Holistic Review: Borderline unwatchable. We used up one of our 8 episodes on this?!

I have a friend who's a fan of Jinkx Monsoon but a non-fan of Doctor Who, and I was idly hoping that he might decide to tune into the two-part premiere and be won over. Had he done so, my only emotion would've been deep, deep embarrassment, because Space Babies embodies pretty much everything that I hated about RTD era 1. (My hopes that the 60th anniversary specials heralded a new maturity on RTD's part seem to have been proven utterly wrong.)

There's a lot that I hate here, too — and I do not use that word lightly — but first we should discuss the sin that, while not the most off-putting element of the episode, is perhaps its most egregious flaw. And that is the plot, or rather, the lack of same. Minimal plot is not an uncommon complaint of mine in revival Who — though it's particularly distasteful when paired with an episode that has as few redeeming features as Space Babies — but this story takes plotlessness to an unusual extreme, without even a true monster to defeat. In short, Space Babies is a story in which basically nothing happens: the Doctor is simply presented with a rather simple conundrum (why are a bunch of toddlers stuck running a space station by themselves, and why is there a scary creature in the lower levels?) and must figure out those answers. The only 'plot' element, as such, is his deduction of how to propel the station to a more hospitable location.

But that's a structural issue. Structural issues aren't terribly uncommon with Who, and they're easily balanced out if the story is otherwise really engaging. What made me embarrassed to be a fan were two other elements in particular.

For a variety of reasons which I'll discuss below, Space Babies doesn't start on the strongest notes. Still, I was willing to go along with the story up until it introduced talking babies. For me, that alone was a potentially fatal flaw. My personal opinion is that if a scriptwriter decides to write anything outside of a cartoon (and maybe even then) in which one or more babies gain the power of speech, they should then hurl that draft script into the wastebin and/or fireplace. Sure, I can envision a hypothetical scenario in which talking babies become a compelling plot element, but for me, it almost never works, and Space Babies — which pitches the talking babies as "inherently adorable and funny", which is utterly the wrong approach — is absolutely no exception.

What massively exacerbates the problem is the frankly awful CGI of the babies' lips moving, which almost never properly lines up to what they're saying. I was already finding it seriously difficult to suspend my disbelief, and this makes it even more impossible. (Had they been given BOSS-like monitors, equipped with thought-to-speech capability and oscillating waveforms, I could've stomached it.) And, while it seems silly and even mean-spirited to criticize the acting ability of babies, the fact remains that the toddlers' expressions do not change, no matter what emotion "their" line is conveying. (Though perhaps I should be thanking the heavens that the effects team didn't try to CGI-manipulate the toddlers' faces, because that would have been even worse than just their lips.) Bizarrely, aside from a couple of shots with Poppy, the director doesn't seem to have made even the slightest attempt to coax the proper emotions out of the kids for their dialogue to be CGIed over. Eric, for example, doesn't smile once during the entire story, not even on the line "I feel very happy. I love you, Ruby." (during which he looks absolutely terrified and traumatized.)

But even talking babies aren't the episode's worst offense, in my view. If we thought the Slitheen were stomach-turning, RTD is aiming for a "hold my beer" with the bogeyman. "Oh my gosh, this just gets worse," I wrote in my notes, as Ruby gets slimed. Then, as if that wasn't disgusting enough, we learn that the aforementioned slime was actually the very same snot that the ship's computer has been milking from the babies for years, to use in creating the bogeyman. (I hate myself for having to type that sentence out, and I apologize that you had to read it, for which we can all heartily thank Mr Russell T Davies.)

I willingly admit that I am just not the target audience for gross-out humor, and I'm sure there's a subset of viewers who howled with laughter at the reveal of the bogeyman's composition. In fact, several of my friends have already posted on Facebook how thoroughly they enjoyed this story, which they feel has brought a sense of fun and joy back to Doctor Who. I, on the other hand, could hardly un-bury my head from my hands, where I had dashed it in despair and horror.

