\n<\/p>\n
Russell T Davies, the showrunner for the new season of \u201cDoctor Who,\u201d had a tough task ahead of him.<\/p>\n
How do you convince longstanding fans that this British institution of a show is back in safe hands after several disappointing seasons, while also introducing a new international audience to a sci-fi series steeped in 60 years of history?<\/p>\n
In the premiere double bill of \u201cDoctor Who,\u201d you can feel Davies grappling with these questions, with largely successful results. After the show was canceled in 1989, Davies rebooted \u201cDoctor Who\u201d in 2005, manning the ship during Christopher Eccleston and David Tennant\u2019s tenures as the time-traveling Doctor. Under Davies, \u201cDoctor Who\u201d was not only popular, but, dare I say it, kind of cool.<\/p>\n
We met Davies\u2019s new Doctor, played by the Scottish-Rwandan actor Ncuti Gatwa, last year in the show\u2019s 60th anniversary episodes (and somewhat confusingly, this new season\u2019s first episode aired as a stand-alone Christmas special). This is also the first season to debut on Disney+ in the United States, and since the rules governing time and space in the \u201cWhoniverse\u201d are notoriously complicated, there\u2019s a lot of world building to do in less than two hours of TV.<\/p>\n
Typically, a \u201cDoctor Who\u201d two-parter would feature a shared story or location, but here we have two separate adventures. The first episode, \u201cSpace Babies,\u201d does much of the heavy lifting to set up the season, so that by the time \u201cThe Devil\u2019s Chord\u201d rolls around, \u201cDoctor Who\u201d can do what it does best: take the audience on rip-roaring, high-voltage adventures.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\u201cSpace Babies\u201d picks up where the Christmas episode, \u201cThe Church on Ruby Road,\u201d left off. The Doctor\u2019s new companion Ruby Sunday (Millie Gibson) enters the TARDIS, his spaceship disguised as a police box, with lots of questions about where he comes from. It\u2019s the Doctor\u2019s job to take her, and any first-time viewers, through the basic Time Lord fact sheet: He comes from the planet Gallifrey and is the last of his species, an orphan like Ruby; he has been alive for thousands of years; and he spends his time traveling through time and space. As introductions go, it\u2019s not subtle, but it gets the job done.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Following a short detour to glimpse some dinosaurs 150 million years ago \u2014 included, I would guess, to demonstrate what a Disney cash injection can do to the show\u2019s famously shoddy special effects \u2014 the pair find themselves suspended on a space station in the year 21506.<\/p>\n
Below deck, a fearsome, snarling boogeyman lurks, seen only in flashes of fangs and glitchy surveillance camera footage. Upstairs live a crew of abandoned, never-been-hugged infants \u2014 the titular \u201cspace babies,\u201d as the Doctor won\u2019t stop calling them \u2014 who bustle around in robotic buggies and speak with the voices of 6-year-olds.<\/p>\n
The uncanny animation used to make the babies\u2019 mouths move takes some getting used to, but the children themselves tug straight at the Doctor and Ruby\u2019s heartstrings. When one baby asks the Doctor if she grew up wrong, you can see the heartbreak in his eyes. \u201cNobody grows up wrong,\u201d he tells her, sweet and sincere. Being different is a \u201csuperpower,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
The space babies run the ship with the help of Jocelyn (Golda Rosheuvel, who plays Queen Charlotte in \u201cBridgerton\u201d), the one remaining crew member who now controls the onboard computer. At some point, the limited food and air supply on the ship will run out, and rescue from nearby planets is near impossible. \u201cThat\u2019s the fate of every refugee in the universe; you physically have to turn up on someone else\u2019s shore,\u201d Jocelyn says.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
For the Doctor, it\u2019s too much of a coincidence that the TARDIS has brought the orphaned Ruby to the abandoned space babies, and he flashes back once more to her birth, on Christmas Eve, when she was abandoned at a church, and snow seeps through from the Doctor\u2019s memory and begins falling in the space station. Ruby is human, TARDIS technology later confirms, but she remains a question mark we can expect the season to return to later.<\/p>\n
In comparison to these heavy themes, the episode\u2019s monster-versus-Doctor plot feels secondary. The boogeyman, it turns out, is just that: a \u201cliving sneeze\u201d created from the babies\u2019 boogers and worst nightmares. The puerility of the snot plot sands down the edges of the episode\u2019s emotional climax, which sees the Doctor risk his own life to save the boogeyman from being blasted into space. (\u201cThat\u2019s what you do,\u201d Ruby explains, already sensing the Doctor\u2019s altruistic tendencies. \u201cYou save them all.\u201d)<\/p>\n
