DOCTOR WHO - SPACE BABIES (2024)

DIRECTED by Julie Anne Robinson 

SCREENPLAY by Russel T Davies 

STARRING  - Ncuti Gatwa as The Doctor,  Millie Gibson as Ruby Sunday,  Robert Strange as The Boogeyman,  Golda Rosheuvel as Jocelynn Sancerre, Michelle Greenidge as Carla Sunday,  Angela Wynter as Cherry Sunday.

PLOT - Ruby Sunday steps aboard the TARDIS for her very first trip into time and space with the Doctor.

 

The TARDIS arrives at a space station that also doubles as a baby farm. The station is crewed by babies whose minds have been genetically altered to give them the intelligence and skills of fully grown adults.

However, the children themselves are not the only secret that the space station hides, for out there...in the darkened lonely corridors and ventilation shafts of the space station lurks the creature known only as...the Boogeyman !!!!

DIALOUGE  -  Ruby - "So, the planet down below will refuse to stop the babies being born, but once they're born, they don't look after them."

PERFORMANCES  - Here we are at the long awaited first episode of the first series of the new era of Doctor Who. It's been hyped up to the moon and back and...its a bit disappointing if I'm being honest (but more on that later).

It's not a bad episode by any means, just very, very average.  What does save it though are the performances of its two central stars - Ncuti Gatwa and Millie Gibson. 

I said in my review of thier debut episode at Christmas that the pair have a great chemistry and bounce off each other very well and thankfully that continues here. Theres lots of exposition in this episode (presumably to get new viewers up to speed on the show's backstory) but this never feels laboured. Particularly well done is Gatwa's delivery of the Doctor's speech about how he lives to wander the universe and see new things - even though this Doctor has a new face (and ethnicity) he's still essentially the same character we've known for the past 60 years deep down. Gatwa captures the Doctor's sense of wonder perfectly and continues to inject lots of energy into his performance.

Millie Gibson doesn't get quite as much to do in this episode as she did in her debut in last year's Christmas special but she's still very good. Ruby seems to adapt pretty quickly to life in the TARDIS and seems quite adept at taking things in her stride, but you can tell that there's some hidden depths to her character as well. There's a mystery surrounding Ruby and in this episode we start to see that mystery grow. Clearly interesting times lie ahead.

Gatwa and Gibson basically carry the entire episode - the other characters are all fairly two dimensional and don't make much of an impression which is a bit of a shame, but then I suppose the whole point of the episode is to let us get to know our two new leads a little better, so it at least succeeds in doing what it sets out to do.

SFX - We get a great monster design for the Boogeyman - all slavering jaws and green slime  ( as we find out, he IS made out of genetically engineered mucous  - he's LITERALLY a "boogey" man ).

He seems to be a practical effect with a bit of CGI thrown into the mix - he works really well - the problem is that he's severely underused. Hes in about two or three scenes maximum and that's it. A shame.

From the sublime to the ridiculous  - I'm not the only person to say this, but the effects used to make the babies speak REALLY don't work at all. Basically, they've CGI'd lipsynched mouths onto the faces of real babies and it just looks really awkward. Obviously, one year olds can't act,  so thier expressionless faces mixed with the emoting adult mouths just looks really odd. It's the "Uncanny Valley" in action and it just serves to take you out of the story. Having said that, I really can't see how they could have done it any other way (other than having fully CG babies and then it would have just looked like a PIXAR film), maybe it's just a case of ambition overreaching capability...I dunno.

We get a nice moment when Ruby gets momentarily turned into an alien...

Theres also some very well done CG Dinosaurs and a nice "farting" spaceship.

Doctor Who has never looked more cinematic.

VIOLENCE  - Theres talk of a genocide having taken place on the planet below, but we never see anything occur. It's all backstory.

RATING - Aside from some great moments with the new Doctor and companion this episode also features some interesting call backs to Russel T Davies' original era of Doctor Who back in 2005. Take a look at this shot...

Ruby's first view of outer space. Then take a look at this shot from episode 2 of the 2005 series - The End Of The World - where then companion Rose Tyler (Billie Piper) gets her first view of space alongside her Doctor (Christopher Eccleston)...

I suppose if it worked back then there's nothing wrong with using the same device twice. It's a nice little callback and theres several more that take place in this episode.

Unfortunately, the rest of the episode is slightly bland, I think. It's definitely not terrible and I'm still excited for this new era, but this (new leads aside) is nothing we've not seen before from modern Doctor Who. Its a nice inoffensive little runaround that reaffirms the new status quo and is quite fun to watch, but Doctor Who is capable of so much more than this.

3 and a half sentient snot monsters out of 5. Standard "meat and two veg" Doctor Who that doesn't live up to the hype, but will hopefully lead to greater things.