Doctor Who Reviews: "Space Babies" and "The Devil's Chord"

Welcome to a new series of Doctor Who, back after five months and with a double-header to boot. Two episodes on the same day to give an impression of what this new era of the show may be. They are very different episodes, with their own sets of strengths and weaknesses, but their signature commonality is an overriding philosophy towards big conceptual swings -both are unsurprisingly written by showrunner Russell T. Davies. Whether it is populating an episode with talking babies or wringing literal instrumental chords out of people’s bodies and going out on a musical number, there’s every indication this series aims to be more broad than Doctor Who has been in a while, to break the formal rules of the universe and experiment. I guess after that ‘cardinal sin’ of the bi-generation, all bets are off. And to be fair, Davies did warn the audience.

I find it intriguing though and the possibilities are vast in either direction of quality. For good or bad, Doctor Who perhaps has the real power to surprise us again. Though I would hope it is more often less in the vein of “Space Babies”. Despite his storytelling, Russell T. Davies does have a few flaws in his creative sensibilities, and had them even way back when he rebooted the series in 2005 (those of us who came to Doctor Who in that era and revere it tend to forget this). And one of these weaknesses is a certain juvenile proclivity. It first revealed itself just four episodes into his initial run in “Aliens of London”, where he created his first new villain race for the show, the Slitheen -whose defining attribute was their flatulence. And “Space Babies” is essentially the “Aliens of London” of 2024 -albeit without the grounded drama and political commentary that underscored it.

There is political commentary to this episode certainly, but it’s not nearly so immediate and biting, and it kind of becomes lost in the greater silliness and overarching theme. The story begins right where “The Church on Ruby Road” ended, with the Doctor welcoming Ruby Sunday into the TARDIS and off on an adventure. He gives her the Cliff’s Notes on himself and the TARDIS, why he’s called the Doctor and his relationship to Gallifrey, and why the TARDIS looks like a police box from an era Ruby can’t even conceive of. To demonstrate what it can do and where it can go, he takes her first to the prehistoric age (in what may well have been a nice allusion to “An Unearthly Child”), steps on a butterfly moments after mocking that theory -only for it to result in a strange alien Ruby appearing beside him which he corrects immediately by reviving the butterfly in what’s honestly a pretty great joke. He then has her select a date at random in the far future -where they find themselves predictably on a space station in the far reaches of the galaxy.

Almost immediately they meet a xenomorph-like monster that chases them until they find a lift taking them to another part of the station. And it confuses the Doctor that he instinctively ran from the creature rather than approach it open-minded -even though this is far from the first time he has done so. “Why did I run?” he asks in a manner that brings to mind his ninth incarnation ordering his own blonde companion to do just that nearly twenty years ago. This may sound like a reach but the context supports it. Much as Davies insists he is putting his former era and associated continuity behind him, he also clearly can’t help himself. This is his Doctor’s second episode, and at this point he indulges in a scene of Ruby gazing out in wonder at the cosmos just as Rose had done in “The End of the World”, his first Doctor’s second episode. He also has the Doctor configure Ruby’s phone so she can contact her world and makes her call her mum -as though he knows not to make the same mistake he did back then and keep her in contact with her family. Looking out at the stars, the Doctor comments on how he likes to see the cosmic beauty through new eyes, and that age-old pathos comes out.

Ncuti Gatwa already seems like a natural in the part -it helps that he came out so strikingly in his first two outings, his Doctor more instantly fully formed than pretty much any of his predecessors of the last two decades. And it’s this that allows him to weather what comes next: a baby in a stroller with a horrifying CGI mouth. 

Indeed, we are treated to Doctor Who’s Baby Geniuses as it’s revealed that the station’s inhabitants are a small collection of genetically farmed babies that have been effectively on their own for six years -maintaining ship operations from their nursery and ageing mentally to the point of speech but making no development physically. And these babies exist just about perfectly in the uncanny valley. I can’t tell fully if they are real babies -certainly they have some tangibility in relation to the Doctor and Ruby -it’s the mouths that really make it difficult to determine. The way that the lips move, never fully matching the words being spoken, as well as the child-like voices themselves, makes them so creepy. And the episode from here on leans into them hard. It also takes on that very infantile tenor that is hard to appreciate unless you are a toddler or a parent of a toddler -if you’re not one who finds babies cute it is a rough time. It soon becomes clear the monster encountered earlier is their Boogeyman.