Nor have we reached the limit with nose-blowing, slime-drenching, and snot monsters. Oh no, we also have to work dirty diapers into the plot. "But I am gonna let it rip!" declares the Doctor, as he vents years worth of built-up methane. Please no. Doctor Who can famously tell all types of stories, so why not stories where the humor is aimed at six-year-olds? (Not me when I was six years old, but some kids anyway.) I mean, hypothetically, it should be fine, right? But I just can't shake this feeling that Doctor Who should lift and elevate and educate, and show us the best of mankind, not wallow in the filth with the rest of our junk TV like Love Island and Jerry Springer and You Can't Do That On Television. BBC programming should be a little bit more highbrow, goshdarnit!

Unfortunately, it's not just the juvenile humor that rankles. In all truth, that childishness is symptomatic of the lack of quality control — or perhaps more accurately, the lack of discipline — that I sometimes perceive in RTD's writing. I can't figure out why sometimes he can script gorgeous drama and sometimes he writes absolute rubbish like this — maybe it goes back to that whole showrunner curse, where even the best writers sometimes fall apart when they're under the pressure of being in charge of everything (so let's see how Moffat fares next week, eh?) — but it crops up in a variety of different (yet typical for RTD) ways, including the lack of plot which I mentioned above, and reaching for the lowest-hanging fruit when it comes to humor. (We'll come back to that one.)

In general, what I noticed is a lack of subtlety in RTD's writing this week. Literally nothing is left for the audience to deduce; every little detail must be spelled out explicitly. As this episode illustrates, RTD has not yet fully overcome his penchant for "tell, don't show" and using broad strokes to convey emotion.

The mystery of the bogeyman is a good example. Rather than speculate about it more generally, the Doctor is peculiarly fixated on knowing what the bogeyman's skin is made of. That didn't strike me as weird on first viewing, but now it does, because of course that is the specific question that the Doctor needs to answer in order to unlock its mystery.

"Tell, don't show" rears its head strongly when the Doctor has to tell Ruby with exactly what she's just been slimed. Even this disgusting revelation, that the bogeyman is a literal snot-monster, RTD just has to spell out.

Doctor: "The bogeyman is made out of what?"
Ruby: "I don't know."
Doctor: "The machine is literal, and the name is 'bogeyman'."
Ruby: "So?"
Doctor: "Oh, Rubes. Space babes. We saw it, the nose-blowing. The machine is literal, and so it grew the bogeyman out of bogies."

We see this again in the analogy of the bogeyman to the kids' "pet dog". Initially the space babies reject this comparison ("That's not a doggo!") but by the end, the Doctor is reassuring them that "your favorite monster is fine!" Had this been the end of it, it would've been a sweet little inversion of the usual monster role. Unfortunately, RTD was not satisfied with that level of subtlety, so I ended up having to write in my notes, "Oh good heavens, it howls just like a pet dog." Why, why must the subtext always be made text in the most cringe-inducing way possible?

The story has its freewheeling moments, too. Why was the babies' physical growth impeded when their mental growth wasn't? We'll just gloss over that. What caused the educational software to run out of control, and why did it decide that a baby farm needed to mimic a scary fairytale? Unexplained. How did Eric escape the bogeyman? No clue. The Doctor and Ruby run smack into the bogeyman: "Not west," yelps Jocelyn, "I meant east!" Oh, convenient.

It must also be said that Space Babies, or at least many elements of it, feel very derivative of past work by RTD and others. I've already mentioned that the bogeyman feels like the spiritual successor to the Slitheen, but they also echo the Sandmen from Sleep No More (ie, monsters that are built from bodily secretions, though where being consumed by the sleep in your eye has huge potential for creepiness, it's a lot harder to find a snot monster inherently scary). We've also got a nearly shot-for-shot remount of The End of the World, as the Doctor opens a space station viewport to reveal to Ruby the planet below, followed by a discussion of TARDIS-facilitated language comprehension, and the Doctor yet again performs some 'jiggery-pokery' on Ruby's phone so that she can call her mum back home in the present day.

Plus, for the first 7 minutes, almost all the dialogue is expository. Right off the bat, the episode starts with a rather unnecessary recap of Ruby walking into the TARDIS, which strikes me as a very strange way to start a season when you're expecting lots of new viewers to jump on board. It's not even clearly established that the TARDIS exterior is so much smaller than the interior.

