Season 1, Episodes 2 and 3: 'Space Babies' and 'The Devil's Chord'
Russell T Davies, showrunner for the new season of 'Doctor Who', had a tough task ahead of him.
How can the British institution's show reassure longtime fans that it's safely back after several disappointing seasons, while also introducing the 60-year-old sci-fi series to new international audiences?
In the premiere double bill of “Doctor Who,” you can sense Davis grappling with these questions, with largely successful results. After the show was canceled in 1989, Davis relaunched “Doctor Who” in 2005, joining Christopher Eccleston and David Tennant on board during his tenure as the time-traveling Doctor. Under Davis, 'Doctor Who' was not only popular, but dare I say it, kind of cool.
We met Davis' new Doctor, played by Scottish-Rwandan actor Ncuti Gatwa, in the show's 60th anniversary episode last year (somewhat confusingly, the first episode of this new season aired as a standalone Christmas special). This is also the first season to debut on Disney+ in the United States. The rules governing time and space in the 'Whoniverse' are notoriously complex, so there's a lot of universe building you can do in less than two hours of TV.
Typically “Doctor Who” duo films feature a shared story or location, but here they are two separate adventures. The first episode, “Space Babies,” does a lot to set up the season, so by the time “The Devil’s Chord” comes out, “Doctor Who” can do what it does best. That's what tears the audience apart. – A roaring high-voltage adventure.
'Space Babies' picks up where the Christmas episode 'The Church on Ruby Road' left off. The Doctor's new companion, Ruby Sunday (Millie Gibson), enters his spaceship, the TARDIS, disguised as a police box, and is asked many questions about where he came from. It's her Doctor's job to walk her and any first-time viewers through basic Time Lord fact sheets. He comes from the planet Gallifrey, the last of his species and an orphan like Ruby. He has been alive for thousands of years. And he spends his time traveling through time and space. As the introduction goes, it gets the job done, albeit not subtly.
After a brief detour to see some dinosaurs from 150 million years ago (presumably included to show what a Disney cash injection can do to the show's famously crude special effects), the pair head to the space station in 21506. I found myself hanging on.
Lurking below deck is a fearsome, snarling boogeyman, visible only in flashing fangs and glitchy surveillance camera footage. Upstairs live abandoned infants who have never been held. These toddlers, “space babies,” as the doctor keeps calling them, bustle around in robot buggies and speak in the voices of six-year-olds.
The strange animations used to move the babies' mouths take some getting used to, but the kids themselves tug straight at the Doctor and Ruby's heartstrings. When a baby asks a doctor if he was raised wrongly, you can see the heartbreak in his eyes. He said, “No one grows up wrong.” He speaks to her sweetly and truthfully. Being different, he says, is “a superpower.”
The space babies now pilot the spaceship with the help of the one remaining crew member, Jocelyn (Golda Rochevel, who played Queen Charlotte in “Bridgerton”), who controls the onboard computer. At some point, the ship's limited food and air supplies will be depleted and rescue from nearby planets will become nearly impossible. “That is the fate of every refugee in space. You have to physically show up on someone else’s shore,” says Jocelyn.
For the Doctor, it's too much of a coincidence that the TARDIS brings orphan Ruby to the abandoned space babies. And he flashes back to Ruby's birth once again, when she is abandoned in the church on Christmas Eve, and his eyes water. Breaking free from the Doctor's memories, he begins to fall onto a space station. Ruby is human and TARDIS technology remains a question mark that we can expect to see return later in the season, although we confirm later.
Compared to these heavy themes, the episode's monster vs. doctor plot feels secondary. It turns out that the boogeyman is none other than a “living sneeze” created by a baby's nose and his worst nightmare. The cheesyness of the snotty plot undercuts the edge of the episode's emotional climax. Here we see the Doctor risking his life to stop the Boogeyman from flying into space. (“That’s what you do,” Ruby explains, already sensing the Doctor’s altruistic tendencies. “You save them all.”)