Thankfully an adult does show up in the form of Jocelyn (Golda Rosheuvel), the nanny who remotely tends to the babies (“space babies” as the Doctor keeps arbitrarily correcting himself) and who is alone on the station since its staff were forced by their government to evacuate due to budget cuts, while the birth machine was legally obligated to continue running. And if you don’t see the political point being made, Ruby more or less spells it out by conceding it sadly doesn’t sound all that strange to her as someone from an underfunded foster care system. For it’s bluntness, it is an admittedly sharp illustration of that notion that babies must be brought into the world but after that they’re on their own. Once again Davies explicitly aligns the Doctor with progressive ideals, though it is hardly the defining statement of the episode. The only hope is to be admitted as refugees to a nearby planet, but the station can’t move to get there. The invocation of that term is no accident either.

The plan becomes that the Doctor will convoy them there on the TARDIS, they just have to get rid of the Boogeyman blocking the way. And after rescuing one kid who tried to confront the monster (and nearly had the audience thinking he’d been eaten), the Doctor and Ruby learn the monster was in fact constructed by the station as a necessary symbol of fear for the babies. And they learn in a sequence that is way too laboured and not quite as gross as they make out, that the Boogeyman is in fact -true to its name- made of the babies’ snot. The Doctor is relieved too to discover his own fear was entirely due to the stimulating effect of the station’s computer. An underwhelming note for what would not have been an issue under another series showrunner.

But Davies’s explanation for why the Doctor ran is tied in to a greater thesis he’s come to have for the Doctor more generally. That unquestioning, injudgmental empathy is a core facet of the Doctor’s being. It certainly hasn’t always been, but one understands exactly why Davies feels the need to define him in such terms. And so, when Jocelyn finds the Boogeyman, and in her control room endeavours to eject it out into space, the Doctor makes the push to save it. And I do think it’s an interesting touch that his motivation is tied into a point that was curiously repeated through the episode about him being the last of his kind after the genocide of Gallifrey. Gatwa plays it with an undertone of PTSD and it mostly works, even as the conscious invocation of the imagery from the climax of Aliens becomes too on the nose. Yes, the Doctor would save the xenomorph.

I don’t know that this is a workable philosophy to maintain for the show; Davies does kind of couch it in the notion of the creature being unique like the Doctor. And it isn’t as distinct a conclusion as perhaps the intention is, though at least it took the action away from the babies for the third act. When the story comes back to them, the Doctor spontaneously solves the rest of the problem (as often happens in mediocre Doctor Who episodes) by once again going to that weird place of adolescent humour, revealing one level of the station is filled with six years worth of the babies’ soiled nappies, which he uses as methane to move the ship closer to the planet where they can be accepted as refugees. And not for the first time, the episode makes one of those cornball self-censorships of the word “shit”.

This kind of tone and everything about how the babies are presented does really work against the episode. It’s unpleasant to look at and tiring to take in. Outside of a very specific demographic, it’s not nearly as cute or funny as it wants to be. And it’s high marks are merely solidly executed scenes or beats -not much to write home about, even in an episode meant to be the start of a new journey.

But the one really interesting thread is the one that connects back to “The Church on Ruby Road”. The Doctor remarks that the theme of babies forms a connection across his two adventures with Ruby, and that the mystery around her birth looms for both of them. There is an excellent beat where the Doctor flashes back to that night and sees the hooded figure point at him -when he’s brought back the snow has come with him: the trace of a memory brought into corporeal reality, which he tells Ruby he’s never experienced before. Yet he ties it to her rather than himself -whom it seems more logically connected to. And then at the end of the episode, after telling her the one place he can’t take her is Christmas night on Ruby Road 2004 -ostensibly to avoid a paradox- he lets her leave the TARDIS (having parked it in her mum’s flat) and initiates a secret DNA scan of her. He doesn’t want her to find out, but he certainly will. It’s a welcome return of the Doctor’s occasional -if well-intended- duplicitous nature, and I look forward to seeing how it plays out.

