TV Review | Doctor Who: “The Star Beast” by Rusell T Davies

It feels as if somebody has just flicked a switch and restored Doctor Who to the heights of its golden age – which, of course, they have.

Like Manchester United after Sir Alex Ferguson’s departure, Doctor Who has struggled for consistency ever since Russell T Davies stepped down as showrunner at The End of Time. Both Steven Moffat and Chris Chibnall’s stewardships delivered some incredible highs, but neither of Davies’ successors managed to deliver the relentless, consistent quality and sheer presence of the revived series’ first four seasons. This resulted in a gradual erosion of the show’s profile, funding, and ultimately its success. Companion show Doctor Who Confidential fell by the wayside after Matt Smith’s second year, Peter Capaldi’s tenure saw the annual episode count drop along with the show’s ratings, and the “traditional” Christmas special – the same special that was often the centrepiece of BBC One’s Christmas Day, spawning many a festive Radio Times cover – was quietly abolished when Jodie Whittaker took over the TARDIS.

Yet, just as he did in 2005, Davies has managed to update and rebrand Doctor Who for a contemporary, telly-aerial-lite audience. No longer the exclusive preserve of Saturday tea-times, Davies’ new-new-Who is custom-built for streaming and complemented by an unassailable back catalogue of content that’s now available to those of us in the UK at the touch of a button. With Bad Wolf, Davies’ own production company, now producing the show alongside BBC Studios for the BBC in the UK and Disney+ overseas, Doctor Who now possesses the lavish “event” feel that we have come to associate with Disney+’s many Marvel Studios and Star Wars properties, right down to the Whoniverse signature that precedes each new episode.

A 4K HDR picture is no longer an iPlayer technical experiment or a rare treat - it’s the show’s new standard, and we are not left wanting for bonus material the likes of Marvel Studios Assembled or Disney Gallery: The Mandalorian. A new episode of Doctor Who Unleashed, seemingly 2023’s answer to both Confidential and Totally Doctor Who, accompanies every broadcast episode, even the Children in Need skit. In-vision commentaries featuring notable members of the cast and crew are no longer reserved for the disc-buying minority – they are available within a couple of days of each episode dropping on iPlayer as part of the service’s ever-expanding and almost exhaustive Whoniverse. Doctor Who hasn’t just caught up to 2023, it’s paving the way to the future; an example, still, but now a good one.

Not a perfect one, mind. There’s still a way to go – iPlayer’s curation of almost every Doctor Who episode ever leaves much to be desired, with the recently-added colourisation of The Daleks seemingly (and somewhat ironically, giving the series’ many wiped episodes) overwriting An Unearthly Child at the start of Season 1, for instance. However, what really let “The Star Beast” down was watching it in all of its 2160p HDR glory... and lossy two-channel audio. There is no obvious technical, practical or legal reason that prevents the BBC adding multi-channel audio to iPlayer – it’s just about the only major streaming service without it. Watching a modern UHD show in stereo is the equivalent of watching an episode of ’80s Who without sound and with someone sat in the room playing a piano. Disney+ subscribers abroad will no doubt get the DTS-HD 5.1 Master Audio (or Dolby equivalent, as Disney+ seems to favour) treatment that we’ll all have to wait for a physical release for, but it’s hard to whinge too much when iPlayer is basically free (yes, I know, a British TV licence costs roughly twice as much as a Disney+ subscription, but having one is more legal requirement than optional subscription).

It’s also akin to cheating that “The Star Beast”, and indeed this whole run of specials, is built on the success of new Who’s finest season and the Whoniverse’s greatest-ever Doctor and companion – not that we care. It’s a testament to Davies’ genius that he identified the need for a tried-and-tested team to galvanise his newly-minted Whoniverse and celebrate the show’s diamond anniversary, and David Tennant and Catherine Test do not let him down. Armed with Davies’ heart-warming and humorous dialogue, both actors clearly relished the opportunity to reprise the Doctor-Donna, dazzling throughout.

A criticism often aimed at Chris Chibnall’s era was that it was either “too woke” or, perhaps a little more justifiably, sometimes “woke at the expense of substance”, but RTD’s script for “The Star Beast” weaves current issues seamlessly into the fabric of its plot and, ingeniously, even uses them to resolve what, fifteen years ago, seemed unsolvable. That it does so whilst simultaneously restoring domesticity to its rightful place at the heart of the show and laying the foundations for a third UNIT era – and, no doubt, another Big Finish spin-off range of UNIT audio dramas... – again speaks to Davies’ talents as not just a writer but also rightful Master of the Whoniverse.

 

However, though “The Star Beast” is indubitably the very model of a Russell T Davies script, its inspiration and even its title are a Pat Mills (Dead London, The Scapegoat) comic strip of the same name first published in the pages of Doctor Who Weekly (now Doctor Who Magazine) in 1980 and immortalised by Big Finish Productions in 2019 when they had Alan Barnes adapt it into a full-cast audio drama. RTD deserves the credit, though, for choosing a villain capable of satisfying even the most hardened of fans’ nostalgic cravings while still entertaining casual viewers. Chances are, if you’ve heard of one Doctor Who comic-book villain, then it’s Beep the Meep, and it’s because everyone gets – and everyone loves – the ludicrous idea that one of the Whoniverse’s cutest creatures is also one of its most vicious. Miriam Margolyes (Blackadder) gives an absolute worldie of a vocal performance as the Meep – no pronouns for the Meep, just the definite article – whose core story stays faithful to that first illustrated in black and white by Dave Gibbons (Watchmen) more than forty years ago.

