It’s time to finally look forward after a marathon of older stories as the 60th Anniversary trio of specials began airing last night with “The Star Beast”, an adaptation of the comic of the same name (which I reviewed HERE, and I also reviewed its audio adaptation HERE!) making this the third time this story has been covered on this blog. That being said, the story is more about the debut of the Fourteenth Doctor and his coming in contact with Donna Noble again, believing there must be a reason why he has his old 10th Doctor face again. Oh and yes, it also has some unsubtle messages for those who worry about that sort of thing. Either way, let’s take a look!
The Doctor (David Tennant), still fresh from his latest regeneration, is trying to figure out why he has taken on the appearance of his past self just as he runs into Donna Noble (Catherine Tate), his old companion from back when he last had this face and whom he had to erase the memory of in order to save her life. The Doctor meets her daughter Rose (Yasmin Finney) and husband Shaun (Karl Collins) but generally tries to stay out of things and instead concentrate on a crashed alien spaceship that happened at the same time. At the crash site, which is actually more of a landing site, The Doctor meets the new UNIT scientific advisor in Shirley Bingham (Ruth Madeley) and generally starts following some leads with his new sonic screwdriver, which can apparently make screens appear out of thin air now. Meanwhile Rose comes across a cute creature call Beep the Meep (voiced by Miriam Margolyes) and takes it in after it claims to be being chased by alien foes.
Not content with already taking up two Regeneration spots, this face makes yet another appearance!
The stories come together as The Doctor appears at Donna’s house just as she and her mother Sylvia (Jacqueline King) are freaking out about Meep and they’re soon under attack by the apparent evil aliens known as the Wrarth Warriors. The Doctor creates shields out of thin air with the sonic (seriously, Russell T. Davies was the one who turned the sonic into a magic wand, now he’s going even further with that concept, seemingly!) and he, the Noble family and Beep escape, but The Doctor notices something odd about the Wrarth warriors tactics. The Doctor gathers Beep and two Wrarth warriors together and gets to the bottom of things: Beep the Meep is actually an evil overlord and last of the Meeps and the Wrarth are there simply to arrest him. Meep confirms this by killing the two warriors and showing that thanks to his engine’s hypnotic effects he has control over a bunch of UNIT soldiers, proceeding to capture our entire protagonist group and then head back to his rocket, planning to take off and destroy the entirety of London while doing it…
I have mixed feelings about the whole Beep the Meep thing because as a long-time fan of the expanded media its annoying to see the Fourteenth Doctor not recognise a foe he should’ve had multiple encounters with already, but ah well. “The Time War reset it” and all that. Ruth Madeley is legitimately a wheelchair user and Yasmin Finney is trans and both of those things play key roles in their characters, with the former only surviving being mind controlled because she couldn’t get up the stairs to the rocket and then giving people a helping hand with rockets hidden in her wheelchair (that was less empowering and more embarrassing, if I’m honest…) while Rose Noble is actually portrayed well and sympathetically for the first two thirds of the story but things take a turn for the… weirdly written in the finale. Either way, doesn’t bother me though I do wish what they weren’t spelled out so explicitly, a little subtlety can go a long way, no need to beat everyone over the head with these things, even if seeing certain corners of the internet go into meltdown is always a good laugh.
The Continuity:
Tossing away decades of continuity aside, Beep does look great in live action!
Apart from the already mentioned Fourth Doctor comic and audio of the same name (and basic plot!) and ignoring the sequels featuring the return of Beep as they happened before this story (argh, my head!) the only major one is obviously “The Stolen Earth / Journey’s End”, which features the whole Donna getting her mind erased thing.
Also Ruth Madeley has played Sixth Doctor companion Hebe is several full cast Audio Dramas, but at least they’re audio so you can just say she happens to be a wheelchair user with a similar voice and pretend she doesn’t also look exactly like her!
Overall Thoughts:
It’s funny how annoying the Donna Noble character would be in pretty much anyone else’s hands, but Catherine Tate has the knack!
The Star Beast version 3 is a good way to kick off the 60th Anniversary mini-series as the lighter plot gave plenty of room for Catherine Tate to do her over-the-top thing as well as pour in some classic RTD melodrama with Tennant’s Doctor. Looking forward to the next episode, and it’s been a while since I said that with new Doctor Who…
The Doctor soon escapes captivity and heads into Meep’s rocket to stop it and after a short while is joined by Donna, who has had a thought in the back of her head that she “must help The Doctor”, even though he hadn’t used that name yet. The Doctor curses what’s happened as a barrier falls between them, giving him one choice: awaken Donna’s memories and have her help him or let many millions of Londoners die. He does so and Meep is stopped as Donna falls into The Doctor’s arms and they have a sad goodbye as the Meep-controlled UNIT soldier pour in but suddenly they become unhypnotized and Donna wakes up and apparently its all because Rose Noble inherited part of the Time Lord brain from her mother, and due to the power being spread between two people it’s no longer lethal (and also Rose being non-binary is a side effect due to Time Lords being neither male nor female… Not sure I get that bit, shouldn’t the trans character have made the choice herself? What message is that exactly?) Meep is arrested and all is well…
Who had “Live action Wrarth Warriors” on their “things they expected to see” list? No, me neither! (I also don’t have a “things I expect to see list”, but there you go…)
Then we get the only bit I felt was too cringey, even for me. The Doctor asks Donna about still having his mind and how dangerous it is and Donna and Rose basically say that he should’ve stayed a women because a man wouldn’t get it, because as they’re women they’re just going to “let it go” and… they do. They just get rid of the power because they’re women, apparently. Riiighty-o. Rose then says she finally feels like herself for the first time, which again not sure what that means in terms of being trans due to Time Lord influence or whatever, but again I’m happy to have a positive trans character on a big show like this, so I’ll just let it slide… probably went over my head. The Doctor manages to convince Sylvia to allow him to take Donna in the TARDIS to see Wilf and they step on board a frankly amazing new TARDIS set and have a bit of a chat before Donna spills some coffee and causes the TARDIS to catch on fire, leading to the two vanishing off into a random time and place…
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