TV review: Doctor Who – The Star Beast

Hello readers! A couple of weeks ago, Doctor Who returned to our screens. Russell T. Davies is the lead writer once more, and for three special episodes, David Tennant and Catherine Tate are reprising their roles as The Doctor and Donna, who defined what many people believe to be the ‘best era’ of the show. Obviously, there were plenty of excellent episodes after their departure, but to most viewers, Doctor Who has been losing its charm. The audience has been shrinking, especially in recent years. Clearly, somebody at the BBC realised that they were wasting the potential of a highly profitable format, and so they dragged in the old crew to reinvigorate the show. It appears to have worked, as plenty of people are talking about it – myself included.

Review in brief:

If you are looking for a quick, spoiler-free review to determine if The Star Beast is worth watching, I have this to say: the episode is very silly. It feels like a seamless continuation of the old Tennant era, but with a slightly bigger budget and slightly clunkier writing. However, if you and the show operate on similarly silly wavelengths, you will find it a lot of fun. It is very much geared towards children, but that isn’t to say that adults can’t enjoy it too, especially if you’re looking for something ridiculously stupid to distract you from depressingly stupid reality. It’s certainly heavy-handed in places, and although you might have seen people online whinging about the mere mention of a pronoun, this is no reason to avoid the episode. There is lots of fun to be had here, providing you turn off the analytical portions of your brain.

Now, if you want a deeper review of The Star Beast from someone who left the analytical portion of their brain switched on, keep reading. The episode was far from perfect, which makes it intriguing on a number of levels. From here on out, there will be big spoilers – so if you are part of that niche group of people who actually care about the plot, beware! Otherwise, brace yourself for some well-intentioned grumbling.

Big budget production

It is clear from the outset that somebody has thrown a lot of money at this show. The episode opens with a Marvel-esque animation that declares the existence of a “Whoniverse”, all of which feels wholly unnecessary. If you wait until the end credits, you will see that Disney now has a stake in Doctor Who, and own the global streaming rights. As such, they have injected a fair bit of cash into the CGI and marketing, and are presumably attempting to make the show more profitable by tempting hungry Marvel fans down the slippery slope towards the Doctor Who fandom.

To the average viewer, the Disney intervention means that we might see slightly bigger set pieces and better CGI than usual. The first episode revolves around a waddling, furry alien creature called The Meep, which is brought to life by expert puppetry and animatronics. This cuddly creature provides a sharp contrast to the alien bug police who show up 30 seconds later, with costumes that look as if they have arrived straight from the 1970s. They’re so awful that I wonder if this was a deliberate choice, to remind people just how crap Doctor Who aliens should look. Clearly, the show won’t be forgetting its roots any time soon.

Characters old and new

It is great having David Tennant back again. He just owns the role, somehow managing to make The Doctor fully believable, while also looking as if he is having the time of his life being on set. Catherine Tate brings a similar energy, managing to make Donna a believably motherly character, while also delivering lines with perfect comic timing. Their dynamic is as good as it ever was, and their constant joviality serves to remind us that we should, under no circumstances, take this seriously.

In fact, the least serious aspect of this episode is the new alien: The Meep. It is introduced as a fluffy, wide-eyed creature with strange fingers – an unholy cross between a Furby and E.T. – and we are led to believe that it is being hunted down. However, we soon learn that The Meep is actually evil, whereupon its eyes turn red, it bares its teeth, and pulls a tiny gun out from its fur. Not satisfied with this level of silliness, it builds itself a tiny iron throne and hypnotises a load of soldiers to chant “hail to The Meep” – then threatens to burn London in order to fuel its ship. It is truly as dumb as it sounds. But also quite funny. Again, you can only enjoy this show if you turn off your brain.

Throughout the episode, we see two worlds operating side-by-side: the real world, where the actors, writers and set designers are expressing their joy for being part of this fictional universe, and then the fictional world, where we have to believe the characters and the plot. The fourth wall is so thin as to be non-existent, and I wonder if this is what gave the show its charm back in the day. For the first time in many years, we have returned to a level of gleeful absurdity. The show encourages us to enjoy the make-believe, because we all know that the characters are just actors having fun with explosions and flashing lights. We all know that The Meep is a puppet. And we all know that David Tennant looks older, and that there isn’t a canonical timey-wimey explanation for this. The show and its characters are comfortably pretend, and enjoyably stupid.

