Storytime with Rachel F Hundred

Genuine storytelling in amongst the silly and surreal

Spoiler Warning

Watching the first two episodes of the new season of Doctor Who and I can see why they are labelling it ‘Season 1’ rather than continuing with either the original or reboot number – this is very much a regeneration of Doctor Who in all senses.  In some ways, it’s even a reboot beyond the Christmas episode and the 60^th Anniversary mini-series for all it references the events and continues the story of Ruby and the Fifteenth Doctor. 

Space Babies

The first episode is very much the re-introduction of the Doctor to the audience through the eyes of Ruby Sunday.  As the Doctor explains the TARDIS, who he is, what he is and the Cliff Notes version of his history to Ruby, so too is the audience informed of all the necessary information about the show to move forward.  For long-term fans the exposition is of the ‘grimace-and-bear-it-because-you-know-you-have-to’ type: necessary but feels like a waste of time.  For anyone new, it’s enough to understand without getting completely lost in over 60 years of detailed canon. 

There are also nice touches to explain how the Who universe works – like stopping in the dinosaur era to provide an excuse for the Butterfly Compensation Switch (which presumably stops all of time changing just because someone steps out of the TARDIS and onto a butterfly – one wonders if that switch existed because of the Doctor and Donna running into Newton and the whole ‘gravity’ debacle in the Anniversary episodes).

Of course, a new Companion always brings that opportunity for explanation – they are the stand-in for the audience to ask the questions and demand the answers.  Millie Gibson’s Ruby Sunday is written almost as though she’s the weird child of Rose and Clara: an ordinary girl entranced by the adventure and the Doctor on one hand, and yet the mystery of who she is really, on the other.  Confident, but unafraid to challenge the Doctor when necessary.  Gibson gives a very confident performance which sells Ruby as a proper Companion to the Doctor, continuing her assuredness from her first outing in the Christmas special.    

From a series’ perspective, it was also interesting to see the callback here to the Christmas episode story and who is Ruby theme.  The in-universe decision to disallow Ruby from visiting the night she was left in the church is well done.  The strange memory-sharing which brings matter from that memory into their physical reality is a little too reminiscent of the Force dyad shenanigans in Star Wars: The Last Jedi (2017) but it works as a warning sign for the Doctor to deny Ruby travel to that specific moment, and so there will be no easy answer for her or the audience on the question of Ruby’s identity.

If Ruby feels consistent from the Christmas special to this first episode, the Doctor improves enormously as I felt very much that there was something missing in Ncuti Gatwa’s performance of the Doctor in the Christmas outing.  He was charming and drawn in familiar broad-strokes, but lacking just that something to embody him fully as ‘oh this is his Doctor.’  It was weird, frankly, because his introduction in The Giggle (2023) had been short, but very assured.  Here there is a return to that Doctor: empathetic, charming, chaotic – traits which are familiar enough of the old, but in a combination which speaks to the new.  And Gatwa is just stunningly beautiful in how he plays the Doctor, particularly in the scene where he saves the Bogey-man – his face shows his agony at watching the only monster of its kind dying, and his determination to save it – great acting which gives the audience Gatwa’s Doctor in a nutshell: this is a Doctor who will save everyone – even the monster.

Unfortunately that brings us to the main story of the first episode and…well, I’m not a fan.

The premise of the Doctor coming across a space station run by babies in automated chairs (like the future of humanity in WALL-E (2008)) with a monster in the basement is a whacky but fun one, yet the execution of it is less than stellar and ends up covered in the muck of slimy juvenile humour.       

To be fair, there is a real urgency and sense of fear about the monster when it is barely visible to the audience except as a shadowy outline.  That disappears when it becomes more obvious that it is a man in a costume when they’re hanging on for dear life in the airlock, but it is genuinely creepy there for a while.  Additionally, the special effects of combining the babies and voiceovers is well done and not creepy at all, even if it never achieves the suspension of disbelief required for it to actually seem natural. 

Other than that, the story has a major plot hole in the existence of NANN-E who is not an electronic nanny program but an actual human hiding out in a storage closet.  The contradiction of a woman who stays behind because she doesn’t agree with allowing the babies to born and to die without intervention, but then doesn’t appear to interact with them at all except via computer??  Not to mention she ends up in villain territory (which is all handwaved away at the end) when the Doctor and Ruby suddenly realise the monster was baby farmed by the station and is a unique lifeform and needs to be saved…none of that works for me.