Generally things fare much better in the follow-up episode “The Devil’s Chord” -named for a real chord you’ve likely heard in many a musical motif to evoke evil over the past few centuries. This is the episode that probably got the most marketing for this new series -with those images of the Doctor and Ruby in their sexy 1960s outfits pre-dating even Gatwa’s first appearance on the program. It’s also the episode that features the Beatles -though much less so than was likely anticipated. Doctor Who actually has a very interesting connection to the Beatles. Footage of them appeared in their heyday in the 1964 serial “The Chase”, where the Doctor, Ian, Barbara, and Vicki watch them perform a fictitious concert on a high-tech television in the TARDIS. There was actually a plan to get them on the episode themselves, which Brian Epstein vetoed -but eventually they were permitted to use an extended clip of the band performing “Ticket to Ride” on Top of the Pops. Due to the BBC at the time constantly wiping their own material (including of course a lot of Doctor Who episodes), this wound up being the only surviving footage of the Beatles on that program.

It’s weird that it has taken this long for Doctor Who to circle back around to covering the Beatles (though the cost to licence their music probably contributes heavily to this -spoiler: you don’t hear any Beatles songs in this episode). But the show actually begins in 1925, with a piano teacher giving his student a lesson that includes the titular devil’s chord. But the atmosphere gets freaky and soon we meet the episode’s colourful villain, rising up out of the piano case, referring to the child as merely a prelude and making him disappear. With the hair and make-up of Bette Midler in Hocus Pocus and a flamboyant opera-infused suit, they refer to themselves as the Maestro, played by drag queen Jinkx Monsoon. And they are as abundantly camp and outrageous as you would expect of any self-respecting drag queen, sapping out the teacher’s musical passion with broad delight (quite literally, bars and musical notes on chords are extracted from his body).

The story proper begins with the Doctor asking Ruby what moment in history she’d like to witness, and deciding on the recording of the Beatles’ first album. And it’s kind of quaint that Davies feels the need to justify that a Gen-Z kid like Ruby would be into the Beatles by following this up with a detailed explanation of how her mother Carla was really into vinyl and would play their records for the kids. Ruby also may be the first companion to ask about what they’ll wear in this different time period, and so they don those snazzy 1960s costumes that are probably not too accurate but look really stylish on the pair of them. And I love that the show captures the infectiousness such clothes have on their attitudes. Very quickly they go to EMI Records, delighting at Abbey Road on the way, and bluff their way into the recording studio where the Beatles are playing a really shitty song no one’s ever heard of. The dawning realization on both their faces is the funniest moment of the series so far.

It’s not just the Beatles. The pair soon discover that music in general is borderline non-existent, with only the most basic or children’s tunes available -crucially, nothing with any heart. A conversation with Paul McCartney (George Caple) reveals to the Doctor that music is deemed a very low art and quite taboo -the idea to make something meaningful out of it is outright offensive. Ruby talks with John Lennon (Chris Mason) and finds he just wants to go home and find a real job. Going to the iconic roof of the building, they discover the sky is full of smog, even more than it should be for 1963.

Speaking of 1963, I appreciate that Davies finds a moment to pander to me at least a little, by having the Doctor point out Trotter’s Lane and explain to Ruby exactly where he is right now in that time, mentioning the junkyard and his granddaughter Susan. This in particular catches Ruby, who asks about her and the Doctor admits he doesn’t know where in the present Susan is. As in the last episode, there’s the hint here of survivor’s trauma on the part of the Doctor -something his last two incarnations didn’t fully reckon with and he now continues to mask in the kind of way that is palpably unhealthy, and will likely come out in some fire storm later on.

He brings a piano out, and a musical history for Ruby is contrived all of a sudden. For a second it looks like the Doctor will have her recreate Yesterday, but instead she plays a song she wrote for a friend getting over a break-up that seems to awaken the whole city, and stir some latent passions for music. But Maestro’s coming is heralded and the Doctor, sensing something that reminds him of the Toymaker, commands Ruby to hide. And there is some decent tension as Maestro, utilizing a kind of operatic sensory call searches for them armed with a tuning fork against the Doctor’s sonic -which he is able to drown them out with, muting their voice for a time that plays out very eerily before the sonic is overpowered. Maestro is called off to deal with a poor old lady who remembered “Claire de lune” which gives the Doctor the chance to escape unseen.

