Hogan Reviews

Doctor Who’s latest season continues and manages to deliver a fun episode at last, though one that wasn’t without its usual issue of being subtle as a brick about an important message, so we’re not golden here or anything. Still, some big continuity things / callbacks and The Fifteenth Doctor actually showing a range of emotions other than happy and crying lifts the episode up quite a bit! So let’s take a look…

Okay, first thing’s first: I’ve never liked the Eurovision song contest, which given I’ve never really been into pop music or… really music in general shouldn’t be a surprise, so I was nervous going into this, especially when a lot of marketing kept talking about host Rylan like he was a big deal I had honestly no idea who he was, but thankfully the actual Eurovision parody part ends quite quickly. The Doctor (Ncuti Gatwa) and Belinda (Varada Sethu) arrive in the far future where the 800-odd “Interstellar Song Contest” was taking place to get the final reading on his “vindicator” device but they decide to stay and watch. Sadly though unsurprising given this is Doctor Who things are quick to go badly as a Hellion (a type of alien with horns like the devil, coincidentally!) called Kid (Freddie Fox) arrives and takes over the broadcast with the help of his inside girl Wynn (Iona Anderson) and decides to first dump a good chunk of the audience out of the space station dome and into space, The Doctor included. It was quite the terrifying visual, sadly undercut only a few minutes later when we’re expressly told they’re not dead but instead kept in a, *sigh*, “Mavity field” and frozen. So that was the tension removed for the viewer quite quickly! Belinda meets with a singer called Cora (Miriam-Taek Lee) while The Doctor unfreezes himself when he has a vision of Susan (Carole Ann-Ford herself!) spurring him on, which was fun bit of continuity out of nowhere!

The Doctor and Belinda take in the sights… I’m sure there’s a sarcastic gag I could put here, but none are immediately springing to mind, sorry.

The Doctor meets gay couple Gary and Mike (Charlie Condou and Kadiff Kirwan), which to be fair is less “Russell’s gay agenda” and more “you’re unlikely to meet a straight man at Eurovision”, and everyone starts to piece together what was going on. Apparently the Hellions are demonised (get it?) in the media and everyone thinks they’re horrible people when in reality their home world was invaded, attacked and stripped of its poppy fields for no other reason than profit, Kid is merely “acting like you think we should” and getting revenge on the people who not only didn’t help his people when they were suffering but continue to think of them as bad people and terrorists… by um, being a terrorist. Not just a terrorist though! Oh no, he plans to broadcast a signal that will kill all three TRILLION plus people watching the Contest. Bloody hell, that’s quite the attempted kill count! What was refreshing is that The Doctor gives him a proper threatening speech like we don’t really see Ncuti get to do, which given Kid’s goals was understandable to say the least. We also hear that Cora is also a Hellion but she had her horns removed to fit into regular society, but as soon as she reveals this her manager disowns her and treats her like crap, so we’re going all in on the unpleasantness here. The soundwave broadcasting-thingy reaches 99% just as The Doctor seemingly appears before Kid and Wynn…

Now, given what’s been happening in the real world there was a good message here, but once again it was spelled out way too obviously, and resolution (which I’ll get to in the spoilers) was downright insulting. Still… enjoyable episode otherwise, especially the mid-credits scene which sadly I’d really like to talk about in the Continuity section, but I guess I’ll have to wait for the two-part finale’s review for that!

The Continuity:

Kid the Hellion and one of the helmeted robot guards I’ve just realised I never once mentioned in the review. Oh well, they didn’t exactly play a major role or anything…

Obviously the big one (not including the thing in the spoiler section) is the return of Susan, who debuted in the very first episode as the titular “Unearthly Child” and left the show in Season 2’s “The Dalek Invasion of Earth”. Carole Ann Ford has returned to the role in audio stories, mostly staring the Eighth Doctor, but this is her first on-screen appearance since “The Five Doctors” in 1983, which is quite the impressive gap (but doesn’t beat fellow Season 1 companion Ian/William Russel’s gap from a few years ago!)

Also, this isn’t the first time The Doctor has crashed a future version of the Eurovision Song Contest in space as the Seventh Doctor and Mel visited the “Intergalactic Song Contest” in the audio “Bang-Bang-a-Boom!”. That was a full on early Seventh Doctor cheese-fest though, no melodrama or serious message to be found with that one!

Overall Thoughts:

I never thought Rylan would appear on this blog! … Mostly because I had no idea he existed before this episode aired…

“The Interstellar Song Contest” once again was “brick to the face” subtle with its very important message but at least it remembered to be a fun episode of Doctor Who around it, with the Fifteenth Doctor acting as a far more well-rounded character than we’ve seen him in a good while. Some fun continuity throwbacks also added to the fun, making it feel like Doctor Who is back on course, even if I’m unlikely to want to watch the episode again in a hurry. Now as the next two episodes are a two-parter, I’ll be back in two weeks time to see if the finale delivered as satisfying pay-off to the series-long (ish) arc.

The Doctor that appeared in front of Kid was actually a “hardlight hologram” (someone’s been watching Red Dwarf!) and the real Doctor was behind him doing some good old fashioned “waving the sonic screwdri- I mean, Sonic Remote Control to your old CD player around and just solving everything” scene, including breaking the wave emitter and breaking Kid’s gun. Then in a rare (for Doctor 15) fit of anger The Doctor uses his hologram self to give Kid an electric shock, again and again and again, despite more images of Susan imploring him to stop, until Belinda arrives and he finally comes back to his senses. Who’d of thought? Actual emotional range from The Fifteenth Doctor! Hooray! The two Hellions are arrested and the people trapped above the arena are saved slowly but surely, leading to the contest resuming with one final song sung by Cora, who reveals she’s Hellion to the audience and says the song is about her lost home world, and through the magic of song everyone starts tearing up and eventually applauds and I guess now all Hellions are seen as nice people and that’s that. I guess Palestine just needs to chart with a sad song and people around the world will finally stand up to Israel, who knew such a serious issue could be so easily resolved!

The Doctor flies through space from the start of the episode… I’m afraid I had no images for the last half, so… yeah.

The Doctor and Belinda see a holo-recording of Graham Norton (at least I know who he is!) who reveals to them that “good old Earth” was destroyed in May 2025, which makes you wonder how the hell the Eurovision Song Contest became the Interstellar Song Contest hosted by a cryogenically frozen Rylan if that’s the case, but I digress. They run into the TARDIS and The Doctor puts the Vindicator into the console only for the dreaded cloister bells to begin ringing followed by an explosion entering the TARDIS doors. Great cliffhanger, but we’re not done! You see Mrs. Flood (Anita Dobson) was one of the audience members that was taken into space and as she’s rescued mid-way through the credits she reveals that her brain has suffered damage due to the experience and regener-… *sigh* bigenerates and reveals that she’s The Rani, or that they’re the Rani as the other person pulled out of her (played by Archie Panjabi) looks and acts more the part… well, Mrs. Flood says this other person is the Rani which I guess makes sense as she’s the next active incarnation and Flood is the old one but still around? God this whole bigeneration bollocks doesn’t half muddle things up for no reason, and why do it again so soon? I thought it was a rare event or something? Ahh, whatever, either way we finally have a new on-screen version of The Rani (or two…?), and I guess she’ll be the core villain for the two-part finale. Interesting, though let’s be fair, Rani was never actually that good in the show in the past, but that doesn’t mean this new one can’t be a bit more competent!