The Star Beast or “How Doctor Who got its groove back.”
Guess Who’s back? And, more importantly, back where it belongs: prime Saturday tea time telly? That’s right, it’s DOCTOR WHO and everything old is new again as a brand new era begins with more than one blast from the past as THE STAR BEAST crashes down to Earth.
When the newly regenerated Doctor (David Tennant, again) arrives in London, it’s not long before he not only runs into Donna Noble (Catherine Tate) but also trouble in the form of a spaceship hurtling chaotically across the London sky. The occupant of the craft is The Meep, an adorable furball alien seemingly on the run from the Wrarth Warriors.
There’s absolutely nothing in here that feels like a direct rebuke to the Chibnall era, but it palpably is as returning showrunner Russell T Davies sets about doing DOCTOR WHO right. The vibe is instantly different yet familiar, the clunky preamble notwithstanding and while it may feel less cinematic than the first two seasons of the Chibnall era it compensates by feeling intimately, familiarly televisual, which is always going to be DOCTOR WHO’s medium.
In adapting THE STAR BEAST, Davies makes an inspired choice, because first and foremost it’s fun. It’s utterly bonkers and silly while still offering serious peril in a way few shows can pull off and its modest yet measurable stakes provide the perfect backdrop for what we’re really here for: to watch RTD write himself out of the corner he first wrote himself into way back in 2010’s THE END OF TIME PART 2. And boy, does he pull a narrative rabbit out that hat, as well as making sly nod to CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE WINTER SOLDIER. You can almost here Davies cackling with mischievous glee as he not only canonises gender queerness within DOCTOR WHO lore but explicitly ties it to the resolution of the sword of Damocles that he left hanging over Donna Noble all those years ago. That’s right, bigots: DOCTOR WHO says Trans Rights!
Any appraisal of THE STAR BEAST has to begin with acknowledging the profound restorative effect the return of Tennant and Tate has on the show. For a story so concerned about the whys and wherefores of Time Lord/ Human metacrises, it almost feels like metatextual flourish that the intervening dozen or so years seem to have had little effect on either of the returning cast members. Some of that Artron energy certainly seems to have rubbed off on the pair of them as despite the years and years since they last appeared together time has hardly been able to lay a finger on them. Tennant’s Doctor remains as cool as a cucumber and Tate’s Donna Noble is as bananas as ever. It’s a sin, really. The rest of the cast impress too, with Yasmin Finney making a welcome addition to the Noble clan and Ruth Madeley as UNIT’s latest scientific advisor. If only the irrepressible Miriam Margoyles had been given a bit more dialogue as The Meep, but then again I suspect it’s not the last we’ve seen of them, especially given his cryptic comment at the end.
Still, there’s nowt so queer as folk who love DOCTOR WHO and there’s plenty to whet the appetite for the adventures to come over the next few weeks. With Donna’s demise dodging dealt with, the focus is surely going to turn to the Doctor himself, as his new (old) face – the third time he’s worn it, in fact.
Post-regeneration stories are always a bit of a mixed bag. There’s the thrill of the new and the mourning of the old as a new cast and crew try to find their groove. THE STAR BEAST avoids this in multiple ways. One, the regeneration itself is referenced, but only indirectly as something that has happened, much the same way as ROSE did in 2005. Two, the thrill here is the old, made shiny and new again. The titles, so gloomy dark and morose for the past six years, are popping with colour and texture again and Murray Gold injects some bombast back into the theme tune again after Segun Akinola understated arrangement. But perhaps the biggest upgrade of all is the humble – or not so humble anymore – sonic screwdriver, now equipped with the ability to augment reality in a way we’ve never seen before and as for the new interior of the TARDIS, well we’re back in the multi-level madness of Matt Smith’s era but with a spectacularly new rainbow-led-hued whiteness and a never-before seen vastness.
Yes, DOCTOR WHO is back, but more importantly, its confidence is back and I suspect it won’t be too long before the audience is flocking back too. Bravo!
