What does a sci-fi fan who’s never seen Doctor Who think of their first exposure to a full episode of the series? Can you even be a sci-fi fan if you haven’t? Well, we’re about to find out. Welcome our guest, an academic and Dr Who fan Dr Aiden Buckland who helps guide yours truly Dr Implausible through some of the details of “The Star Beast”.
https://www.implausipod.com/1935232/14072417-implausipod-e0019-the-14th-doctor
Transcript:
DRI: Actors have a bit of a challenge in that they can become deeply linked with iconic roles that they play so that the audience always associates them with whatever they first saw them in. And so too it is for me with David Tennant and the Purple Man. Killgrave. From the Netflix MCU series Jessica Jones.
See, that’s where I first saw him. And he was absolutely stunning in that role. Super creepy. And it’s hard to imagine him as anything else. But apparently he has a long and storied history as an actor in various other cinematic universes. And one of those is returning to screen shortly. Something called Doctor Who.
And apparently it’s widely popular, but it’s a bit of a gap in my knowledge. I mean, I was aware. of it, but I’d hardly seen any episodes. Maybe something with Christopher Ecclestone back in the early 2000s and something with a dude in a scarf back when I was around eight, but it was never largely accessible to me.
But with it returning to the screen, it seems now is a perfect opportunity to get on board with the Doctor.
And I’m not kidding, I’m being completely honest with you. I haven’t really watched much Dr. Who and Jessica Jones was the first time I saw David Tennant. So there’s a lot of stuff out there in the media sphere and you can’t watch everything. And for some reason, Dr. Who just never really caught into me, you know, didn’t get its hooks in.
So I’m aware of it. I’m aware of some of the larger themes, but what we’re going to do for this episode is it’ll be in two parts. The first part will be me going to watch the first episode of these 2023 specials, StarBeast. And then I’ll come back and I’ll give you like, some of my initial impressions.
And then the second half is going to be a discussion with a colleague of mine, who’s a big Doctor Who fan. And so once they join in, we’ll kind of go over some of what my impressions are and how that connects to the larger universe. And then we’ll have, If time allows, we’ll do this for the other specials in 2023.
So stay tuned. I’m going to go check out an episode and I’ll be right back to let you know what my first impressions of watching a full Doctor Who episode are.
And we’re back after having seen the Starbeast, and that was an interesting episode. So this isn’t really a recap, it’s just kind of a list of impressions, so it may go chronologically for a little bit.
So, going in with having no history of the characters or any of their connections, it was a little odd. We got the recap at the start with the once upon a time, and I thought that was an interesting way to do it. We have the introduction of A British housewife, Donna Noble, and felt very much like, say, a British housewife canonically, as opposed to one from America or Canada or anywhere else.
And we learn that she is married and has a lovely child, and the child has grown. So there’s been a lot of history, I guess, in the past, but that doesn’t really have a whole lot for me. There’s some lines that they drop there that also stood out with an interesting juxtaposition where Dr. Who goes, this face has come back. Why? And Donna goes, the story hasn’t ended yet. So we get this idea that there’s something going on. And at least a little bit of a mystery that might be hinted at later.
The whole introduction itself felt very like. Marvel comics from the seventies and eighties, where there’d be a recap in the first few pages after a splash page or something, and I’m wondering if that’s common. We get the introductory title by Russell T Davies from a story by Pat Mills and Dave Gibbons. And that is very curious because I recognize both those names from sci fi, especially like 2000 AD and other comics, again, of the seventies and eighties. So I’m wondering what the source was, whether it was a comic or a novelization, an older episode or something like an issue of 2000 AD or something else, heavy metal back in the day.
So I’m keeping an eye out for that and maybe I’ll track down the references after, but for now, that just kind of jumped out like, Hey, I recognize that reference. And while they set up some tension in the recap that, you know, they couldn’t see each other again, they get like right to it with their interaction right away, and kind of release that tension, but also set it up for something later on. We get introduced to Rose, but I got no idea who she is. I, I understand she’s Donna’s daughter, but I got no reference or what those eyes are referring to. So I’m wondering if that’ll pop up later. And then the meteorite or whatever streaks across the sky.
There’s a comment that Donna makes, while her eyes are distracted, about never trust a man with a goatee, and something about being stuck in a drainpipe, and I was wondering if that was a hint to any prior episodes, but I don’t know. And then she makes the reference to the doctor telling him that he has to ditch the tie by the age of 35, that he can’t do that old 80s Duran Duran style anymore. I thought that was cute.