And then there's the "humor". This is far from the first time that I've criticized RTD for going after the low-hanging funny fruits, but alongside far too many bodily-fluid jokes, he does insist on coming up with lame gags that won't get a genuine laugh out of anyone over ten years old, then beating those gags into the ground. Here, it's the notion that babies, if born in space, must always be prefaced by that word when referred to. Now, I am the target audience for this joke; the twelfth Doctor and Clara's verbal sparring about "space restaurants" still amuses me just thinking about it. So, yeah, "space babies" would've been cute once or twice, if the gag had been set up correctly. But this isn't set up as a joke, just a cute turn of phrase, and the more RTD belabors it, the more it morphs from mildly amusing to outright annoying:

1.	12:37	Ruby: "A baby farm, run by babies." Doctor: "Ha ha! Space babies!"
2.	15:43	Doctor: "So you lot grew up, but you stayed the same size. Baby size. Space babies."
3.	19:05	Doctor: "Okay, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, babies. Space babies.
4.	19:23	Doctor: "NAN-E, these babies are trying their best — space babies — but this station is in trouble."
5.	20:09	Doctor: "No no, I'm just, er, helping babies — space babies."
6.	23:02	Doctor: "So the crew went home, and left the babies behind? Space babies."
7.	28:50	Doctor: "I can detect... Space baby!"
8.	30:20	Poppy: "Babies to the rescue!" Doctor: "Space babies!"
9.	30:39	Doctor: "Space babies, you need to go, okay? Get, get out of here."
10.	33:40	Doctor: "It invented a bogeyman." Ruby: "For the babies!" Doctor: "For the space babies!"
11.	40:19	Doctor: "But listen, listen, babies — space babies — your world is over here. The world of Mondo Caroon!"
12.	40:55	Doctor: "A zillion metric tons of methane, babies. Space babies!"

Along the same lines, this basic joke format ("So you're talking out of your —" "Ask not!") — combining taboo deformation (to get around that prime-time swearing moratorium), remorphologization, and interruption — from New Earth (and others) recurs four times, albeit with three different variations. (Though I must admit that the first two examples are probably the best use of it yet, since it's a callback to the 'nanny filter' that the script has already set up.)

Jocelyn: "I told you, these systems are a crock of —"
NAN-E: "— waste product."

Jocelyn: "Don't you touch them, you —"
NAN-E: "— illegitimate person."

Doctor: "It's snot!"
Ruby: "It's not."

Doctor: "No wonder it was stinking down there. For six years, a great pile of sh—"
Jocelyn: "Nanny filter!"
Doctor: "— shizzle!"

And then we have RTD's incorporation of moral messaging. I have to laugh when fans online say things like "I just want a good story, not to be clobbered over the head by wokeness / a political message" with regard to — well, name any story from the last five years, really — but particularly stories like Praxeus, which turned ocean-polluting microplastics into an effective eco-monster, and weaved a gay romance into the storyline. For some reason, these fans thought that the return of RTD would mean an end to Chibnall-era wokeness. Not only had they apparently completely forgotten how very joyfully RTD celebrates diversity, but they also forgot that he's not against writing an episode whose entire message is condensed into one single, brief, wallop-you-over-the-head dialogue exchange:

Jocelyn: "It's the recession. The government closed the baby station to save money, but the law says it's illegal to stop the birth machine."
Ruby: "Hang on, so, the planet down below refuse to stop the babies being born, but once they're born, they don't look after them?"
Jocelyn: "It's a very strange planet."

I mean, gosh, it's a great theme for a Doctor Who story to explore, but it's mentioned so offhandedly that it's like an afterthought! Couldn't we have woven this idea more deeply into the script so that it resonated more powerfully? (And gave the viewing audience something more substantial to latch onto than talking babies and bodily-function gags?)

And that's not the only one: this story has not one but two throwaway morals, the second of which is:

Jocelyn: "They don't go fetch refugees. That's the fate of every refugee in the universe. You physically have to turn up on someone else's shore."

