11.2: The Beast Below
In which the British people are the real monsters after all. Ahhhhhh.
Broadcast: April 2010
Watched: October 2021
“Bad boy, Timmy.” Bad child actor too, Timmy.
The magical, child-friendly vibe continues. The little girl reading the riddle, which becomes Amy’s voiceover at the end; Amy’s voiceover at the start, come to that; Amy flying in space, the Doctor holding her by the ankle… Also, the story has child guest stars, and literally starts in a classroom. The three faces of the smilers, which clearly only have room for two, doesn’t make literal sense (nor do the human/smiler hybrids, come to that), but it doesn’t feel out of place in a story with a princess, ish, saving a monster. It’s science fiction as fairly tale.
I love the whole notion of Starship UK. The tower blocks which are counties. The flags everywhere, including the wrongly coloured ones on the computers. The tube iconography on the lifts, everything feeling a bit WW2, a bit make do and mend. We’re told that Scotland wanted its own ship, but there’s no evidence of Wales or Northern Ireland either. That said, all the counties we see named except for “Yorkshire” seem to be southern ones so this may just be London-centrism at work.
LOLl that the UK is apparently the only country in the 30th century not capable of space travel, mind. Bloody Brexit.
Liz 10 is great, both in conception and performance (“I’m the bloody queen mate - basically, I rule” is a brilliant line), though I do think it’s a shame Who wasted the idea of a mixed race queen before the culture wars got going.
I really like the allegorical bit of the story, but it does feel a bit half-baked (“ooh your prosperity depends on others’ suffering... but also you aren’t actually that prosperous and you live in a police state for some reason”). I’m not sure the revelation is as horrifying as it’s set up to be - I don’t think most people would give a shit that their survival depended on whale torture, and the fact that whale doesn’t kick them all off the moment it gets a chance is a bit unconvincing, too.
Again, it feels like it’s from a different era when we still had some faith in humanity - oh christ we’re still on stuff broadcast under a Labour government aren’t we? [We are. The last episode before the 2010 election was Flesh & Stone; because coalition negotiations took a while, Gordon Brown was still Prime Minister for The Vampires of Venice.]
Other bits and bobs:
The voting age on Starship UK is 16.
“It’s this or Leadworth, what will Amy Pond choose” is a nice summation of the theme of this series: do you want silly adventures or to grow up at last?
“Checking all the water in this area. There’s an escaped fish” is just another of my favourite lines.
Some random references. “Because I won’t be the Doctor any more” is a proto-War Doctor bit; the memory wipe hidden in the lights is also recycled in Day. “The same ten years” is proto-Heaven Sent. Magpie Electricals from Idiot’s Lantern are in space, for some unexplained reason. (Well, presumably the reason is “shit shit we need set dressing”.)
Some things that aren’t quite references - the twist with the mask is another of those satisfying Moffat clicks, that he did all the time in the RTD era, but is going to run out of quite soon. And when Smith says “A great big tongue!” he’s definitely channelling Troughton (who, I seem to recall, was the old Doctor he’d been most impressed by while researching the history of the show).
There’s a lack of confidence in the way the episode gives us flashbacks to show Amy working things out, and then her spelling it all out for the Doctor afterwards (”Remind you of anyone?”) - Moffat hasn’t worked out quite how much he can skip over yet.
The use of a screenwipe to shift to a shot of the regulars looking out of a window into space is, like much of End of Time 2, very Star Wars. Why was everyone doing Star Wars in 2010? There was no Star Wars in 2010.
The cliffhanger, with Churchill phoning and the Dalek shadow moving into shot, is the single best bit of the Victory of the Daleks story and it isn’t even in the episode.
Oooh the mysterious crack following the TARDIS whatever could it mean.
No way is this the 30th century we see elsewhere in Who. How d’you get out of that one, Lance?
But please can we edit out the wink wink jokes about the Virgin Queen.
Amy Pond really over-egged the explanation. We get it, Moffat, move on. My daughter would have had no problem killing every human on board in favour of saving the star whale and I tend to agree. Once again, I was confused about how they were vomited up but didn’t float off into space. I woke up in the middle of the night deciding that final shot must have been after all the scaffolding and cage were removed so the whale could go free. I really enjoyed the rewatch of this episode. My daughter didn’t speak until the reveal with the whale torture, which is a sign it’s a good one.