And then following that we have a ride with the taxi driver, Sean Temple. Ends up being a little bit more expository as well. When we get some of the backstory and I was grateful for that. It was kind of, came about a little bit naturally, but also a little bit, Oh, here’s all the main characters all, all at once altogether.
So I’ll get to this later, but it felt like everything was just like one after the other falling into place. Like we didn’t really have a whole lot of mystery. So it was just kind of straight into it. And. We arrive at the factory and this explosion looks like something right out of the nineties, like demolition man or Robocop, which is pretty good for TV, honestly.
I mean, full points. I remember what syndicated sci fi TV shows looked like in the nineties. It was a little rough. As he’s wandering around the factory, I think the only thing that would make it more 80s would be the lighting as we have that gold and teal kind of filter rather than the blue and red filter that was endemic in 80s sci fi.
And then we’re introduced to a few other characters or groups. The ship is being Surrounded by some soldiers or soldier type persons and there’s a woman in a wheelchair, but again, I don’t have a reference here I don’t know if they’re new or supposed to evoke something from past episodes And then we switch to a home scene with an older lady cooking and who says there’s no such thing as spaceships. Now Donna has a neat quote about the 930 mark or she says I will burn down the world for you darling And then she goes, I will dissent, or I will descend. I didn’t quite catch it, but it was kind of neat.
And Oh, okay. So the older lady is her mom, but her mom seems to remember more of the past than she does. So again, I, maybe they were in earlier stuff. There’s a lot of internal reference, even at this point, like, you know, 10, 12 minutes into the episode that it feels is starting to be there for people who watch it regularly. And I admit I’m not lost, but I’m kind of, I don’t have any association that the authors, the show runners might be trying to evoke with this.
So sometimes it’s coming across a little bit flat as again, I don’t know who the people are. I don’t recognize them, and there’s just a lot of assumptions made. About the audience, about who and what they see. So then, we switched to the kids and Rose outside and there’s an escape pod in the middle of a field. And it feels like right now they are speed running through ET and they meet this little critter called a meep.
And while it’s cute enough, I’m not sure what they’re going for here. There’s also some dudes with like bug eyes in the dark and they remind me of like bug from Micronauts, which is weird given that, you know, we had Mills and Gibbons doing this. So maybe they were kind of tying into like the seventies comics.
I’m wondering if there’s that earlier comic book reference there. So, but apparently they’re hunting something. So we’ll see what’s up with that. The doctor is in the warehouse or sorry, in the factory steel factory. So very eighties heavy metal video here with his whole display that he’s able to conjure up on the out of thin air and actually works as an interface.
And that’s super cool. I don’t know if he’s ever done that before. And then. We meet the redhead in the wheelchair again, who knows the doctor is familiar with him. She’s Shelly science advisor, number 56, and she knows his history. At least he was science advisor. Number one, don’t, I’m probably saying that too much, but that comment, I guess about Donna, where the universe is turning around her again.
And the, he does has, I don’t want to be the one who kills her. So there’s definitely linking to that back history again, and so we get more of the officers from the unit. It had unit in the badge. I didn’t quite see what it was from, but you know, they’re like the men in black or something or the paramilitary organization associated with the men in black, maybe like shield or sword or some other group.
So they’re not necessarily regular police officers, but they are something else. And then. They open up the capsule and that is, that stood out. If you remember from like the earlier podcast, I talk about dragon’s domain and how there was like a creature that came out and started possessing the crew members from space 1999.
And we almost have that exact same thing here. This strikes out with. The light and the light changes in the soldier’s eyes, and then it takes them over and is able to possess them and move them around. And that is, it’s kind of wild. So we have these linkages to earlier, like 1970s sci fi, that’s been going on within this episode.
And that’s super cool. I’m wondering how much more that is. I’m just going off what I know, but maybe this is something previously within the show as well. Now the Meep and Rose run back at the show. And then the mother who, I guess now the grandmother, sorry, Cynthia, she seems to know what’s up. She goes, the Meep isn’t real.
