Doctor Whom?
Russell T. Davies is the best friend Chris Chibnall ever had.
No one else could have saved Chibnall’s reputation but Davies has done it.
He actually made Doctor Who worse.
Davies has a long track record for consistently delivering good, solid writing but the Doctor Who 60th Anniversary Special was so bad it’s up there with BBC’s The Watch.
The fandom is standing in stunned disbelief at the magnitude of the disaster.
How could this happen?
Oh…
A joint production of the BBC and Disney. Yeah, that mega combo punch of artistic fail could manage it. Although they had to dig deep to do it.
On December 6, 1989 Peter Cregeen the BBC Director of Series had had enough. Doctor Who’s budget had been going up and up but the audience was staying static. His own boss Jonathon Powell clearly loathed Doctor Who’s showrunner John Nathan-Turner. The sales to America were also static and it was only to the Public Television Network so that wasn’t exactly a fountain of money. The American cable market might have turned things around but it wouldn’t exist for another four years.
He knew the fans would scream but science fiction weirdos always did that rather than settle down and watch a good police procedural like the kind Cregeen loved to make. Still, they would scream a LOT, and the English are extremely sensitive about throwing away anything that has been around for more than a couple of years. So, instead of openly announcing a cancelation, the press release said that Doctor Who was going on a temporary hiatus. The cast knew what that meant, updated their resumes, and started looking for new work. The fans knew what it meant too and began a Bring Back Doctor Who campaign.
The BBC figured it could ride that one out. They figured wrong. Doctor Who’s fans never gave up. Creegen and Powell were shown the door a couple of years later for having greenlit some expensive flops, this was about the time that sales to the now extent American cable market took off. The British fandom never let up on the steady pressure and the American market began to get hungry for more. The Fox network thought there might be something there and launched the disastrous, Americanized pilot movie. It was bad but it was new Who and the Doctor’s fans clearly weren’t quitting.
By the early 2000s the BBC had felt compelled to make a day of Doctor Who’s 40th anniversary, to include new content by future showrunner Steven Moffat.
A revival had clearly moved from if to when.
And in 2005 “Rose” the first Doctor Who episode in sixteen years went on the air. All because Doctor Who’s fans never gave up.
Last Saturday night, they finally gave up.
Doctor Who’s 60th anniversary special, The Star Beast was a deliberate slap in the face to the Doctor fandom. The people that had kept the flame alive during Doctor Who’s wilderness years were thoroughly shit upon for not being down with The Message. Just to add salt to the wounds, the guy that did it was the man that the Who fandom had pinned all of their hopes on. Russel T. Davies was the showrunner during the Doctor Who revival’s superb first six seasons. Surely, he could put the show back on track after five disastrous years of Chris Chibnall.
But something has happened to him. Maybe it was his age, maybe it was the protracted death by brain cancer of his partner. Given his age and preferences, maybe he has somebody new in his life who is way too young for him and extremely politically active, (my money’s on that one). Whatever the reason the result speaks for itself.
The episode opened with Tennent’s Doctor and Donna Noble speaking directly to the camera, filling in the potentially new audience members on Donna’s dilemma, she has a copy of The Doctor’s mind implanted in hers and it’s too powerful for a human brain to contain. He locked it away as well as all memories of himself, and if she ever remembers her adventures, she’ll die. Donna goes on about how her life is great to include her… sigh… “BEEEEEEWWWTIFUL daughter.“
It is the first of many times we will hear about “BEEEEEEWWWTIFUL” Rose is. Catherine Tate drags it out like that every time. Apparently, if you take enough time saying the word ‘beautiful,’ then the audience is required to believe it. I mean, just look at it.
Look at it!
LOOK AT IT, I HAD TO!!!
After some fairly expensive new credits the Doctor arrives in London around Christmas and as fate or weak contrivance would have it, the first person he runs into is Donna. Then a spaceship makes a hard landing, as they do.