Of course, if you want to analyse The Star Beast like an actual drama and not just an hour of brainless entertainment, there is plenty to complain about. Donna’s husband barely gets to say anything beyond praising his wife and his daughter, and the alien bug police get about as much thought into their characters as they do into their costumes (assuming that there isn’t some deep Doctor Who lore around these guys that I’m too mainstream to understand). However, my biggest complaints aren’t necessarily about the characters’ backstories and personalities, but about the way Russell T. Davies has them express themselves.

Introducing Rose

In this episode we meet Donna’s daughter, Rose. I hadn’t paid any attention to the trailers before this episode was broadcast, so I was happily surprised to learn that Donna’s daughter is trans, and played by a trans actress, Yasmin Finney. The introduction of a young trans character into a mainstream show watched by children and parents together is probably one of the most effective modes of representation. It will make a huge difference to a lot of people, and will counteract the negativity and demonisation pushed by a worrying number of British media outlets. All this being said, I worry that Rose’s character wasn’t approached with enough thought or sensitivity, which is all the more disappointing when so much hinges on her positive representation.

Writing a character from a minority group can be a thorny issue. Even if the author themselves is part of that minority, the story that they want to tell might be different to the story that others in the community want to see, and even stories told with the best of intentions can be misinterpreted with negative consequences. At its simplest level, I can identify two key dilemmas. Firstly, does the writer create a world that highlights the real-life difficulties faced by the minority, or do they create an idealised world to show how good things could be, and towards which we can strive? Secondly, does the writer make the character’s minority identity central to their plot relevance, or should it be largely irrelevant in helping them save the day, despite being important to who they are? There is no wrong answer here, as it all depends on context and personal opinion.

Unfortunately, Russell T. Davies’ approach is somewhat muddled. Rose is introduced in an incredibly chaotic scene, during which The Doctor lands in a busy market, has no idea where or when he is, meets Donna, is baffled that her daughter is called Rose, then sees a spaceship crashing. In the first scene that Rose actually gets any breathing room to assert herself, she is subject to transphobic abuse. The first mention of her being trans is in a negative setting, and I just can’t see how this is a supportive approach. Maybe the negativity is a setup for Donna being a supportive mother, or a reminder of the oppression faced by trans people, but the end result is that a trans character is introduced as a victim, and that transphobic abuse is normalised. Remember, this is a show watched by children, who will only view things at their simplest. I suspect that they would respond far better to a trans character who isn’t defined by the abuse they receive, and who lives in a world where people are fully accepting.

Muddled positivity

Other attempts at positivity are dealt with in a clumsy, heavy-handed manner. It is perfectly reasonable and believable that Rose would call out The Doctor for assuming The Meep to be a “he”, but the sudden change of tack when The Doctor asks for preferred pronouns felt clinical. It’s such a shame, because the cold, algorithmic interaction that followed is exactly the sort of thing that gets ridiculed by The Daily Mail – and just a slight rewording could have made it feel so much more natural and heartfelt. Indeed, when The Meep declares that it always goes by “the definite article… I am always THE Meep”, The Doctor replies “oh, I do that!” – which is the sort of funny but sincere sentiment that should have been present throughout the entire conversation.

Perhaps my biggest gripe is the muddled and botched way that Rose was incorporated into the final act. We were reminded at the beginning of the episode that Donna carried The Doctor’s memories, and that these had been locked away to keep her safe. If she ever remembers The Doctor, the memories will leak out and she will die (it’s contrived, but within the poorly-defined remits of this show). Later, we learn that Donna passed some of these memories to her daughter, Rose. When the Doctor is forced to awaken the memories so that Donna can help him shut down The Meep’s spaceship (which only involves flicking a few buttons), he awakens the memories in Rose too, allowing her to step in and save the day (by flicking some more buttons). It is explained that The Doctor’s memories are why Rose has been making toys that look like aliens, and why she called herself Rose when she transitioned. This is when things get decidedly muddled.

Firstly, choosing a name to define yourself is of great importance to someone who is trans, and to suggest that Rose only chose her name due to having the memories of The Doctor feels a little insensitive. Not only does this undermine her sense of self, but it raises the awful possibility that she has been making unconscious and personal decisions based on personality traits that weren’t her own. This would undermine anyone’s personality, but to do this to a trans character feels like a huge oversight.

