Boom: Ranking - N/A (but around #130ish)

"Boom” (15^th Dr, 2024)

(Series 14/1A episode 3, Dr 15 with Ruby, 18/5/2024, showrunner: Russell T Davies, writer: Steven Moffat, executive producers: Julie Gardner, Jane Tranter, Joe Collins and Phil Collinson**, director: Julie Ann Robinson)

Ranking: #130ish reviewed 19/5/2024

'You put your left leg in, your left leg out, shake it all about and...Boom! Gee, I guess this wasn't the right planet to start doing the hokey-cokey on after all!'

There we were, thinking that we had the Davies-Disney Plus era of Who sussed as a colourful cartoonish romp where the most bizarre things happened and it was all joyous fun and made for a new audience of hip six year olds with the Doctor footloose and fancy free then in comes Steven Moffat, writing his first script since ‘Twice Upon A Time’ seven years ago and suddenly, boom!, suddenly the Doctor’s put his foot in it and the universe is a much darker, scarier and more adult place again. Just like the last time Russell T was in charge in fact: Moffat’s episodes tended to be the darker, scarier ones that pushed Russell’s likeable characters to their limits to discover their bad habits and unresolved trauma, the landmine that was always waiting for them. I don’t know any hip and trendy six year olds watching Dr Who (and if I did they wouldn’t be hanging round with me in any case) but if I did I’m willing to bet they had the same whiplash I did trying to work out how we could from the brutal realism of ‘Remembrance Of The Daleks’ to the gaudy kitsch of ‘The Happiness Patrol’. Honestly the series needed it by this stage, after three specials, a Christmas episode and two season openers that felt as if they could have been Christmas episodes too and early signs are that this episode has gone down better than most later for confronting the darker side of nature in a story where, far from having a cartoon villain, the monsters turn out to be ourselves.

The story goes that Russell phoned Steven up to tell him he was taking over the show again and had cast his new Doctor though the former wasn’t yet looking for writers and the latter wasn’t looking for work the discussion naturally turned to what sort of Dr Who stories they’d both spotted in the world (which at this point was circa 2021: Davies is a long way ahead of himself with current filming). Moffat’s first question was what the new Doctor was like and when he was told Ncuit was energetic and youthful and always seemed to be moving decided that a good contrast would be to see what might happen to Dr 15 if he was forced to stand still. Which happens quite literally when the Tardis lands and the Doctor rushes out to embrace a new planet and steps out in the middle of a great big war onto a whacking great mine (one likes to imagine the ghost of Harry Sullivan yelling ‘the Doctor is an imbecile!’ right now, but to be fair to him it is rather well camouflaged). It’s very Moffat: The Weeping Angels in reverse and continues his belief that an attack in slow motion is more scary than one that’s swift: only this time it’s the Doctor who can’t move not the threat.And that’s it: that’s the plot, for 45 minutes tense minutes, as the Doctor stands on one leg, tries not to lose his cool and works out how to save himself and the planet from certain destruction. So much for all the extra Disney money spoiling our show: far from being an expensive extravaganza this is Dr Who pared down to basics again: not many characters trying to avoid certain death in a single (albeit rather impressive panoramic) set that is, to all intents and purposes, made to look like a quarry.

Once again Dr Who goes back to basics trying to bring peace to a war-torn society the way he’s been doing since the very beginning (and, indeed, in Moffat’s last episode 2017’s ‘Twice Upon A Time’ set in a similar battlefield in WW1). In stories past we might have learned a lot about this society at war – we get a few details sketched in, with a world full of ‘Anglican minister’ soldiers who seem to be humans in the future but for all we know it could be world war three, the cold war, a rogue human army in the glorious battle of the Sontarons empire against their Rutan enemies or a re-match of the Daleks and the Thals or the Movellans. In a sense, though, it doesn’t matter what the wars are about because all wars seem the same and in an era when Russia is at war with Ukraine and Israel and Palestine are lobbing great lumps out of each other and America is at war with itself and Britain is at war with itself and goodness knows what might happen next it could be any or all of them. This is a story that complains about how we really should be over this by now and doing better, moving on to a great united peaceful future not squabbling over land and money and resources. The children who grew up on the Who of the 1960s and dreamed of flying to the stars are really resenting still being here, taking the show over a second time, because their work still isn’t unfinished while humans remain Earthbound and petty.  Moffat even weaponises the ‘thoughts and prayers’ message, which has become so synonymous with 21st century conflicts, used by people in general but politicians in particular to sound like they care when really they know that nothing will ever change. For, like a lot of Moffat stories, though, the real villain is capitalism: countries make more money out of war than they ever do out of peace and somehow always find the money for illegal wars and costly invasions when they can’t find a few pounds extra to spare to their starving, suffering children. By the time the Doctor works out what’s going on (spoilers) we find out that there isn’t even an enemy on this planet – that they’ve long since died but the war is still being fought because it makes commercial sense to sell weapons to the fighters. So far so Dr Who but there’s an extra twist of the knife that even our own deaths can be turned into commercial gain, with futuristic urns that project costly holograms with final messages and social media feeds that you can pick and choose downloadable ‘memories’ from. Honestly it’s a wonder the war doesn’t come with its own sponsor. It’s more than a little like the capitalism message of ‘Oxygen’, only better and – despite the mine the Doctor stand on and (more spoilers) Ruby getting shot – far more nuanced and far less brutal in the way it handles the subject the knife wielded with surgeon’s precision rather than as a blunt instrument. 

Moffat’s on slightly shakier ground when it comes to the question of faith. This is something that’s turned up a lot in past Dr Whos too, the role that religion has in the universe and whether religions that are at their core usually about peace really ought to be used as an excuse for war. It is, if you will, ‘The Crusade’ 59 years on, asking the same questions about whether you really want to believe in a God that believes you should kill unbelievers. It’s a line that equates this story even more with the Israeli-Palestine conflict, which is interesting because given the length of time between the filming and broadcasting of stories now Moffat must have been mighty hot off the press writing about this. He makes the soldiers must closer to home by having them be Anglicans though, with the pithy line from the Doctor to Ruby when she expresses surprise that traditionally most soldiers have been religious – she’s just been brought up in a slim pocket of time when wars appeared to be about other things. There’s nowhere for the message to go beyond that though: Moffat tries to square the question of belief versus proof out by having the soldiers question the Doctor in a way they won’t their religion and by having the Doctor himself embrace the comfort of faith when an orphaned little girl believes that death isn’t really a final goodbye, but it all feels a little stuck on the top of this episode, not integrated as well as it might. There is one great line though: ‘faith means never having to think for yourself’.

There is, I believe, a third protest going on – one that’s well hidden amongst the metaphors and leads on nicely from the idea of having ‘faith’ in governments to look after us when we’re better off looking after each other. The biggest change that’s happened in the world since Russell and Steven last played with their Dr Who toys on national television, of course, is the covid pandemic. There seems to be a mass hypnotism worthy of The Master around the subject now because no one talks about it, even though it was a massive universal trauma we’re all still recovering from and hundreds of people still die of it around the world every day and thousands more are disabled by its after-effects and the longer we move away from our mass lockdowns the more the figures go up not down. Given the simple format of this story it wouldn’t surprise me if this story actually started life as one of the ‘lockdown’ videos made by old writers and actors from the show’s past to comfort children before a mass tweetalong every week during the early days of the pandemic in 2020 before the politicians decided it was over and everyone had to go back to work (because it was costing too much to stay at home), only it’s been disguised. Covid was described from the beginning in terms of a war: it was something to ‘battle’ said Boris as he utterly failed to comprehend the seriousness of what was going (or, in the early days, walk down a single flight of stairs at Downing Street to sit in on early panicked meetings following the outbreak in Wuhan). The people who died were described as ‘casualties’. Many people died who didn’t need to because of economics: the governments messing around giving ppe contracts to their friends and cronies, who might as well have spent the money on hand mines for all the good it did people. Those of us who were and remain vulnerable were sacrificed in the hurry to get back to normal and have people buying things again – we were suddenly expendable again, no longer shielded at home, even though most of us had disabilities that wouldn’t have stopped us living full lives without a pandemic (just like the blind soldier John Francis Vater). We were unable to say goodbye to many of our loved ones in person, just through video – something which happens when John’s little girl Splice turns up and sees a hologram of her daddy, the contact nearly blowing everyone sky high. Because the landmines are set off by contact: the only we can stay safe and avoid blowing each other up is to remain in isolation, even in the middle of a war, even with a battle raging, even when we want to hug our loved ones, because it’s the only way we can keep each other safe.  And who is the first line of defence injured because he rushes in to save everybody, not realising the full danger? The Doctor of course (so many healthcare practitioners were disabled or killed by covid).More than anything else, though, Moffat captures both the evils of capitalism sending us out to fight while the danger is still there, from governments perpetuating a war that should have ended long ago but would cost too much to fix, while being forced to stand still in a world that’s changing far too fast. The only thing he’s missing is some zoom quiz nights and Ruby making banana bread and we’d have the whole package. Since when was there such a thing as an ‘acceptable casualty rate’ Moffat rages: we should all be trying to save each other and ourselves, even when the people in charge don’t want us to, in war or in plague, or what does that say about our humanity?After all, most TV studios – including Who – are still masking: programmes run to such tight deadlines that a delay from cast or crew being off sick would cause more problems than it would in most workplaces. Overall it’s a neat metaphor, cleverly hid – so cleverly hid I don’t think many people have picked up on it yet (unless of course I’ve just been on the wine gums again: gluten-free ones these days thanks to the price my digestion system is still paying for the damage done to it by covid). 

