Well, after a build up of not weeks or months but literally years we get the first new episodes of Doctor Who under the stewardship of the returning Russell T Davies.
After 4 specials in 2023, we get the first episodes of a new season of Doctor Who from RTD and his new stars Ncuti Gatwa and Millie Gibson.
Are we relieved? Ecstatic? Confused? Worried?
We'll dive in after the break with this double-decker edition of Doctor Who Is NEW!
Caution: there will be spoilers.
So the Doctor and Ruby Sunday encounter babies!
In SPACE!!
....
(cracks knuckles)
Well, my work here is done!
'Bye, everybody!
OK, OK, OK!
Maybe a little bit more detail....??
The Doctor takes Ruby on her first TARDIS trip to....
Wyoming!
Millions of the years in the past when dinosaurs roamed the Earth!!!
Ruby steps on a butterfly, fucks up history, the Doctor saves the butterfly, restores history and remembers to turn on the butterfly compensator in the TARDIS.
But that is just our opener.
Forward in time to the year 21506!
The Doctor and Ruby arrive at a space station that functions as a baby farm. It is also, curiously, managed by several babies. Babies who are six years old, but still have the bodies of babies and very advanced strollers to carry them around.
There's also a monster on the lower deck, a Bogeyman who scares the babies and also the Doctor.
In case you're wondering why there are babies running a baby farm, the government that runs the farm decrees that babies gestating in their various test tubes MUST be born but that same government also decrees there is no money to actually run the baby farm and take care of those babies.
Did everybody get that? Is RTD being too subtle?
Never mind the threatening Bogeyman, there is the matter that space station baby farm has limited food and air. All the babies are doomed! Unless the Doctor can make the station not stationary and move it towards a more benign planet that will take care of the cosmic tots.
Thankfully the baby farm's version of a diaper genie has 6 years of poopie diapers building up sufficient methane to propel the station through space.
The space station is propelled through space to deliver the space babies to safety thanks to a gigantic space fart.
Well, that is... new.
Keep it classy, Russell!
There is a scene in "Space Babies" that echoes one from “The End of the World" featuring the 9th Doctor and Rose Tyler.
Ruby and The Doctor gaze upon the beauty of space and Ruby marvels that humanity makes it to the stars. And like the 9th Doctor did for Rose, the 15th Doctor sonics Ruby's cell phone so she can reach across time and space to check in on her mother.
Those points aside, "Space Babies" is very much it's own thing and Ncuti Gatwa and Millie Gibson have a fresh spin on the Doctor/companion dynamic.
Take a breather. We're back with the 2nd episode for this week's Doctor Who Is NEW!
Next up we have "The Devil's Chord" as the Doctor and Ruby visit 1963 to meet the Beatles on to find a malevolent being is stealing music from the world. That being is the Maestro (Jinkx Monsoon), a cosmic being who is to music what the Toymaker is to fun and games.
Jinkx Monsoon is a veritable FORCE, devouring every scene like it's a honey baked pineapple glazed Easter ham. The Maestro make an indelible impact on the Doctor Who mythos thanks the uniquely powerful and outrageous performance of Jinkx Monsoon.
If this seems too similar in tone to the Toymaker's appearance in "The Giggle", well that is intentional, it seems as the Maestro is the progeny of the Toymaker. They are part of a Pantheon of cosmic trickster gods that Russell is building to bedevil the Doctor, all in service to a mysterious "the One Who Waits".
But "The Devil's Chord" does seem less of a coherent story and more of a sequence of increasingly absurd acts of chaos. Since the Maestro wants to steal music from the world just to watch the world burn, there's a lack of narrative cohesion.
In a call back to the classic series "Pyramids of Mars", Ruby points out that the Maestro could not have destroyed the world in 1963 since she is from the future and the world is not destroyed. The Doctor arranges a short hop to Ruby's present (June 2024) and oh look, the world is destroyed.
Side note: it seems 6 months have passed between "Space Babies" and "The Devil's Chord".
For an episode billed as "Doctor Who Meets the Beatles", the Fab Four are little more than an ancillary prop to the proceedings. And it seems Disney+ money is not enough to secure the rights to use even a small part of one Beatles song.
The episode ends with a big musical number that features the cast dancing through the Abbey Road sets, delighted at the return of music. I suppose the Maestro's cosmic influence was still in effect or something.
Or Russell said "What the hell, let's have a musical number" and that is all there is to say about that.
RTD's version of Doctor Who is leaning more on the absurd and the silly, a camp science fantasy perspective as opposed to a more serious science fiction view point. I am not quite sure how I feel about that approach but I can honestly say I am not bored and I trust Russell enough to see how this plays out.
And I will say that Ncuti Gatwa and Millie Gibson have lived up to the ridiculous levels of hype and expectation and I am enjoying their turns as the Doctor and Ruby.
This Friday another new episode drops on Disney+ and I will be back on the following Monday with another Doctor Who Is NEW!
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