Last year’s special starring David Tennant may well have just been a victory lap for his era. Celebrating the pinnacle of the revived drama, everyone’s favorite and arguably the most personable Doctor of all time returns to remind us one last time why we fell in love with the series in the first place, farting aliens and more .
Thankfully, this was just the beginning of RTD’s second renaissance as Whovian leader. What a strong statement of intent: Yes, this is the show you remember. Energetic. sparkling with light. Infused with the chaotic energy of Ant & Dec’s Saturday Night Takeaway and all the warmth and world-weary empathy that informs Davies’ other more serious work, as well as the Sixth Sense of casting (by long-time collaborator Ant Dee Pryor backed) producers will be crazy about it. Being able to summon Neil Patrick Harris to Bristol to play the Celestial Toymaker is a testament to RTD’s Time Lord-like powers as a producer, and positioning him for David Tennant’s Dark Mirror is divine genius .
But it’s also a new era for Doctor Who, with Generation Alpha looking to the future and reinventing itself for a tired age in desperate need of a new mythology. Nuti Gatwa is far from the “classic” image of the Doctor – obviously, he’s not a middle-aged white man, but that’s not why. He’s effortlessly cool, with an ever-changing wardrobe and grooming that no doctor before has been able to pull off. I mean, he even looked stylish in his debut, where he was wearing a shirt and briefs. There was nothing stuffy or patronizing about him – he was filled with the essence of creativity and invention. If all the previous Doctors were Phil Collins, then he’s the Prince and he can do anything.
He also succeeded in overcoming my inherent aversion to the accents of the east coast of Scotland, where I grew up. Hearing someone on TV who sounds like me or someone I grew up with is usually like putting nails on a blackboard, but Ncuti decided to use his natural accent – a French accent with a hint of his Rwandan upbringing. Husband’s accent – very good for him. Doctors should be familiar with it, but it can be difficult to pin down the details. After all, many planets have Dunfermline.
So he jumps around the screen with the rhythm of a man determined to make every moment count and who can feel every second passing by. There’s so much action in this show that’s mesmerizing, sizzling, and full of delightful intent. In stark contrast to the show under RTD’s successors and/or predecessors, it felt very slow in comparison. Every showrunner tries to leave his or her own mark. Moffat is trying to turn this into a big, twisty sci-fi epic, where time travel and its workings aren’t just a device or premise, but the focus of the show. Chibnall attempts to give the TARDIS a comfortable sitcom dynamic while desperately trying to transplant some mystery into an ancient and crumbling mythology with an entire reference book filled with established and immovable canonical facts.
Of course, RTD is the Trickster God in Doctor Who, so he changed the series bible by having the Celestial Toymaker return to fundamentally rewrite it, allowing for things that Doctor Who really hadn’t done in over sixty years past things. Goblins on floating pirate ships kidnap babies. The devil crawls out of the piano and magics the concept of music out of the human soul. All the while, he’s still heading to the edge of the universe to repair broken spaceships. The show has always been science fantasy, but now the balance has been tipped in favor of the latter. Boy, this is a welcome adjustment.
Perhaps the most classic story from Season 14 or Season 40 (delete depending on preference) is “Space Baby.” It started with an interesting sci-fi concept: What if a space station was run by super-smart babies? Intelligent enough to solve problems and operate complex equipment, but still outwardly childish: incontinent, barely able to move, unable to fall asleep without reading a bedtime story. Scared by the snot-nosed monster. The whole thing. What a fantastic Doctor Who idea. It’s a bit like Who’s past, a bit reminiscent of Tennant-era favorite The Girl in the Fireplace, but also showcases RTD’s famous soft spot for the utterly childish: the one who gives you the hiccups ’s dumpsters, burping alien invaders and paving slab blow molding jobs are back, and there’s more to come. The Doctor bonds with a literal snot-nosed monster, then saves the world by pressing a giant farting space butt. Oh my god, folks, we’re back.