The ending is just as tidily wrapped up. The Doctor offers Ruby a key to the TARDIS, with a caveat that almost certainly teases future plotlines: She can never go back to the day she was left at the church on Ruby Road,or she risks causing the \u201cdeepest, darkest\u201d rupture in time.<\/p>\n
Once the explanation of the basics is out of the way (for now at least), the next episode, \u201cThe Devil\u2019s Chord,\u201d can ricochet between hilarity and sinister nihilism.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
It begins in the year 1925. In an attempt to invigorate a bored student, Henry (Kit Rakusen), the piano teacher Timothy Drake (Jeremy Limb) teaches him the episode\u2019s eponymous note cluster, a chilling combination said to summon Satan himself. Instead, a dramatically dressed figure, played by the drag queen and Broadway star Jinkx Monsoon, bursts out from the piano and introduces themselves as Maestro in the luxurious rasp of a cabaret singer.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Maestro, <\/strong>who uses they\/them pronouns, has one aim: to destroy music and set off a chain of events that will end in the destruction of life as we know it. Musical notation swirls through the air, and Maestro swallows it with a near-erotic groan. The villain then looks down the camera\u2019s lens and drums out the rhythm of the \u201cDoctor Who\u201d theme tune on the piano.<\/p>\n Back in the TARDIS, Ruby and the Doctor get suited and booted in looks from the season\u2019s promo images and emerge in London on Feb. 11, 1963. \u201cDoctor Who\u201d was first broadcast later that year, and the Doctor comments that he lived nearby with his granddaughter Susan during this period: a sweet Easter egg for longstanding fans.<\/p>\n Outside the TARDIS is the future Abbey Road Studios (then called the EMI Recording Studios). As Marlena Shaw\u2019s \u201cCalifornia Soul\u201d plays, the pair dance across the famous crosswalk to find the Beatles recording their first album.<\/p>\n In the studio, the band isn\u2019t laying down the classics, but making songs with uninspiring lyrics like \u201cI\u2019ve got a dog, he\u2019s called Fred\/My dog is not alive, he\u2019s dead.\u201d As posited by Richard Curtis\u2019s 2019 movie \u201cYesterday<\/a>,\u201d a world without the Beatles looks very different, and with Maestro stealing music in a bid for total destruction, history has taken a \u201csour\u201d course, the Doctor says.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The Doctor recognizes Maestro as an accomplice of the menacing Toymaker (Neil Patrick Harris) from last year\u2019s anniversary specials \u2014 his child, it\u2019s later revealed \u2014 and a one of the prophesied \u201cvast powers beyond the universe\u201d that the Doctor so fears.<\/p>\n If the archetypical relationship between the Doctor and his companion has the Time Lord careering around while the assistant struggles to keep up (and sometimes falls in love) with him, the dynamic here is more exciting. When the Doctor is frightened by Maestro, it is Ruby who comforts him. At several points in the opening episodes, the Doctor assumes Ruby will stay behind while he heads off to investigate, but she insists on joining in on the action.<\/p>\n There is only one glimmer of hope for humanity: A different set of musical notes could banish Maestro, but only a genius could track those down.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cYou might be bright, and hot, and \u2018timey wimey\u2019 \u2014 but genius, I don\u2019t think so,\u201d Maestro flirtatiously tells the Doctor. Over the course of his career, in shows like \u201cQueer as Folk<\/a>\u201d and \u201cIt\u2019s a Sin<\/a>,\u201d Davies has brought many L.G.B.T.Q. characters to the screen, but Maestro \u2014 who Monsoon imbues with a grotesque sensuality and captivating sense of danger \u2014 may be one of his most memorable.<\/p>\n When Ruby starts singing \u201cCarol of the Bells,\u201d the Christmas song that was playing on the night she was abandoned at the church, snow falls once again and now it\u2019s Maestro\u2019s turn to be scared. \u201cHow can a song have so much power?\u201d Maestro asks, \u201cand power like him.\u201d Like who? \u201cThe oldest one,\u201d comes the cryptic reply \u2014 a mystery to be solved in a future episode.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n In the end, it\u2019s Lennon and McCartney (played by Chris Mason and George Caple) who save the day by playing the notes of banishment together on a piano. Maestro is banished, although not before offering the ominous warning that \u201cthe one who waits is almost here.\u201d<\/p>\n They\u2019ll worry about that in the future episodes. For now, the Doctor has a surprise for Ruby \u2014 and us.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s always a twist at the end,\u201d he says, looking straight into the camera with a wink, before launching into an original song and dance number with a 50-strong chorus line. It\u2019s an unusual scene for \u201cDoctor Who,\u201d but undeniably spectacular, demonstrating the show\u2019s rediscovered ambition and style.<\/p>\n After years of missteps, \u201cDoctor Who\u201d has begun to get its groove back.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n