Doctor Who: The Interstellar Song Contest: Review
The latest adventure for the Doctor and Belinda sees the pair ending up at the 803rd Interstellar Song Contest8, a camp mix of Eurovision and aliens (timed to release with the annual Eurovision Song Contest weekend).
The second series has just two more episodes to go after this and with an uncertain future for the show bubbling away in the background, the pressure's been on this year to turn it around.
But what begins as a harmless bit of fun for Ncuti Gatwa's Doctor and Varada Sethu's Belinda soon turns out to be a desperate battle for survival...
The key parts of this episode are riddled with spoilers for long-running mysteries seeded since the start of Gatwa's tenure and while they appear to set up further questions rather than answers, at least one of them is a genuine surprise. A mid-credits scene delivers something else too.
But what the Interstellar Song Contest has a main story is another parallel with current concerns.
As the main control room of the song contests broadcast is invaded by Freddie Fox's alien Kid, who's determined to sabotage the event and who coldly kills 100,000 people (seemingly including the Doctor), is a story that appears to parallel Israel and Palestine in a non-too subtle way. It's powerful stuff and given the current Eurovision has been hit by protests over sibgers from the Middle East, it's both prescient and chilling.
Equally chilling is Gatwa's turn as the Doctor here who effectively delves into a darker, more cruel side, hitherto unseen in this incarnation shocking his companion Belinda. But what's frustrating is that despite her initial contempt, by episode's end she's reverted back to not really caring, which is the fault of poor writing and perhaps a problem of the show's need for speed rather than depth.
With side characters getting more to do this episode,there's a feeling that it's more of a packed episode than normal.
But in parts, it feels too totally jerky, a mix of camp comedy, Rylan Clark's awful acting and a Eurovision-style spectacle that doesn't quite gel in parts.
Overall, Doctor Who: The Interstellar Song Contest is an episode that has a strong central plot but is one which is more about its reveals and mysteries going into the two part finale than a fully-fleshed compact story.
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Make one wonder if any future regenerations are they all going to be bi-generations from now on? Also, while many of us called it already, the Rani reveal scene itself is almost completely bereft of drama. Compare it to "Utopia," which reintroduced the Master back in 2007. That episode was actually about the character of Yana, the secret he was hiding, and the nature of the Doctor's isolation. There was some seeding earlier in the season, but the episode itself did the work, and the escalating revelations - he's a Time Lord, he's the Master, he's regenerating, he's Harold Saxon, PM - felt both powerfully dramatic and earned. Compare that to this: two years of increasingly bizarre cameos from Anita Dobson, a tacked on scene in the credits of an episode that had nothing to do with her character, a regeneration that barely makes her blink and no Doctor present to react or explain to the companion who is the Rani, so that there's no indication of why it's important (especially to fans who may have not seen the Rani before) that the Rani is back.
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