So I’m wondering if it’s illusory. With the family all home, they’re trying to keep each other away from it. And I think Cynthia recognizes the past history between the doctor and Donna and doesn’t want anything to happen, but, yeah, that’s a bit of an issue. So they meet the meep and then we have the little bit with the fur harvesting is kind of a bad thing and a discussion about the pronouns for the meep and that struck me as interesting, but it also just struck me as matter of fact that the doctor was able to just accept that and correct and ask and just went with it for the rest of the episode. So that was really interesting.
There’s a comment, I guess the doctor has twin hearts. And that’s cool. The space Marines in the Warhammer 40, 000 universe all have twin hearts too. And so does like, um, Longshot from the X Men and that whole Mojoverse series. So that’s a common thing, I think, with a lot of sci fi series as a way of kind of evoking a subject’s transhumanism that, you know, Oh, they’ve got multiple hearts or whatever. And, and that was kind of fascinating. So I’m wondering if the 40 K guys kind of cribbed that when they were making their trans war, transhuman warriors and the space Marines, or that, if that’s just so common that it’s not from a particular thing, but it’s just a trope in general.
So from there, we’ve get into the firefight, and I’m wondering how many factions are going on here. We obviously. We have the meep plus the family at this point are with them. We have the possessed soldiers. We have the bugs who are fighting the possessed soldiers. We have the regular military, the ones who haven’t possessed. And I don’t know if the doctor is his own faction or what, but you know, we’ve got four or five different groups here.
And again, while they’re doing some cool tricks with the shields and using the. tool, the sonic screwdriver and their defensive capability, and just being clever about getting away from it and trying to escape and save lives. And I thought that was really interesting. There were some airborne troops in there and I was wondering if those were the bugs.
They’re kind of in the black and I didn’t quite see if those were more drop troops coming in to support the paramilitary organization or not, but I guess we’ll learn more as this goes on. And then we get to this parking garage and it says either we’ve escaped or we’ve got things very wrong. And he says, we’re in a court, court is in session.
It’s a shadow court and he puts on a teleport intercept. And then the bug soldiers appear and it turns out that yes, we indeed do have everything wrong. There’s something about a psychedelic sun here that powered the meep’s homeworld as they ate the galactic council and this is the last one left. And we get the whole reveal that yes, curse your inevitable betrayal here as the Meep turns out to be the one that is possessing the soldiers and there’s a whole lot more going on.
The star beast is indeed the furry little creature that finally shows its fangs. And so from there, things move along rather rapidly. The doctor and the family are taken prisoner and moved back to the steel factory. The little critter is being worshiped and brought about on a plank when made out of metal by the possessed soldiers.
And while they’re trapped, there’s a rescue from Shelly, the science advisor, who’s in the wheelchair, who has weapons apparently embedded within it. Because of course, James Bond also probably echoes into the influences here as well. So We switch to the ship and the doctor tries to prevent the launch as the dagger drive is engaged.
And we start seeing this whole scale destruction of London with the tendrils of flame and like earthquakes going out. It feels a lot like Guardians of the Galaxy 3 where we know this is like a populated area with people involved. And like, how are there not casualties and catastrophic destruction from this?
Now, Donna Noble is assisting him as they’re trying to get this right. But it’s a whole lot and there’s a lot of like internal reference going on here. I can see the action that’s going on. And then finally Rose undoes the psychedelic lightness that shining in the eyes of all the possessed and everything kind of goes back to normal.
We’ve learned that the toys in the shed are tied to Rose’s memories of all the beasts that have been encountered in the past and We finally kind of get some resolution here, but as a viewer I was kind of starting honestly, from about the 30 minute point on, I was kind of tuning out a little bit.
There was a lot of internal references and I wasn’t necessarily getting. All of them. It was the thing with like the Phoenix force that was going through Donna and Rose. I don’t know what’s going on there. Some shared memories or something was embedded within Rose that allowed her to be saved and then finally they walk inside the Tardis and we get that tiny little ship or the family’s talking about just taking one tiny trip and it feels like every Rick and Morty episode ever. And honestly, I’m wondering how much Rick and Morty is kind of tying into the doctor at this point. It’s weird that I’ve seen almost all of Rick and Morty, but almost none of Doctor Who.
So is it just a case of picking one and not the other? I don’t know. Or can you enjoy both? To my friend who’ll be joining me later, perhaps that’s the question. We get into a what looks like a redesigned TARDIS interior. It looks almost like Cerebro from some of the X Men films with all the sphere and the railings and stuff.