Moffat also gets to grips with the way big events in our lives like wars and covid speed up the normal human processes and there’s another very Dr Whoy theme about our mortality and the need to make every minute count. There we are bumbling along, thinking we have all the time to fall in love and dodge round the question of whether the person you like likes you back and that we will live to see our children grow, when a big moment suddenly mkes everything much more intense and urgent. The Moffat children who were still at school when their dad was showrunner (and helped shape his scripts by throwing in ideas for phobias and monsters and historical timezones) are now all grown up but you never forget what it is to be a parent and the relationship between the soldier and his little girl is one of the best. While the closing appeal from the Doctor for his hologram to put things right is a bit of an easy solution (albeit a clever inversion of ‘War Of The Worlds’ by having a computer virus save us from our invaders) it works well in the sense that early on Moffat sets up the problems raising children in a war (or indeed in lockdown) and there are lots of sweet links between the two (the hologram’s final goodbye comment that his girl should remember to brush her teeth is such a dad thing to say and neatly mirrors where the story started, ordinary life continuing on as it always does). The soldiers figuring that facing certain death is a good time to admit their love for each other rings true too and is a little more believable than when Chris Chibnall tried a similar trick in ‘Resolution’. All in all, with its dramatic opening and its moving climax, I can see why so many fans are calling the best story of the Disney era so far, with many saying it’s the best since Capaldi was the Doctor eight years ago.

I’m still not quite convinced (I have a very soft spot for ‘The Star Beast’ and there were a few of Jodie’s stories I rated highly too, even if it was a very inconsistent era): ‘Boom’ starts well and ends acceptably but it goes a bit weird in the middle. And honestly those centre fifteen minutes or so were pretty dull. And if you can’t be exciting when the lead character is standing on a mine about to be blown to bits when can you? In its aesthetics and brutality its ‘Caves Of Androzani’ twinned with ‘Genesis Of The Daleks’, a story with big stakes that is somehow too small to match the ambition and layers of those past classics. There’s only so much drama that can be rung out of a timelord trying not to put his foot down and a lot of it was rather overdone: particularly the moment Ruby is shot just as she’s about to save the day and put things right (the moment we nearly had covid under control before being sent back to the office, perhaps?) There are a few loose storytelling devices left hanging: for instance we’re told early on that the mine’s don’t just react to weight but subtle clues in a person’s blood pressure and heart rate so the Doctor has to stay calm and not get angry. Sometimes the lines do indeed flicker round when Ncuti raises his voice – but not always. And frankly hearing that his companion has just been shot (without being able to see how bad she is) and bawling ‘sorry!’ to all and sundry would have blown all the lights on the mine to kingdom come. Weirdly, even though ‘The Devil’s Chord’ specified that Ruby had been travelling with the Doctor for six months by now, this story claims that this is Ruby’s first alien planet: I really hope there’s a series arc about messing up with time or this would be the biggest continuity blow since the toy of Davros had the wrong arm amputated. In keeping with the new musical companion The Doctor has suddenly started picking up a habit of singing songs to calm him down out of nowhere – 20th century Earth songs, which seems a bit weird (wouldn’t it have made more sense for him to sing a new Murray Gold composition masquerading as a Gallifreyan lullaby? Although it did warm this fannish heart to hear the Doctor actually sing the words to ‘The Skye Boat Song’, the tune the second Doctor was always tootling on his recorder when he got the chance). In another neat link the Villenagrd systems were mentioned in chatter between the 9^th Doctor and Captain jack in Moffat’s first Who TV story ‘The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances’ (in case you’re wondering he turned everything off in the wilderness years before he met Rose, which is why he doesn’t then turn everything off again at the end). It seemed rather inevitable too that if there were four spaces left on the mine before it blew up that we would use them all up before the end, even when things seemed under control. The closing remark, about how we’re all like snowmen waiting to be erased when the only thing that survives of us is love is incredibly tacky, the Hallmarks Greeting card version of love and death that runs through Dr Who (Moffatt can mess up on the odd line: what with a fan-pleasing reference to ‘fish fingers and custard’ this episode really is like a sampler album of all Moffat eras more than it’s like a Greatest Hits).  The Anglican soldiers who turn up don’t really add much to the story either – they felt more like filler to pad the plot out a bit longer.

One of them is actress Susan Twist making her fifth appearance in seven stories. I’ll admit I hadn’t even noticed it was the same actress until the fanbase pointed it out online, thanks to a dose of face-blindness and the clever makeup and costumes that have changed her appearance so much (I feel a bit better given the Doctor and Ruby haven’t spotted her yet either!) In this episode she was the ambulance driver, while other stories have seen her play Mrs Merridew (Isaac Newton’s maid) in ‘Wild Blue Yonder’, the woman who asks Ruby’s band to ‘give it some welly’ in ‘The Church At Ruby Road’, Gina in ‘Space Babies’ (the communications officer) and an Abbey Road ‘tea lady’ in ‘The Devil’s Chord’. Most of the time the parts are so small she’s uncredited but eagle-eyed  viewers recognise her from other things: surely the name ‘Susan Twist’ has to be a clue? Especially given the amount of times the Doctor keeps mentioning being a father and grandfather lately (Susan was his grand-daughter if you haven’t caught up with the earliest Dr Whos on the Whoniverse i-player yet: hint – you absolutely should, the 1960s was the show’s peak for me. Although it would seem a weird time to do it, given that her ‘creator’ Anthony Coburn’s son is the one holding up ‘An Unearthly Child’ from being added to i-player, much to Russell’s chagrin). And not forgetting the finale of ‘The Devil’s Chord’ mentioning how ‘there’s always a twist at the end’. And how does she link to the theme of time being changed so often and so bizarrely in most of the episode since the 60th anniversary in November last year, Ruby’s confusing beginnings (abandoned on the local church steps one Christmas) or the snow that’s fallen on three stories in a row now, including on a battleground in the blazing sunshine? Compared to the subtlety of ‘bad Wolf’ it’s a clue that’s beginning to scream we pay attention to it by now. And yet it would almost be more Dr Who like to plant all those clues and then make out afterwards that it was all just a coincidence, while the writers absolutely knew they were taking us for a ride and perhaps diverting our attention away from what was really going on. All will be revealed soon. Maybe...  

We haven’t really had enough time in any of these appearances to see if Susan Twist can act but we can the other characters and honestly the acting was a bit variable this week. Caoillin Springall wasn’t one of the more convincing child actors we’ve had in the series (though better than some) and Joe Anderson was a bit one-note as her dad (ironically enough he was rather good singing Beatles songs in the fab four equivalent of ‘Mama Mia’, the under-rated 2007 film ‘Across The Universe’, so maybe they should have got him in as one of the band for ‘The Devil’s Chord’ last week?) Millie and Ncuti continue to be class, though, with Millie continuing to be brave and helpful and the Doctor adding new shades as that ebullience from his regeneration in ‘The Giggle’ continues to wear off. Ncuti doesn’t quite nail every line this week the way he did the last three episodes but given he’s been robbed of the ability to act with his hands and legs (he’s a naturally very physical actor) he holds up very well (it’s a shame Moffat didn’t come up with this story for the 11th Dr though, can you imagine the fate of a planet resting on Matt Smith’s ability to stand still?! Tom Baker too!) The soldier Mundy is an interesting one: we know, given how far these episodes are being made in advance now, that actress Varada Sethu returns as a full-time companion next year (alongside Ruby despite rumours that Millie Gibson was being replaced for being a ‘diva’, rumours I’m amazed and a little dismayed Russell didn’t stamp out immediately). Is Mundy the new companion? Is her presence here part of the story arc, perhaps a Clara-style plot about someone keeping an eye on the Doctor to make sure history turns out the way it should as it’s being re-written by someone? (The Toymaker? The Master? Heck ‘Space Babies’ mentioned The Rani for the first time in ages so maybe it’s her?) Or is it as simple as the fact that Russell enjoyed her work on this story and decided to work with her again? After all, it’s not unprecedented having characters appear in other roles before the one they become known for – including Nicholas Courtney, Ian Marter, Colin Baker. Karen Gillan and Peter Capaldi.

