Mark Harrison | On 11, May 2024

Despite all appearances to the contrary, Doctor Who has never been one big show so much as umpteen very different shows in the same big coat. It’s always possible to reconcile one version of the show with another, but what’s pleasing about the RTD2 era (and its newly styled Season One) is that Russell T Davies’ second reboot of the show is as different from his 2005 take as “New Who” was from “Classic Who”.

Following on from the 2023 Christmas special, The Church on Ruby Road, the Fifteenth Doctor (Ncuti Gatwa) and Ruby Sunday (Millie Gibson) blast off into time and space with a double bill launched simultaneously on BBC iPlayer in the UK and Disney+ worldwide.

In Space Babies, the Doctor and Ruby find themselves playing nannies on an abandoned baby farm in space in the year 21,506. Then in The Devil’s Chord, a trip to see the Beatles record their first album at Abbey Road’s EMI Studios turns into a battle against celestial melody-maker Maestro (Jinkx Monsoon).

This pair of episodes compounds the feeling that last year’s 60th-anniversary specials were a finale to “New Who”, RTD’s first run at rebooting the programme, and Gatwa’s debut is a fresh start. The first 15 minutes of Space Babies infodumps a lot of the exposition that’s usually spread out over a few episodes – it’s oddly reminiscent of the 1996 TV Movie’s approach to explaining the Doctor, the TARDIS, the Time Lords and other franchise fixtures.

Episode 1 proves somewhat slight in the season-opener stakes, but it’s loaded with cute characters, running gags and good old-fashioned monster action. Director Julie Anne Robinson ably wrangles an episode that’s Look Who’s Talking upstairs and Alien downstairs – it’s especially silly stuff, but the megawatt charisma of Gatwa and Gibson powers it through the more nonsensical moments.

Meanwhile, Episode 2 doubles down on some more surreal fantasy elements in Davies’ 2023 episodes, led by a doozy of a guest-star turn by RuPaul’s Drag Race champion Jinkx Monsoon. The Devil’s Chord is not an episode about the Beatles so much as an episode the Beatles happen to be in, but even if the Fab Four had more to do, this would still absolutely be Maestro’s show – and it’s thanks to them that you can imagine the episode getting Rocky Horror-style screenings at future fan conventions.

Davies is writing six out of eight episodes in the newly styled Season One and in both Space Babies and The Devil’s Chord, you get the sense of the writer taking his time – both instalments are slower paced than anything from RTD’s first era. Both episodes return to the TARDIS for a detour, first for a comedic interlude involving prehistoric Earth and then for a dramatic re-staging of something we first saw Doctor Who do all the way back in 1975. Neither is absolutely essential, but there’s a sense of the show luxuriating in the increased budget that comes with the BBC’s partnership with Disney+.

More importantly, the frivolities are underscored by a renewed grit and resolve – though far from conventional, “serious” science fiction, Space Babies and The Devil’s Chord each have more to say about how we live now than this show has in a while. As an opening double-bill, it’s chaotic and flabbergasting fare with a few moments to make “serious” sci-fi fans cringe and whinge. But it’s all Doctor Who – New Who is dead, long live New New Who.

Doctor’s notes – contains spoilers

– Space Babies is the youngest-skewing episode of Doctor Who since 2010, maybe longer – unabashedly juvenile, it’s a story with a monster made of babies’ snot and a closing beat where a space-station propels itself with fart power. We’re so back, baby (space baby)!

– Alongside a gaggle of talking babies and a snot monster, Bridgerton’s Golda Rosheuvel guest-stars as Babystation Beta’s accountant-turned-caretaker Jocelyn, who remarks that the government has defunded the station but made it illegal to stop making new babies. In the tradition of Doctor Who taking messages to its family audience where they are, it’s good to see the show take a point of view again.

– Striking a similarly critical note, The Devil’s Chord revolves around the “darkening” of a world without music and the arts, where John Lennon and Paul McCartney are selling “cheap rhymes” until they can get proper jobs. And George Harrison and Ringo Starr were also there – but as we said, it’s not an episode about the Beatles.

– Maestro is said to be a child of Neil Patrick Harris’ Toymaker, controlling music as he controls games. Monsoon’s smashing guest performance is part Looney Tune, part classic Disney villain, and she’s the villain to beat this season.

– The aforementioned 1975 throwback comes with an almost beat-for-beat recreation of a scene from the Tom Baker serial Pyramids Of Mars, where the Fourth Doctor shows Sarah Jane what will happen to Earth in her present if they don’t save the day. When Ruby assumes history is safe, the Doctor shows her London in a nuclear winter in 2024 – it’s something Davies has wanted to revisit since his original pitch in 2005, and here we have it.

– “I thought that was non-diegetic.” Just how long has the Doctor been able to hear their own soundtrack? Gatwa’s line is a high point of the musical meta-humour scattered throughout Episode 2, including Maestro hammering out the Doctor Who theme tune on piano and a cameo for once-and-future composer Murray Gold in the musical finale.

– “It all comes back to Christmas with you, doesn’t it?” Along with the high-powered exposition, there are a lot of hints about what’s coming later in the series. Where did Ruby come from? Why is the Doctor’s memory of the church on Ruby Road changing? And who is “the One Who Waits”, first mentioned in 2023’s The Giggle? We might have some guesses, but like the man sang, there’s always a twist at the end…

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