And it has a coffee maker, but apparently it hasn’t been protected against coffee. It’s fragile enough that one spilled coffee is enough to almost destroy the place. And that’s kind of where we end. So as the credits roll, it It, it feels a little odd, earlier note I made about it feeling like a speed run through ET.
I mean, it feels like the whole story was a speed run as they were racing through the required story beats to try and link everything together with previous seasons and previous episodes. And there was a lot of history there and so much of it was being elided. It was kind of being relying on our cultural memory of other sci fi.
Movies and TV shows and episodes, and we got equal parts of like a very special episode and a lot of fan service going on there. So I’m not sure as a new viewer, it was a representative story of the franchise. I was able to make some external connections to some stuff. Like the authors and some other references to sci fi and even by the midpoint, but by the last 15 minutes or so, it was all very internally referential.
And the titular Starbeast was like a very thin foil for the rest of the narrative that was assumed, like we assumed things would work out. And. They were just used there for the show runner to hang all the connections together. So as a new viewer, I’m not entirely convinced. I do want to discuss this with my colleague though.
So I’m going to step away from a brief second for a brief second, and we’ll be right back.
And we’re back and we’re going to talk about the impressions of the show. I’m here joined by Dr. Aidan Buckland, who’s a professor of digital and social media. You can let him introduce his bona fides. I’ve known him for quite some time. And we’ll get into it. So, thank you for joining us today, Dr. Aiden.
Dr Aiden: Well, Well Dr. Implausible, thank you very much for having me. Yeah, so, Ph. D., Communication, I’m usually somewhere in that pop culture landscape, and Dr. Who is something, you know, I’ve been a fan of for a while, but also had a bit of a Professional interest in: done some presentations over the years at Calgary and Edmonton Expo, and have watched a number at places like the Popular Cultural Association.
DRI: Okay, so you have like an academic interest in that, then. Awesome. Okay. I’ll just let you know I think, I sent you the copy of the of the first half of the episode here. I’m coming in with this, like knowing that exists, I have almost no exposure. And for a franchise that’s like older than me, which is rare, it’s like, okay, Star Trek, Dr. Who, and like, I’m older than Star Wars, right, so it’s a rare thing. And like, how have you not watched any of this? So here we are. Yeah, I, found it really interesting, but I’m kind of like, what’s your kind of take on it as somebody who’s like well versed in this, cause I’ll admit there’s some parts of it that didn’t necessarily land with me, but maybe we’ll walk through the episode a little bit and you can tell me what I missed without going too much into spoilers.
Maybe we can just chat about that for a little bit.
Dr Aiden: For sure. Yeah, and I was thinking that while I was watching it. So, you know, myself as a fan, I jumped on during the new who era. So I have dabbled a little bit and kind of watching and rewatching. I think at this point, all of the doctors for at least a few hours of their runs each just to get a flavor for it before going out and speaking about it. But yeah, this was a daunting episode. I think in some ways for new fans to be jumping on board. It was relying on a lot of stuff that kind of happened during Russell Davis’ 1st run at the show. But at the same time, I also felt it was very emblematic of of his vision of doctor who like, it felt very much like it would fit very easily into, you know, what we sometimes refer to as the season of specials.
DRI: Okay. The season of specials is like the Christmas season where they just have these one offs. I guess there’s two more episodes coming up and if you’re, if you’re down for it, I’ll watch those and we can maybe chat about each of those in the coming weeks too.
Dr Aiden: For sure. I’ll definitely be watching them. So I would love to chat.
DRI: Okay, cool. So yeah, like for me, the first, it kind of had like a, it felt like a Stan Lee Marvel recap at the start of it. And then, I’m not sure if you’re familiar with it; while you do pop culture stuff, so you’re probably sure of who Pat Mills and Dave Gibbons were in that jumped out at me.
Cause I’ve been looking at both their works, Pat Mills, especially in his work on 2000 AD ties into something I’m working on called Appendix W, which are like the prehistory of the Warhammer 40, 000 universe. And so he’s really influential as like a creator from back in like the 70s and 80s, and that was just like, okay, so what am I watching here?
And I don’t know if you had any foreknowledge of that kind of era or influence on Doctor Who.
Dr Aiden: Yeah, I’d be interested. And I think, you know, in some cases with Dr Who, in particular, there is kind of a media kind of explanation for, you know, the influence that runs through here. You have to remember, of course, when Dr Who was.
