Doctor Who - The Interstellar Song Contest

Flood Damage

Doctor Who -
The Interstellar Song Contest
UK/USA 2025
Airdate: 17th May 2025

Warning: All the big, big spoilers

Hmm... dunno. As I mentioned at the end of last weeks review, the trailer made this episode look pretty unwatchable but, I’m glad to say it wasn’t and a couple of my friends thought this one was really good. As I am writing this I’m still processing some of the big story strokes this one had but, on the whole I thought that it was... an okay episode.

Okay, lets get to it... the last stopping point of The Doctor (played by Ncuti Gatwa) collecting readings from the Vindicator to get Belinda (played by Varada Sethu) home to Earth, sees them landing on a space station broadcasting a future installment of... The Interstellar Song Contest which is what the Eurovision Song Contest apparently evolved into over time, after the destruction of the Earth which, apparently, coincided with the day The Doctor and Belinda left it.  One of my least favourite TV presenters, Rylan Clarke, is released from suspended animation to compère the show and the station even has an interactive holographic version of another of my least favourite television presenters, Graham Norton.

And, of course, Mrs. Flood is also in the audience. I’ll get to her soon enough because, she comes back big time in a mid credits teaser which reveals her true identity. So stick with it.

This one appears to kill off the whole audience, including The Doctor, within the first ten minutes but Belinda and a few others are spared due to their situation and, its not long before The Doctor returns, improbably riding a confetti canon from out in deep space protected by a gravity field, which due to the whole Isaac Newton thing from the opening scene of Wild Blue Yonder (reviewed here), everyone is still referring to as mavity. 

However, the reason The Doctor revives is because of a vision he has in his head while frozen out in the void. That vision being of his grand-daughter Susan Foreman, played once again by the actress who played her in 1963, Carole Ann Ford. Now, this is kind of interesting because,The Doctor originally left Susan on Earth in the year 2164, in the 1964 story The Dalek Invasion Of Earth (reviewed here), which was also made into a movie set in a different year (reviewed here). So where and when these visions are set is... interesting. As is the fact that Susan hasn’t regenerated at all in the last 61 years.

Anyway, as usual it’s another short review for this series with, some nice sequences but with a lot of camp in it (well, it is a Eurovision themed episode so I’m trying to forgive it that) and some nice musical cues from Murray Gold (none of which are of much consequence since his stuff doesn’t seem to be getting any proper CD releases anymore). So let’s get to that mid-end credits scene then...

Mrs. Flood is a timelord, no surprises there. And her identity is not a particular surprise either since... well people have been guessing it right since her introduction a couple of years ago. But what I didn’t expect was that Anita Dobson, who plays the character, would bi-generate just as The Doctor did during his last regeneration. And she bi-generated into... dum dum dum... The Rani. Originally played by the late, great Kate O’Mara opposite the Sixth Doctor (Colin Baker) and the Seventh Doctor (Sylvester McCoy), she is now played by both a bizarrely subservient Anita Dobson and newcomer Archie Panjabi. 

Oh... and note to the writers. If you’re going to have somebody new bringing back an iconic character, then maybe don’t have her quoting a Fourth Doctor speech which has echoed through the series as an indication that she’s the ‘definite article’. I’m already not liking the way she plays her. I remember seeing Kate O’Mara playing The Rani on stage in a musical Doctor Who show at Wimbledon, opposite Jon Pertwee returning as the Third Doctor many years later and, all I will say is... Kate O’Mara is to The Rani what Roger Delgado was to The Master. But we shall soon see, I guess.

Two more episodes to go now before, I suspect, Doctor Who will take a long rest or, quite possibly, be cancelled and slowly forgotten. I hope neither of those things happen but, yeah, I reckon it’s on the cards for sure. What with every episode in this season so far garnering the lowest ratings in the 63 year history of the show. Again... we shall soon see.

Doctor Who - The Well

Tennant To Midnight

Doctor Who - The Well
UK/USA 2025
Airdate: 26th April 2025

Warning. Yup... spoilers from the outset.

Oh rats! What a shame. 

The first two episodes of this latest series of Doctor Who were actually better than anything we got last year but, just when I thought it was safe to go back in the Whoniverse, we get an episode, The Well, which is... while still better than pretty much all of last year’s episodes... just a bit of a mess, to be honest.  And that’s made more irritating by the twist reveal, halfway through the episode.

Okay, so we have Ncuti Gatwa and Varada Sethu on form as The Doctor and Belinda, at least. Although Gatwa’s performance as The Doctor is once more tempered by the bad writing, which means he is tearing up at the drop of a hat again (this has to stop at some point... surely?). And we have a good supporting cast around them when they accidentally find themselves as part of a group of marines dropping onto a planet which they don’t name right away for fear that viewers will see the twist coming a mile off. With good reason because, the twist only works as a kind of call back to the name of a former, David Tennant episode called Midnight (there’s brief footage flashing back to the 2008 episode, just in case people don’t ‘get’ the joke). I didn’t see it coming and that’s probably because...

