Doctor Who “The Beast Below” Review

Doctor Who The Beast Below

Amy’s first trip with the Doctor carries them both to a massive spaceship that carries all of England through space, but the thing that lives below raises some very difficult questions about how far one is willing to go to survive.

The Doctor is a maniac.  One thing that’s been different so far about the Eleventh Doctor is that he’s once again this unknown element.  You never know what he’s going to say or do next, and he talks so fast it’s a wonder anyone can keep up with him.  The way he wrings his hands when he’s presenting their new location to Amy makes him seem like some mad scientist.  The fact that he has so many different things running through his head at the same time is believably displayed as he plays hopscotch with about four ideas in one conversation, constantly jumping back and forth between them.

Once again, Amy is able to prove how important it is for the Doctor to have a companion.  Luckily, this comes off differently than it has before, as when the Doctor rains hell and fire on his enemies and someone has to rein him in.  This time there were no real enemies, just a difficult choice to make, with the Doctor being blind to the best answer because he chose to see the worst in everyone.

The whole episode had a very realistic feeling, despite being set on a starship in the future.  That’s probably the biggest difference between this series and the last.  I think when the show came back from “hiatus” a few years back, a lot of emphasis was placed on the “normal” that existed in the weird situations the Doctor found himself in.  That’s why they always spent so much time on the companions’ home lives, or showing that no matter where you go, people still deal with the same stuff.  I think the emphasis was to show that Doctor Who wasn’t just for “geeky fanboys.”  And now that they’ve done that successfully, the show can open up and be a little weirder and return focus more to the fantastic and bizarre, those really wild ideas that make Doctor Who so astounding.

Little stuff:  I like that, when Amy says the Doctor looks human, he responds “No, you look Time Lord.  We came first.”  That ties into fan-cannon which holds that the evolution of the Doctor’s race, the Time Lords, effected many others, explaining why so many races in the universe look human.  They actually look Time Lord.

The character of Liz 10 was entertaining and not at all what I was expecting.  I love it when important people know who the Doctor is, and actually want his help.

I also thought the TARDIS looked a little better this time.  Maybe it was that they didn’t focus on the little stuff like the typewriter and hot-and-cold pipes that bugged me last week.  From the wide-view, it was much easier to appreciate how impressive the new control room is.

I like that Amy is still running around in her nightgown, like Wendy in Peter Pan, continuing the fairy tale theme from last week.  Also, Arthur Dent from Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy spent the first three books journeying through space and time in his pajamas and bathrobe.

Did anyone else notice the beginnings of a countdown to something?  The last episode was titled the “Eleventh Hour,” and this episode had a new character named Liz 10.  Also, both episodes featured the number zero prominently, with Prisoner Zero in the last one and the young boy’s grade of Zero in this one.  I might be reading too much into that, and will probably have to wait to see if a Nine and a Zero show up in the next episode before going all “conspiracy theory.”

This started out as a typical adventure, but got pretty freaking dark and tense there at the end.  I was kind of surprised they went that way so soon in Smith’s run.  I would have figured it would be a while before they had him freak out on anyone.  But then, I would have thought it would be a while before the Doctor’s worst enemies, the Daleks, showed up and apparently they’ll be on the next episode.  I suppose they are trying to get as much good stuff as they can up front to keep people interested long enough to accept Smith if they haven’t already.  Still, it was surprising to see the “goofy” new Doctor display so much anger and disappointment.  But it was still great TV.

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