In its prime, say, late 60s in through the 70s, you know, this is at a point in time where there are actually very few channels to watch in the UK. So whenever we’re talking about sci fi creators, writers, directors, who are living in the UK, you know, you can almost guarantee to a person that they would have been exposed to this show at least in its first run from, from 63 to 89 at some point.
DRI: Yeah. I’m getting a feeling, like we’ve covered Space:1999 a bit, and we’re going to be covering, as I said, 2000 AD and Blake’s Seven at one point, I’m sure. It feels like everybody knew everybody in this community. I mean, Britain is, is relatively small size wise, I guess, especially if you’re from the Canadian prairies, it’s like, well, we can just drive across Britain pretty quick here.
But yeah, so there’s that whole idea of scope and size, but as a community in the seventies, yeah, I’m assuming it was very connected. I can’t say for sure, but it has that feel to it.
Dr Aiden: And a hub of sci fi too, right? Like, there’s so much happening in television, in movies, so, yeah, it would be interesting to sit down and map all of that sort of stuff, like, who’s influencing who, where are we seeing, kind of things pop up, especially as it relates to the Doctor and his travels.
DRI: Yeah, that’s, well we’ll I think that’s kind of like the side project or maybe that’s something assumed with the Appendix W. I mean, we’re tracking everything up to the launch of Warhammer 40, 000, which is in 87. So yeah, it’s going to be coming. So, so how have I never watched the doctor before?
I got no idea, but what stood out to you from the episode? Like what was really kind of like a big thing, or just maybe walk through it chronologically, like how did you feel watching it?
Dr Aiden: I think the first thing that really struck me with the episode was the mixing and matching of the aesthetic of Doctor Who.
So, as, you know, you probably know production wise, there’s been a deal. Disney plus is distributing it now internationally. So there’s a lot more money in the budget, and this has been the case for a while. Chibnall, the previous show runner, also had a pretty big budget, for Doctor Who standards at least.
So, you know, we saw a lot of that, like that really lovely shot in (the) neighborhood. I’m jumping ahead chronologically in terms of the episode. Where we see the soldiers fighting the other soldiers and that nice over the action shot of that, like, that’s, that’s a really expensive thing that, you know, we sometimes got in new Who but we definitely didn’t get in the original run of the show, which was that kind of them flexing their muscles production wise.
I think the Meep in particular, in terms of the creature design, looked a lot more polished than a lot of Doctor Who aliens and and creatures look, but then we also had the Rolf, the, the grasshopper looking gentleman, who talked very nicely once they actually got to speak.
You know, they actually look more emblematic of that old aesthetic of Doctor Who. So I thought that that was, it was one of the things that stood out to me is this really does feel like A kind of crossover for Dr. Who: of Russell T. Davis going from kind of what he was working with in the early 2000s with the relaunch of the show to now having a bit more money, but wanting to stay true to that aesthetic that a lot of Who fans would be comfortable with.
DRI: Okay, so there’s he’s playing to some audience expectations there. Okay, that’s interesting because I mean, I noticed that with like, The set with in the steel factory with the spaceship in there that looked fairly impressive, like production wise. I don’t know how much of that was digital and how much of that was like a practical, but they at least had put that into place.
I mean, there was some obvious places where there’s like the digital layover of the city and the like, but even as you said, like that overhead drone shot that we’re seeing, it’s starting to become very common. We saw that in like The Peripheral and Westworld and a bunch of places where it kind of gives a top down third person perspective or not third person, but almost like an RTS perspective that we’re kind of used to.
Dr Aiden: I was going to say, it reminded me a lot of that series of games XCOM where you’re looking at the field from that and that’s an alien invasion game too. So it almost felt like they were trying to tap into that aesthetic with that shot, which It was neat, I think, for Doctor Who.
DRI: Yeah, for sure. So they’re expanding it now.
Like you said, these are the specials. So maybe it’s like the CFL on Grey Cup or the NFL on the Super Bowl where they’ll bust out multiple cameras and kind of go for broke and the regular episodes don’t quite have that same level of production. I don’t know, we’ll kind of see how that goes, but I’m always fascinated how the production culture elements influence the onscreen workings of it, or, you know, what we see as fans on screen and then how much the fans will, you know, develop the no prizes from Marvel or whatever to come up with explanations that kind of patch over some of those holes that might be simply explained by, well, we, we had no budget, so we had to put a plunger on the end of this, of the Dalek and, and kind of make it a thing.