Everyone in London is shocked to see a spaceship and as I’ve said before I don’t know why, because Earth in that timeline has been repeatedly invaded, usually around Christmas.
When Arianna Grande started singing All I Want For Christmas is You on the radio again, UNIT went on high alert. Good for them! I’d have it marked on my calendar too. “No Christmas leave will be granted. It’s Thanksgiving or nothing Marines.”
UNIT was on the scene immediately, even if they had been wiped out a few seasons ago. The Doctor grabs a cab ride with Donna’s husband. Fate was apparently determined to keep the Doctor in Donna’s orbit no matter how narratively heavy-handed it looks. Donna’s husband happily burbles about how honored he was that his wife wouldn’t take his name. Or for that matter his “daughter.” Xhe insists on being called “Rose Noble.” I rolled my eyes at that, although in truth if my son had been that fucked up I wouldn’t have let him use my name either. Donna’s Husband is clearly delighted with his doormat existence, he couldn’t be prouder of the fact that his life is completely in the shitter by any objective standard and he lives about as cucked an existence as you can get. He thinks it’s just silly “What are you gonna do? That’s my Donna” Kind of thing, that his wife gave away the entire lottery win of 160 million that the Doctor had provided them.
The Doctor sneaks around the landing site but is immediately found by UNIT’s newest Science Advisor. She is in a wheelchair and has the kind of smirk that screams, “I adore the smell of my own farts.” She spends a few moments talking down to the guy who has saved the human race on more occasions than she’s had birthdays.
Then she shoos him off because a disabled woman is in charge of his old job now so the situation is in much better hands than it ever could have been when he had her job.
Donna and Rose are walking home. Rose gets called by her deadname by some actual boys, this is the worst profanity in all the universe and Donna spends several minutes assuring Rose he’s BEEEEEEWWWTIFUL and validating her kids’ life choices a-n-d wait a minute… Donna Noble left the show in 2009. So, her kid is no older than fourteen… and is fully transitioned???
Donna’s Husband, let us talk for a second. You clearly disappointed your wife. Women who marry black men have certain expectations that you obviously didn’t deliver on. She’s been punishing you ever since. But you can still do the one thing everyone including her was expecting from the start. Take off. Just go out for a pack of smokes and never come back. No man on Earth would blame you.
Rose goes to xer shack in back of the house and finds an adorably cute alien hiding out. This is “The Meep.’
The Meep tells her it’s tale of woe, its species has been hunted to extinction for its gorgeous fur and The Meep is the last of its kind.
Flying bug aliens attack. Given the amount of money Disney was pumping into this thing, the cheapness of their appearance may have been a deliberate choice. I kind of approve it if that was the case. More likely it was incompetence but I’d like to pretend I saw something good.
The bug-things are hunting The Meep. The Doctor helps Donna’s family escape, although her mother knows what the deal is and wants him gone before Donna comes down with a fatal case of total recall.
Now the episode becomes just obnoxious.
The Doctor refers to the Meep as him, and Rose sharply rebukes him for assuming the alien’s pronouns. He immediately assumes an apologetic beta male posture and humbly requests the critter’s pronouns.
The bug-things attack again and The Doctor realizes that he has been fooled by appearances. The bugs are using non-lethal methods to try to capture The Meep. Although, if I were an alien furrier trying to catch a critically endangered animal for presumably cloning purposes, I wouldn’t want to blow it up either.
Regardless, The Meep is totally evil as turns out. It heads back to its spaceship where the mind-enslaved white male members of UNIT have been repairing The Meep’s ship. Luckily the Sikh Lieutenant is still in the fight because although he is male, he is not-white and so far as Londoners like Davies is concerned, he is nearly a Muslim even if a Sikh would be enraged by that.
The UNIT scientist was also in the fight. Her wheelchair had secret weapons built into it. There is too much other dumb stuff going on to object to that. Besides UNIT started life as a 1960s fictional spy organization, even if they were all in uniform, so the Q-branch wheelchair is kind of acceptable.
