Doctor Who 5.2 – The Beast Below
After gushing over the season premiere last week, it pains me to find “The Beast Below” is lacking. One element of the episode I found to be a huge letdown, and one that’s critical to the story is “the children,” and I had a bad feeling about this as soon as the episode started in a classroom. Now it’s not necessarily that the children angle of the story is sloppily plotted, it’s that I’m annoyed by Steven Moffat’s ongoing insistence at using kids as pivotal elements in his stories. I realize that last week I went on and on about how magical the stuff was between the Doctor and the young Amelia Pond – and make no mistake, it was – but with “The Beast Below” I found myself instantly bored with the angle. Of the four stories he crafted during the Davies era, three of them involved children to one degree or another, and the first two stories of his own era have now featured children.
My problem with this is that even though “Doctor Who” is a family series, and that children are a large part of the viewing audience, that doesn’t mean children must be a component of the narrative. It becomes doubly irritating when you’ve already got a lead character who acts like a kid much of the time anyway. Somebody might argue that they’re used as audience identification figures for younger viewers, to which I say balderdash. For 26 years “Doctor Who” hummed along quite nicely, rarely making anyone younger than a teenager part of the storyline. Kids, I believe, are perfectly content to watch adults on the tube and in film. They don’t long to see other children involved in these types of adventures. Somebody else might argue that Moffat uses children in order to help adults find their inner child. I can actually buy that more than the former proposed argument, but it needs to be used sparingly and smartly, and hot on the heels of the young Amelia Pond is hardly sparing, and the climax of “The Beast Below,” which hinges on crying children doesn’t strike me as particularly smart.
Once again I’ve gotten ahead of myself and jumped to the end of the episode, but once again I reiterate – you’ve no business reading these pieces if you haven’t seen the episode being written about. Events kick off in the 29th century where the entirety of the Britain (apparently save Scotland) exists on a giant spaceship appropriately named the Starship UK. Due to solar flares, humanity has been forced to relocate from the planet’s surface. (They’ll one day head back down to the planet once the danger is gone.) We’ve seen so many different periods of Earth’s future on the series so far, in episodes like “The End of the World,” “The Long Game,” and “New Earth,” that it isn’t a stretch to buy into this, yet at the same time there’s a certain “been there, done that-ness” to it all.
The post opening credits sequence with Amy floating in space outside the TARDIS, while the Doctor holds onto her leg is really rather splendid, as is her voiceover about her imaginary friend who has come back to her. Before the duo travel to the ship, he gives her a very goofy speech about his one rule, which is to never interfere in the affairs of other people. Ha!! Who does this cat think he’s foolin’? But it’s interesting nonetheless, because in telling Amy that, it demonstrates how little she actually knows about this man whom, we, the viewer, actually know a great deal about. These are early days for Amy, and there are many adventures yet to come. What causes the Doctor to break the rule he just set down? A crying girl seen on the scanner. Amy follows him, still dressed in her nightie, which has a certain Arthur Dent-ness to it. (If so, then is the Doctor Ford Prefect?)
The world of Starship UK is a dreary place, and the residents live in fear of these figures called Smilers, which are frankly one of the dumbest elements of the entire episode, as I still, after seeing it twice, have no real idea what their function is other than to look scary. A water glass comes in mighty handy, when the Doctor uses it to deduce that there is no engine running the ship. The Doctor and Amy split up only to each find clues leading them closer to the great mystery of the Starship UK. Tentacles, voting booths, and a masked woman who knows the Doctor are parts of the equation. The masked woman is eventually revealed to be Liz 10 (Sophie Okonedo), or Queen Elizabeth the Tenth, who’s heard all the stories of the mysterious, wise Doctor. She’s been working against the government to get to bottom of the “this ship has no engine” problem as well, but hasn’t made much headway.
There are so many seemingly random elements knocking up against each other in this episode, that by the time it’s revealed that the ship has no engine because an enormous space whale has been carting it across the stars, I’d all but lost interest in what was going on, despite the fact that I actually sort of like the space whale idea, as well as the bigger, more important idea of a society in denial. But when it was revealed that the whale was doing it for the crying children, I just rolled my eyes. If this were any show other than “Doctor Who,” I never would’ve made it through the entire episode. In the end, Amy saves the day and proves her worth, while the Doctor is left with just a little bit of egg on his face.