Yeah, fascinating stuff, but we’ll keep an eye out for that in the future, for sure. So, what else kind of jumped out at you?
Dr Aiden: I mean, off the bat, I am a big fan of David Tennant, both as a doctor, but also as his other roles like Kilgrave, as you had mentioned earlier, having him do that kind of fourth wall break that once upon a time, once upon a time Lord was an interesting opening.
It reminded me of the last time Doctor Who as a franchise really started to, you know, put on a push to get American viewers, which I associate this Disney plus deal with, and they did something similar. They had the Companion at the time, Amy Pond do like a little voiceover kind of explaining her relationship to this being the doctor, and it got a bit of pushback actually, from some older doctor who fans.
It’s that gatekeeping element in fanculture that essentially. You know, Dr. Who’s been around for decades. Most people have grown up with it in the UK and in some of the Commonwealth countries like ours. And, you know, the idea that you would need to put this in here and, you know, clearly it is for newer fans. But how did you find that? Did that help you? or orient you for what was coming up. Did you find that useful?
DRI: I found it super useful, I think between the introductory bit before the credits, as well as some of the exposition that happened with the cab driver, I felt, you know, they kind of put a lot of pieces in place. So maybe they were, I think I commented earlier as a bit of a speed run, but I felt there was enough exposition that I wasn’t necessarily confused about who was what, like I didn’t, I didn’t have any deep connection with any of the characters, but I could generally tell the relationships and the social map of who was who there. Sometimes characters would show up and I wasn’t sure as, Oh, is this an old person or a new person or something?
So maybe, maybe that’s the thing, like what was new in that? What was, what was novel in the episode that I have no reference of. So like, was there anybody, what was new?
Dr Aiden: Yeah, well, production wise, I think that’s actually kind of one of the fun parts with Star Beast is that actually this is, you know, an adaptation.
So we’re, we’re dealing with a Who story that has existed since I believe sometime in 1980, there was a weekly comic strip and that’s where this story first shows up. So in the opening credits, I believe you see along with Russell T. Davis, the original writers for this panel in particular, but in terms of new stuff, I think there’s still lots in there.
I would say, you know, for a lot of older Who fans the Sonic was doing a lot more in this episode than we’ve ever seen it do, which, you know, is some fans have bristled on it. The ones that I’ve been watching reactions from online, but at the same time, it is always like a lot of the elements of Doctor Who, you know, the sonic does what the writers needed to do in a particular context.
So it’s kind of always had that, but generally, as a tool, it’s really done underwhelming things, like it just, it unlocks a door, or it sets off an alarm, or it, you know, turns on a sprinkler, it’s, you know, very underwhelming, so when he starts to look at it as a visual display, very MCU like, which is a comparison that Ellie Littlechild made over there at WhoCulture, or later on where he’s, he’s building light shields out of it, that almost seemed, in a lot of ways, to use a kind of gamer culture term, a little overpowered for the sonic screwdriver, which is interesting.
But again, this is a Doctor who is coming back, which again is something we haven’t seen, so.
DRI: Okay, I just yeah for reference. I didn’t know that any of those abilities like the the shields and like even just the interface I didn’t know that was new. It seemed I felt they were seamless I really liked the like basically passive or non combative use of the screwdriver because it gave a like a different way of solving problems and even though it wasn’t… I guess maybe firefights aren’t that common in Doctor Who, I don’t know.
It did seem like they put a lot of budget in it, you know, blowing up a wall and having the whole chase through the house. But having those ways of reacting that isn’t necessarily offensive, I thought that was really neat. And the interface, I mean, we’ve seen that see-through interface in everything since like Minority Report with Spielberg, Spielberg put a lot of money and effort into the development of that interface for that movie.
And then we’ve seen it from Avatar and Matrix and that whole idea of a see-through interface, which really isn’t that useful, like from a user perspective, this is amazing visually. Yeah, we’ve seen that. So I didn’t realize that was new, but it seemed like an awesome way to like engage with it. What about like characters or anything?
Was there any new peeps that showed up?
Dr Aiden: Yeah, we do have some new people in there, but I, I just wanted to respond to something you had just mentioned there. It is actually, this is the, the classic Doctor Who thing is he almost never is overtly offensive in the way he interacts with other species.
