Posted in: BBC, Doctor Who, TV | Tagged: bbc, beep the meep, catherine tate, david tennant, doctor who, donna noble, neil patrick harris, russell t davies

Doctor Who 60th Anniversary Notes: Donna Noble, Beep the Meep & More

We didn't get a Doctor Who Christmas Special this year, but Russell T. Davies didn't leave us hanging. He gave us a proper trailer for the 60th Anniversary specials to start the hype in full swing. Let's break down the trailer a bit. Everyone else is.

Donna Noble is the Key

Let's see… we get London… we get Camden Market… and we get David Tennant back as the Doctor, of course. We get shots of Yasmin Finney as Rose. We get Donna Noble (Catherine Tate), lots of Donna Noble. Davies is putting it front and centre that Donna is the focus of the specials. She might be the bait in whatever the Big Bad has planned for The Doctor. This is not a standalone story. It references where The Doctor left Donna when she was last on the show: her memories of him and their time locked away lest they come back and kill her. We see the Doctor and Donna's mum Sylvia (Jacqueline King) failing to keep her from seeing him. Davies probably sees Donna's story as unfinished business for The Doctor, and this is a good reason to tie up that story before the show enters its new Disney+ era with Ncuti Gatwa as the Fifteenth Doctor.

U.N.I.T., Alien Invasion, Chaos

We get alien ships in London, what looks like U.N.I.T. troops firing guns, a robot-like alien soldier, and a shot Ruth Madeley, who possibly plays a U.N.I.T. officer. Madeley previously worked with Davies and appeared in his BBC-HBO Science Fiction drama about the dystopian near-future of the UK, Years and Years. Davies likes to work with the same actors over and over again, especially if they're really good. She was rumored to have been cast in the Specials when production first began.

Enter the Toymaker?

And we get a glimpse of Neil Patrick Harris as the Big Bad, the Toymaker. It seems Davies has removed "Celestial" from his original name, "The Celestial Toymaker," because, well, that word used to be a racial slur for Chinese immigrants to America and England in the 19th and early 20th Centuries. The Celestial Toymaker, the first reality-warping, immortal enemy of the Doctor's, only made one appearance on the show back in the 1960s and appeared in full yellowface wearing a Fu Manchu-esque Chinese Imperial court official's robe. The hardcore fans calling for the characters' return over the last 60 years have conveniently ignored how racist the character's original appearance was. This is assuming Harris is playing the Toymaker, and all the clues seem to be in place. It's not even a secret or much of a spoiler anymore.

But the biggest surprise – already rumoured for months – is the live-action appearance of Beep the Meep.

Doctor Who: Who is Beep the Meep?

Beep the Meep is a character originally introduced in the Doctor Who comic strip that was published by Marvel UK in 1980 in "Doctor Who and the Star Beast," written by Pat Mills and John Wagner and drawn by Dave Gibbons. That's right, Beep was created by the creators of Judge Dredd, the co-creator and artist of Watchmen. The Meeps were a previously peaceful species that became aggressive, expansionist invaders after getting influenced by black sun radiation. Beep was an advance guard that tried to mind-control humans until the Fourth Doctor (Tom Baker as drawn by Gibbons) defeated it and had it arrested by a galactic authority. He appeared again in the comics in the 1990s to menace the 7th (Sylvester McCoy) and 8th Doctors (Paul McGann) and is still out there somewhere. Hardcore fans have an ongoing affection for him, but none of them expected him to appear in the actual show. Leave it to a hardcore fan like Davies to bring him out.

Beep was a cute lil' furball who was also mean and sadistic to contrast with his appearance – that's just how 2000AD comics writers roll, guys. Beep appears to have arrived on Earth to bring a warning of an impending invasion, and his interactions in the trailer seem to be with Rose. Perhaps Beep is up to his old tricks: pretending to be cute and on the good guys' side to trick them into trusting him so he can do something evil while being a cute furball. Meep is probably the villain in the first special.

There's another sound reason for Davies to bring Beep forth to the TV series: TOY SALES! Once this show hits Disney+ worldwide for the kids, you gotta get the merchandising ready for the shops next Christmas, after all.

Doctor Who: Of Course, The Fifteenth Doctor Shows Up!

Once again, we get the Fifteenth Doctor (Ncuti Gatwa) at the end of the trailer, seemingly trapped in a kind of limbo, waiting to fully manifest. Davies wants to remind us that Tennant is not back permanently. He will be passing the torch to Gatwa, who will presumably have his first proper episode in a Christmas special in December 2023 after the three anniversary specials air in November. It feels like these specials might be the last hurrah for the show that began in 2005 before a new era and possibly feel beings next year with Disney-level budgets and access to bigger stories, bigger FX, and more American stars.

Now we only have eleven months to wait for the first specials to drop.

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