Oh and one more (probably unintended) link. You remember The Beatles from last week? The last song they recorded their split (well, three of them anyway – Lennon didn’t turn up) was…’I Me Mine’. If the next few episodes feature a Ram, a Band on the Run and a utopia with no heaven, only sky (we already had the gnomes from ‘All Things Must Pass’, well goblins) then I’ll know that Russell T has been more inspired by The Beatles recently than he’s let on!

Overall  maybe it’s a good thing that we have so many of these extra things to think about because, as basic plots go, ‘Boom’ is one of the simplest. In a season where too much seems to be going on by far each episode it’s made for a refreshing change and the darker aspect, with the first deaths of a humanoid character in, what, four stories now (three if Goblins count) one of the longest gaps in Who without anyone dying on screen, a nice change of pace. There are a lot of worthy points in this story, most of them well made, and though Dr Who polemics about the stupidity of war and the dangers of capitalism used to be common it’s unique having the two woven together so tightly. I do wish there had been another layer on top of this plot though, perhaps a sub-plot for Ruby to solver given that she doesn’t get an awful lot to do this week – it feels as if ‘Boom’ is missing a layer to be a true classic of the modern age. Even so it’s still a really strong episode and proof that Moffat’s still got it following a difficult few years (Moffat threw his lot in with Netflix after Who and they’re going through a tough time of it lately so many of their newly commissioned series were paused or cancelled including ‘Dracula’ which ran to just there episodes in 2018, ‘The Time Traveller’s Wife’, a promising adaptation of Niffenhogger’s excellent and very timey wimey book, got dropped after one series in 2022, while stage play ‘The Unfriend’ was scuppered by covid and delayed two years). Steven had already gone down in Who folklore for having written more episode of Who than anyone, yes even Terrance Dicks and Robert Holmes and Russell (this is his 49th – apparently a 50th has already been filmed, the Christmas special for 2025!) It really was like he’d never been away (there’s a sweet tale that at the tone meeting Moffat felt so natural he forgot he wasn’t in charge and started haggling over costs that could be pinched from other episodes, before the team awkwardly pointed out it wasn’t his show anymore!) For all my criticisms this is a writer who earned his stripes with this show long ago and he’s already nailed the 15th Dr the way he did 9, 10, 11 and 12 so the more we see of him in the future the better. For even if this episode isn’t perfect it’s undeniably a step in the right direction and moves the programme on again: all of which is quite ironic really when you realise that it’s about someone standing very still.

+POSITIVES Unless something turns up on a future DVD commentary/i-player special to contradict me I’m pretty sure this is the first Dr Who story to use a new computer software device called ‘Unreal Space’ created by Dan May for use in computer games, so that programmers can use a much bigger space and see where their sets all fit in with one another across previously impossible distances. To the best of my knowledge it’s not been used on TV before, which makes this a watershed moment for not just Dr Who but television in the same way the first chromakey was back in the 1970s or the first handheld cameras and Nicam stereo were in the 1980s (Dr Who has always been the guinea pig for new techniques). It works really well: the moment Ruby stares up at her first alien sky, a huge Jupiter-like planet dominating the skyline along with purple aurora borealis (not unlike the very alien sight we had in our own skies last week!), revealing that the actors weren’t just standing in a tiny set but in the middle of a vast battleground, is a really impressive shot. In time I suspect we’ll view it the same we do the Tardis’ first dematerialisation or the Tardis turning corners on a space wheel at the start of ‘The Trial Of A Timelord’: a real ‘money’ shot that’s there to show off just what the series can do. Given how much of this episode pared things back to basics (with no other sets) a shot like that to show off is money well spent I say.

- NEGATIVES Seriously though, all these however many years in the future and the holograms of the dead and dying still look like worse than ‘Star Wars’ from 1977? The circle of past pictures to download was done better by ‘Black Mirror’ too (in the episode ‘The Entire History Of You’ where Jodie Whittaker first came to fame no less). The only way I can square it is to imagine the people of this planet have had to invent an alternative to wifi (as I shouldn’t think there’s much chance of a decent internet signal) and started over again.  

BEST QUOTE: ‘Give it time – everywhere’s a beach eventually’.
Previous ‘The Devil’s Chord’ next ’73 Yards’

The Devil's Chord: Ranking - N/A (but #180ish)

 

"The Devil’s Chord” (15^th Dr, 2024)

(Series 14/1A episode 2, Dr 15 with Ruby, 11/5/2024, showrunner: Russell T Davies, writer: Russell T Davies, executive producers: Julie Gardner, Jane Tranter, Joe Collins and Phil Collinson**, director: Ben Chessell)

Ranking: #180ish reviewed  13/5/2024

 

'And now, it's number one, it's  intergalactic top of the pops featuring those intergalactic Beatle tribute albums available now to buy at His Monster's Voice: The Ice Warriors "Please Freeze Me', 'Wirrn The Beatles' 'A Hath Day's Night' All-Cast Recording: 'Help!' The Wire 'Rubber Sucked Out Your Soul' The Menoptera 'Evolver' The Daleks 'Sgt Pepperpot's Lonely Hearts Club Band' The Vespiform 'Let It Bee', Zarbi 'Ant-Thology' Because every planet has a Beatles'.

‘If you remember the sixties you weren’t there’ famously said Jefferson Airplane (and Hugo scifi nominee) Paul Kantner. Unless, of course, you were there in a parallel dimension created by a demonic overlord.

Every fan gets one story that feels so right for them that it feels like they wrote it. Just as the fact that the Dr Who fanbase is so wide that probably every story has a different fan that was made to represent it (and if you happen to be reading this as the fan that ‘Orphan 55’ was written for then I’m very sorry and hope you feel better soon). ‘The Devil’s Chord’ is mine. Most of you probably don’t know but I started off my writing career (such as it is) as a music writer: not only is there an Album Archives Guide to The Beatles out there to buy but also solo books dedicated to John, Paul and George (sorry Ringo!) I can almost guarantee that none of you are aware of my scifi-romance series ‘Kindred Spirits’, in which the universe has twelve inhabited planets full of aliens who have to learn to work together, in which music, as much as anything, is the glue that holds us together and stops us attacking each other (and if Russell T Davies wants to borrow my Intergalactic Peace Orchestra for the sequel, made up of all different types of aliens, he’s very welcome). Put them together and you get ‘The Devil’s Chord’, a story about a Godlike entity with special powers who takes over the Earth not by starting a war or even pushing humanity into starting a war but by taking away all music, so that instead of bonding over the minutiae of Beatle trivia we end up beating each other up in an endless war. Though for me the sudden-ness with which the Earth suddenly started breaking out in wars is directly related to the rise of Spotify and streaming (seriously: it used to be the ‘job’ of musicians to bring issues to our attention we hadn’t noticed but then streaming paid so little and record labels cared so little about investing in new talent that there just isn’t any niche music being made any more because it doesn’t pay – instead the only ‘breakout’ stars are those who appeal to the most common lowest denominators so they don’t dare upset anyone) I approve of Russell’s measure that things started going wrong when The Beatles split, when they were no longer around to hold us together. George Harrison once made the famous quote that the world used The Beatles as an excuse to go crazy, but as I said in the essay in my Beatles book much more than that I always saw the world as using The Beatles as an excuse to go food: a lot of our social changes in race, in gender, in class, in generational class warfare, in knowing that there was more purpose to life than being a cog in a relentless industrial wheel, all stems from The Beatles. Other people added to it sure, other people are adding to it even now, but the jump they created from the ‘past’ to what we think of as the ‘present’ is seismic and their influence is still being felt in ways beyond music. Of course Ruby’s first request to travel back in time is going back to see The Beatles. I’m amazed no companion made it before. I’m beginning to like her a lot after finding her the weakest link in ‘The Church On Ruby Road’ and even more so when it turns out that she’s the first truly musical companion we’ve ever had (the closest till then has been Ace with her 1980s ghetto-blaster and Susan grooving to John Smith and The Common Men in the very first story ‘An Unearthly Child’ set just a few months after this.