What saves the proceedings is Matt Smith. I can’t turn this recap series into a Smith gushfest every week, so it’d be best to keep it short: This guy’s incredible. Even though Amy had a lot more to do in this episode, I’m still not finding her character to be all that. I’m not sure Karen Gillan has found her yet, either. Ultimately this episode didn’t come close to living up to the promise of “The Eleventh Hour.” I hope that Moffat is building up to something big, as was evidenced by the crack from Amy’s wall appearing on the side of the ship as the episode came to a close. We’ve had duff entries in the first act of many a season of new “Who,” so I’m not worried about this stumble, but it’s a shame that such a lackluster offering should be the second of this new era. I guess it goes to prove that even with Steven Moffat there are bound to be missteps, and that not everything is going to work perfectly. In any case, the tag at the end with Winston Churchill and the Dalek was great fun, and hopefully next week will be better.
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NEXT TIME: It’s back to the Blitz for the TARDIS, when the Doctor and Amy visit Churchill in “Victory of the Daleks.”
Classic “Who” DVD Recommendation of the Week: I can’t be bothered to recommend any classic “Who” this week, so instead I’ll recommend Terry Pratchett’s “Hogfather,” which features an entire world floating on the back of an enormous turtle.
(Thanks as always to Sonic Biro for the screencaps.)
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Posted in: Doctor Who, TV, TV Sci-Fi
Tags: Doctor Who, Doctor Who Blog, Doctor Who Season Five, Karen Gillan, Matt Smith, Sophie Okonedo, Steven Moffat, The Beast Below, The Eleventh Hour
Glad I’m not the only one who was meh on this episode. Although Matt Smith’s version of the Doctor is growing on me.
I’ll admit, I shed a tear for the whale. Not because he was doing it for the chyyyyldren, but because they were torturing it!
I’m ready for them to move on to another time and place besides Earth. Bring on the Daleks and the Angels!
I did not have your resolve, Ross – I haven’t seen the entire episode yet. I think it is among the worst of the entire franchise.
I remember I think you said last week that Matt Smith has found his Doctor”instantly” or something like that…
Too early to tell although he SEEMS to have a good take on it so far. I bet his Doctor changes over time.
This episode and your gripe on it about the kiddies…
Reminds me of people’s gripes about Spielberg’s stuff where all of the adults were clueless and the kids were the pivotal characters. E.T., Kick the Can (Twilight Zone: The Movie), Ghost Train (Amazing Stories), Hook, The Goonies. All of these films were and are at times overly sappy and while it may seem like I’m taking the opportunity to bash on Spielberg my point is that it’s easy to use kids in writing; it’s also easy to use them sloppily. My gripe from the episode Rose has been the ridiculous nature of some of the ways that the stories unfold. Way too hyperreal. Why can’t the writers on this show just…slow….down…? It’s as if part of the story bible is that each story HAS to have all the characters running like hell to something. I wonder if the mentality is that viewers will change the station the second the Doctor starts delving into…dare I say it….DRAMA.
In the Beast Below I wanted to start clapping my hands so that Tinkerbell would come back to life. SPOILER ahead…
The reveal of the STARWHALE was a roll my eyes moment that COULD have worked if the narrative had s l o w e d d o w n!!!!!!
All of this said though I find myself looking forward to this show every week. Weird! 😉
Owen –
I get you. Since you and I both grew up watching the classic series, we’re accustomed to appreciating a much different kind of “Who” than what the new series is. Recently I was reading something from Lawrence Miles, and he was talking about a big difference between the two eras. He said something along the lines of how the classic series was all about the little moments that came in between the big moments – how it was those little moments that made the series what it was, because, since the show was so cheap, the big moments couldn’t afford to be as “big” as they should have been. The new series is the opposite – it’s all about the big moments, of which there frequently seem to be far too many, and the little moments are becoming fewer and fewer.
Which is a shame, because some of my favorite moments in the new series have been the little ones. Off the top of my head, an excellent example was the end of “The End of the World” with the Doctor and Rose standing in the middle of London after seeing the Earth explode billions of years in the future. THAT was an incredible scene. This episode needed something like that, and it just didn’t have it.
Also, I agree with you John – a major lowpoint, but Angela, I also agree with you, the tortured Star Whale reveal was good, unfortunately it was too little too late (and then they botched it with “the children”).
Wow. Sounds like Mr. Miles is entering a realm I love…Film Theory.
I wonder if “little moments” may refer to my favorite and only favorite part of the 2-part THE END OF TIME: I loved the moment with Tenant and Cribbins just chatting. I think they were in a diner or something. THAT is what I mean by slowing it down. Another word for it is DEPTH. I’m thinking Doctor Who as written by Ronald Moore.
Just saw both episodes last night — loved the first one, found this one so full of holes that I decided not to think too much about it lest I become overly irritated. The Doctor’s three choices were so stupidly limited — why did they need to move at all? Why not just plant the ship at a LaGrange Point and let it orbit the planet? I could go on, but I’ll refrain.
