Doctor Who feels like it has infinite reasons to celebrate. It is 60 years old this month, it has a flash new sugar daddy thanks to an international deal with Disney+, and it has moved on emphatically from the era of star Jodie Whittaker and writer Chris Chibnall, during which the show seemed to become smaller, looking inward when it should explode authoritatively in all directions. The most beloved showrunner of its modern era, Russell T Davies, is back – and his long-term choice for a new Doctor, Ncuti Gatwa, smacks of hope and progression, a fresh start.
Before Gatwa arrives on 25 December, however, there is an extra set of gifts, like an Advent calendar that’s just as plush as your big Christmas present. Three special episodes temporarily re-introduce David Tennant as the Doctor and Catherine Tate as his companion Donna Noble, a combination not seen in the “Whoniverse” since 2010. Their comeback is a treat, a bonus – and the first of the new stories, The Star Beast, romps merrily, just as it should.
The Doctor lands back on Earth and immediately runs into his old pal Donna, which perturbs him. Before the action starts there is the unusual sight of Tennant and Tate taking turns to address the camera in character with a plot refresher for the benefit of young, forgetful or US viewers: Donna saved the world once, but to do that her brain had to absorb all the Doctor’s wisdom, which would have melted her mind had the Doctor not stepped in and wiped her memory. Since then, she has lived an ordinary life, blighted only by a nagging sense that something is missing. If she remembers who the Doctor is – at this point Tennant juts out his chin and delivers his lines through his bottom teeth, which is how you know it’s serious – she will die.
Such is the backdrop for a story based on the 1980 comic book Doctor Who and the Star Beast. A spaceship crash lands in London, which quickly leads to a furry, 3ft-high creature called Beep the Meep holing up in Donna’s shed in a bid to escape a team of assassins called the Wrarth Warriors. The ensuing battles and chases do contain evidence of the comfy new Disney budget, mainly via the Doctor’s sonic screwdriver, which can now draw cosmic maps in the air and create floating bulletproof glass to hide behind. But Doctor Who remains kooky, slightly sitcommy and deeply British: the Meep, who Donna refers to as “mad Paddington”, is given the voice of a tremulous old biddy by Miriam Margolyes, while the Wrarth are just tall men with green heads that look as if a 1970s props designer moulded them from papier mache. The Doctor, Donna’s family and the Meep eventually escape thanks to poor brickwork in the party walls connecting a suburban Victorian terrace.
It’s fun, light and fast, but Davies is a writer who, when something needs saying, will say it proudly at the top of his voice as soon as he is given a platform. He has seen a section of the Who fanbase towards whom he wishes to reach out a hand. Donna has a daughter, Rose (Heartstopper’s Yasmin Finney), who is transgender, and some lovely early scenes set up Donna as a fierce protector of a young woman who has done what every parent hopes for and blossomed in an unforeseen way. Rose’s grandmother Sylvia (Jacqueline King), meanwhile frets about saying the wrong thing or using the wrong pronoun.
The episode’s treatment of Rose is tender, informed and, in the final reckoning, gloriously, air-punchingly affirmative – she is literally empowered by the experience. But Davies is always alive to comic possibilities too, as in the scene where the Doctor and the Noble family quiz the Meep about its own gender identity. “My chosen pronoun is the definite article – I am always ‘the’ Meep,” says the Meep.
“Oh,” replies the Doctor. “I do that.” Musing on what the Doctor’s pronouns are and concluding that they’re just “the” is a classic Davies touch.
As for that grand finale, it follows a familiar pattern for Who episodes such as this one: they’re not really trying to be classic stories because they have other functions to perform, such as introducing a new cast. There’s a neat twist halfway through that flips the story on its head and then, when all seems lost, a magic solution that just about makes sense so long as everyone promises not to rewind and study it too closely.
After that, there’s just time to reveal a fabulously expensive-looking new Tardis interior, before Tennant and Tate, their faultless comic chemistry restored, take off ready for episode two. Doctor Who is flying again.
Doctor Who: The Star Beast aired on BBC One and is on iPlayer