What works even less is that whole reveal that the Bogeyman is made up of actual bogeys from blown noses, and that the station gets powered by the babies’ nappies which have turned into methane gas.  Juvenile humour for the win, apparently.  It’s times like these when I try to remember I’m not the target demographic and Doctor Who started life as a children’s TV show.

Still, there was a story told even if it wasn’t one that I particularly enjoyed.

The Devil’s Chord

In contrast, I very much enjoyed the storytelling in The Devil’s Chord, even if I’m left wondering by the musical number if there was actually enough story to be told and where all the breaking of the fourth wall stuff is going.

Let me start there.

In a post-credits scene in the Christmas episode, the character of Mrs Flood broke the fourth wall which was an aberration.  It’s not known for the show to do that in the way for instance it’s a device recognised in something like Deadpool (2016) or Fleabag (2016-19).  Once in a scene not even in the main episode could be seen as a clever marketing technique, but in an actual episode where the villain of the piece does it a couple of times and the Doctor does it himself? I’m not really sure how I feel about it, and I think whether I ultimately land on it being a positive or negative will undoubtedly be down to what it all leads to in the end.

Breaking the fourth wall did seem very in-character for the wonderful villain, the Maestro, played with a brilliant mad joie de vivre and an edge of insanity that is incredibly captivating by Jinkx Monsoon.  It is entirely believable that the Maestro is the child of the Toymaker.  Monsoon brings the same kind of energy to the role that Neil Patrick Harris did to the Toymaker and the result is that they feel consistent as beings of the same nature.  Kudos to Monsoon.

Kudos too for the repetition in that feel of equals between the Doctor and the Maestro that also happened between Tennant’s Doctor and Harris’ Toymaker.  Gatwa and Monsoon are well-matched on screen and have a good chemistry as hero and villain.  The story also plays up that sense of the Doctor not only meeting an equal, but someone who can outmatch him.  The whole scene of the Maestro hunting the Doctor and Ruby, for the Doctor to hide them with the sonic in a sound bubble but then for the Maestro to counter that…that was perfection.

Gatwa continues with a great performance in this second episode outing.  His Doctor remains very consistent from the first episode; empathetic, charming and chaotic.  His vulnerability is shown more as he recognises that his win over the Toymaker was lucky, yet the Doctor’s familiar and innate arrogance that he can find the notes which would send the Maestro back is also shown here.  From a story perspective that he fails is brilliant.  He’s fallible and that’s fantastic especially as it also leads to the Lennon and McCartney saving the world moment which is just another moment of perfection.

A third moment of perfection for me was also when the Doctor talks to Ruby about Susan and acknowledges that right at that moment in a different part of London, he and his granddaughter exist.  It was also a good way to also expand once more on the universe lore of how time travel works for the Doctor, and importantly why the Doctor just doesn’t pop in and see Susan.  That note of vulnerability that he’s not certain the genocide of the Time Lords has led to Susan’s death too and fears that if he goes to her see her that he’ll find out it has is poignant and perfect.

That scene is also another good example of how the show uses those moments between the Doctor and Companion to explain things to the audience.  Gibson continues to shine as Ruby (loved the scene where they visit the nuclear winter of the future because of the death of music with the Maestro’s existence) even as the Maestro’s capture of her continues that revelation that there’s something more about Ruby than her just being another human girl dropped into being a Companion.

That thread and the thread of the Toymaker’s kind threatening the Doctor and the universe are nicely woven into this second episode.  That whacky energy of the Toymaker’s where anything is possible and anything goes enables the wilder moments and even the fourth wall breaking to be OK. 

My only real criticism of this episode really is that final musical number at the end.  While it also fits with the Toymaker’s whackiness, I’m still not a fan.  I would rather have had more story in the middle, more confrontation and moments between the Maestro and the Doctor.

In conclusion:

This is a strong start for the new season. 

Individually, The Devil’s Chord for me is the stronger episode, but Space Babies does what it needed to do to reboot the show.  Gibson is a great Companion addition; there’s a sense that she knows exactly what the role demands of her and she delivers.  Gatwa’s Doctor seems much improved from the Christmas episode and his performance is wonderful.  You can see the infusion of Disney cash in the production value.  Importantly, I love the story threads for the season with Ruby’s mystery and the threat laid out nicely for the future.  I’m definitely looking forward to next week’s episode.