Doctor Who: Push the Button, Space Babes!
★★★☆☆ | Last Saturday, Doctor Who landed back on screens across the world with an effervescent double-bill bang, and I simply must talk about it. Here's my review of Episode 1 'Space Babies'.
The Exposition Dump Opening
Let’s start at the very beginning (a very good place to start). As Space Babies opens with a 70 lightyears-an-hour jaunt through time and the Doctor’s biography, Ncuti Gatwa’s effervescence as the Doctor already proves to know no bounds and is ably matched by Millie Gibson’s own wonderstruck élan as she undertakes the careful balancing act between awed teenager and confident young woman. Ruby easily finds her feet as the Doctor’s companion and it is clear that we are witnessing a new take on the typical audience surrogate character, both in terms of the acting and the writing. We see here how writer Russell T. Davies has his finger permanently on the pulse, understanding that television watching has changed.
Ruby Sunday: Who are you?
The Doctor: I’m the Doctor. You don’t have to stand over there. Come and have a look! It’s called the TARDIS.
Ruby: Nice! But hold on, I can’t call you “Doctor”. No, I wanna know your name.
The Doctor: Yeah, that’s, uh– that’s tricky. Because I was adopted, and the planet that took me in, they were kinda– they were kinda posh. They’d use titles like the Doctor or the Bishop or the Rani or the Conquistador. Say “Doctor” for a thousand years, and it becomes my name.
Some may deride this episode’s swift churning-out of exposition in its opening minutes as a Disney-ordained info-dump – and it may well be that – or cite it as some kind of attempt to appease Gen Z’s appalling attention spans (I haven’t opened TikTok once while writing this, I swear…), but I prefer to see it as evidence of Davies’ ever-astounding understanding of the zeitgeist. He knows that his viewers, especially those who fall into his younger target audience, are only a Google away from diving into a Wikipedia hole of information on the series, he knows that many people already know about the essential premise of Doctor Who, and he knows that Whovians simply do not need this exposition. As such, he treats the exposition-heavy opening like a Conservative government treats state benefits, cutting it down as much as possible. Unlike a Conservative government with state benefits, however, he makes it fun and accessible!
The Doctor: Inside, it’s a time and space machine, but outside, it’s– it’s like a chameleon. ‘Cause once I landed in 1963 and they useds to have police boxes on street corners.
Ruby: 1963?
The Doctor: Yeah.
Ruby: Okay. Ooh, jukebox. I like that. Okay. So, back to the planet.
The Doctor: My world is called Gallifrey.
Ruby: Gallifrey! And where’s that?
The Doctor: Gone! Ruby, it’s gone, it’s gone. They died. There was a genocide and they died. So the one that was adopted was the only one left. I am the last of the Time Lords. And I am so, so glad to be alive. This thing flies. Do you wanna see?
After all, is there any other TV show out there that could fit everything from time travel to the butterfly effect, dinosaurs, the main character’s origins and trauma, as well as a reference to the show’s very first episode in 1963, all into its opening five minutes without losing the viewer?
Space Babies To The Rescue!
Having landed on a space station in the year 21506, the Doctor and Ruby have a close encounter of the snotty kind with the episode’s “monster” (or “creature [we] haven’t met yet” as the Doctor says?), the Bogeyman. This mysterious creature has the unexpected effect of absolutely terrifying the Doctor. Long-term viewers will know that this isn't a usual experience for the Time Lord, and Russell T. Davies takes pains to explain this fact for new viewers:
Doctor: The question is, why did I run?
Ruby: 'Cos it was scary.
Doctor: It was new. I love meeting new things, so why did it give me the shivers? I couldn't run fast enough. I was like whoosh!
A few more longstanding elements of the series are then introduced such as the TARDIS's translation matrix. As a translator myself, I would be remiss to not stop on this point a moment. For those unaware, the translation industry is currently up in arms as the AI revolution is sweeping the world and threatening translators' livelihoods (see: my cri de cœur on the subject). Now, I am not going to scream and shout that Russell T. Davies is taking the side of AI in this fight. As recently as three episodes ago (Wild Blue Yonder), his writing highlighted how an admirable character such as The Doctor would go to pains to learn "57 billion 2 hundred and 5" languages despite having no need to thanks to technology. After all, science-fiction has long played with the idea of automatic, seamless translation, and I would personally love to see technology like that in a distant future. It goes without saying that such technology would do wonders for international – or, in the case of Doctor Who, interstellar – collaboration. However, I would personally love it if Doctor Who could take the time to explain the difference between this theoretical, flawless automatic translation and the flawed, AI translation we have these days. Maybe it could have gone like this:
Doctor: Huh. Planet Pacifico del Rio.