Unlike his encounter with the Boogeyman, there is genuine fear in him about realizing that Maestro could be part of the Toymaker’s legion and what a confrontation with them could mean. Ruby, necessitated to play the sceptic, is unsure, and the Doctor takes her home to reveal what has become of 2024. In a really powerful choice by director Ben Chessell, the camera remains focused on him while Ruby goes outside to see for herself. Without music, the world is an empty wasteland. And here at last the two formally meet Maestro (with a costume change of course), who reveals themselves as the Toymaker’s child.  A creature of music incarnate, we learn of their desire to feed off all the music in the universe, and also that only a particular genius set of chords can banish them from existence. This all is conveyed with an elastic flourish and vigour, every line-read has a different, amusing bent -something carried into the next sequence, where the Doctor after much hassle (Maestro being able to control the rhythmic molecules of the TARDIS) returns them to 1963, with the only choice to figure out this chord that can defeat Maestro. But no sooner is he in the recording studio with John Lennon’s guitar than Ruby is carried off to the concert hall by those musical chords -Maestro intent to sap her of her music as the last human in 1963 they haven’t gotten to yet. It’s here with Ruby bound in the air and forced to sing to Maestro cackling below that the inspired casting behind Jinkx Monsoon really makes sense.

Both they and the Doctor are thrown by the music that emanates from deep in Ruby’s heart: “Carol of the Bells” from the night she was abandoned -and it’s powerful enough to contend with Maestro, who abandons this endeavour, for it to be succeeded by a music contest with the Doctor (that whole thing with Ruby seemingly intended just to reinforce this continuous story thread). Classically, Maestro takes up the violin to the Doctor’s piano, and the Doctor, giving the kind of grand assertive speech we’ve come to expect across all incarnations, finds the first several notes of the critical chord -but misses the last one. Maestro succeeds in trapping both the Doctor and Ruby, but then of course who should save the day but two Liverpudlian songwriters who find the chord just outside and play it with the final note. The Doctor isn’t the genius, but John and Paul are. That is it for Maestro, and very conveniently on their disappearance, music returns to the world.

The deification of the Beatles is quite a cliché at this point, this choice effectively being the same as Yesterday’s assertion of how deeply vital their music is to civilization at large. The idea that only John and Paul could come up with the final note that defeats the personification of musical evil is almost funny it’s so blunt. But narratively it does work. Which is something that can’t be said for what follows, when the Doctor seems to temper Ruby’s optimism that everything has been resolved by claiming in his adventures “there’s always a twist at the end”. He says this part while looking directly into camera -and it’s a notable, perhaps worrying thing, that it is the third fourth wall break across these two episodes (he earlier commented “I thought that was non-diegetic” in explanation for not noticing the music carrying Ruby away, and in the last episode made a subtle appeal to cross over with the Star Trek franchise). There’s just a cheeky fun to them so far, but I really hope Davies doesn’t turn Doctor Who into Deadpool.

This break was the most appropriate though, given it leads into a zealous musical number with the Doctor and Ruby singing and dancing alongside a whole chorus, the Beatles included, throughout EMI Records. It was announced that there was going to be a musical episode this series, to some consternation, and I am not among those who disapproves. In fact I honestly expected more -it’s merely one song, and a not particularly good one at that (it’s not even all that accurate to the show); but it’s spirited and charming -and does indeed include a twist that Maestro’s prelude kid H. Arbinger is still around. And the Doctor turns Abbey Road into the piano from Big before flying off. Perfect. No need to drag it out.

While I wouldn’t call it great, “The Devil’s Chord” is a very solid episode that plays off its gambits -a drag queen villain, the musical number ending- much better than “Space Babies” did. It’s certainly destined to be more memorable from a character perspective, and while stuff like the Beatles component to it is very gimmicky (also none of the actors look much like their respective Beatle), it doesn’t have anything embarrassing going for it. The story is adequate, the concept is strong, and it builds slightly on those recurring threads -though “Space Babies” in fairness set them up better.

And so here we are already one-quarter into the new Doctor Who series! It’s going to be interesting, whatever direction it takes. I’m especially curious for next week, which sees the return of an old frenemy for Doctor Who and myself personally. Can’t wait.

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