The on-screen ideas were a little too ambitious for the visual effects budget, which I think is all part of the show’s scrappy appeal, but I also believe that no amount of money from Disney could have done it without lip-synching babies Achieve lip synchronization. Anything that falls into the uncanny valley. The usually boring people who complain about bad CGI whenever something on the screen reminds them they’re not watching a documentary always revel in their dislike of the show, but they also often complain about visual effects in over-budget movies. , the catering bill for those movies was enough to pay for five seasons of Who. Frankly, you can’t please some people. The kids are adorable and very cute.
Then: horror. Davies has written some of the most disturbing episodes of Doctor Who of any era, of any era. “Turn Left” depicts the tragic scene of the world turning to fascism in response to a major disaster. With last year’s Wild Blue, Who experimented with body horror, but the results were horrifying. “Midnight” is a single-location drama that’s perfectly executed by a great script and a stellar cast. This season’s The Devil’s Chords could neatly insert itself into this pantheon: disguised as a silly historical plot, it purports to be a Beatles-themed adventure in Swinging London, but actually places the Doctor and all of humanity in At the mercy of the Master is perhaps one of the show’s greatest villains ever, played to perfection by “RuPaul’s Drag Race” star Jinkx Monsoon. RTD’s casting eye once again proves its worth.
Having a scenery-chewing, fourth-wall-breaking villain who fools your favorite people is a dangerous prospect for any TV show, especially one with a fledgling new cast that has yet to properly establish itself As for the program. Monsoon’s performance reminded me of Jesse James Keitel’s Hammy space pirate in Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, I found it annoying and over the top, rather than lovable, he ‘s entire plan seemed to hinge on the crew turning into complete idiots in one episode. (Although it must be said that I am in the minority on this one).
In contrast, the Master’s understanding of “The Doctor” is indeed beyond his comprehension. Since she’s the toymaker’s daughter, he knows he barely survived his last encounter with one of her relatives, and we see that trauma surface here. It didn’t weaken him, as it could easily have done: it heightened the danger. The Doctor is probably at his best when RTD gives him some vulnerability, and the highly trained talent is in full effect here. Thankfully, the Beatles had little to no involvement. I think it’s a wonderful meta-marketing twist that they were so heavily featured in the show’s promotion, only to fall victim to an overbearing, music-stealing goddess. We hear that John Lennon cried himself to sleep every night because he had no music as a creative outlet. Paul McCartney pretends to hate songwriting. Tonally, it’s the biggest departure from “The Beatles.” A painful pantomime.
What makes it a hard watch is the machine-gun pace and performance to match. Monsoon and Gatwa echo each other with aplomb in show business, with a similar dynamic to that of David Tennant and Neil Patrick Harris – narratively divergent but equally powerful in their command of the stage . Gatwa seems to glide through the scene like a pop background dancer on roller skates. Monsoon gestures like a horror monster crossed with Liberace and has an uncanny ability to contort her face into a terrifying demonic gaze without any obvious post-production involvement. They’re so evenly matched in coolness and weirdness that they cancel each other out, giving Milly Gibson’s “Ruby Sunday” – which here somewhat represents the death of audience confusion – a perfect opportunity to tip the balance. .
In Ruby’s relationship with the Doctor, we’re reminded of the intense chemistry between Billie Piper and David Tennant. Gibson makes the point here: playing Ruby, striking the difficult balance between youthful innocence, intelligence, and the agency the character requires. Time will tell if their relationship becomes one of the iconic partnerships that has defined the show over the years, but all the right ingredients are in place to make it reach that status. Given that they’re blessed with the best showrunner the series has ever had, who seems to have a unique ability to give the series the cachet it really needs and deserves, I have no doubt that by series 14, 28, or 54, we’ll be wondering If the new plot is anything to compare to the golden era of Gatwa and Gibson.
Cheers to more trickster gods and farting space butts. Thank God for Russell.
