This weekend, the Disney era of Doctor Who arrived with a bedazzling double bill flourish on BBC One, BBC iPlayer and Disney+ outside the UK and Ireland! Alas, allergies precluded me from watching the midnight premiere (and I missed out on the aurora due to light pollution).
It’s amazing to see Doctor Who shimmer in a way it’s never been able to in the past thanks to those Disney dollars. Of course, none of this matters without compelling stories and characters.
Ncuti Gatwa (Doctor Who) and Millie Gibson (Ruby Sunday) have electrifying chemistry and I can’t wait to follow their sing-along TARDIS tales.
Space Babies was an undemanding season one opener/Disney+ primer, a glossier reprise of The End of the World framed as Red Dwarf does Alien. During the airlock scenes (lifted directly from the Alien franchise), I was thinking this was the same tech developed for the Star Wars live-action spin-off series on Disney+ and utilised on Disney’s upcoming Alien: Romulus!
I loved the callback in The Devil's Chord to Pyramids of Mars (one of my all-time favourite serials) when the Fourth Doctor took Sarah Jane Smith to a desolated future 1980 should Sutekh escape...
A reference to the Doctor’s granddaughter, Susan Foreman, and Totter’s Lane, where the TARDIS was located in An Unearthly Child, piqued my interest. Will Susan return and is there a connection with Ruby?
It was a timey-wimey dopamine hit!