Skipping ahead, the Doctor is trying to shut down the Meep’s rocket before it destroys London. (Come on The Meep, you can do it. Actual England is rooting for you.) Donna came running after him for reasons. Reasons to never be provided. They are separated by contrivance and The Doctor has no choice but to unlock Donna’s memories. Donna is fine with dying if she can save her family, (granted it’s the choice I’d make too).
Donna shuts down the rocket and then dies.
Briefly.
Donna’s BEEEEEEWWWTIFUL daughter saves her because while the Doctor’s mind was too vast to be contained by a single human brain, two are enough. Meaning either the Doctor’s mind isn’t all that vast or Donna simply isn’t very bright. Either one is possible.
Regardless, the Doctor is still concerned because it will still kill both of them. Just slower.
Now we come to the truly special part of this episode. The duologue that made the Doctor Who fandom feel like Davies had put Chris Chibnall’s trainwreck back on the tracks only to run it into the cliffface a second time and even harder.
You may have already seen it but if you haven’t take a muscle relaxant first because cringe is so powerful you are likely to tear your butthole.
Donna: Yes, we know.
Rose: We know everything.
Donna: And you know nothing. A shame you’re not still a woman because she would have understood.
Rose: You’ve got all that power but there is a way to get rid of it. Something a male presenting Timelord would never understand.
Donna Just. Let. It. Go.
Rose: And we choose to let it go.
Then Donna and her BEEEEEEWWWTIFUL hulking daughter hold hands and glow for a couple of seconds. Thus saving themselves.
It’s not just that this is a travesty. I mean it is of course. The tragedy of the Donna was some fantastic storytelling. A woman who had never accomplished anything of note before the Doctor entered her life had helped countless worlds and even the universe itself and she had to go back to being nothing without any memory at all of life’s greatest achievements.
This great little tragedy was undone in a bit of godawful, club-handed bit of writing that felt like it came from a junior college’s social justice creative writing round table.
But what makes this an exceptional travesty is that Russel T. Davies wrote both of these episodes. There is a reason that Shakespeare never wrote a sequel where it turned out Juliet woke up in time. He plowed under some of his best writing and he did it to deliver a diatribe to the fans of Doctor Who that had walked away when the show turned into an unwatchable firehose of political cant be sprayed right into the audience’s eyes.
Also, how the fuck did Donna know that the Doctor had been a woman?
Doctor Who has been lefty since forever ago but before 2016 it was humanist in nature. It was trying to change your mind by showing you the error of your ways. But from Bill the black lesbian onward Doctor Who has been a struggle session.
Was there anything at all I liked? Yeah, a couple. When Donna got her memory back she immediately started screaming at the Doctor because she gave away all her money. That worked. The retro-interior of the Tardis was nice but since that rug has been pulled out from under us, it doesn’t matter.
This new season has the same problem the last three had. Rose isn’t a character, xhe’s a political persona defined by nothing more than xer sexuality. The voices in your head aren’t real Rose and you’re not beautiful.
The only thing that has been keeping Doctor Who going for the past few years was money from American streaming sales. When Warner Brothers’ money ran out it looked like it was over. But Mickey the Great and Terrible rode to the rescue. There is no way in hell a company as ideologically captured as Disney was going to let the wokest thing on television sink without a lifeline.
I had managed my expectations going into this show. I thought it was going to be a heap of shit and it couldn’t even manage that. A heap of shit was just too ambitious a goal for a collaboration between Disney and the BBC.
I want to give this my Avoid Like the Plague rating but I’m going to have to watch all three of the Tennent Specials for that.
Fine, I can hold my nose that long.
In conclusion, I will quote the BBC’s own freaking review of their own show.
“This special is preachy and by the end is nothing but a delivery system for The Message.”
