When Doctor Who Did 1984 (Badly)

[Music] the second episode of any television series is always one of the most important because it can make or break the show by showing whether the momentum of the opening episode can be maintained over time one of the prime examples of a disappointing second episode is doctor who's the beast below where the doctor takes brand new companion amy pond on a trip to the starship uk which is being carried by a star well that is being tortured by the human passengers muffet wanted the episode to emphasize his fairytale vision of doctor who along with filling the narrative with philosophical and political commentary however the beast below has always been considered one of the weakest series 5 episodes and until very recently even moffatt himself considered it the worst doctor episode he had ever written indeed not only is it forgettable it's extremely rushed and padded along with weak characters and a completely wasted imaginative setting so what exactly makes this episode so disappointing and bad and is there anything that can actually redeem it well saddle up on a giant space world and make sure you have enough social credit to watch this video because it's time to review the beast below and the bloody queen mate i really like the starship concept behind this episode i've always been fascinated by the idea of generation ships giant vessels relying on generations of passengers to maintain it over the course of its journey rather than cryogenically freezing them it's always been one of my favorite sci-fi concepts and there is a similar idea behind starship uk a roman city of sorts in the same vein as mortal engines except on a much bigger scale since this is an entire nation the backstory also makes a lot of sense within the world building of the episode in the distant future the earth is partially destroyed by solar flares so the only solution is fleeing the planet on mass and becoming a nomadic race as things settle down or people colonize other planets in other words going to the winchester and waiting for everything to blow over therefore it's to be expected that our earthbound nations would remain just being carried into the stars because what else would you do in this situation there are limited ships and a couple billion humans to evacuate so it is just easy to maintain nations i feel like the steampunky aesthetic of the ship reflects this makeshift mass evacuation this isn't some sleek futuristic star destroyer this is just something people have had to literally cobble together so they would have had to have put in stuff that would just work rather than stuff that looks cool i think the whole idea of reversing back to bicycles and more stripped-down yet reliable technology crafts a unique identity for both your ship itself and the people who live there especially because you get lancashire being the death star trash compactor which makes me dread to think what happened to ken because it's bad enough already the ship is a really good sci-fi concept unlike anything we've seen before outside of maybe the ark so it's a shame that this didn't become the new earth of the moffat era coming back for more adventures in such a distinctive location the other key component of the starship uk setting is the political narrative it spins showing us this dystopian society where people are out to vote on star wars freedom every five years but being punished unless they choose to forget the truth i'll get into the specifics of this in a minute but i do think this part of the story is a bit disappointing because it suffers from moffat's more fairy tale when approach to doctor who it doesn't fully embrace the horror of starship uk society i mean it starts off promising with under performance students not having enough china social credit points to ride lifts but it immediately ruins it with the unintentionally cringeworthy and laughable lift scene how do you take it seriously when you've got a child reading out a poem and the absolutely awful looking smilers and don't get me wrong i love a good zolton machine but these look terrible unlike other distinctive moffett monsters like the gasmar zombies or vashtra narada the smilers don't fit into the aesthetic of the story feeling very out of place in this society they don't look friendly when they're happy but they also don't look intimidating when they're angry they just look bad and it's actually funny as the script turns you and says oh look they have a third evil face yeah i bet you're terrified now aren't you it's obvious that they wanted these monsters to be nightmare fuel by straddling the line between harmless and evil but they simply aren't either they just serve as a really weak villain for the piece and on top of that we don't even know how their counterpart winders work they're the android secret police but why are they part smiler it's just style over substance rather than actually having interesting or scary villains even when they do pose a direct threat list10 just shows up and kills them instantly without even a chase sequence which highlights the terrible pacing no floaty episode thanks to all the padding the story has no real structure and moffat seemingly couldn't find interesting ways to move from beat to beat so the half-baked action scenes feel pointless and unnecessary the beast below is notable for being amy pon's first trip in the tardis floating up in space as the doctor looks up a dress now i appreciate the consistency of her still being in the nightgown because it maintains the