Here again: great message, and could we maybe save it for an episode that's actually about the plight of refugees, and might help engender some proper empathy in the audience?

For me, Space Babies only truly had three moments of — well, "greatness" seems like a stretch, so let's go with "goodness" — that transcended the material around them.

First: the scene in which the Doctor realizes that the babies have lived their entire short lives without any human contact.

Doctor: "Captain Poppy, when was the last time that you had a hug?"
Poppy: "Never."

Despite myself — and I was deep in the throes of over-it-ness at this point — I found myself tearing up as the Doctor gathered Poppy into his arms. If this scene could overcome even my hardened defenses, I know it must be poignant. (The importance of touch certainly hits home for me, perhaps even moreso given that I, too, lived in an incubator without any true human touch for the first few months of my life.)

Second: the story's more embedded moral message that every one of us is unique and special, worthy of appreciation and love, and — to get all Biblical for a moment — 'fearfully and wonderfully made'. As the Doctor says, "Nobody grows up wrong. You are what you are, and that is magnificent." It's a very affirming and sweet moment, reminding the kids in the audience that they're just right, exactly as they are.

What I really appreciate is that Space Babies follows this idea through to its conclusion, when the Doctor expands on it by telling Poppy, "There's no-one like me in the whole wide universe. No-one like me exists, and that's true of everyone."

This statement becomes especially relevant, and especially meaningful, when the Doctor realizes that the bogeyman, too, is unique. It's the only one of its kind; nothing else like it exists in the universe; and it, too, is just fighting to survive. Just because it looks terrifying doesn't mean that it's any less deserving of respect and care. It's rare that Doctor Who builds this kind of empathy for its villains or monsters — in both the characters, and the audience — and I really do absolutely love it. It's hands-down the single-best thing about the episode, and nearly rescues the whole story.

Third: the hint that something inside Ruby can physically manifest memories, which is the first truly interesting thing that happens in the story, and it makes me very curious to see where this plot thread leads.

Behind the scenes, safely away from the script, I have very little but good things to say. As off-putting as I find the concept, I must praise the effects and costume teams for their work on the bogeyman (inhabited by Robert Strange). They've put a lot of work into the design of a creature who has about as much bearing on the narrative as the shrievenzale, with vastly greater success. Its needle-sharp teeth, in particular, truly are terrifying, and I love its long claws and little black spider eyes too.

Turning to the cast, Gatwa is a total delight. He draws the eye no matter what he's saying or doing, which is truly the mark of a star, as far as I'm concerned. How lucky were we to snag him??? His versatility continues to shine through the screen; I adored the way he imitates Ruby's accent on "Come 'ere, butterfly!" and his delivery of "It was new. I love meeting new things, so why did it give me the shivers?" The fifteenth Doctor gets a lovely moment of heroism in this story, too, when he risks his life to save the bogeyman, by shutting the airlock door from the inside. And I'm really digging his long coat, and the trousers which have a snazzy little V at the small of his back. Very cool design!

Gibson's Ruby continues to be almost inappropriately chipper this week; for evidence, I present her response to the Doctor informing her "TARDIS stands for Time and Relative Dimension in Space" which is to laugh as if she understands exactly what he means and finds it quirky. With Millie, I just can't shake the feeling that I'm watching an actor performing, rather than a real character, and I can't put my finger on why. Among her deliveries that I really did love — "Okay. 'The planet': parking that. 'Thousand years': double parked.", "Wait, no!", "That's the best signal ever. How much did that cost?", and "Right, mate, let me tell you where we're gonna go!" — were others that rang a bit hollow for me, like "No! You've got to be kidding! You are kidding! Don't be so ridiculous!" But then we have this scene, which is utterly adorable:

Doctor: "Give me a number. Give me a year."
Ruby: (bouncing with excitement) "Er, 2!"
Doctor: (punching them in as she provides them) "2."
Ruby: "1! 5. 0. Aah! 6!"
Doctor: "6! Oh! Five numbers! I like it!"

