The Beast Below - A Review

Right, let's dispense with the obligatory spoiler warning for those of you who haven't seen the latest episode of Doctor Who.

I've been prompted to write this because the sublime Mr. Gareth Rafferty has a very different opinion on the episode to mine. I just want to briefly summarise my thoughts on it.

The Doctor and Amy Pond materialise above the rather cheesy-sounding Starship UK, a sort of generational ship searching the stars after the Earth has been slightly spoiled by solar flares. There are echoes of the second Tom Baker serial, The Ark in Space, here. So despite the ridiculousness of the Starship UK idea, it's tempered with an amount of geek cachet.

After the titles we see what is essentially Doctor Who's first ever "spacewalk", and Amy Pond floating serenely in space is a powerful, heartening image. Needless to say, our "Ooohs and Ahhhs" are capitalised on by Murray Gold, whose soundtrack either consists of a woman wailing "oooh" and "ahhh", or the BBC Symphony Orchestra after a bombastic night out on the sauce. So much, so meh.

But this is Amy's first trip to the future. We've been hundreds of times, of course, but the strength of this episode rests solely on Karen Gillan's shoulders. This is New Who through her eyes, much as The End of the World or The Shakespeare Code introduced Rose Tyler and Martha Jones to the Doctor's life. But unlike these past episodes, The Beast Below isn't totally awful.

We get a handle on Amy's character right from the moment she monologues into the TARDIS scanner, and the image of a crying child. The Doctor has just delivered one of the funniest lines in Doctor Who history - "I never get involved" - and there he is, comforting the child. It's a magical moment, utterly contradicts the Doctor's still-cooking self-image, and sets the tone of the entire episode.

And the entirity of The Beast Below is about choices. It's a morality play in space, and it's something Doctor Who has always excelled at.

The Doctor immediately notices that there's something nefarious afoot (or underfoot) on Starship UK, and he baffles us by placing a glass of water on the floor. "There's an escaped fish", he tells the bemused onlookers. This is Moffat's strength - to take something as humble as a glass of water, and turn it into a mystery. A central plot point out of the mundane.

So the Doctor sends Amy off to explore, and she gets into the usual companion trouble. After a scare she's presented with a terrible truth, and is then given the option of forgetting or protesting. Being human, she chooses to forget. But the Doctor arrives, and his words just ring in your ears... "What have you done?"

The Doctor is born to protest, and he presses the appropriate button. And down they go. After a brief spell in the mouth of a giant star-whale, they are propelled back to the surface to be greeted by the "mysterious woman" Liz 10, who is so blatantly the Queen in disguise it's almost laughable. Her line "Basically, I rule" is awful and thrilling at the same time. Less good is her Cock-en-y thief accent.

One of the great tropes of Classic Who is the idea that the Doctor is viewed suspiciously, and observed in all of his investigations. In an inspired bit of casting, the person charged with spying on the Doctor is none other than Terrance Hardiman, the Demon Headmaster. You know, the creepy one who you had nightmares about. We were Matt Smith's beloved "barren generation", and only had the Demon Headmaster, Aquila and the Queen's Nose to fill the Who void.

But I digress. I must stop digressing. Hardiman summons Liz 10, the Doctor and Amy to the Tower of London, where the brain of the star-whale is being electrocuted to act as an accelerator pedal. It's a gruesome thought, but not a surprise. Liz 10 demands to know why this is being done in her name, and she has her little amnesia/Groundhog Day moment. The Doctor, very angry by this point, is left with his own choice. Destroy Britain, Kill the Whale, or make it a vegetable. Gareth makes a good point in that it's actually a rather false choice. He probably has the nous to give them replacement propulsion, or to evacuate the entire population to the TARDIS swimming pool.

But, and this probably won't come as a surprise, I'm always willing to suspend belief in Doctor Who. I think that's the point. Okay Moffat, if you say here's a real dilemma, we'll go with it. Otherwise, the plot would fall down. It would be a failing if it weren't for the real alternative that Amy is left to discover. The whale has volunteered in an attempt to save the children. The adults may be to blame for their collective choice, but the star whale is compassionate. Just like the Doctor.

Now that final point may be a little unnecessarily laboured, but this is a children's show. I don't credit all 8 million viewers with the necessaries to learn an important lesson in passing. And neither, probably, does Steven Moffat. This might in itself seem to suggest Moffat has a negative view of humanity, but I do see him as essentially a Humanist because of the way he writes his characters. Individually, each character is capable of acts of both evil and good. Collectively, he's making a timely point about our political blinkers. But every single one of the characters is given the benefit of the doubt. Even Hardiman's, who looks genuinely apologetic.

There are failings to this story. The Smilers are essentially incidental to the plot, and you get the feeling they're there purely because a committee decreed that All Episodes Must Have Monsters. I actually believe this is a fallacy. There are also too many layers of complexity for everything to gel perfectly, but the key lesson for the viewer is essentially none of the above. We see how well Amy Pond already understands her raggedy Doctor. He is the central pillar of her personal creation myth, and she tries to impress. She succeeds.

Both Matt and Karen's performances are captivating. The Doctor's anger is well caught, and the references to a kind and lonely old man, though we've heard them before, don't seem remotely as tired here as they have before.

Put simply, Moffat can write brilliant characters, and the cast can act them. It's not an instant classic, but there's meat on the bone, and so many wonderful nods to classic sci-fi - especially Hitch-Hikers - seem to permeate the scripts.