The ending was also neatly concluded. The Doctor gives Ruby the keys to the TARDIS, with a caveat that almost certainly hints at future plot points. She can't go back to the day she was left at the church in Ruby Road. Otherwise, she risks causing the “deepest, darkest” rupture. hour.
With the basics out of the way (at least for now), the next episode, “The Devil's Chord,” can vacillate between hilarity and ominous nihilism.
The story begins in 1925. To cheer up bored student Henry (Kit Rakusen), piano teacher Timothy Drake (Jeremy Lim) teaches him the episode's eponymous note cluster. This combination is said to summon Satan himself. Instead, a dramatically dressed figure played by drag queen and Broadway star Jinkx Monsoon leaps from the piano and introduces himself as the Maestro in the luxurious rasp of a cabaret singer.
virtuoso, People who use they/them pronouns have one goal: Destroying music and starting a chain of events that will end in the destruction of life as we know it. As the score swirled in the air, the Maestro swallowed it with an almost erotic moan. The villain then looks down into the camera lens and drums the rhythm of the “Doctor Who” theme song on the piano.
Returning to the TARDIS, Ruby and the Doctor appear in London on February 11, 1963, wearing the costumes shown in the season's promotional images. 'Doctor Who' first aired later that year and the Doctor said he lived nearby. With his granddaughter Susan during this time: A sweet Easter egg for longtime fans.
Outside the TARDIS is the future Abbey Road Studios (then called EMI Recording Studios). While Marlena Shaw's “California Soul” plays, the two dance across the famous crosswalk to find the Beatles recording their first album.
In the studio, the band hasn't put down the classic, creating songs with uninspiring lyrics like “I got a dog, he's called Fred/My dog ain't alive, he's dead.” As assumed in Richard Curtis' 2019 film “Yesterday,” the world looks very different without the Beatles, and history took a “noisy” path, the Doctor says, as the Maestros stole their music for utter destruction.
The Doctor recognizes the Maestro as an accomplice (and later revealed to be his child) to the menacing Toymaker (Neil Patrick Harris) from last year's Anniversary Special, and one of the prophesied “great powers beyond the universe” that the Doctor so fears.
If the typical relationship between the Doctor and his companion involves the Time Lord circling around while the Assistant struggles to keep up with him (and sometimes even fall in love), the dynamic here is even more interesting. When the Doctor was scared by the Maestro, it was Ruby who comforted him. At several points in the opening episode, the Doctor assumes that Ruby will stay behind while he heads off to investigate, but Ruby insists on joining in on the action.
There is only one hope for humanity. Another note can banish a maestro, but only a genius can track it down.
“You may be bright, hot, and ‘timely.’ But I don’t think genius is like that.” Maestro says playfully to the doctor. Davis has brought many LGBTQ characters to the screen during his career, in shows like “Queer as Folk” and “It's a Sin,” but perhaps not the Maestro, which Monsoon imbues with grotesque sensuality and a seductive sense of danger. . One of his most memorable.
As Ruby begins to sing 'Carol of the Bells', the Christmas song that rang on the night she was abandoned by the church, the snow falls again and it's the Maestro's turn to get scared. “How can a song have so much power?” Maestro asks, “And such power.” Like who? “The oldest,” comes the cryptic answer. This mystery will be solved in future episodes.
In the end, it is Lennon and McCartney (played by Chris Mason and George Caple) who save the day by playing the notes of exile together on the piano. The Maestro is exiled, but not before issuing an ominous warning: “The one waiting is almost there.”
They'll worry about that in future episodes. Currently, the Doctor is preparing a surprise for Ruby and us.
“There’s always a twist at the end.” He winks, looks straight into the camera, and delivers an original song and dance number with 50 powerful chorus lines. It's an unusual scene for 'Doctor Who', but it's undeniably spectacular, demonstrating the show's rediscovered ambition and style.
After years of missteps, 'Doctor Who' is starting to get its groove back.