Talking of which Russell T missed a trick here. Ruby requests going back to seeing the making their debut album ‘Please Please Me’ recorded in one great big long session on 20th February 1963 (bar the two singles that were already out). But Whovians have always been fonder of the second album ‘With The Beatles’, which was released the day before ‘An Unearthly Child’ went out (just imagine that as a weekend: Beatles album out on the Friday afternoon, news of JFK’s assassination filtering through that evening, Dr Who debuts the next night. I was worn out this year with a Dr Who double bill and Eurovision). The Beatles were huge scifi fans and watched the show when they could (you can hear the band discussing BBC2’s marvellous ‘sister’ series ‘Out Of The Unknown’ during the ‘Let It Be’ sessions, in a scene sadly cut from the ‘Get Back’ series also on Disney Plus). Famously there’s a clip of them performing ‘Ticket To Ride’ in the 1965 Who episode ‘The Chase’ on holovision, but the BBC tried really hard to get them to make an actual in-concert performance, dressed up to look like old balding men at their 50th anniversary gig at the Cavern in (gulp) 2012; they were all eager to do it had they had the time and not been busy making second feature film ‘Help!’ round an American tour at the time. Many episodes have name-checked The Beatles since too though, across the 1960s, the association between the two was more of a telepathic link of reflecting society: just look at how ‘The War Machines’ is the last Who story to go out before the release of ‘Revolver’ (in which swinging London is hip yet led by machines that point towards a darker underbelly in the nation’s capital), how ‘Evil Of The Daleks’ episode two aired a day after the release of ‘Sgt Peppers’ (both are obsessed with Victoriana and start off light before a gloomy second half that concludes with a ‘final end’) and how ‘Abbey Road’ was a bittersweet goodbye that looked forward and back and ended with a plea for peace and equal give and take mere weeks after ‘The War Games’ did the same (though, admittedly, Patrick Troughton doesn’t turn up thirty seconds after being put on trial by the timelords to sing ‘Her Majesty’. Worse luck). It’s even more than though: both The Beatles and Dr Who are dedicated to making the world a better kinder more tolerant place; it’s just that Who does the same for more than one world. Don’t think it’s a coincidence we got this episode as part of a double bill before Eurovision too: the plot about how music can be weaponised but how at its best can be a message for peace is perfect for the most politically troubled event in the singing contest’s 68 year history, with Ukraine there but not Russia, Israel there but not Palestine and the Dutch entry kicked out for (depending who you believe) protesting against Israel’s inclusion or beating up a photographer (or quite possibly both). Given Maestro’s links to The Toymaker from ‘The Giggle’ (although as her entrance is greeted with three knocks I was surprised she wasn’t The Master) she’s also what you might call a ‘Puppet On A String’ while the world goes ‘Boom Bang A Bang’ (before music rises like a phoenix).

Anyway, a universe without the Beatles is surely as unthinkable as a world without Dr Who, so Russell ups the ante straight away by having their life play out not quite right. There they are, the Doctor and Ruby in the actual Abbey Road (EMI, the record label that owns it, has been in dire financial difficulties for a while now and rents Abbey Road Studios out to anyone, which is also why we get a stupidly pricey Beatles box set every Christmas that costs at least £200 more than they should)  eager to see history happen when The Beatles open their mouths for that all-time classic ‘My Dog Fred’. Clearly something has gone very wrong and the look on team Tardis’ faces is priceless (it’s the same as the look I have on my face when people tell me The Spice Girls invented feminism, a mere thirty years after Janis Joplin and Grace Slick did it properly). Well, you think, maybe they’re just having an off day (or recording one of Ringo’s songs) but in the studio next door Cilla Black isn’t fairing much better. Even in the bigger, lusher studio no 1 reserved for orchestras it all sounds a mess (what a shame this story isn’t set a little later so Pink Floyd could have got in on the act too; I like to think The Hollies are in the car park preparing to record their first single). They say never meet your heroes: actually practically everyone whose ever met any of The Beatles for real has loved it (give or take Ringo’s grumpy no autographs phase) but that is true of parallel worlds: when the Doctor and Ruby talk to John and Paul (poor George and Ringo get short shrift this episode) they discover the awful truth: music took a wrong turning around the 1920s and it no longer exists, beyond a few tone-deaf ditties. That means no singing, no dancing, no love songs, no Eurovision, no…gulp…lengthy music review sites by anoraks like me! Paul (at least I think its meant to be Paul, the actor likenesses aren’t the best) talks about it being embarrassing making music, John (in his anachronistic granny glasses) talks about giving it up for a proper job. Both of them look puzzled though, as if they can sense the flow of chords in the back of their minds they can’t quite get a hold of. 

Around this idea is wrapped an intriguing plot I wish they’d made more of around tritones, a sequence of chords long said to be demonic and for a time banned by the Church from being performed (why? Well, our best guess is that it’s the sequence of chords for ‘amen’, as heard at the end of most religious hymns, in reverse – and as a lot of satanic rituals involved doing things in reverse that surely meant the same for music too). While, honestly, a lot of Murray Gold’s rather overwritten scores using tritons have made me feel otherwise there really is no such thing as a ‘devil’s chord’. And yet it’s a very Dr Who concept to work a story round that, to have a demonic presence hiding within those chords. Alas Russell doesn’t seem to know how to progress a story from there so the idea gets dropped as early as the opening tag scene, where Maestro suddenly pops up and harasses a music teacher named Timothy Drake whose teaching a pupil decoy named Henry Arbinger who turns out to be ‘harbinger’ for this being’s plans to rid the world of music. It feels as if he’s going to be a big character (and that this is going to be a plot along the lines of ‘Amadeus’ and Mozart’s jealous rival Sallieri) but in fact we never see him again. Nor, too, do we hear anything more about the concept of a ‘lost chord’ that, once heard, can unify us all in peace and true harmony (presumably that’s what Ncuti is trying when playing the Abbey Road piano but a few myths and legends from other planets and an explanation of bat it would do would sell that scene so much better). There is, as far as I know, no one connected to the real world of music named Timothy Drake and yet the name must mean something given that Russell quite deliberately has him saying his name when he could have just been ‘A N Other music person’; the closest I can find is a character in the Marvel comics (where it’s the real name of Batman’s sidekick Robin).

And surely ‘The Devil’s Chord’ is based more on a comic strip as anything else because, after such a strong beginning, the story goes greatly downhill. Like ‘Space Babies’ we’re in the broader, more cartoony end of Russell’s writing and what could have been a powerful character piece ends up being another bit of brash bold colour, with musical notes that end up actually appearing in the air and cosmic tuning forks, that never quite connects. There are good reasons for this which might be why we’ve never had a musical Who episode before now: music is hard to show visually and Dr Who is a very visual programme. The Beatles’ music is so expensive and so fiercely guarded by their litigation-loving company Apple that to use any of it would have cost the budget for half the series, even with Disney money (which is also why the sound of ‘Paperback Writer’ playing in a bar in ‘Evil Of The Daleks’ had to be removed from the soundtrack CD and replaced with Dave Dee Dozy, Beaky, Mick and Titch).