tradition of other first altons and yuhu but the line of sight definitely makes this look a bit dodgy no wonder amy wanted to bonk him it is a nice scene though driving home the spaceship capabilities of the tardis i'll always love these kinds of visuals seeing the wide expanse of space through those unassuming wooden doors illustrating the vast possibilities of such an impossible time and space machine another significant part of this opening is moffat driving home the doctor's supposed non-interference policy this is a really weird thing to establish because it feels like mother only wrote it to fit the end of the episode rather than to show an actual element of the doctor's character the 11th doctor doesn't become an incarnation synonymous with non-interference it's only in the snowmen much later that he tries to stay out of events every other time he's more than willing to interfere so what was the point of this especially as moffat subverts it literally seconds later you never interfere in the affairs of other peoples or planets unless there's children crying it makes absolutely no sense doesn't at all fit the tone or writing of the show and it just feels like i'm off at trying to be clever and thematic which pretty much sums up the episode as a whole this bad opening is made worse by the doctor spewing our exposition of this being a police state sure the doctor always knows everything but this scene is written way too hand-holdy all the doctrine aim you have seen is a little girl crying and apparently that instantly means a police state the viewer on the other hand has already seen the whole lyft segregation social credit stuff so it feels like a useless speech only in there as stylistic fluff it's literally just a child crying it's what they spend half their time doing because they're children you don't need some stupid sherlock dialogue about silent crying and parents not acting on their instincts because police state the episode shows us cloaked men following the doctor around and mysterious observers so we can tell it's a police date without it being rammed down our throat through dialogue it's a weird case of moffat trying to show and tell so it just really rubs me the wrong way because it feels like he's trying to show off how clever he is this is about a minute's worth of dialogue telling the viewer what they have already seen but the episode tries to feel clever about it it's annoying and doesn't give the audience the chance to form their own conclusions you don't need the doctor to narrate the entire situation to make him seem clever it's patronizing and wastes time just have him point out the unusual cleanliness of the smilers it's all you need it's all made worse because the exact same sequence has the perfect use of the doctor's knowledge he looks at a glass of water and we don't find out why until later when it's revealed that the water was still because there's no engines it feels incredibly satisfying and clever because it was set up and had time to mellow for the audience to wonder what was happening rather than the doctors sit and then erasing the complexities of a glass of water on a spaceship immediately afterwards now believe me i do like mother i think he is a great writer and has crafted some of the best doctor stories of all time but episodes like these show how insufferable his scripts can often be when he tries to be clever and flaunting since it actually takes you out of the experience and makes you feel like you have no power as a viewer and of course because this is moffat we even get a snarky child who knows it all yeah when your friend kept bumping into me great thanks a lot you really couldn't resist shoehorning that ink could you at least we get magpie electricals which redeems this hunk of junk just a little bit since i always liked production easter egg whenever it crops up but wait amy oh no you can't continue because there's a hole we have to go back is that where the actual competent and semi-decent episode went pretty sure it fell in the hole in the meantime the doctor meets the mysterious queen liz 10. i'm the bloody queen mate get it she's the queen but she speaks like a typical londoner isn't that quirky just ignore the fact that she's a figurehead of a dystopian police state look at the guns not her being fine with underperforming children being fed to a whale or becoming slaves at least they explained that she's just as in the dark as everyone else having been held in a 10-year cycle of mind wipes that they can keep a charade up even if she was the one who started this all to begin with yes she's actually 300 years old and also always chooses to forget the star well i find it strange the episode doesn't really explore the true extent of this horrifying groundhog day scenario she always finds herself in she spends most of the time skulking around being paranoid of her own government before repeating it over and over again it makes her look a bit useless and borderline incompetent as a queen list 10 also brings up another issue i have with the moffat era i mentioned in my 11th hour review that i didn't like the hero worship communicated through everyone in leadworth knowing about the doctor thanks to amy's childhood stories it felt strange because this is the beginning of a brand new era so it feels redundant because it continues to perpetuate one of the most criticized cornerstones of the russell t davis era and the difference is that era had actually built the characterization being the moff era it goes out of its way to