Okay, so I was having misgivings s about the episode being shoddily written right from the start but the reveal that it’s the unnamed ‘mimic antagonist’ of Midnight actually makes things worse. For one thing, the antagonist of the original story did not have the same modus operandi as the version of it in Midnight at all. So it really is a sequel in terms of labelling only, it seems to me. Secondly, Midnight was one of the best stories of the original Russell T. Davies era of Doctor Who... so turning this into a ‘by name only’ sequel invites comparisons to that original and, honestly, this thing isn’t a patch on that one in any way, shape or form. Invoking the name almost denigrates the original episode.

The other thing about this one which was really bad was the damned costumes that The Doctor and Belinda choose to wear. When they find out the TARDIS has landed far in the future, without knowing anything about what or who they are gong to run into... they decide to dress up in future garb. And they choose these very specific matching jumpsuits which immediately had me thinking... “wait, what?” Are they going on a space expedition or something. To which the answer was immediately, yes because... well the suits they are wearing are an exact match to the uniforms being worn by the troops they go down with to the surface of the planet Midnight. Which... um... what? That’s pretty crazy. They accidentally dress in some uniforms belonging to the group of random strangers they then go on to meet? What happened to the writing on this thing? Explain this, please because, this makes no sense.

The only decent part of the episode was the surprise appearance of Anita Dobson as Mrs. Flood at the end of the story, as a character turning up in situ with other characters. So that was a novelty but, honestly, makes me start thinking of the inclusion of Susan Twist in every episode of the last story. And we all know how completely terrible and stupid that reveal turned out to be. But, it does look like she’s gathering intel on The Doctor here.

And I think that’s me done on The Well. This has got to be one of my shortest Doctor Who reviews ever but, I just don’t have much of anything positive to say about it, truth be told. This was definitely something and, I think that somethings was... just another unremarkable episode of modern Doctor Who. I won’t be revisiting this episode again any time soon.

Doctor Who - The Robot Revolution

The Catch
Chandra Crossing

Doctor Who -
The Robot Revolution
UK/USA 2025
Airdate: 12th April 2025

Warning: Slight spoilers.

Okay, full transparency... I might as well own up that I am expecting this year’s new-Who reviews to be more in the form of short capsule reviews. There’s not enough gone into the stories to really sustain them for much longer at the moment and I can’t see that changing anywhere before the end of the current series (which is only scheduled to run for eight episodes this time around anyway).

Also, before I get into it... I have to say that one member of my household was dead against going back for the new season of the show after the track record it’s had over the last six years or so and, while we persuaded him to watch... yeah, he really did not like this one and was very critical of it. Which I totally get. I thought the last season was particularly dreadful (asides from the strengths of the two main lead performers) and I can totally see why the show has become anathema to him.

That being said, I thought The Robot Revolution was a terrific Doctor Who season opener. We got an introduction to the new companion Miss Belinda Chandra, played by Varada Sethu and The Doctor, played by Ncuti Gatwa, even gives a reason, of sorts, as to why she’s the exact duplicate of a character he met last season (played by the same actress) in her far future... although I expect that explanation will be altered significantly to take on a different significance by the time of the last episode.

The story was a time twisty adventure which was all about her and the current night/six months prior/ten years prior, depending on your entry point into the story, when she was kidnapped by robots and taken to the planet... Missbelindachandra, of which she is surprised to find out she is the queen.

There are cute, barely tolerable robots, big bruiser robots, a mad controlling manifestation of AI (not really AI) of her ex-boyfriend and laser battles and tricky reveals that propel the story forward at a quite fast pace - if this was a more episodic serial show as it was from the 1960s - 1980s there would have been more time to explore the concepts... things were a little bit rushed, it seemed to me.

I liked it a lot, though and, the lead actors Ncuti and Varada are both good here (as they were last season but if the scripts don’t work as well as this one did we may still be in trouble). Yeah, I thought this one was great but I’m not naive enough just yet to expect them to be able to keep this up... since the last season was made back to back with this one the makers would not have been able to do much about audience feedback from last year’s show, for sure. So we’ll see how it goes.

I mean, Anita Dobson was back as Mrs. Flood, talking to the audience again and popping up somewhere she shouldn’t be, so that was interesting (although after last season’s so called solution to the overall arc, I’m not trusting any of this just yet). However, it wasn’t long before The Doctor was crying his eyes out again and getting way too emotional about stuff... so, yeah, I’m not fully on board yet. And since we havent even had a soundtrack CD for the last season yet, then I’m not even going to mention the music. No CD, no comment.