There’s a moment in the story where everything goes silent for one very weird moment that’s quite a Dr Who type moment, but that aside there’s no easy way of demonstrating music bar having Ruby and a few others playing the piano (one of them, the old lady attacked by Maestro when playing the piano, is 92-year-old costume designer June Hudson, whose most notable in Who circles for designing Romana II’s costumes and who Russell heard had always wanted a cameo in a Dr Who episode so he wrote her one). Maestro is a big cartoony villain, like the Toymaker on steroids, and while Jinx Monsoon is a really good actress who plays the part exactly as it’s written i.e. unhinged, her presence over-topples this story considerably. A story about music and togetherness quickly becomes an exercise in shouting and over-acting and the scenes where the Doctor ends up trapped inside a kettle drum while Maestro cackles and taunts most unmusically is one of the hardest to stomach in a little past sixty years, joining the worst of ‘Space Babies’ in surely making most of the potential news fans (and quite a percentage of the old ones if my social media is anything to by) switch off in droves. The result is in danger of looking like another larger-than-life show that was big in 1963 and every bit as wacky but which leaves me cold, ‘The Avengers’ (shudder).  Had this story been a cartoon from the beginning, had it featured a cartoon band (The Archies? No not that literally – say ‘The Spice Girls’) it would have made sense. But the lurches in this story from major to minor are way too clumsy so that instead of being swept up in the music you’re left going ‘ooh, that was a bad note’. Let’s just hope Maestro is (de) composing somewhere so we don’t have to see her again…

And then to top it all we end with a singalong because ‘there’s always a twist’, even though the twist was so 1962 and no one would have been caught dead dancing it in 1963 (besides, what the Doctor, Ruby and extras are performing here is really more of a frug)in an awkward wink to the camera that suggests Russell T Davies has been watching too many Dennis Potter plays and High School Musical films for inspiration when he should have been watching ‘A Hard Day’s Night’. Even for the sort of fan that thought the Goblin song from ‘A Church On Ruby Road’ worked, sort of, once, if you didn’t think about it too hard and only watched it drunk on Christmas Day, this moment is awful and rather spoils the whole episode. Indeed most of the last ten minutes, with Maestro over-acting and Ncuti trying to match her while fighting over the Abbey Road piano (Mrs Mills! All the Beatle references they could have included and they name-checked Mrs Mills!), is truly awful. Usually Russell’s really good at judging a mood and having a script hang together (albeit with a penchant for sudden endings that come out of nowhere) but he really drops the ball on this one.

Perhaps his hands were tied by not wanting to go near the parallel world Beatle projects that already exist: the execrable ‘Yesterday’ (where we’re seriously meant to think Ed Sheeran is on The Beatles’ level) and Big Finish’s superlative 5th Doctor story ‘Fanfare For The Common Man’, in which Susan’s rave favourites find fame instead of the fab four. There are many ways they still could have played it though: The Beatles could have been busking outside  Abbey Road while a failed bunch of wannabes (like, say, The Dave Clark Five) got big instead of them. Or a parallel world where Brian Epstein was from somewhere other than Liverpool. Or a worlds where the only songs allowed all had to be military marches and The Beatles tried to find a way to hint at peace underneath it all, culminating in  finale where John still got to sing ‘Give Peace A Chance’ to the masses during his honeymoon. Or they could have had the Doctor inadvertently saving John Lennon’s  mum Julia from being run over thus taking away his great drive to make a band and become rich and famous and heal the world. Or they could have had The Maharishi turning out to be infected by The Great Intelligence and make The Beatles perform evil music (‘The Abominable Snowmen’ is pretty close to that as a plot as it is). Or they could have done it like ‘The Rutles’, a parallel world band who are almost like the real thing but not quite. Doing it this way raises too many plotholes: why would any teenager back in 1963, when pocket money was rare and things were pricey, waste any of it on a wretched song about a dog? Why, without the influence of their beloved rock and roll acts from the 1950s, were The Beatles inspired to make music at all? How can Abbey Road afford to stay open – why isn’t it, say, an Abbey? And what the performers there play is still technically music, so shouldn’t Maestro be popping her head up during all their sessions?  
This episode still plays all the right notes though (if not necessarily all in the right order) and there are lots of individual scenes that I love. The Beatles’ song about a dog which, even if you half think is coming, is still very funny. Maestro’s chilling line that the sound of a nuclear winter ‘is the purest music of all’. The fact that Ruby plays the piano on a rooftop just before Maestro turns up (mirroring the peak of music when The Beatles quit just after their own performance atop their Saville Row headquarters) that causes her and the Doctor to leg it down to a basement to start all over again (a basement that looks a little like The Cavern Club’ where The Beatles started their career). The ‘Pyramids Of Mars’ style trip to an alternate future 2024 where Maestro wins and the world is at war, which was nearly as powerful when they did it in 1976 and such a neat trick that I’m amazed modern Who hadn’t tried it before. The fact that the world is saved (again) by Lennon and McCartney playing a chord suspiciously like the one from ‘A Day In The Life’. The Doctor’s sadness when talking about his first self being over there in Totter’s Lane somewhere with Susan, a grand-daughter he no longer knows is alive or dead and Ruby’s natural instinct to give him a great big hug, something none of his other companions thought to do – even Rose (although that in itself is questionable if Maestro successfully changed the timelines: the main reason Susan came to London in 1963 was to hang around swinging London and listen to pop music, though admittedly The Common Men do it for her much more than the fab four for some reason); presumably without music Susan no longer asks to come here, the Doctor doesn’t kidnap Ian and Barbara, the Doctor continues to be the crotchety old git he was when we first met him and the series looks very very different – having that plot strand in parallel, of the Doctor’s lives unravelling directly because of the removal of The Beatles from his personal timeline, would have made for a far better story that Maestro shouting at people and playing Peekaboo. They even go to the trouble of parking the same beetle car seen on the ‘Abbey Road’ album cover (which in ‘our’ universe seems unlikely to be there – it was tracked down years later to belong to a tourist who didn’t even know he was parked near Abbey Road who was most puzzled that it ended up on screen and who missed the hasty messages from the session photographer asking to have it towed away in case people read too much symbolisation into it being a ‘beetle’ car). 

Aside from The Beatle aspects The Doctor-Ruby partnership continues to shape up to be one of the better ones now that it’s got going and they spar off each other well. I like the new character touches they’ve given Ruby: after being the blandest and most generic companion of the lot in ‘Church’ (did Russell intend for Rose Noble to be the new companion then change his mind for some reason?) Ruby is being fleshed out nicely now, with her musical abilities, the lesbian friend Trudy she stuck up for and wrote a song about and the fact that she’s already looking out for the welfare of this mad stranger whose walked into her life, worrying about how he’s affected by stuff instead of just worrying how him being affected by stuff is going to affect her. Ncuti struggles a little more this episode compared to his last three, but then I defy any Doctor-actor to have been able to make the scenes of banishing Maestro by playing a tune on a piano look natural; he’s much better when talking about his tragic past than he was doing something similar in ‘Space Babies’ and his fright in meeting another plaything of The Toymaker after the ;last one ‘literally tore me in half’ is well played. We don’t often see the Doctor scared and this one, especially, seemed confident enough to face up to anything.

Mostly though this story will be remembered for The Beatles and as the biggest cultural icon of the 20th century, some of the few figures from the past that modern children will instantly recognise (well, the real Beatles anyway – the casting really could have been better) and even learn about in schools these days (why didn’t do that in the 1990s? That’s one time I’d have been guaranteed an ‘A’!) it’s inevitable they would turn up eventually. And even more inevitably now that Doctor Who is competing for space with the latest flux of Beatle documentaries and films on Disney Plus (I guess an actual Disney crossover is still a little too on-the-nose for now, although I’m looking forward to seeing Ncuti teaming up with Mickey Mouse and Buzz Lightyear to defeat The Master and his/her hapless assistant Goofy one day, ‘Roger Rabbit’ style. The Rani is practically Cruella De Vil as it is. While if Christopher Eccleston never returns to the show Dumbo has the ears for it. In all seriousness if they ever do a Who crossover with Wall-E, my favourite of all the Pixar films – preferably with K9 along for the ride – I would be one very happy fan). While the story doesn’t use them as well as it might (this is the Lomax caricature cartoon Beatles TV series from 1964-66, not the ‘A Hard Day’s Night’ Beatles) it’s great that John and Paul save the world between them when even the Doctor can’t and the theme that music is humanity’s greatest strength and how awful and fragmented and angry and bitter and warlike the world would be without it, is the perfect plot for me. This might well end up being the hippiest Who story ever, in fact, just beating ‘The Space Museum’ (with a special mention for the ‘hippies turned establishment of ‘The Greatest Show In The Galaxy’ which in many ways is this story’s opposite) – even if, perhaps aptly, it rather looks as if all the people in charge of making it were on drugs. All that and filming inside the real Abbey Road too has made me a happy fan, for all my gripes. Although I can’t help but feel that there’s an even better story to come from the same source. The (Doctor) Who maybe? (‘Talkin’ ‘Bout My Regenerations!’) I mean, Pete Townshend wrote an entire (unfinished) concept album around the idea of a ‘lost chord’ that would unite us all: ‘Lifehouse’(which sort of became ‘Who’s Next’) has always struck me as the perfect Dr Who story, about the importance of community during terrible times. Or how about a sequel where The Rolling Stones come up with the triton themselves while recording ‘Sympathy For The Devil’ and unleashing a more monster-like villain out into the world? Or how about we just have The Spice Girls being sentenced to life imprisonment in Shada? So yes, it could have been a lot better but at least this story’s hearts were in the right place. In The Beatles discography I put it around a Wings LP, say ‘Wings At The Speed Of Sound’ or ‘Back To The Egg’: some great ideas and some lovely moments but way too many overdubs and production gloss with a habit for writing any old nonsense as filler in between the moments of pure inspiration. I do wonder what The Beatles would make of this story if they saw it. I hoped they’d appreciate the message that love and music is all you need, even if they struggled to recognise themselves. Maybe one day we’ll get that scene intended for ‘The Chase’ after all?  

