Doctor Who heads to The Interstellar Song Contest, for a bit of music and a lot of trouble. Our spoiler-filled review…
This review contains spoilers. Our review of last week’s episode is here.
The final time for Doctor Who to let its hair down before we head into the two-part season finale, The Interstellar Song Contest is a galaxy-wide party that reminded me a little of how Russell T Davies wrapped up his first series of the show back in 2005.
Then, he recruited in Anne Robinson, The Weakest Link and Big Brother for a pop culture explosion with some Daleks thrown in. Oh, and a Delta Wave too, which makes another cameo appearance.
Here, it’s Rylan, basically the Eurovision Song Contest, and dead Graham Norton announcing to us that the world is going to vaporise. Just your standard Saturday night.
Penned by Juno Dawson, the set-up sees the Doctor landing to give this vortex vindicator whatsit a go. In a pod that looks akin to that of a trade council delegate in a Star Wars film, it quickly becomes clear that this massive music festival being broadcast to three trillion people is about to go tits up. That’s separate to the fact that Mrs Flood appears to have been gathering the coordinates the Doctor’s been capturing, and has plans of her own.
Directed by Ben A Williams – who did a terrific film called The Pass in 2016 if you get the chance to check it out – The Interstellar Song Contest wastes little time getting us to the Harmony Arena, where confetti cannons are just as omnipresent in the year 2925. And there’s a few things going on.
The surface level stuff is a plot involving a protest led by Freddie Fox’s Kid, who basically hijacks the broadcast, cuts the Harmony Arena off from the rest of the galaxy, and in theory is set to wipe lots of people out. Then there’s Miriam-Teak Lee as Cora Saint Bavier, there to sing, but with a suspiciously ill-fitting wig. And then you have Mike and Gary – Kadiff Kirwan and Charlie Condou – with their own little sub-plot too.
The song contest stuff is really well realised, I thought. I’ve tried to dial back a little from discussing the lashings of resources available to Doctor Who at the moment, but in both The Interstellar Song Contest and Lux, we get stories that’d be hard to visually realise without it (although at one point I got The Greatest Show In The Galaxy vibes, and that was filmed in a tent in the BBC’s car park!). It strikes me as money well spent. Heck, these days the show can afford to suck the Doctor, Rylan and the TARDIS into space, and deep freeze them.
Credit to Juno Dawson for investing reasons for Kid’s actions, that muddy the waters between good and bad. Many of us oldies will have seen such things before, but I remain conscious just how young the audience for Doctor Who often is, and adding a bit of substance (not in the Demi Moore sense) is welcome.
Glossy and fun, then, and with subtexts about protecting species, not trusting massive adverts (unless they’re on this site and make us lots of money), and be careful who you meet at Brighton Pride.
The discussion points though are more about the broader series-wide stuff. It’s not hard to tell that big things are coming when the BBC cuts the ‘next time’ section off the preview copies sent to reviewers, and seeing what’s in there?
Hence this awkward bit where I’ve just watched it, before pressing publish, and had to delete the line I’d written saying ‘Has Russell T Davies brought The Rani back or something?’ Because, well, yes. Another Time Lord, originally played by Kate O’Mara in two not very good stories, but now there’s both Anita Dobson and Archie Panjabi set to do battle with the Doctor. Much like the reappearance of Sutekh last year, it’s something for the older fans to go with the avid recruitment of new viewers. Did Davies know that Dobson would bi-generate and be The Rani right at the start? That’d be a decent long play.
It answers some questions, and leaves others. We now know why Mrs Flood knows so much, and why the cloister bell was going off. We don’t know why Susan has started appearing. The stakes are rocketing, the TARDIS doors are blown off, and there’s double trouble ahead.
I do hope Davies gets to something else in his last two episodes outside of the galaxy-ending and Rani-battling stuff, because one thing that increasingly strikes me: there’s not been much exploring of the dynamic this season between Doctor and companion.
For whatever reason, outside of being unified by the drive to get Belinda home, there’s not been much bond between them. I’ve been trying to put my finger on why I’ve found Ncuti Gatwa’s Doctor less interesting and mysterious in this run, and I wonder if that’s part of it. He gets very angry and loses control in The Interstellar Song Contest, and we saw him admitting the need for a place to retreat to last week. But there’s not much new there. Part of the problem is I grew up with angry Doctor Who, and the show can’t be for me, at heart. I love it, but I’ve been through many narrative cycles with it before, and others haven’t.
It’s difficult, and I get that. Sherlock Holmes, James Bond, characters like that, how do you present fresh challenges to them that haven’t been seen in the decades before? It’s a bold plot to separate the Doctor from his companion so much, but while it’s perhaps benefitted the series, has it helped the character? Belinda has been a real asset, but the Doctor keeps taking a back seat.
In fairness to him, he is part-responsible for the saving of Rylan Clark here, and Ncuti Gatwa’s expressions sell surprise and fear in the blink of an eye. Plus, his immediate problem: something’s just bashed through the door of the TARDIS, leading into what may be the last two Doctor Who episodes for some time. It may be something, it may be nothing, then: I’m just conscious that the core dynamic has been a little, narratively, distant.
I’m still really enjoying this run, though. It’s been a stronger season than the last, and confidence is rippling through the show. And, ultimately, I had fun with The Interstellar Song Contest, and suspect many others will.
Now let’s hope if it is going away for a bit, Doctor Who leaves us on a high. And if Davies manages a really good Rani story? Well, that’d be quite something too…
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