The Beast Below

Stephen Moffat’s second episode of the series owed a large debt to the Russel T Davies style of storytelling and perhaps suffered for it. Here was a world based loosely on ours but with a significant twist, a heavy dose of modern parallel, followed by a choice and a heroic solution that leaves no one hurt. However there was a sharpness and a quality here that was missing from RTD’s usual episodes. The dialogue snapped and there were better laughs, side characters were well developed, the world was better realised than any I can remember from the RTD era.

Starship UK

Modelled on a rundown Seaside resort, the boulevards of Starship UK, covered in bunting and the kind of union jack laden miscellanea eagerly snapped up by modern day tourists, pines for the comforts of old cruelly destroyed in the fires of the sun. Its enforcers, the Winders and Smilers are equally nostalgic. Smilers evoke the amusements that delighted Victorian sun seekers, whilst Winders recall the heights of Tudor England’s terror. Cycles and hand wound devices are the order of the day, adding a delightfully steam punk esque look to the episode. There is much left to be seen of the starship and I imagine it will be revisited, something I look forward to.

Liz Ten

Starship UK’s enigmatic leader is a touch of sillyness at the heart of a serious story about choice and the value of life. The reveal of her character is the height of writer’s wish fulfilment, a black cockney queen, magic. She believes she is a benevolent leader, a saviour for her people, but ultimately she is revealed as the creator of the demonic police state. This reveal is at the heart of the episode and it adds a tremendous weight to her character, and demonstrates Moffat’s penchant for playing with perceptions of time. Liz Ten is a fun character but adds to the sheer ridiculousness of the plot, thus detracting from the drama of the episode. There is clamour for more episodes featuring her, I’m not sure I agree but it is nice to have a three hundred year old queen not played by John Barrowman.

The Voting Booth

By some distance the best sequence of the episode, Amy Pond faces a terrible choice and proves herself unable to see past the myopia of her humanity. The choice is a wonderful invention, an uncomfortable question that probes at your psyche, to forget and continue your life or to protest and end your nation. Amy’s message sets up a beautiful conflict for the episode that is never fully played out but plants a seed of doubt in the Doctor’s mind about how much his new companion can be trusted. She has already chosen humanity over an alien once, and tried to prevent the Doctor from making the same choice. The part of the video that is shown layers intrigue on the plot and opens the reveal up to any number of possible solutions.

The Doctor and Amy

This is, as tradition dictates, the companion’s story. She goes from wonder, to intrigued, to direct conflict with the Doctor. If the first episode hinted, this episode states it, this is damaged companion. She is untrusting, distracted and on the run. Her investigative personality is a natural fit with the Doctor and is shared with nearly all her predecessors but her anti authoritarian streak is a mile wild. She ignores the Doctor’s instructions by not asking Mandy about the Smilers, then Mandy’s by investigating the “hole”, then everyone’s by hitting the abdicate button. By the end the Doctor and Amy are closer, a partnership but there is little Amy reveals that companions haven’t previously. Perhaps this is just the Doctor remembering why he has companions.

The Doctor himself is angrier than before and noticeably more anti-human. Carrying on from his disparaging comments about video phones last episode now the Doctor unleashes his anger at Liz Ten and Amy. It is enough to honestly believe that if the Doctor drops Amy now he may never take another human. What strikes this episode and this doctor out as different is the speed at which he works out what is going on. He knows well beyond his anger bubbles over, and it is the slow burn of his rage that makes it interesting. Also to note is the further sexual development of the Doctor where it is stated even more obviously than previously that he slept with Elizabeth I.

Other notables:

Magpie Electricals, just a throwaway, or a hint at the damage wrought by the cracks in the universe?
The crack in the starship at the end of the episode. Obvious but not overwhelming, this year’s arc.

Best line: The Doctor, “This isn’t going to be big on dignity.”