Billie are all from working class backgrounds and RTD’s determination to expand Doctor Who’s class life-worlds on screen, as something fundamental to his revival, gave Nu Who an incredible fresh start. That long shot in Rose where the two of them talk as they walk through Rose’s estate, and the Doctor gives his spine-tingling speech in response to her question, “Who are you?”:
“I can feel it. The turn of the Earth. The ground beneath our feet is spinning at a thousand miles an hour, and the entire planet is hurtling round the sun at sixty seven thousand miles an hour, and I can feel it. We’re falling through space, you and me, clinging to the skin of this tiny little world, and if we let go. That’s who I am. Now, forget me, Rose Tyler. Go home.”
is iconic, and a far cry from the historic upper-middle-class-ese of the Time Lords (“my dear chap”) affected (as well as rebelled against) by the Fourth Doctor (the first to have a story set on Gallifrey – The Deadly Assassin) when in the company of his own people.
14 December 2023 at 23:43 #75017“…Sheer campery”
from Eccleston. I’m definitely using that.
Great video – they are still obviously very fond of each other.
Loving Chris’s fondness / nostalgia for his Northern, working-class roots. I’d love to have a couple of pints and a chat with him – not about DW per se, but I bet he’s fascinating to talk with.
I’ve read about the behind-the-scenes discord on the show during Eccleston’s time – and Eccleston mentions several names here. Pretty bluntly it has to be said. Is there a definitive article somewhere that explains what actually went on?
15 December 2023 at 15:42 #75029Great post and really interesting to get some of the Marvel background too. Hadn’t realised just how impactful and widely disseminated Star Beast actually was. Certainly I’d say that I’d consider those early Who strips (of which I think this is the best, closely followed by the later Tides of Time) had more of an impact on me than the actual TV stories of the time. And, yes, Sharon was definitely ground-breaking for the time. You can see echoes of Ace, both Roses and Bill Potts in her, I think. And kudos to Pat Mills for that and I guess Sharon was informed by his near-contemporary work on Misty. (If anyone’s interested, it’s definitely worth signing up to Pat Mills’s substack where he gives a lot of fascinating detail on various aspects of his career, including recently his various works on Who.)
And yes, the question of class in Who is a vexed one and which we seem to have tossed around a lot on this site. Is Ace really the first credibly three-dimensional depiction of the working class on screen? I’m struggling to think of an earlier one and if that’s the case then that’s positively shameful, especially given the pointers offered by Mills here.
I suspect the class issue is also why the Time Lords and Gallifrey are so problematic for the current show too — to the point that they have to keep destroying them/it or readjusting the lore to distance the Doctor from them. In pretty much every Classic story they’re a plummy, white, mostly male (literally) closed society that’s clearly based on Oxbridge, Westminster and British intelligence. In the late 60s and early 70s from a socio-cultural perspective this seemed almost natural but even by the 80s it was looking creaky and questionable — which I guess is why we see Six in such an adversarial position towards them after the catty but essentially friendly dispositions of the previous Doctors. And it certainly doesn’t fly 2005 onwards. It’s just that the respective showrunners haven’t quite figured out the best approach to take — hence RTD literally kicking the can down the road, Moffat berating the Doctor for being ‘officer class’ and Chibs rewriting the Doctor’s lineage completely. I suspect that we won’t hear a peep about Gallifrey for much of Gatwa’s run, given the full reset he seems to being given. (Although if The One Who Waits turns out to be Omega then that could be embarrassingly wrong.)
I’m not sure if there’s ever been a definitive collation of Eccleston’s grievances but as far as I can gather it’s largely down to the internecine and ruthless nature of BBC politics (reading between the lines of The Writer’s Tale, I always kind of got the impression that RTD had the potential to be kind of ruthless) but also I believe there was a sense of hierarchy on set with those at the bottom of the ladder (I think catering were mentioned someplace) being treated really, really badly. That sounds like the sort of thing that would get up Eccleston’s nose and I can’t say I blame him. Plus given what we now know about John Barrowman’s antics (not to mention Noel Clarke), there might be a sense of grievance if senior management were perceived to be protecting them.
15 December 2023 at 22:49 #75033and in all seriousness* may I just say that this person called Whist or Whilst or Wished or whatever is an absolute fool and should hang their head in SHAME!