I like Matt Smith, I find Amy Pond to be a delightful and thoughtful companion so far, and I’m not worried about the use of children. Eleventh Hour didn’t hinge on Amy being a kid, it just happened to start that way. Plus I love the whole idea of this season being Amy’s payback to the Doctor for screwing up her entire life so far. She really should be compensated for that somehow, don’t you think?
I was somewhat intrigued by Amy’s pegging the Doctor so early as very old, very lonely, and very kind. Previous incarnations of the Doctor have been quite brutal, and I will be massively disappointed if Moffat has filed off all the Doctor’s sharp edges. Someday there will have to be difficult decisions made, and I want to believe Eleven will be up to it.
Yeah Joan, I’d like to see the Hartnell and Colin Baker’s Doctor’s stuck in an elevator. What kind of horrible atmosphere THAT would be!
Anon (who I think was Mike) –
Yeah, the scene you’re talking about between the Doctor and Wilf is precisely the kind of thing Miles was talking about. And that was a great scene. But I don’t think Ron Moore would be a good fit for “Who,” of course maybe I’m wrong and just can’t see it.
Joan –
Glad you’re caught up! You bring up numerous strong points. I particularly like the observation that the season is Amy’s payback for having to wait. While I was obviously aware of that at the end of TEH, it’s not something I thought about carrying with me as a viewer as the season progressed. Now I may just do that. I came down really hard on the kid thing, and I realize there are different things that can be done with kids on this show – and in general Moffat’s been really good at utilizing kids (whether they’re Amelia Pond or not) really well. But it was different when he was only writing one story a season. Now that he’s writing half a season, I’d prefer this not become his “thing,” that’s all. As far as the defanging of the Doctor, I think it’s still far to early to tell, and as Mike mentioned earlier, this Doctor will probably change a great deal as the series progresses.
Why wouldn’t Ron Moore a good fit?
It seems to me that 11/Moffat is really treating Amy as a child. Just the fact that she is in her pajamas the whole episode makes her little-girl like. The Doctor gets petulant when he yells at her for choosing “forget,” and his “as soon as I’m done with what I’m doing you’re going home” was almost a caricature of a Dad speaking down to a 6-year old. I wonder if Amy will come into her own as a woman companion.
Owen –
When I think back to some of the stuff Ron Moore wrote for “Star Trek,” I can see how he’d be a cool fit for “Who”. But when I look at the showrunning he’s been doing in recent years (Carnivale, BSG, Caprica) I just don’t see how his vision of sci-fi and fantasy would fit in with how this show works. He doesn’t seem to have the necessary whimsy it takes for “Who”. (On the other hand, there have been plenty of eps in the new series that have gone *too* far with the playfulness.) All that said, I’d love to see him write at least an episode of the show, just to see what he’d do with it. It certainly couldn’t be any worse than this one was.
Peel –
You bring up an interesting point, which sort of dovetails nicely with my “children” rant. The Doctor should never talk down to anyone he claims to respect, and certainly not his trusty companion. I mean, there’s a reason he’s chosen them, right? Because he senses that they’re competent enough to “get it.” Maybe he doesn’t really believe Pond (I do love how he calls her by her last name) should be with him, just that he owes her, as Joan suggested. On the other hand, maybe she’s proven herself after this outing. Of course, the attitude could be a gimmick on Moffat’s part that he’s using in order to emphasize how old the Doctor is, even though this incarnation looks so incredibly young.
I had many of the same problems with the episode that you had but I still found it watchable. I had to turn my brain off a bit, but as I get older I’m finding that’s a lot easier to do (in fact I think it gets done sometimes without even a conscious thought on my part!). I’m curious to see what you think about the next episode as that’s been the biggest disappointment to me so far.
I’m usually really bad at deducing these things, but it’s my suspicion that the thrust of his whole season may be about children, especially given the moment in this episode where the Doctor was asked if he had any children and he unabashedly changed the subject to avoid providing an answer. I haven’t studied the ‘net: has there been discussion of Jenny returning this season?
Bob – I’ve no aversion to turning my brain off, and maybe that’s what I should’ve done with this ep. Regardless, even if I had, I think I still would’ve found the whole thing nonsensical regardless.
Will – Oh, jeez, say it ain’t so! Wouldn’t that be ironic?
I’ve been trying to keep myself as insulated from scuttlebutt as possible for this season, so I honestly don’t know about a possible return for Jenny. I *do* know that the whole reason her character was kept alive in the first place was at Moffat’s request, so that he could bring the character back at ~some~ point.