continue it for basically no reason indeed liz 10 has been raised on the tales of mysterious eccentric strangers swooping in and saving the world throughout time it does make sense that the doctor would be a mythical legend especially because of their run-ins with the royal family but it just rolls me the wrong way the first five episodes of series five having characters gushing over the doctor and saying how much they love him it makes it more irritating than a davis era ever was when it comes to hero worship because it's too forced without that actual slow build up and it's more blatant than on the nose than ever and also there's nowhere else for me to talk about this line but we see the return of the planet of the deadline almost verbatim you look human no you look time lord i'm still not sure if i get it maybe i need another 200 identical comments explaining it to me speaking of characters amy is surprisingly blank in this episode which is strange because moffat wrote it intending for her to save the day and prove herself worthy of being a full-time tardis traveler however it feels like any other companion could have been put in her place and it wouldn't make a difference which feels shocking for the first proper adventure of a brand new companion obviously karen gillan does well for the poor script she was given but amy really doesn't have much of a presence she's just there to receive exposition after exposition because she doesn't yet know the doctor as well as the audience does and even this is massively inconsistent since she seemingly already knows him well enough to make this big decision revolving around his age and kind nature remember this is her first adventure only maybe an hour after first stepping into the tardis she barely knows him so having this sudden wealth of knowledge makes the episode feel out of order with the rest of the series the weird character dynamic extends to amy being vilified for trying to protect the doctor from being put in the impossible position of choosing between the entire colony ship and the last star whale in existence she has only just started traveling with him she doesn't yet know what he's been through with her genocide he's committed so obviously she wouldn't be able to comprehend the importance of her decision yet the story actually makes her appear to be a bad person for this which in my opinion feels counterproductive however i do like the scene as amy finds out the history of starship uk even if someone in the production team can differentiate between six and eight age 1306. you know between this and roy's id being issued in 1990 i'm starting to think they had a toddler in their production team dealing with all the numbers anyway the scene is quite chilling serving as a horrific example of the ignorance of pseudo-democracy people are given the choice to forget what they see or do something about it and they always choose ignorance they're happy to accept the totalitarian estate because it keeps them alive they know about the star well but they always choose to forget so they can actually live with themselves for doing this which mirrors the reality of people overlooking atrocities because they don't want to feel responsible about doing anything to stop it the voting isn't actually a choice it's the illusion of one it just allows for people to feel like they have a choice when they're actually just given the state permission to continue it's dark and [ __ ] this ultimate dystopian framing about how scared we are of taking responsibility for our own actions and would willingly forget under the pretense that we would ever choose otherwise it's a window into our own world but that also brings up one of my major criticisms of the episode it feels like a scrapped russell t davis story no i know i always get accused of being a davis fanboy but it's undeniable that he has always excelled with these biasing political commentaries never shy of making massive statements i can't help but feel like he would have been the better writer to convey the commentary of this narrative it feels like moffatt was scared to commit at some moments but two on the nose at other times with actors awkwardly delivering lines like and once every five years everyone chooses to forget what they've learned democracy in action i love the exploration of the illusion of choice but the episode definitely messes it up especially because it ends with the doctor happily allowing this police state to presumably continue killing dissenters but hey they're no longer torturing the animals so it's all happy happy just ignore the authoritarian government that still maintains power through fear and oppression it's actually quite funny mother accidentally contradicting his own political commentary whoops so much for this we're bringing down the government this government hates the doctor amy and the queen down to the star world's torture chamber where he gets really angry at humanity this scene is actually quite reminiscent of planet of the youth even down to the sounds of suffering that regular people can't hear it's poignant confronting the viewer with such a horrific reminder of our own treatment of animals forcing them to do our bidding even if they actually want to and because of this emotional morality the doctor gets very angry amy for basically no reason i don't even remember doing it you did it that's what counts i find this moment very uncharacteristic i don't even know if it's supposed to be because he doesn't really get punished for being a dick i understand