There is also something fitting about using a comic strip as the launching pad for the second coming of Russell T Davies as, particularly with hindsight, his first run on the show was typified by its larger-than-life, bombastic tone - a quality that returns full force here thanks to the colourful direction of Rachel Talalay (Sherlock, The Flash) and particularly Murray Gold’s resurgent score.

Like all good openers, “The Star Beast” begs more questions than it answers, and it does so whilst telling a fast-paced and solid science-fiction story couched in all the heart and all the humour that made Doctor Who the household sensation that it was fifteen years ago – and will now be again.

“The Star Beast” is available to stream in the UK on BBC iPlayer and overseas on Disney+. You can also watch the episode on iPlayer with an in-vision commentary. 

A Target novelisation of the episode is now available to pre-order from all good booksellers and Amazon.

The original Doctor Who and the Star Beast comic strip is collected in Panini’s Doctor Who: The Fourth Doctor Anthology. Today’s cheapest online retailer in the UK is Amazon who have it listed for £23.89.

Alan Barnes’ full-cast audio adaptation of Doctor Who and the Star Beast is available to download from Big Finish Productions for £24.99 as part of Doctor Who: The Comic Strip Adaptations – Volume One.

TV Review | Doctor Who: "Destination: Skaro" [2023 Children in Need Special] by Russell T Davies

Russell T Davies has been back at the helm of the TARDIS for five minutes (well, 4:54, to be precise) and already the show is bursting with the heart, humour and intrigue that defined his original tenure. The show’s 2023 Children in Need special, untitled on screen but widely referred to as “Destination: Skaro” in various social media posts, serves as a delectable entrée to the three-course meal of specials that are about to be served up.

Paying homage to the fan-favourite 1975 serial Genesis of the Daleks, “Destination: Skaro” sees David Tennant’s new Doctor crash-land on Skaro some time prior to Tom Baker’s Doctor’s notorious meddling in the planet’s history, at a point when Davros’s prototype Mark III Travel Machine has just rolled off the production line. Davies’ wry script delights in poking fun at the ridiculousness of the Daleks’ anagrammatic nomenclature and infamous sink-plunger appendages, while also treating long-standing viewers to some unashamedly nostalgic Easter eggs such as Peter Miles’ reprising the role of Nyder from Genesis.

Tennant is instantly back to his exuberant best, almost literally bouncing off Mawaan Rizwan’s (Sex Education) confused Kaled scientist to superb comic effect. It is another Kaled scientist, though, that is the skit’s main talking point: Davros, soon-to-be creator of the Daleks. Whilst Big Finish audio dramas have explored Davros’s life prior to the incident that left him disfigured and disabled, all we have seen of that life on screen is the few moments from his childhood that formed part of Steven Moffat’s “The Magician’s Apprentice” / “The Witch’s Familiar” two-parter back in 2015. “Destination: Skaro”, inventively, gives Julian Bleach the opportunity to portray the megalomaniacal scientist - this time without the straitjacket of prosthetics. This, in of itself, makes this little charity special a real treat.

Like many viewers, my thoughts as I watched this minisode were simply that its events must have taken place prior to Davros’s life-changing injuries; however, those who tuned into the series’ new companion show, Doctor Who Unleashed, as I did, will have learned there was more to this than merely giving long-standing fans an illicit thrill. Keen to right a wrong that has persisted since the earliest days of theatre in which the disabled and/or disfigured are often portrayed as villains, Davies has taken the bold decision to no longer depict Davros as a “wheelchair user”. Whilst personally I have never heard anyone refer to the self-styled “Lord and Creator of the Daleks” as a wheelchair user – “Half-man, half-Dalek” seems to be the phrase ubiquitously thrown around by casual viewers, and, truth be told, by the late ’80s Davros wasn’t much more than a head – I have to admire the boldness of Davies’ conviction and, once again, his incredible vision for what Doctor Who can and should be.

That distinctive Davros silhouette, perhaps used most effectively in Davies’ own “The Stolen Earth” fifteen years ago, has been a cornerstone of the show’s mythology for almost fifty years, and as a result there won’t be many honest fans out there that won’t lament its loss going forward. However, most of us will readily admit that Davros’s disabilities have always been superficial – he was designed to be deliberately monstrous for no reasons other than tradition and cliché. Lance Parkin’s seminal twenty-year-old, eponymous audio play even went so far as to describe Davros’s injuries as being “the least of his problems”, or words to that effect, yet they have had a massive impact on how performers have been able to play him. With actors’ reduced to near immobility and unable to use anything but the most extreme of facial expressions, in the past the role of Davros has been almost entirely vocal. Terry Molloy in particular made an art of channelling everything through his voice, imbuing Davros with a distinctive brand of hysterical mania that, for decades, has been as defining as Darth Vader’s mechanical breath. Now, all of a sudden, Bleach has been given the opportunity to use all the tools at his disposal to take a fifty-year-old character somewhere new and potentially groundbreaking – and there’s nothing more Who than that.

Times change, and time can be rewritten. Doctor Who has reached the sixty-year mark because of its adaptability, not in spite of it. The series’ ability to stay relevant in an ever-changing world remains one of its core strengths. “Destination: Skaro” may ultimately prove to be nothing more than an interesting footnote on Davros’s Wikipedia page; a statement of intent from a returning showrunner. I hope, though, that it’s the shadow of many a wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey Skarosian adventure to come – adventures that could see the Doctor and Davros finally go toe-to-toe.

“Destination: Skaro” is available to stream on iPlayer, home of the entire Whoniverse. Well, nearly.

I, Davros and Doctor Who: Davros are available to download from Big Finish Productions for £12.99 and £2.99 respectively.