POSITIVES + The costumes! Ruby walks out the Tardis wardrobe looking like Twiggy and the Doctor looks like Jimi Hendrix circa 1963 (when he was touring with Little Richard’s band). Both actors seem more natural in these costumes than in their everyday ones. They do, however, look far too hip and American: most of Britain wasn’t that hip yet and you think they would raise a few puzzled expressions (they’re clearly not at Abbey Road to make the tea looking like that; such clobber was expensive: if you want to know what everyone was really wearing back then ‘An Unearthly Child’ does a pretty good job).     

NEGATIVES –Not to make a song and dance about it but, seriously, what was that ending? While many Dr Who stories might well have been improved by a closing musical number (‘I was there for one brief shining moment in dear old Gallifrey!’ ‘Don’t Cry for me Andred and Leela!’‘Ood Glorious Ood’ ‘Face Of Boejangles’ ‘The Time Warp’) a song about The Beatles isn’t one of them: every time they’ve tried to do a ‘Mama Mia’ and use Beatle songs in place of a plot it’s gone horribly wrong (let’s be honest ‘Mama Mia went horribly wrong too though there seems to be an odd pact not to talk about how wretched it really is). It’s a moment that’s incredibly un-Beatles, incredibly un-Doctor Who and serves no purpose other than creating a storm of angry protests from old time fans who are currently hanging onto this series by a thread. In a story about how music unites us all it seems suicidal to put this here. And it’s not even a good dance, it’s the sodding twist! 

BEST QUOTE: ‘Sometimes genius is just hard work’.

 PREQUELS/SEQUELS: Seriously, if you even vaguely liked this episode and have a love of The Beatles and Dr Who you need to buy ‘Fanfare For The Common Man’. Released as part of the 1963 themed’ 50th anniversary stories back in 2013 it’s my favourite 5th Dr story including the ones that made it to television, a moving tale about the thin line between success and failure and how all of our lives might have turned out differently with even a slight nudge in a different direction.  For The Beatles it’s the continuation of National Service past 1960, which means that they have to disband and their audience never become interested in rock and roll and instead turn to other more warlike things (basically what happens to them is what happened to Elvis when he went into the army). It’s a fun story with a serious message about exploitation by businesses (and aliens), highlighted by Nyssa’s shocked response (they don’t have rock and roll on Traken!) and a twist about the Common Men’s origins that throws new light on Susan’s interest in them that I won’t spoil here. All I can say is: Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! 

Previous ‘Space Babies’ next ’Boom’

 

Space Babies: N/A (but somewhere around #210ish)

 

"Space Babies” (15^th Dr, 2024)

(Series 14/1A episode 1, Dr 15 with Ruby, 11/5/2024, showrunner: Russell T Davies, writer: Russell T Davies, , director: Julie Ann Robinson)

Ranking: #N/A (but around #210ish) 

  'Dr Who Babies! Watch the Doctor and his sonic rusk crawl down some corridors on the run from the Cybertoddlers and master Master in his time-travelling cot while wearing Tardis nappies (Time and Relative Diapers In Space) in 'Doctor Wah! and the Goo Goo Ga Ga...Of Doom!'  

>Back in the distant days of the 2000s Russell T Davies’ series always fit a pattern: the first episode of every series was the silly one, a runaround that reminded the audience of the basics of time travel and worked as a primer for anyone (particularly children) new to the show before (hopefully) hypnotising them into staying as the series grew increasingly darker and darker (think ‘Rose’ ‘New Earth’ ‘Smith and Jones’ and ‘Partners In Crime’). Russell II Davies has already shown us during the 60th anniversary specials and Christmas Day return alike that he’s using Disney money to do exactly what he did before but bigger and bolder (if not yet necessarily better) and so again we get that traditionally silly opener to an even bigger extreme. So this time we don’t just get a gentle reminder that this is one of the most imaginative series on Earth we get an episode that no other scifi series would possibly think of. We don’t just get a few gentle continuity references for newcomers to drop into we get multiple scenes about time travel/The Tardis/a phonecall that lets Ruby call home in her time even when in the far future/the Doctor’s tragic past that means he’s an orphan just like his companion, all within the opening few minutes. The lightweight plot that wraps itself around these basics is right on the verge of being nonexistent. And Russell’s not just going after children as his target market this episode but babies. Yes, space babies. As The Doctor says at least a dozen times more than he needs to know in this episode.

All of those opening episodes are a mixed bag. For every good moment that ought to be silly but are genuinely chilling and adult (a shop full of plastic mannequins coming to life/a hospital full of cat nuns treating the sick/a Judoon on the moon that looks like a Rhino in a spacesuit/the threat that tissues of fat can turn into people!) there will be another that really doesn’t land and seems far too childish (Burping wheely bins! A talking bit of skin inhabiting the Doctor and Rose/Ann Reid sucking patients’ blood through a straw/did we mention fat turning into people?) ‘Space Babies’ is that formula again, but with an even bigger gulf between the bits that work and the bits that don’t. Often in the same scene. Exhibit A: babies that actually talk, a really silly idea thanks to the wonders of CGI in a highly creepy yet silly way that looks like the 1990s CGI used on animals in films like ‘Babe’ and which is nevertheless oddly affecting when baby Eric wheels his pushchair out to certain doom, telling himself in a baby voice that he’s going to be brave (it seems an odd quirk of the inhabitants of this universe that they all have the voices of six or seven year olds and act around that age too, despite looking like Human babies and still being in nappies: apparently aliens potty train at different speeds in the universe. Which isn’t a thought I can say I‘ve ever had before despite this being my 321^st review). Exhibit B: the all-too literal bogeyman made of real bogeys, taken from the wiped noses of all the babies and turned into a real living monster because…well…just because it does alright? And yet the silliest, cheapest, daftest most outrageously juvenile baddy in all of Who still made me really sad when it was hanging out of an airlock about to die. Which is not to be sniffed at: I mean, it’s an art form making you care about people in a relatively short amount of screen time and I felt more for that poor creature in five minutes of Russell’s writing than I did full seasons of characters under Chris Chibnall. And yet…space babies who talk? Seriously, that’s the plot? I spent half the episode watching in horror, expecting the television to burn out of sheer sacrilege for what my favourite series had turned into – and the other half feeling strangely proud that something this weird was actually going out in primetime as part of one of the BBC’s flagship programmes. I mean, so much for the worry that the Disney money was going to make Dr Who lose all it’s quirks and become ‘normal’; it’s as if Russell went the other way and decided to make the show quirkier than ever. And I’m sort of here for that (or at least I was until the ‘exhaust fumes from old nappies’ joke that was one too far).

One thing the story did get right was the interplay between the Doctor and Ruby. We didn’t get a lot of it in ‘The Church On Ruby Road’ and Ruby herself was a bit bland, a combination of being stuck on her own for much of that episode, the Doctor getting all the best lines, Millie Gibson acting in a very ‘Coronation Street’ (i.e. artificial) way and the fact that there’s only so much brilliant acting you can do surrounded by singing CGI goblins. This episode had more time to work out who these characters are and how they respond to another. This Doctor is more naturally cooler than the others, freer with his emotions and less the natural outsider, which is I think a clever way of handling the fact that the lead part is being played by the first ethnic minority actor. Ncuti continues to be eccentric and likeable in a very Doctory way despite having more natural confidence and brashness than his predecessors though and it’s a relief to have a playful Doctor who just wants to have fun (he’s at his weakest when asked to do the ‘I lost all my family in a time war’ emotional baggage that Eccleston and Tennant used to do in their sleep). Ruby has been turned into Rose mark II, but thankfully the original Rose when she represented the best of us rather than the smugger less likeable version from series two when she stopped representing us at all. Ruby finally clicks as a character when she stops being slightly dazed and one step behind the Doctor or asking the Doctor lots of questions or being in peril and picks up a baby because it needs comforting, with no thought to picking up alien germs or the weirdness of the situation she finds herself in. It’s her equivalent of Rose ignoring the local celebrities to talk to and befriend the local servants. ‘Church’ was all about Ruby as a mystery, a Clara-like conundrum to solve and I was worried Russell was going to continue that line of thinking (actually I’m still a bit worried about that after the scenes of her memories making it snow). Russell isn’t that sort of a writer and, as ‘Wild Blue Yonder’ proves, his episodes go a bit wrong when he’s trying too hard to be like his friends, but here he makes Ruby flesh and blood.

