Mark Harrison | On 17, May 2025

This review contains no spoilers for this week’s episode of Doctor Who. Already seen it? Read our Doctor’s notes at the end for additional spoilery observations. For more on Doctor Who, see our Whoniverse channel.


“Welcome to the 803rd Interstellar Song Contest.” This week’s episode of Doctor Who sits in a very precarious spot on BBC One, nestled between the FA Cup Final, which might run into extra time and penalties, and the live Eurovision Song Contest final. You’ll know when you’re reading this if The Interstellar Song Contest was transmitted as planned but, either way, it’s positioned as event television.

It absolutely fits the bill – in the year 2925, the Harmony Arena space station plays host to presenters Rylan Clark (yes, that one) and cat-person Sabine (Julie Dray) along with countless acts, including Liz Lizardine, Dugga Doo and Cora Saint Bavier, broadcasting to more than 3 trillion lifeforms throughout the galaxy. The Doctor and Belinda are loving it but, as usual, the proceedings soon take a deadly turn.

Written by Juno Dawson and billed by showrunner Russell T Davies as the most expensive Doctor Who ever made, it’s a story that demonstrates both the reach and the limitations of the show in its current, Disney-backed incarnation.
 
First and foremost, it’s a visual extravaganza. If “expensive” is the word, then it looks every penny of it – there are huge sets filled with hundreds of extras in distinctive alien make-up and some spectacular visual-effects set pieces to boot. Even in what’s inevitably the best episode of the making-of spin-off show Doctor Who Unleashed, you can only begin to imagine the size and scope of the work that director Ben A Williams pulls off with aplomb here.
 
There are funny original songs (Dugga Doo!) and dazzling outfits (was that a Malpha???) and at one point even the Doctor comments on how “camp” it is, but Eurovision is only one half of this berserk tonal mashup. The other, as Davies put it in his original pitch is 1988’s Die Hard, which largely comes with the arrival of Kid (Freddie Fox), an insurgent from planet Hellia who takes control of the proceedings in a shockingly violent style.
 
John McTiernan’s action classic negotiates around the prevailing macho action of the 1980s better than Doctor Who historically has – the Peter Davison and Colin Baker eras took to guns and violence about as well as a duck to a brick wall. Here, we wind up with what sounds like the comedy episode being the darkest of the season by far – that’s not underlit, and certainly not serious, but flat-out dark as heck.
 
The results are a little wobbly. As much as this is an episode designed for its particular scheduling, there are political circumstances upon broadcast that couldn’t have been anticipated at the time of writing and filming, more than 18 months ago. Or at the very least, they could have been handled more delicately. Instead, Dawson’s double-barreled celebration and critique of the geopolitics (astropolitics?) around the contest lets off a confetti cannon in a charged real-world context. The duly messy outcome is the product of a show that still bandies “genocide” around as something David Tennant shouts “not on your nelly” about, rather than something that’s still happening in the world.
 
Still, Fox plays it well, as does Gatwa, whose Doctor shows a steelier side as he McClanes his way to the control booth. Elsewhere, Varada Sethu is a little underserved by the script but again shows she can handle whatever the show throws at her, and there are also cracking guest-star performances by Miriam-Teak Lee, Kadiff Kirwan, Charlie Condou and, of course, Anita Dobson. Graham Norton pops up too, deliberately this time!
 
Between queer fan-service, interstellar terrorism, and a surprising number of callbacks and cliffhangers, The Interstellar Song Contest scores “douze points” for its sheer pageantry. Its composition is messier and thornier, but it’s a compelling contradiction in terms. As pure event television, Doctor Who could never have pulled this off without the backing of a streamer like Disney, and yet it’s designed for the show’s more linear appointment viewing style. And for better or worse, the show simply doesn’t get any bigger than this.

 

 

Doctor’s notes – contains spoilers

– The episode economically sets up the Harmony Arena in time for it to take a shocking turn – the scene of the Doctor and 10,000 other spectators being ejected into space is played for full horrific effect. It’s only later that the Doctor explains about expanding the protective air bubble, but for the sixth time in a row, the show doesn’t settle in its story of the week until it sends our expectations reeling – there have been ups and downs, but this season has really pulled out all the stops with its pivoting plots.

– And for an encore, Kid plans to fry the brains of the trillions watching at home by using Harmony Arena’s hyperbroadcast station to transmit a delta wave. It’s destruction on a scale we rarely see outside of series finales, and indeed, we last heard delta waves mentioned in 2005’s The Parting of the Ways.
 
– That “ice in my heart” business is unsettling and unresolved. New Who has always fixated on the Doctor going too far, but it’s deliberately pushed further here and it’s never satisfactorily walked back. This also lets down Belinda as a character – she’s been calling the Doctor out for much less than tormenting and torturing an already-defeated enemy. The reference back to Gallifrey’s destruction felt less like something she’d accept and more like setup for what’s to come.
 
– Anyone following along with the original songs of the Ncuti Gatwa era will not be too surprised that Murray Gold’s best lyrics are not in English. We hear snippets of songs like “I Love You But My Heart Says No” in the background, but as we’ve already mentioned umpteen times, it’s Dugga Doo that stole our hearts with their Dugga Doo song. And you know, Cora’s Hellian aria is also very nice – the silence that follows the performance is one of those rare times when you realise how seldom New Who falls quiet to let a moment land.
 
– We don’t get the spectacle of a Dalek’s skirt being whipped off in that hysterical Bucks Fizz montage, but there are Doctor Who callbacks galore here. Malpha contestant Liz Lizardine (Christina Rotondo) comes from a species seen in the lost 1966 serial The Daleks’ Master Plan. Cora represents Trion, home planet of the Fifth Doctor’s companion Turlough. And the Corporation that runs the contest were also the owners of Platform One, the events space-station from 2005’s The End Of The World.
 
– “Grandfather, come back.” And oh yeah, the Doctor’s granddaughter Susan is here. Appearing in the Doctor’s mind as he regains consciousness, Carole Ann Ford returns to Doctor Who for the first time since the 1993 charity skit Dimensions In Time. Last season’s finale hinted that she might turn up again and we expect this is one of two returns that will play into next week’s finale.
 
– That excellent Unleashed episode features lovely interviews with Rylan, a fan since the Christopher Eccleston era, and Graham Norton, who has unwittingly crashed Doctor Who on original broadcast not once but twice. He’s meant to be here this time, but unfortunately, his hologram also delivers the news that the Earth died on 24th May 2025, and was reduced to dust and rock and ashes in a single second. Except Rylan, we guess?

- “Let battle begin.” The episode cliffhangers twice, first with the TARDIS doors exploding inwards from impact with next Saturday, and then with the audacious reveal that Mrs Flood has been recovered with the other spectators, but incurred fatal injuries. She then bi-generates into Emmy-winning actor Archie Panjabi and annouces that they’re the Rani, also last seen in Dimensions In Time. Pledging “absolute terror” for the Doctor, the two Ranis leave together – and it’s goodnight from her…

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