Secondly, one of the side-effects of Donna having the memories of a timelord was that she kept saying “binary, binary, binary” for some reason (presumably Russell thinks this is how computers talk). When The Doctor reawakens the memories, Rose chimes in and says “non-binary”. This is instantly problematic, because the way that Rose was introduced, we had no reason to believe that she identifies as non-binary. Indeed, a trans woman is usually not non-binary – being a woman is very much one of two binary options. This strange dialogue choice becomes all the more confusing when The Doctor explains that Rose is non-binary because “she is The Doctors”, who are a mix of male and female. Unfortunately, this undermines Rose’s sense of self yet again, and verges dangerously close to suggesting that her trans identity was swayed by The Doctor’s influence. Also, making her identity crucial to such a silly plot simply demeans it. This was shamefully clumsy.

Perhaps the most egregious use of plot-relevant gender identity is in the final scene. We know that Donna and Rose are at risk of dying from The Doctor’s memories, but Russell comes up with a baffling solution to their predicament. Simply by being female, Donna and Rose can just “let it go” – which (aside from revealing Disney’s nefarious influence yet again) means they can just hold hands, smile, and let the dangerous space magic float off into the sky. The “metacrisis” memory plot, which was crucial to The Doctor leaving Donna years ago, is now gone, just like that, because they are women.

The scene is particularly cringe-inducing because of Donna and Rose’s unexpected and inexplicable smugness as they tell The Doctor that this is “something a male-presenting timelord would never understand”. This doesn’t make any sense, and doesn’t serve any purpose. The Doctor might be male-presenting now, but he was female-presenting not so long ago, and the way that someone presents is, almost by definition, not necessarily how they define themselves beneath. Why would having a male face change his understanding? And what is it about women that allows them to let things go? This would have been an unsatisfactory ending to a story arc even without the bizarre pseudo-feminist statements.

Nice sentiment, questionable execution

Overall, I appreciate that Doctor Who is being inclusive and representative. I think this episode was written with the best of intentions, but certain aspects didn’t receive quite enough thought. This wouldn’t matter so much if representation and inclusion in a show like this wasn’t so influential. Rose will be remembered by children. She will make a difference to their lives going forward. However, this show also has a huge and dedicated LGBT+ fanbase of teenagers and adults, who will analyse the nature of this representation a little more deeply. To me, just a few small changes would have made a whole world of difference, and I do wonder how many people were consulted on the script. In fact, I wonder whether any feedback will make its way to Russell, or whether it will be lost in the swirling mire of hate and bile on Twitter and Reddit. Lots of people out there hated the representation to begin with, so I can only hope that the show stands its ground on the inclusion of LGBT+ characters, but improves the way they express themselves.

Some final gripes

The new TARDIS design is really big and really empty. Okay, it has lights and lots of space for David Tennant to shake off the zoomies, but it has the RGB energy of a gaming PC.

What’s with the panic attack breathing in the intro theme? I like the piano, but the rhythmic gasping is uncalled for. It’s uncomfortable. Stop.

It was unnecessary for The Meep to call Rose “weird”. I understand that The Meep is evil, but this was obvious enough from its red eyes, tiny gun, and threats of eating people. The needless insult-hurling again normalises the abuse of trans people before an audience of children, and as an extraterrestrial visitor with no knowledge of human biology or customs, The Meep has no context to make such an accusation in the first place (unless it managed to read The Daily Mail while it was hiding in that trash pile).

Finally, can we move on from framing women slapping The Doctor as humour? This time it was Donna’s mum as the perpetrator, and although we understand that she doesn’t like him, imagine if she had done this to Jodie Whittaker. Hitting people for comedic effect is not acceptable, especially when your audience is primarily children.

In summary…

I certainly enjoyed The Star Beast more than any of Chris Chibnall’s Doctor Who offerings, and it’s a welcome burst of energy for this stagnating show. While the episode is far from perfect (very, very far), it provides enough benign idiocy to qualify as entertainment, especially for children. The Meep puppet is incredible, the dialogue is often funny, and for those of us who were alive in the noughties, seeing David Tennant running around with a glowing screwdriver will bring a pang of nostalgia for simpler times. I’m interested to see where the series goes from here, but I don’t expect great things. Doctor Who was never destined for a sprawling, Marvel-esque universe, and it was never destined to be a pretentious, high-end drama. Instead, it should keep treading the narrow tightrope between thought-provoking and silly, providing lightweight sci-fi escapism for children and adults alike.