Alas Russell still isn’t writing plots with his customary three-dimensions. So far the only plot worth mentioning since his comeback has been the one he borrowed from a comic book (‘The Star Beast’) and this one too is on the lighter side. The plot as a whole: some babies were abandoned, their nanny’s been looking after them and the computer maintaining them conjured up a monster out of their bogeys because children like being scared.  It’s a big ol’ two fingers at Mary Whitehouse and the idea that children should be protected from being scared when it’s such a natural and necessary part of their development (just about the only thing the three different Who showrunners have agreed on is that their biggest memories of the series they love are the scariest ones). But whereas Moffat would have made it all super scary and Chibnall would have linked the scares into a moral Davies ends up making this more about the emotions. Yes being scared is a natural part of human nature, there even in babyhood, but so is courage (Eric is quite happy to die when he thinks he’s going to save the others and for one awful moment we think they’re actually going to do it – the pauses between the peril and things working out really are getting longer, after the similar one of Donna being ‘abandoned’ in ‘Yonder’). And so is mercy: the babies start crying when they think their bogeyman is about to die and seem sadder at his potential death than they were at their own. It is, if I may be so bold, a continuation of the specials (and Rose Noble specifically) with Russell thinking about the new series of gen Zs who’ve come along since he was last in charge of the show and how they differ from the millennials he was pitching his series at. More grownup in some ways growing up in a hardened era of austerity wars and environmental collapse,  more childish and coddled in others as parenting styles become more protective and children become independent later in life, the younger generation freer and more comfortable with their emotions than their parents, grandparents and great-grandparents, a combination of being ‘snowflakes’ who can’t tolerate the hardships their elders went through (say their detractors) and who are less willing to put up with stuff and prepared to make a fuss rather than cow down to potential parents and bosses (say their supporters).

Ruby, agonisingly young (she casually drops into conversation that she was born in 2004 – and thus born at exactly the time Russell would have started writing Who’s comeback season) was born right in the middle of Gen Z and is them all over: it feels as if she needs saving and a hand to hold more than most recent companions and yet at the same time she’s first to dive into trouble when she thinks she can help, actually pushing the Doctor out the way to rescue Eric much to his admiration. And if all of that sounds far-fetched and high-falluting, remember it’s where Dr Who began, as one of the few ‘family’ shows of the 1960s written equally for parents and children, that helped bring up awkward conversations about the generation gap and parental fears about what their children might grow up into when let loose on the world as adults (see ‘Space Museum’ for a pro-youth story, ‘The Dominators/Abominable Snowmen’ for a pro-adult one and all the Terry Nation Dalek stories for the fears that the children of WW2 might grow up causing WW3 although ‘The Chase’ is very much Nation’s realisation that they’re smarter and kinder than that). Of course if I was Gen Z I wouldn’t be too happy at being portrayed as an actual baby, which is what this story is hinting at too, with it’s actually rather sweet message about how all our youngsters need is love and hugs (I mean, the eldest of them are in their mid-twenties now). Actually that’s a great message perfect for Who: a lot of this show has been about trying not to pass on generational trauma and to make life better for their children, when they’re mostly powerless to. Whether that be the parents who fought in WW2 or the miners who knew the misery the Thatcher strikes were going to inflict, who then realised what damage David sodding Cameron and his successors were going to do (please turn him into Davros or something!) It’s the sort of theme Dr Who has hinted at a lot in the past but never as strongly as here and the scene of abandoned children, asking for a hug and some attention (surely the children abandoned under the conservative government with libraries shut, schools falling into disrepair and leisure activities abandoned) is exactly the sort of thing that Dr Who is for. This is a series that’s at its best when giving a voice to people who don’t have one – and who could belong in that category better than babies who haven’t learned to speak yet?

There’s another theme hidden away in this story that gets a bit lost under the talking babies and snot jokes. One of the big news stories of the past few years has been America’s gradual descent from the rich and bountiful in-place every child in Britain secretly wanted to grow up in (‘The Chase’ again, ‘The Gunfighters’ and many more) to the sort of place we look on with increasing pity. One of the biggest shocks to the ingrained British idea that America is ahead of us came with the Roe vs Wade debate that reversed a woman’s rights to pre-term abortions in certain states of America. Abortion is a much much bigger issue in America than it is in Britain and as well as having half an eye on the younger generation Russell is also clearly thinking about the big launch Disney promise to make Stateside. He doesn’t pack any punches here: there’s a wicked and very Davies stinging barb in there about a regimented system that will do everything it can to make sure that babies are born come what may and shrieks about the rights of all foetuses to be born, which then abandons children after birth into potential poverty without a second glance. You can just feel the venom at such a contradictory absurdity dripping from Russell’s computer as he writes these lines and has Ruby comment on what a backward society this must be. Let’s face it, there aren’t many opportunities to take potshots at abortion laws in a series like Dr Who  but it’s clearly an issue that’s got under RTD’s skin (I mean, it’s weird enough that this is the second story in a row to centre around babies;  funnily enough the only other babies we’ve ever had playing such a central role in the plot both came in the same era, that of the 7^th Doctor, with Delta giving birth to a baby covered in green goo amongst running for her life from ‘The Bannermen’ and Ace befriending her own mother as a baby in ‘The Curse Of Fenric’).

That coincidence has set me off thinking and made me put my finger on since the specials too: we’re in a time-warp heading back into the McCoy years of the modern show. Or to put it another way we’re hovering around the twenty year mark all over again. When Dr Who returned in 2005, with Russell at the helm, it was like the 1960s all over again: a show that above all things was about learning and curiosity and imagination that could go forwards, backwards and sideways and reinvent the wheel. It was a film noir, however it was shot, nig on shadows and character and dialogue. The Moffat years were the 1970s: more colourful, more stylistic, more Earth-based (thanks to the credit crunch limiting the BBC budget) and a lot scarier. It’s typical of 1970s telly, making the most of the new colour and being full of images and ideas and monsters. Chibnall’s are the early JNT years when the show became more defined by what it wasn’t than what it was (remember the first year when we had no returning monsters?) and the show became more about the characters around the doctor than the doctor him/herself. It either looked like intelligent adult TV made by children or children’s TV made by adults, with nothing in between (a lot of my childhood in the 1980s was spent watching shows like that). And now here we are, in an era that seems suspiciously like 1987 all over again, a big bright cartoon painted in broad strokes with daft monsters that seem designed to make half the fanbase cringe and storylines best described as ‘whimsical’. It’s modern Who’s equivalent of the Rani laughing manically (much more of this when maestro turns up the following episode), of the pool cleaning robots, Richard Briars gurning, Ken Dodd directing green-skinned aliens to Butlin’s holiday camp and a toddler befriending a dragon in a world made of ice (‘Dragonfire’ is arguably the closest story to this one for that reason, because as well as following a simpering toddler around it also features some of the most horrific moments in the series with Kane’s melted face, immediately after such cutesie moments). It’s not my favourite phase of the series. I don’t think it’s anybody’s favourite phase of the series. But I can see what they were trying to do. I’m hopeful that the next phase of the show (the late McCoy era) will see it all come right again (and hopefully without the cancellation this time around). And stone me if I don’t actually prefer it to a lot of the playing-safe Davison and shouty Colin Baker stories that came before it, even though fandom generally accepts they're worse.

 The bogeyman might be a stupid idea but it’s a really impressive design – like ‘Star Beast’ the extra Disney money has clearly gone on the monsters rather than the sets or the special effects (although there is also an impressively long corridor to run down). It really does look like its made up of bogeys when you look close and yet not so obviously it gives the game away. The ‘sleep’ monster in ‘Sleep No More’ was easily the best thing about that episode too, but this one beats it in every way. Just one regret: it would have been so Dr Who to defeat it with a giant handkerchief!