Ruby: Oh, that's in English. They speak English here? English exists?
Doctor: Er, no. No, no, no. Humans all speak one language by this point. A bit like Cantonese. This is what it really looks like, but the Tardis translates. It's got a perception filter, so it helps you fit into every time and place.Ruby: Oh, my phone does that!
Doctor: Pfft… Your phone tries to do that. It's cute. Like a baby taking its first steps, but with even worse vocabulary.
But enough of me ranting about AI, it's time to say hello to the titular characters. Because yes, spoiler alert: the episode titled Space Babies is about babies in space. Who’d’ve thunk it, eh?
Somehow, these babies – space babies – just about manage to defy the all-too-common uncanny valley effect that plagues most CGI-heavy TV shows. I must admit that Baby Eric may have needed a smilier actor given the number of times he was supposed to overjoyed but instead appeared to be in need of winding. But we, as viewers, can forgive this breaking of the suspension of disbelief because – in all honesty – those babies (SPACE babies!) are just too damn cute!
Talking of “too damn cute”, we also get to meet the real star of the episode, Captain Poppy, who shares a short but key scene with Gatwa that, in just a few lines, does more to win over new viewers to the character of the Doctor than the entire opening.
Doctor: But the point is, is that it doesn't matter where I come from, because I am absolutely lovely, aren't I?
Poppy yawns.
Doctor: That wasn't rhetorical, Pops.
Poppy: Yes, you are.
Doctor: And do you want to know my secret? There's no one like me in the whole wide universe. No one like me exists, and that's true of everyone.
It's not a problem, Captain Pops. It's a superpower. High five. Yeah.Poppy: Yeah!
Many long term viewers will have fond memories of the fairytale Series 6 that heralded the beginning of Steven Moffat’s tenure as showrunner (more on him a couple reviews later…). Most particularly, they will remember Amy Pond’s swift understanding of a key aspect of the Doctor’s character: how if ever he hears a child cry, he is unable to ignore it and must help. While the space station’s abandonned babies – space babies – do not specifically cry, the Fifteenth Doctor’s immediate keenness to help them out of their predicament is, in my opinion, the best way that Russell T. Davies could have tried to make a whole new generation of children fall in love with Doctor Who. Failing that, there’s always fart jokes.
A D*mn Good F**king Nanny
The episode swiftly moves onto the action with the introduction of NAN-E (“nanomatrix electroform”, according to the Doctor) A.K.A. Jocelyn, as played by Golda Rosheuvel, Bridgerton’s Queen Charlotte. It turns out that a recession on the planet below, Pacifico del Rio, led to the space station’s crew leaving in protest as the government shut them down while obliging them to leave the birth machine running (anyone not following along with the hidden meaning here can Google the word "allegory" followed swiftly by "women’s rights in the United States").
Having stayed behind to tend for the babies from afar (“Cos I don't want to see them die. And I don't want them to see me die”) and via a swear-suppressing nanny filter intercom system, accountant-turned-space-nanny Rosheuvel’s Jocelyn offers us a starkingly truthful representation of the blind purity of maternal love in all its forms but specifically in the adoptive sense here. When she is offered the opportunity to rid the space station of the Bogeyman, she does not hesitate. While the Doctor and Ruby make it clear that this isn’t the right choice because they know that the creature is one of the children, and manage to save the Bogeyman at the last minute, the episode does not try to antagonise Jocelyn for her attempt to protect her children; her maternal instincts are not wrong, simply misplaced.
Doctor: It has been right in front of us. We've been saying it all along. It's all one machine. One up above, and one down below. The one up above grew the babies. The one down below...
Ruby: It grew the Bogeyman.
Doctor: Yes!
Ruby: I said this. I told you so. Six years ago, the machine is mother and father to the babies, and mother and father to the Bogeyman.
Doctor: And why? Because Jocelyn said that the educational software ran out of control, and then you said...