And Ruby has some good moments in the script: I find it touching that Ruby thinks of how the Doctor might react to her glee at the human race's survival, given that his species was annihilated. And I love that Ruby immediately races to Eric's rescue when she realizes it's her fault that he's charged off to face the bogeyman by himself.

I was a little bit startled (and, to be honest, fearing another cheap RTD joke) when NAN-E appeared to break character to snap at the Doctor: "Oh, for God's sakes, 3-5-7! Come on!" So it was with enormous relief that I discovered NAN-E was actually a real-life woman, Jocelyn Sancerre (Golda Rosheuvel). Rousheuvel is wonderful as the frazzled and somewhat embittered Jocelyn, who rediscovers her empathy and humanity as the Doctor coaxes her into dropping her walls and allowing herself to truly care for the babies.

I really don't have much to say about the toddlers and their voice actors; alas, my visceral negative reaction to this plot element has rendered me somewhat unable to evaluate them objectively. I did find Sienna-Robyn Mavanga-Phipps, with her big wide eyes, to be especially adorable as captain Poppy, especially the way she wiggles on the line "And me!" She's really the story's MVP, high-fiving the Doctor and covering her eyes in nervous worry when required.

Props to the three actors who played the protesting crewmembers: Jesus Reyes Ortiz as Rico Trieste, Yasmine Bouabid as Lucia Colasanto, and especially the returning Susan Twist, who inhabits Comms Officer Gina Scalzi this time around. I wondered why she was being so prominently featured, until the penny dropped.

It will perhaps not surprise you that my first LOL of the episode came at its very end, with Cherry's line "What the blinking flip?!" How I adore Angela Wynter! My petition for Cherry as companion starts here.

Director Julie Anne Robinson gives the story some kinetic oomph. She's clever to film the bogeyman, at least initially, almost entirely over fritzing monitors, even when it's chasing the Doctor and Ruby. Somehow not being able to see it actually pursuing them heightens the tension.

If we can leave aside the toddler lip-synching, the effects this week are brilliant. The dinosaur scenes look practically photorealistic, helped enormously by the erupting volcano in the background, and the lush primitive-looking foliage around the TARDIS. (I adore the ferns, but it's the giant rhubarb-looking leaves in front of the Doctor and Ruby that are particularly convincing!) The station itself looks great as the TARDIS approaches it, and the reveal of the double-ringed planet Pacifico del Rio through the viewing window is a stunner. Later, there's a gorgeous effects shot as the camera moves past Pacifico del Rio (which apparently has at least one very well-populated settlement on it, judging by the lights down below) and through the front windows of the station. Gibson's makeup as Rubathon Blue is super, giving Silurian vibes, albeit with antennae — perhaps this is meant to be how the Silurians would've evolved if they'd had total control of the planet for millennia and hadn't put themselves into hibernation?

Murray Gold's score is more subtle than usual, but there's some great creepy music that fades in when the Doctor snaps back to reality, surrounded by imaginary snowflakes.

Delightfully, the two-part premiere coincided with my last day travelling around the UK. I'd been to Birmingham for the Capitol Seven convention — where I finally got to meet Carole Ann Ford and Alister Pearson for the first time — after which I hopped around the UK, ending up in Leeds. On the downside, I had a flight to Amsterdam around noon on Saturday, so I wouldn't be in the UK for its terrestrial airing, but I could (weirdly) watch the online début at midnight. I'd assumed I would just log into my Disney+ account, but it hadn't occurred to me that Disney+ would know I was in the UK, and would only display for me the UK site without Doctor Who! Cue momentary panic until I finally managed to get BBC iPlayer to cooperate with me. So at 1 am on Saturday — after a nap that accidentally ran overtime — I sat down with a mug of hotel tea and, rather unbelievably, an appropriate bag of WHAM Space Babies gummy candies that I'd found in a Liverpool shop, to enjoy the premiere. (I enjoyed the candy only slightly more than I enjoyed this story, alas.)

Minor points:

• This is a nice way to lampshade the Time Lords' peculiar penchant for titles! plus, RANI MENTION.

  Doctor: "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."