Skizz.
Your comment was reductionist, glib and dumb.
{sigh}
I do truly love this place for the quality of people and writing here** as I do get to reflect and see/understand far more than what I take on first viewing
* though as always tongue in cheek, I am face-palming with a side order of head slapping at my own laziness.
** and the daft bonkerising. I’m definitely here for the daft bonkerising.
;¬)6 June 2024 at 12:12 #76078My first impressions as I watched it – (Written five minutes into first viewing): – This is more like it! Donna was never my favourite companion but it’s good to see her back. I like her daughter already. And the titles have a distinctly old-Who look about them. This is promising… Oh, and directed by Rachel Talalay. The old firm’s back!
The crashed spaceship is a bit Quatermass-ish. But the cute alien that speaks perfect English – I can’t help thinking Ewoks. Or something Muppet-ish. The two hunters now are – really rather terrible examples of the extras-in-a-rubber-suit genre. Bug-eyed monsters. Terrible. The Doc now has a proper Sonic Screwdriver again, at last.
It seems that UNIT must have been reactivated since the events of ‘Resolution’ where they had been disbanded.
Donna continues to be annoyingly insensitive (as in the old days) but after three seasons of a frequently-annoying Doc, it hardly registers.
The human/oid characters (by that I’m also including the Doctor, Donna (whatever Timelord DNA she might have absorbed) and Rose (whatever her parentage was) are all excellent. The aliens are a bit regrettable. All this is a bit too Star Wars Disney for my liking. Unless there’s some meta-explanation.
And Sylvia actually said ‘Thank you’ to the Doctor, which is the most extraordinary turn of events in this episode.
I did approve when RTD subverted all the cutesiness and the Meep turned out to be the villain and the BEM’s the good guys.
Interesting bit of retconning when it turns out that Donna, having had Rose, can now survive the Vortex or whatever-it-is. And they both gave up their regeneration energy – just like that? A bit too easy?
I like the new Tardis. Not as much as Capaldi’s, but a welcome relief from Whittaker’s crystal grotto. So of course Donna had to blow it up.
Immediate reaction – it started off really well but then it all went a bit Disney. About half the mental age of Moff/Capaldi’s era. I’ll just have to withhold judgement for a couple of episodes.
6 June 2024 at 13:43 #76079Oh, and – almost like a throw-back to past times – the DVD includes a decent collection of extras including a full-length commentary by David Tennant, Phil Collinson (exec producer) and producer Vicky Delow. It’s a while since a DVD set bothered to do that, I think.
20 September 2024 at 14:31 #76917Although I’d forgotten much from my first viewing a couple of months ago, it’s interesting that the comments I wrote this time were often the same, almost word for word, to what i wrote then. Similar scenes evoking identical reaction, or subconscious memory of what I wrote? Anyway, I’ve edited out most of the word-for-word repetitions.
Okay, right from the start – Ten and Donna – it’s like RTD just pushed ‘Reset’ and the entire Chibz era disappeared. (Well, Moff too, I suppose, if I’m honest). But this feels very RTD. Director: Rachel Talalay. Yay! The old firm’s back! (See what I mean?)
In the years since Donna’s first unfortunate appearance (boy did I hate her for years for that!) I’ve gradually grown to accept her. I’m actually pleased to see that Donna’s settled down with her fella and they have an absolutely gorgeous daughter.
The Meep looks entirely Disney cute alien. It speaks perfect English for someone presumably out of range of the Tardis’ translation circuits. And the Wrarths also look exactly like bug-eyed Disney villains.
I do like the sonic screwdriver’s new function of generating a virtual screen. Not a new idea, may have been used on Who before for suit-generated displays, but very nicely realised. The Doctor’s exchange with UNIT’s new adviser – which is basically an info-dump – is just so much more natural and better staged than anything in 13’s era.
The Battle of Donna’s House is every bit as dramatic and exciting as Chibz’s cosmic destructionfests, which demonstrates bigger isn’t always better, there’s a law of diminishing returns. All this is a score of Wrarths attempting (apparently) to kill one Meep. And isn’t it odd that Shaun’s taxi didn’t suffer any damage from the close-range Wrarth gunfire? And the Doc quite rapidly deduces that the Wrarth aren’t the villains in this.