Ruby: It's like a story. The teaching software, it told a story.
Doctor: It invented the Bogeyman.
Ruby: For the babies.
Doctor: For the space babies.
Ruby: The machine is literal, like a computer. It literally said, "Babies need fiction, they need stories, they need monsters."
There’s No Such Thing As Monsters
As we reach the episode's climax, we discover that its opening exposition dump was not merely an exercise in catching up new viewers on the show, but does in fact tie into the themes of the episode. We learn that the Bogeyman was created from the babies' own bogeys by the space station's baby-making machine due to some buggy education software deciding that what the children really needed was a fictional monster to be scared. By dint of this rather unique "birth", this means that the Bogeyman is a one of its kind, or the last of its kind, just like the Doctor, and it is this that inspires the latter to put himself into danger to save the creature from Jocelyn's attempt to throw it out of an airlock.
"I am the last of the Time Lords. […] I'm the only one of me in the whole, wide universe. No one else like me exists, and that is true of everyone."
Arguably, it is a bit odd, perhaps, to highlight the Doctor's realisation that the Bogeyman is the last of its kind; our favourite Time Lord typically wouldn't need such motivation in order to find a kinder way to resolve the conflict. On the other hand, this sequence can also be interpreted as emphasising how much being the "Last of the Time Lords" weighs upon the Doctor's mind. Either way, there's no denying that watching the Doctor fight against the vacuum of space makes for a thrilling experience and suggests that Gatwa's Fifteenth Doctor might be more of a daredevil compared to other incarnations of the Time Lord.
The Best Bits
The recurring space babies joke. I've had some fun with it myself in this article, and while some might find that the joke was uttered a few times too many, it was worth it for the Doctor's "babes, space babes" line towards the end of the episode.
"Babies to the rescue!" If ever I were in danger, I would feel honoured to be saved by a flamethrower-wielding space baby.
The nanny filter, specifically Jocelyn's line to the Bogeyman that gets cut off just in time by NAN-E: "Don't you touch them you [cut] illegitimate person."
Overall Rating: ★★★☆☆
This is undeniably a great opening episode to introduce new viewers to Doctor Who, but when you know how good both this show and Russell T. Davies’ writing can be, it does leave more to be desired. The good news is that there’s seven more episodes to enjoy and a statistical likelihood of them improving as the season progresses.
Theories, Speculation, and Twists
This season seems set up to be either an incredibly satisfactory or mindbendingly frustrating one for hardcore Doctor Who fans who love to speculate on the season's overarching plot. Between the plot threads dangled by the 60th anniversary specials last year and Ruby Sunday's enigmatic introduction in the previous episode, we have a great deal of threads to pull on:
The Boss
A villainous character who, like the Doctor, has two hearts. Given the mention of classic Doctor Who Time Lady villain the Rani in the episode, many are speculating it might be her. There's also the option of the Doctor's nemesis, the Master, and some are even imagining the return of a Time Lord villain that hasn't been seen on screens since the 60s: the Meddling Monk. Suffice to say, we're definitely in for some Gallifreyan villany.
The Toymaker's Legions
Presumably a horde of other mythical, extra-universe entities intent on sowing discord and general mayhem.
Susan Twist
No, I'm not talking about the Doctor's daughter Susan but about real life actress Susan Twist. So far, she has made appearances as innocuous background characters in three separate episodes (Wild Blue Yonder, The Church on Ruby Road, and Space Babies). At this point, it's clear that we are likely to see her make a subtle appearance in each episode. There is a lot more speculation that I could make on this point, but since it relies on information obtained outside of the show's content, I shan't risk spoiling anything.
Ruby's origins
The companion's birth parents and the circumstances of her birth were already established as mysteries to be solved in her debut, but this episode has shown that there is something bizarre going on with Ruby, as mere discussion of her abandonment at the church manages to conjure snow from thin air in a space station, as well as change the Doctor's memories of events as he now remembers Ruby's mother (if that is her mother) pointing at him outside the church. Given the other plot threads running through this season, it is quite frankly wonderful to have so many possibilities and to have none of them be more obvious than another.
Next Time
The next episode will see the Doctor and Ruby go back to 1963 to see the Beatles produce their first album, unless Jinkx Monsoon's villainous Maestro has something to do with it…
