Praise the Time Lord! The Doctor’s ditched the woke preaching for fun family viewing
...but how intergalactically stupid to release new series at midnight
‘The BBC is sticking two fingers up to Britain’
DOCTOR WHO ★★★★★ THE BBC (no stars at all)
SPOILER alert! The Beeb has comprehensively ruined all the surprises in its own flagship family show, releasing both debut episodes of the new Doctor Who series online, 18 hours before transmission. Fans who have waited agog with excitement since Christmas were given a cruel choice: watch the shows in the small hours or spend all day yesterday avoiding any glimpse of other fans’ reactions on social media.
The episodes, Space Babies and The Devil’s Chord, began streaming on iPlayer at midnight on Friday, and were simultaneously aired in the US – where it was a more civilised 7pm or earlier. To see them on telly here, you had to wait till 6.20pm yesterday.
Madder still, these are the most family-friendly adventures the Doctor has enjoyed in years.
The first features talking babies on a spaceship, a Mary Poppinsish nanny and a storybook monster. The other is set in Abbey Road studios, where the Beatles are recording their first album in 1963, with dance spectaculars and an uproarious panto turn from a villainous drag queen.
These are stories that small children can enjoy with their older siblings and parents, featuring just the right amount of scariness. Broadcasting them at midnight was worse than stupid – it was sticking up two fingers to the whole of Britain.
We have loved, supported and nurtured Doctor Who for six decades, revelling in its best eras and pretending to forget its worst. Now we can count ourselves lucky to see it at all, apparently. BBC bosses clearly care only about the American market… which is why the first ten minutes of Episode One consist of explanations for viewers who have never heard of the Doctor.
This isn’t a one-off. Next week’s episode will also land on iPlayer at midnight. Parents across the country will be fighting battles with young Whovians intent on staying awake till 1am as otherwise ‘all my friends will have seen it and I won’t!’
None of this is the fault of Ncuti Gatwa, the 15th Doctor, or his new travelling companion, Millie Gibson – who plays Ruby Sunday with just the right amount of sass and wonder.
The two previous Time Lord incarnations were disastrously bad. Peter Capaldi played the Doctor like a dirty old businessman. And the relentless preaching of Jodie Whittaker turned the show into a tiresome political broadcast for the Woke Party.
But with the aid of Disney’s bottomless budget, Gatwa has regenerated the show. He’s charming, he’s light-footed, he delivers every line with a playful twist – he looks like he’s having all the fun that every fan expects from time travel.
When Ruby announces she wants to see John, Paul, George and Ringo making a record, he’s practically turning somersaults.
A shot of the pair bursting out of the Tardis dressing-up wardrobe, looking like they’re swinging down Carnaby Street, is joyful.
So is the manic evil-doing of Jinkx Monsoon, in a Bette Midler wig and a Sgt Pepper tunic, as the camp demon trying to steal all music from the world.
That’s what we want to see – not lectures about the role of female scientists in the 19th century, which was all Jodie’s Doctor could think about… when she wasn’t telling us how awful the British Empire was.
Screenwriter Russell T. Davies does inject a dash of politics, but it’s done in a mischievous way.
On the spacecraft piloted by tots in pushchairs, we discover their planet insists that all babies have to be born – but once they’re here, there’s no one willing to look after them. That’s a swipe at the antiabortion lobby in the US. Another barbed comment about the treatment of refugees follows.
These flashes of satire are not intrusive. Most children won’t even notice them. They’ll be too busy giggling at the rocket ship powered by smelly methane from the baby nappies and the world’s worst Beatles song – ‘I’ve got a dog, he’s called Fred/ My dog is alive, he’s not dead.’
Fans who love the show for its monsters were not disappointed either. A bogeyman with teeth like knitting needles stalked the lower decks of the babies’ spaceship, giving even the Doctor a fright. ‘There’s no such thing as monsters,’ he gulped, ‘just creatures you haven’t met yet.’
But for the adults, there’s lots more sophisticated material to enjoy as well – not only the gigantic set-piece musical numbers, worthy of the West End, but clever references such as the moment Lennon and McCartney discover the one chord that will save the world. It’s the echoing combination of notes that closes A Day In The Life, the one like a grand piano colliding with a London double-decker.
So much fun, so witty, so welcome… so stupid to stick it on at midnight.