So, you know, he will do things to stop a villain from, you know, achieving their plan. He’ll do things like he shoots the Meep up in the escape pod by the end of it, but like his, his initial reaction is almost always to run, you know, so it’s, it’s something that you’ll see him saying a lot and generally, that’s because he’s trying to observe what’s going on and figure it out, which is usually what you get revealed in the end.
So it’s his non combativeness is actually by design and it was, yeah. At various points in the run in the original run, I think it was the 5th doctor who put his hands on a gun and that became kind of controversial. And then even in this new who run Matt Smith, it was in a trailer at 1 point for an episode, it was the 3rd episode in the season and, you know, it just has him holding a handgun and firing it, which, you know, got a bit of a negative reaction, and then when you saw what was happening in context, you see that it’s not the Doctor using a handgun against a person. It was him shooting a piece of technology with reversed gravity at the time.
So, it’s the kind of thing that he doesn’t like, it’s, it’s rare to see him actually holding offensive weapons, which was interesting.
DRI: Okay. Yeah. That idea that it ties into some of our other more iconic heroes, like, you know, a Captain America or Spider Man or Batman, you know, or there’s generally that idea that they didn’t have offensive weapons.
So Batman’s probably an edge case in that one. And I know they’ve made some changes to cap as well, but for a long time, the silver age view of those heroes was like no guns. Now, some of that was from, you know, especially in America from the comics code, but you know, there was some other reasons for it as well.
That, okay. That’s fascinating. Interesting stuff. What about Peeps? Was there, because again, I kind of got that the family all knew each other, that there was relationships there, but was there any other new characters that were introduced?
Dr Aiden: New character, old organization. So, in the episode, of course, we’re introduced or reintroduced, I guess, to Unit.
This is the, basically the task force that deals with alien kind of stuff on planet earth. They are often associated with working with or working against, depending on the episode needs, the Doctor. And of course, in this one, we get the introduction of an actress who essentially, Ruth Madely, as Shirley Anne Bingham, the newest science advisor.
So, you know, as you saw in the episode through dialogue, the Doctor is the first science advisor for Unit. This is during the period in the original run when he was basically banished to earth for a little while, but Madely, had a role on Years and Years, which is a Russell T. Davis show for the BBC, and I guess that’s seeing her crossover from that now into Who was interesting, and her role was, was fantastic, like, I loved the positioning of her. It was the scene where, you know, “don’t make me the problem”, sending the soldiers on up to the mind control.
And then, later on, having, you know, weapons in a wheelchair, and when the doctor remarks on it, you know, her response is, yeah, we all have as if, you know, this is just, it’s standard operating procedure. All unit members who may or may not be wheelchair bound will have weapons in their devices, which was fun.
DRI: Yeah. There was, there was a lot of that stuff was just and maybe this leads to some of my confusion because they, they dealt with a lot of stuff just matter of factly. Right. Like it did not happen. I noticed there was… okay. so unit, I saw the badge on the lapel, but I didn’t, I thought maybe I was missing something that there was another word for it, but it’s just, it’s called the unit. Okay.
Like they had a Sikh member and there was a few others. associated with it. So there’s a broad spectrum of representation within the show. And like I said, I’m going into this as spoiler free as I can, but I guess there’s some issue. Is there some controversy around the whole woke moment there in the middle?
Dr Aiden: I’m sure there will be just given the, the internet these days and, you know, Doctor Who has run into various.,let’s say communities who perceive themselves as aggrieved, for representation issues in the past. The previous Doctor in particular was the first doctor to be female presenting during her run.
We see another variant, or in Doctor Who terms of regeneration, who is also female presenting and also, African Britain. So it is something that they have run into before. But this is one of the things that I think is again, emblematic of Russell Davis as a creator. He’s not afraid to touch those, those controversial rails or those 3rd rails and really, again, the matter-of-fact nature in which they deal with a lot of the more, I think, sticky issues like the conversation that Donna and her mother have in the kitchen about whether or not she should be, you know, complimenting her daughter Rose for being attractive when she didn’t before the transition, was a lovely kind of way of, again, not, you know, scolding or preaching like, you know, Donna could have, you know, yelled at her mother in that scene.