• The scene in which Ruby treads on a butterfly and briefly alters all of human history is a cute butterfly-effect gag, but couldn't they have used a less obviously modern butterfly? Monarch butterflies only evolved max 2 million years ago, whereas the Doctor and Ruby are evidently around 145 million years in the past, when dinosaurs roamed Wyoming. I'm also taken out of the scene a bit by wondering how the Doctor managed to bring the crushed butterfly back to life; one supposes he must've shed some regeneration energy (albeit without the accompanying visual effect this time), but that really seems like the sort of thing he shouldn't be able to do at all — or, at most, immediately after a regeneration — so I have my skeptical face on, twice over. (But then, he did magick up regeneration energy from out of nowhere in The Angels Take Manhattan, so my skeptical face doesn't have much of a leg to stand on. So to speak.)

• Still, I LOLed at the Doctor's subsequent line, "Controls are new. Completely forgot the butterfly compensation switch."

• However, I note that the Doctor is flinging his coat over the handrail, which is not the most stable location in a rocking TARDIS. What he clearly needs is... a hatstand!!!

• Yes please!

  Ruby: "Ah-hah, is that like a matter transporter? Like in Star Trek?"
  Doctor: "Ha ha! We gotta visit them one day."

• When the Doctor and Ruby find the parthenogenesis machine, it's surrounded by vats of unborn babies. But from all appearances, the last batch of babies was birthed six years ago, with none in between. And it's unlikely that they've just been hanging around in suspended animation all that time, because Jocelyn says that Pacifico del Rio is unwilling to stop the process. So is it on a six-year cycle and Jocelyn's about to get another dozen mouths to feed?

• Fantastic! Yes, I would totally watch this episode — it sounds like the sort of thing Sliders would've done, actually — and it's a great way to put the oddity of this scenario in context.

  Doctor: "Sometimes a world goes sterile or, I dunno, goes mad and bans kissing."

• Delightful performance by Gatwa:

  Doctor: "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!"

• How delinquent is Jocelyn that she totally ignores the intruders strolling among the babies until Eric asks her to say hi? Then suddenly it's all "We have visitors, children!" Yeah, I believe you mean HAVE HAD VISITORS FOR A WHILE.

• While I find the nose-blowing sequence to be absolutely ridiculous (I cannot believe that these flimsy little robotic arms are actually effective at blowing and especially cleaning toddler noses), it is regrettably vital to the storyline. Plus, I was wondering how on earth the children managed to change and feed themselves, and I guess this explains that a bit.

• The Doctor never actually does address Ruby's concern about how to handle helping the babies if it requires six weeks or ten years of their time.

• I love that when Jocelyn offers to trade tools, the Doctor actually takes her wrench! Ha!

• Favorite line of fifteenth Doctor dialogue thus far (even though you know he doesn't really believe this, ha!)

  Doctor: "I've met a million ugly bugs. I'm an ugly bug."

• I love how Ruby attracts the bogeyman toward them, and then they find and gather up Eric. *facepalm*

• For a companion as sunny as Ruby, I loved this glimpse of her boiling-over rage (in very understandable circumstances!)

  Ruby: "Oh, this is disgusting! Don't call me Rubes!"
  Doctor: (sweetly) "Are we almost there, Jos?"

• Jocelyn has already observed that the station is a closed system with a limited oxygen supply, but the oxygen field in the airlock is dropping so slowly that it can't just be pulling air out of that one room. So Jocelyn, in her attempt to get rid of the bogeyman, is basically venting the entire station's oxygen and dramatically shortening the babies' lifespans in order to... save them from something that's never actually posed a threat?

• Since the station has no engines, I hope the Doctor has some way to halt the station's trajectory before it crashes into their new home planet! (Though how else are they hoping to get everyone down to the surface of Mondo Caroon?)

• As a mission statement for the Gatwa era, I adore it.

  Doctor: "No job. No boss. Just fun."

• Ooh dear, who's gonna fix poor Carla's roof? This flat does get abused!

It's not quite as bad as Orphan 55, but I have to say that the sophomoric humor of Space Babies gives that all-time-low episode a real run for its money. Gatwa is potentially the most luminous actor we've ever had in the role; why is he getting saddled with this drivel?

posted:

23 May 2024