he would be absolutely sickened by what he has discovered and hate the human race for it but it's nothing new as i said planet of viewed big alien brain being tortured and the eud forced into slavery he didn't try and kick donor out of the tardis then so why would he kick amy out when she was forced to make an impossible decision on her literal first outing what was she expected to do she didn't decide for him she was overwhelmed with something she didn't know how to handle so him blaming her just feels wrong and he doesn't even get called out on it since the episode leaves it to amy to seemingly redeem herself however i do like the idea that he's in such an impossible position that he won't even call himself the doctor after this story really setting you on the weight of such a decision because it's that severe and significant and luckily for the doctor there's the power of children since amy has a convenient flashback realizing that star well saving the planet was because it didn't want children to cry how unbelievably mother of it yes this entire crisis is averted because amy remembers it doesn't eat children so somehow that proves it's good even though it eats adults because this all doesn't feel cheap and pretentious at all it came because it couldn't stand to watch your children cry indeed luckily for everyone amy is right and she even gives this insufferably poetic mother speech culminating in this painfully forced line if you were that old and that kind and the very last of your kind get it it's like the doctor i really don't like this ending the narrative seemingly abandons its themes all of a sudden and the ending just happens again it's the typical muffler approach of style over substance it's the same as it ever was people talking a lot without saying anything this ending is meant to be some grand heroic moment of defiance but it feels hollow and rushed forming a very unsatisfying conclusion to a story that was trying to be really stark and illuminating with its political themes it just gives up by introducing a magical cop-out fourth wave very old and very kind and the very very last sound a bit familiar get it it's like the doctor it feels like moffatt wasn't sure the audience would understand a thematic link so he beats you over the head of it like he's a caveman whose cave painting you defiled it's so heavy-handed and frustrating and don't forget the tactile poem in the final shot morpher once again passing himself on the back for being so clever and thought-provoking here's steven have this medal for your genius writing oh thanks steven you should get one too you are so clever funnily enough i was originally considering making this video a defendant despised since i remembered the beast below being underrated and unfairly hasted however re-watching it now was a horrible experience it felt like an absolute chore to sit through it's full of moffat trying to be clever and show off at the expense of the narrative itself there's a lot of patronizing dialogue as the script tries to be sherlock in space but instead of being clever it just walks you through things you already know the pacing is dreadful feeling really rushed at the end suddenly wrapping things up whilst leaving a lot of things hanging it pulls its punches when it comes to action and excitement so these moments feel wasted and pointless because it doesn't commit to being a very ponderous character-oriented episode the political commentary is brilliant on paper and creates a great framework for the episode but the details in the actual execution don't do it justice so it flounders and peters out with a disappointing solution even though it isn't the beast below feels like a davis era episode awkwardly recycled for the smith era so it doesn't fit in with the stories around it one of the only overtly political narratives in the entire smith rom but it lacks the slickness and thematic weight these kinds of stories had in that previous era it's simply style over substance and despite being one of the shortest episodes in all of new who it feels extremely padded and ends up very forgettable as a result i would probably give the beast below a low d ranking on a series 5 tier list and that's only because i'm feeling generous i know a lot of people been coming around in the episode and now consider it underrated but i just find it so disappointing squandering so many good concepts like the fantastic starship uk setting the villains are weak and badly handled with their characters weirdly written and it's all capped off with some absolutely insufferable moffat moments so i won't be rewatching it anytime soon and i wouldn't recommend you do either and i'd like to give an extra special thank you to my platinum level patron fallon cortez and all my gold level patrons alex marston calvin daniel shilito france horne ak line vortex george hernan verzog and stephan never miller thank you so much for your support

Channel: Harbo Wholmes

Views: 43,469

Keywords: harbo wholmes, doctor who, harbo wholmes doctor who, doctor who season 5, doctor who series 12, doctor who 2005 series, doctor who 2010 series, dr who, doctor who series 5, doctor who best endings, doctor who regeneration, doctor who matt smith, eleventh doctor, karen gillan, doctor who amy, amy pond, eleventh hour, Doctor Who S05E02, doctor who beast below, doctor who 1984, doctor who space whale, doctor who starship uk, doctor who moffat, steven moffat

Id: dlGR6Vv67Qc

Length: 18min 39sec (1119 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 07 2021