And that’s really all I’ve got to say about The Robot Revolution. I thought it was brilliant but, so much has been wrong with the show recently that I’m just not trusting it. We shall see what we shall see. 

Doctor Who - The Legend Of Ruby Sunday

 

Triad-itional Celebration

Doctor Who -
The Legend Of Ruby Sunday
Airdate: 15th June 2024
BBC 1

Warning: Spoilers aplenty.

Okay... well I have to say I am not feeling much love for this first instalment of the two part season finale of the new series of Doctor Who. I certainly didn’t hate it and it was put together well but... I dunno, I feel kind of underwhelmed, to be honest.

So the brief plot set up is that The Doctor (Ncuti Gatwa) and Ruby Sunday (Millie Gibson) visit UNIT HQ to try and figure out two things... firstly, who is the mysterious woman they keep seeing cropping up in their adventures (as played by actress Susan Twist, every week as a different character) and, also, the answer to the question... “Who is Ruby Sunday’s mum who left her on the church steps on Christmas Eve 2004?

Well, the woman is Susan Triad, about to give the world her new technology (and who has dreams about the things her characters would have seen in each episode)... not knowing she’s the victim of this week’s returning villain. Yeah, so Russel T. Davies said they wouldn’t be bringing any old villains back this series and so, what did he do? He brought an old villain back. Meanwhile, looking through a time window to recreate the night that Ruby was left on the doorstep of the church, they bring more death and the villain manifests itself in our time.

Okay... so I’ve seen many theories on what could be happening over the last month on the internet and, subsequently... as far as we are in the story by the end of this episode... they’ve all been speculated successfully so that, yeah, there are no real story surprises in this episode at all (but, not to worry, some more suprises may be coming next week, one hopes). Debut character Harriet’s second name being Arbinger, for example. So, H. Arbinger or Harbinger. People were pretty sure that would be the case and so it goes (to quote someone who once found themselves unstuck in time... I’m pitching to you, Kurt Vonnegut fans).

So we all knew that Susan Twist’s character this week, Susan Triad or S Triad, was an anagram of TARDIS (where the manifestation of an ancient God was hiding). And, yes, many people had already figured out the ‘Sue Tech’ idea as meaning it could well be an appearance of the God Sutekh from the 1975 Tom Baker era story The Pyramids Of Mars. And it is, it would seem. I think that’s what most disappointed me about the episode and, if there was any surprise for me, then it was that they’d bothered brining this enemy back in this form. I mean, really?

Two reasons for that disappointment. One, the great thing about The Pyramids Of Mars storyline was not Sutekh but his large, robot mummy henchmen, who were iconic monsters of the era (despite only appearing in that story). So I’d much rather have the cool mummies back than Sutekh, to be honest. Secondly, I guess I am a little curious as to why they decided to bring back a monster who is not going to be familiar to any modern era audiences, unless they’ve gone back to look at the classic stories. I mean... yeah, it’s  only really going to mean something to fans of old. Nothing against that personally but... maybe not the smartest move considering you’re trying to hook new viewers into the show for the Disney fatherland.

And, yeah, it was an unsatisfying cliffhanger, to be honest. I’m not really buying into it. But there are still some surprises yet, I suspect. Firstly, since they keep invoking The Doctor’s granddaughter Susan all through the episode, I’m not completely ruling out that she’ll put in an appearance at some point in next week’s episode. Maybe by way of an epilogue, The Doctor could revisit her where he left her in Earth’s far future, after the Dalek Invasion Of Earth (although how The Five Doctors fits into that, I can’t really remember).

Secondly... Mrs. Flood’s return, as played by Anita Dobson. Now, okay, she could just be a manifestation of Sutekh (I hope not, that’s boring) and she’s certainly presenting as a villain. But... she’s not immediately aggressive with it and so, maybe she’s another old returning villain (such as The Rani) waiting to pitch in and help The Doctor against a common enemy. Who knows? Well, not me I can assure you but all the audiences who went to the 12.01 cinematic showing of the final two episodes this morning will already know the answer to that one. As for the likes of me (who is not near a cinema playing it), I’ll have to wait until next Saturday, alas.

I’ve not got that much else to say other than that, I think... other than well done to returning companion Mel in the form of Bonnie Langford. She did some good work here. Way too much hugging going on again in this episdoe though. The Legend Of Ruby Sunday is an excellent title for an episode but, yeah, I was seriously underwhelmed on this one, it has to be said. Keeping my fingers crossed for next week’s concluding episode, Empire Of Death. We’ll see how that goes, I guess.