All that said there’s a lot I didn’t like. The babies talking are meant to be sweet but are more creepy than anything. Even with Disney money the production team don’t have the time of a Hollywood blockbuster film to simply follow the babies around and capture all the expressions they need for around half an hour of screen time, so what we have are babies saying one thing with their mouths and another entirely with their eyes (let’s face it, most of them are looking round for their mums and dads and confused as to why they’ve been left in the middle of the room with two bouncy strangers under hot studio lights). None of the babies get enough time to do anything much bar whinge; it looks when we first meet them as if Russell is going to do his usual thing and give a crowd lots of contrasting yet easily identifiable personalities –and then he stops to concentrate on Eric. The sight of him wheeling down a corridor in his pushchair with his little legs flapping, off to certain danger, is simultaneously a really sweet moment and the silliest moment in a really silly story (I mean, how slow are the Doctor and Ruby if he could wheel himself so far away from them at his speed?) The plot makes little sense when you break it down (I mean, who built this space station exactly? And what happened to the parents? It might be explained in a future episode…but I doubt it); worse yet there isn’t a proper ending: yeah sure the Doctor saves the bogeyman and they all live happily ever after but it seems so out of character that the Doctor doesn’t at least try to reunite them with their families and instead saunters off, job half done, with the nanny whose proven to be a sub-murderer (albeit in unusual circumstances) left in charge.  Even an actor as natural ebullient and natural as Ncuti is also clearly struggling to stay in character when bouncing an errant baby on his knee, his eyes plainly saying, to quote a phrase, ‘would someone tell me what the hell is going on?!’ (Millie is far more natural: I’m willing to bet she either had a lot of younger brothers and sisters or did a lot of babysitting growing up. One idle thought: we know the Doctor is an only child, as indeed all timelords seem to be given the weird way they were ‘loomed’. But do they have babysitters too? Did the Master-Doctor feud start when the elder Doctor told the younger Master (in all-black nappies, natch) to stop pranking him and laughing like a maniac and to get to bed already? )

A lot of the specials and ‘Ruby Road’ felt like Russell had come back solely because he was jealous of his successors getting to play with all the toys he established and wanting to do a bit of the same, only more so. I can’t help but feel that this entire story was written around the repeated 11^th Doctor gag, written by Steven Moffat for ‘Closing Time’ and ‘A Good Man Goes To War’, that the Tardis translator circuits allow him to ‘speak baby’. I’ll be honest, it wasn’t my favourite Who joke even when it was clearly a joke (just look at the sly grin on Matt Smith’s face when James Corden as Craig is so utterly bewildered he can’t work out if his friend is laughing at his gullibility or not). The bogeyman monster too is uncomfortably like the ones made out of the sleep that gets in our eyes in Mark Gatiss’ ‘Sleep No More’. Half an hour of watching babies wheel themselves around in prams when we could be anywhere in time and space is really not my idea of a good time. It might be just a genetic fault in me but I’ve never found babies that sweet or cute: they look like children that have been sat on by the Abzorbaloff and been squashed out of all proportion. You can’t talk to them, you can’t play with them, you can’t show them your Dr Who collection or play toy Daleks with them…Babyhood seems like a genetic waste of time in so many ways. The episode seems to take it as read that we all want to cuddle a baby but I’m not sure I do, especially with all the references to snot and nappy changing. I mean, personally, given the choice I’d rather go sit with the bogeyman because at least he looks as if you could actually have a conversation with him. Traditionally one of the largest audiences that make up Dr Who fans are teenage boys. They don’t seem like natural baby-lovers either. Is putting this all-important episode first in the run really the way to recapture a whole new audience? I mean, it’s not fun with plastic mannequins is it?   

One other issue I have with this story is the opening. Back in 2005 Rose discovered what life as a time traveller was like gradually. The viewers might have had a million questions about how this world works but they weren’t answered all at once; indeed, the last time I re-watched the episodes in order I was struck by how late it was that the issue of ‘how come I can understand alien lingo when I didn’t even get my French GCSE?’ and the like first cropped up (series four’s ‘Fires Of Pompeii’). This story reportedly leads straight on from ‘The Church At Ruby Road’. Ruby  should be in shock: there she was having an ordinary day and suddenly she’s been asked to believe in goblins, aliens, time travel and the tardis being bigger on the inside and out in quick succession. That, surely, is enough for any companion to be getting on with for a few stories (indeed I put it to you, dear reader, that Tegan spent three years suffering from culture shock and only quit the Tardis in ‘Resurrection Of The Daleks’ when the numbness wore off. But then she did see her aunt murdered too). Next thing you know Ruby’s already delivering random number co-ordinates like she’s done this sort of thing all her life, asks if her foster mum is dead now she’s in the future, gets her routine one phonecall home (to discover she’s just left) and doesn’t seem surprised in the least to actually be on a space station in the future (instead she makes a quip about Star Trek, further muddying the ‘is Trek real or a TV programme in the Whoniverse?’ debate that’s been raging on and off for fifty years). Next episode she’ll fill in the other blanks that generally take companions a full year: learning about the Doctor’s family, the fact he has two hearts, asking about a Tardis wardrobe and getting her own Tardis key. I mean, I know this regeneration is more trusting and open than the 10^th but when you think what Martha had to go through to prove she was worthy of one – I mean, what has the Doctor even seen Ruby do so far, except chase a goblin over a roof? I understand that the Disney audience of newcomers are impatient to know all these things, but so we were in 2005 and it felt right the slow way Rose got to grips with everything. Had they cut maybe five minutes of this opening and spent more time fleshing out the baby plot then it would have made the episode more palatable all round (was this scene padding to compensate for just how costly animating baby faces turned out to be?)

Alright. I can’t hold the joke off any longer…’Space Babies’ isn’t the great stretch into the new direction fans were hoping for now that the anniversary nostalgia was out the way, but it is perhaps baby steps into that direction. This isn’t a modern masterpiece of subtlety and depth to match highs like ‘Midnight’ and ‘The End Of The World’ that show off what this series can do at its best, it’s a broad cartoon full of one dimensional characters, a one dimensional plot and paper-thin ideas that unravel like a cheap nappy when you try to pull them apart. And yet there are moments here when it all comes together and becomes grownup despite the setting, when the Doctor and Ruby are sparring off each other, when little Eric is being oh so brave or when the Doctor is risking his life for the baddy because life is precious and death is a last resort always, even when you’re an artificial creation made out of bogeys. And if that isn’t the true spirit of Dr Who I don’t know what is. We really didn’t need the joke about the nappies (sure to become as notoriously poor in taste as Russell’s one about Ursula’s paving slab sex life in ‘Love and Monsters’) or the puerile humour that ran through most of it (of course Ruby gets covered with snot, as if we’re watching a bad episode of ‘Fun House’), nor did we need quite so much ‘babies’  at the expense of ‘space’, but  even though this was an episode that seemed almost designed to make the natural fanbase gag in so many ways it still felt like ‘proper’ Dr Who in a way that some of the specials and the Christmas episode didn’t. I mean, at least it didn’t close with a musical finale right? Putting another one of those in would be silly. Hahahahahaha, um,  ha. See you tomorrow for the review of ‘The Devil’s Chord’!

POSITIVES +I love the opening gag about going back to prehistoric Earth and Ruby accidentally treading on a butterfly before turning round as a completely different alien and the Doctor’s frantic attempts to undo it by fixing the ‘butterfly effect’ lever in the Tardis. So very Who and such a clever way of spelling out the paradoxes of time travel without having to do the whole ‘father’s Day’ emotional shebang all over again. The alien Ruby looks great (it’s clearly what Phillip Martin was thinking of when he wrote in a feathered Peri to ‘Vengeance On Varos’)and Ncuti plays his sudden moment of horror as he looks over really well. Had the episode stayed on prehistoric Earth I’d have been very happy!

NEGATIVES – The Davies et machina plot resolution tradition strikes again: someone is being sucked out of an airlock and is solved by the Doctor pressing a big red button. Just as in ‘The End Of The World’. And ‘Doomsday’. And ‘The End Of Time’ to a certain extent. I know Russell likes his big buttons but there are other ways to end a story you know.  

BEST QUOTE: ‘I don't have a people, I don't have a home... But I don't have a job, either. I don't have a boss, or taxes, or rent, or bills to pay. I don't have a purpose, or a cause, or a mission, but I have...freedom. That's why I keep moving on, to see the next thing, and the next, and the next. And sometimes it looks even better through your eyes’.
 

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