Like, you know, better stop doing this stuff, you know, whatever, but really just kind of lovingly interacting with her and, you know, modeling that. Hey, it doesn’t have to be uncomfortable for very long. We can actually just have a nice. Little matter of fact discussion, you know, she’s beautiful. She’s gorgeous.
And then, of course, you get the Catherine Tate humor about, you know, “you could be saying that about me”, the generational bit there. But I think that that was quite lovely. And I think the pronoun bit in the middle was also again, another way of making it matter of fact. This, you know, pronouns have been an issue now for a little while.
They tend to cause some people to get very upset about having to use them or not, and you know, turns out, if you’re a Doctor Who fan, you’ve been using alternative pronouns for a long time, because he’s the definite article. He is The Doctor, and Meep is The Meep. So, he idea that it’s Rose that kind of puts that as a question, I think was, it was nice to kind of nudge that conversation in there, and then, you know, to make it so that, you know, actually, the Doctor has an alternative pronoun of the definite article, and always has.
So, You know, pronouns are really not that big of a deal, right?
DRI: Yeah, I liked how they approached it, that it was, it was, a long time ago I talked about, like, I guess it would be framed as agenda-setting in media, like how we learn how to deal with things and everything from commercials to just, you know, how shows present things, especially things like sitcoms, like the Slice of Life stuff, how you might see how the video game or internet is incorporated into family life and then that kind of sets how we talk about it in, in the broader culture.
And so, yeah, just seeing that kind of embedded within it, treated matter of factly and the show moved on, I think was a really effective way of showing to its viewers. a good way of dealing with this. So I know we’re kind of getting a little bit tight on time here. So just in interest of not really spoiling things for any future episodes, but like, what are you looking forward to in the next couple?
Dr Aiden: Oh, for sure. So this is actually an interesting production thing as well. We’ve 60th leading up to this latest episode and it turns out, that most of the footage in those trailers comes from this 1st episode. So, Russell T. Davis himself, in an interview I was reading recently, has mentioned that, you know, they haven’t cut any footage into a trailer from this 2nd episode coming up.
So, we literally know nothing about what’s going to happen in this next episode. We know, of course, how the episode ended. The TARDIS is doing its TARDIS thing. Things look like it’s a crisis and it’s going to take us anywhere it wants in time and space, which is actually something they’ve done quite frequently in Doctor Who, the TARDIS is always enduring and fragile at the same time.
It seems to always be breaking down and going the wrong place and not doing what he wants it to do, but then also always doing what he needs it to do, which is actually a line from the Steven Moffitt episode, called the Doctor’s Wife, I think, and pardon me if I got that wrong, but it’s essentially where he gets to speak to the tardis, ’cause it gets embodied in a human- ish body, for a little while. So you get this idea that, you know, it’s always kind of had that, so that I’m, you know, eagerly anticipating, you know, what kind of surprise are we gonna get next for this next episode?
DRI: All right. And for me, I think it was that toy box at the end with a bunch of little critters.
Some of those I recognize from various… I think there’s a lot of cross pollination between media in, you know, in various, not necessarily transmedia ways, but just the influence from one cultural element showing up in other ways. I’ve seen some of those creatures in other forms and other formats before, whether it’s dungeon and dragons or Warhammer.
So seeing which of those actually show up as dudes in costumes or, as special effects, I’m kind of curious as well. So we will see what happens. So, with that in mind, I think we’re pretty close to our time. So I’m going to, let’s touch base in a week here or maybe less. I think, we’ll get this out probably around the release of the second of the specials, give or take.
And hopefully we can touch base before the third one as well and talk a little bit further. So again, Dr. Aiden Buckland, thank you for joining me. I appreciate the insight, as always. And, from someone with no…, who knows nothing, I appreciate again you taking the time to share with everybody here on the ImplausiPod.
Dr Aiden: Sure. Thanks very much for having me, Doctor, and look forward to talking again.
DRI: Okay. Thank you. And once again, thanks to our guest, Dr. Aiden Buckland. You can contact him at doctoraidenwho at gmail. com. And again, I’ve been your host, Dr. Implausible. Join us again in a week or so for the second of the Dr. Who Christmas specials. We’re going to try and recap that one as well, or give you my impressions as I become a little bit more familiar with the. Dr. Who cinematic universe here. And again, you can contact us at Dr. Implausible at implausipod. com. We have a few other episodes going up shortly, so we’ll keep on with the regular production, but we hope to talk to you again soon until then have fun.
