26/11/2023
Thoughts on Doctor Who(2023): The Star Beast
(Brace yourselves because this is basically going to be a Doctor Who blog for the next month)
If there was one piece of media I've been anticipating the most this year, it was the beginning of a new era for Doctor Who. I've had a weird relationship with the show over the past few years. Despite my complete indifference to the entire Chris Chibnall era, I still engaged with the show a lot, and really solidified my opinions on the overall show.
Doctor Who to me is a show defined by its inconsistency of quality. Almost every season (even the really good ones) contains one episode that could be argued as one of the show's best, and one that could be argued as one of the worst. The most noteworthy example to me is series 9 of the modern series, where Heaven Sent is my all time favourite episode, and Hell Bent is my most hated of the show. The main issue of the Chris Chibnall era, in my opinion was that it was overall too middle of the road. Series 11 was mostly a collection of okay at best standalone episodes, with a couple highlights. Series 13 (Flux) was too ambitious of a concept for the constraints it was under and ultimately didn't amount to anything.
While I've been excited for the upcoming return of Russel T. Davies as the showrunner, it has come with a bit of skepticism, as this is the only time a showrunner or lead producer has returned to Doctor Who. I wasn't sure how well his writing style would work in the show nearly 14 years after he left, but I did feel that him, along with the brief return of David Tennant as the 14th Doctor would bring some public interest back into the show at a time where it desperately needed it. Also for once in the past couple years, I actually applauded a decision that involved Disney, as the distribution deal lead to Doctor Who finally having a budget more comparable to the rest of modern television.
Before I get into the actual parts of the episode that matter, I do want to talk about the superficial elements that do not affect the episode's quality but that Doctor Who fans love to discuss anyways. First of all, I do not like the new title sequence. While the CGI is very nice, the timing with the music is just off, and the logo appears as a basic PNG zooming into the screen. I really hope it gets improved going into the new season proper. On the other hand, the new TARDIS interior set is an absolute slam dunk. Easily my second favourite version of the set just behind the Series 8-10 TARDIS.
As for the episode proper, I quite enjoyed it. Watching The Star Beast for the first time was kind of surreal, the writing style felt exactly like an episode from RTD's first era, just given modern production values. David Tennant and Catherine Tate were great as always, along with the rest of the new and returning cast. This whole episode was, for better or worse, a 2023 version of an episode that could have come from Series 4 of Doctor Who.
I'm not gonna get into spoilers here too much, but the story I felt did an alright job at wrapping up plotlines from the last time the Doctor had seen Donna Noble, with the main story of the titular star beast, the meep, also being very entertaining.
Overall, I'm pretty happy with this special. I am still unsure of how the rest of RTD's new run will play out, as this didn't really do anything new with the show quite yet, but we'll just have to see as the next specials release over the next month.