‘Activate the initialisers! Brandish the gravity stanchions. Calibrate the flight deck!’ Could it possibly be that RTD is gently taking the Mickey out of Chibz’s technobabble?
I have to say the way the dagger drive generates burning fissures through the streets, which then close up when the Doctor and Donna (and Rose) reverse the startup, looks very cartoonish.
The way the regeneration energy doesn’t kill Donna because she has shared it with her daughter Rose is ingenious, in Rose’s case very blatantly a metaphorical validation of ‘non-binary’ people (although that’s purely a coincidence of phrasing with no actual meaning), but I can live with that. I did gag a bit on the stuff about Donna and Rose just being able to let all the excess energy go because they weren’t male, come off it RTD, stop bringing gender wars into it. And the whole sequence is a bit Disney-fairytale, with its happy resolution.
I suspect that in ealier incarnations of Who (the Moff’s tenure, or even RTD’s prior tenure), Donna might have died from the regen energy. That she didn’t this time – is this a symptom of Who now being more ‘family-friendly’ or Disneyfied?
The new Tardis interior is a vast improvement on 13’s, though very bare and plain compared with Twelve’s. It’s huge, and gives plenty of space for the actors to do their thing, unlike the cramped interior of 13’s.
And I’m really disappointed that Rose didn’t get to see the interior – or accompany the Doctor on further adventures. I thought she was going to become a Companion. (I think she could certainly have fitted in to Wild Blue Yonder instead of Donna. Not better, not worse, but same role essentially. I only say ‘instead of’ rather than ‘as well as’ because WBY is very much a 2-piece play).
And we just *know* Donna is going to spill coffee on the console, don’t we? Donna never changes.
Overall, though it seemed to be aimed at young teens, I found this ep quite entertaining. And easy to follow the plot.
23 September 2024 at 13:53 #76918@dentarthurdent. Gosh how the year has flown. It seems like a couple of years since Star Beast. I barely remember it. Must be due for a re watch. Reading your review i do recall disliking the burning fissures in the street, very silly, and the pacing was hectic but otherwise this episode was fun. I always liked Donna and felt that her loosing everything she had gained from being with the Doctor was a shabby ending for her character so it was nice to see that restored. Donna finally got the story resolution she deserved.
Cheers
Janette
24 September 2024 at 14:28 #76921@janetteb I conceived an instant dislike of Donna when she burst in on the Doctor who was (IIRC) in shock following the loss of Rose, and instantly started addressing him in accusatory terms as if he was guilty of some crime. It took me quite a long time (you know what they say about first impressions) to soften in my feelings towards her.
I do agree that losing her memories was rough. But then most of the Doctor’s companions came to a sad ending one way or another.
There was a considerable similarity between Donna’s case and Rose in Season 1 (when she absorbed the energy of the vortex), only in Rose’s case Nine took the energy from her and that caused him to regenerate. And, come to think of it, Clara was faced with the same fate as Donna, besides being dead, only she switched it so that the Doctor was the one who forgot.
And the other almost universal feature of nuWho is that the Companion’s tragic ending is somehow softened in a subsequent episode. Which I intellectually distrust but emotionally approve. So yes, okay, I like that Donna got her memory back.
I think it’s a tribute to the skill of the writers that these similarities weren’t glaringly obvious (to me at least), they’ve only just occurred to me now that I’m calling them to mind.
1 October 2024 at 02:22 #76923@dentarthurdent @janetteb I enjoyed all of this episode and seeing all the old faces. Rose is a lovely new face and I would buy her stuffies any day, except the Meep. Cute and harmless at first disguising quite a nasty little guy inside. The Meep reminds me of the adorable young racoon we have visiting our bird feeder .He is so cute with his little black mask ,bushy tail and little fingers but get too close ,which we try not to do, and he growls and shows us his very sharp and pointy teeth.
Donna got her memories back and that was great and well deserved. The Doctor Donna, the stuff of legends, a household God ,the hero in stories and songs throughout the universe and she didn’t remember. That has always made me sad so now I am not.
Of course there is the 14th Doctor and I know he is not the 10th he does look a lot like him! I was so pleased to see him that I clapped and asked for “permission to sqeee” . I still wish he had stayed for a whole series.
Anyway ,I did like this episode, it felt very Doctor Who.
stay safe
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