Posted in: BBC, Disney+, Doctor Who, Review, TV | Tagged: bbc, beatles, disney, doctor who, jinkx monsoon, Millie Gibson, Ncuti Gatwa, russell t davies, Space Babies

Doctor Who Return Kicks Off Disney Era with Gleeful Insanity: Review

REVIEW: The BBC/Disney+ era of Doctor Who kicks off with two episodes that crank up heart, humor & sense of adventure to 100 and never let go.

Doctor Who is back this week, a new "Season One" streaming worldwide to attract first-time viewers who don't have to worry about sixty-one years of past seasons to catch up. Russell T. Davies is back as showrunner for a new era and both the BBC and Disney+ are premiering the first two episodes as a taste of what's to come. This is a SPOILER-FREE review/overview of the first two episodes of the new series, so you can read this before you watch them without worry. We'll write about the episodes in more detail after they premiere on the BBC in the UK.

Doctor Who – Now More Than Ever!

Every first episode of Doctor Who with a new Doctor and companion is practically a new show – and this time, it's both new and old again… and cranked up to 100. The first episode of the modern era of the series, "Rose," premiered nearly twenty years ago, and Davies knows it's a very different time now where streaming has changed the TV viewing landscape. He has to do everything he can to keep viewers interested – and man, does he hit the ground running, more than any other TV show premiere we've seen in quite some time. The first five minutes alone of the premiere are a mad but coherent dash to let first-time viewers know exactly who these characters are and what the show is, full of gags and establishing Ncuti Gatwa and Millie Gibson's chemistry. If you liked them in the Christmas Special (which is the real new first episode of the series, a soft launch, as it were), "Space Babies" is designed to make you fall in love with them. It really cranks up their chemistry, their sheer charisma, their ability to play comedy and off each other, and how they can play the script's notes from joy to comedy to sadness instantly.

"Space Babies"

Space Babies is utterly hysterical. It's possibly the most insane thing Davies ever wrote in his entire career, never mind Doctor Who. Yes, it features babies in space. You'd have to be completely heartless not to find babies cute. You could just "awwwwww" to death just watching this episode. And it's hysterically funny. It's as if Davies is saying, "You think going Disney is going to make us go all cute and gooey and sentimental? Yes, sure… BUT!" Then things get really, really crazy while still making perfect sense. It ties together all the themes of the Doctor and Ruby's story in a wild combination of goofy cuteness, surreal humour, and heartache at the same time, along with Davies' penchant for barbed social and political commentary.

It feels like Davies' way of taking Disney's notes to create a US TV pilot and then amping it up right from the start – and then it gets crazier and crazier as it goes along that you start to wonder if you're hallucinating. It's like a "Screenwriting 101" lesson on meth. As for the episode's "big bad" in "Space Babies, " we have quite possibly the grossest monster in the entire history of Doctor Who. You might have heard of "Save the Cat" – it's Hollywood screenwriting slang for "showing the hero saving someone or an animal to prove they're sympathetic and likable." All of "Space Babies" is "Save the Cat" – dialed up to eleven.

You feel like if Davies starts out the new season of Doctor Who this crazy, he's totally planned to top it by the finale – and he's already setting a very, very high bar.

"The Devil's Chord"

Disney quite rightly sent over a list of things not to spoil for pre-broadcast reviews of the first two episodes of Doctor Who, and I can say here that beyond "The Doctor and Ruby go back to 1964 to meet the Beatles",  saying literally anything else about this episode would be a spoiler! So I'm not going to tell you anything about the story other than that it's no less crazy or intense than "Space Babies" but a bit more serious and darker. Davies might be channeling Ryan Murphy's American Horror Story in casting Jinkx Monsoon as The Maestro, the villain of this story. I say this because Monsoon is loads of fun to watch, camp as tents, flamingly extravagant, and also utterly menacing like one of the evils in Murphy's series.

Both premiere episodes of the new series display Davies' talent for switching between wacky comedy and heartbreak, and promises the rest of the season will escalate that intensity.

Doctor Who streams Friday, May 10 at 7:00 p.m. ET on Disney+ where available and simultaneously on May 11 at midnight on BBC iPlayer in the U.K. New episodes debut weekly – and be on the lookout for our spoiler-filled reviews this weekend.

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