Beep the Meep

Story: The Star Beast
Written By: Russell T. Davies (from a story by Pat Mills and Dave Gibbons)
Length: 60 Minutes
Year: 2023

Happy 60th Anniversary everyone! The 60th is being marked by a trio of specials starring the once 10th Doctor David Tennant back in the role of the Doctor, this time as the newly regenerated 14th Doctor.  Also returning behind the scenes is Russell T. Davies, who is triumphantly returning to the showrrunner role after first leaving the show in 2009.  The production is also now being co-produced by Bad Wolf Productions, which is run by Julie Gardner and Jane Tranter, who had been the Executive Producers for the BBC back in the original RTD era.  Also Phil Collinson, the day-to-day producer of the original RTD era, is back as an EP as well.  So with Tennant and basically the whole RTD production crew back...this is quite the return.  

To kick things off, the Doctor lands in London, and almost immediately nearly runs into Donna Noble.  Then a spaceship crashes nearby.  Concerned that the universe is trying to kill her by once again drawing them near each other with his old face and alien activity happening right near her...the Doctor has to investigate the alien happenings and hopefully not trigger Donna's memory and destroy her, or get her family killed in the process either. 

Two aliens have come to Earth, the sinister looking Wrarth Warriors, and the adorable Beep the Meep.  But the Doctor quickly realizes something is off, and realizes that looks are deceiving, and the Meep is actually the sinister alien, and the others are just trying to stop the Meep from causing more destruction. In the end the only way to save the day is to return all of Donna's memories killing her.  Luckily, she can live because the meta-crisis was partially passed on to her daughter Rose. And the two are able to expel the meta-crisis business from the bodies.  

 The Doctor and Donna attempt to take a quick trip to visit Wilf, but after a lovely showcase of the brand new TARDIS set (which I love by the way, much more than the Thirteenth Doctor's awful design), Donna accidentally spills her coffee on the console, fire erupts, and they are whisked off to some new misadventure. 

I quite enjoyed this.  It was a fun return of the old gang, the gang which all hail from my favorite era of the show, the era which introduced me to this franchise.  I was not one of the many who decried Chibnall as the anti-christ, or that Whitaker's casting was bad because she lacked male genitalia (it's funny, the Doctor's genitalia really hadn't come up before the gender swap), but I will say there is a spark to Davies writing that has been missing from the show since he left.  I mean I really liked a lot of the Moffat era too...but no one is able to have big bombastic goofy plots and still balance that with smaller character moments like RTD.  

A good chunk of this story is based on a comic strip of the same name from the early days of "Doctor Who Magazine."  The Beep the Meep, Wrarth Warriors, and almost everything surrounding them is pretty much pulled right from the comic.  The updated elements are all the stuff with the Doctor, Donna, her family, and UNIT.  And it is a fun balance of all that.  I have long considered the comic to be canon, and still do.  The continuity of the Doctor Who universe is a mess even if you only count TV alone, so why can't the Fourth Doctor have a similar adventure and then 10 regenerations after Time Wars and universe rebootings can it happen again.  I'm for it. 

 This is a perfect launch to the new era. Sure, the 14th Doctor is only meant to appeart in 3 television tales before regenerating into the next long term Doctor, the 15th played by Ncuti Gatwa, but I had a good time with this and look forward to the next two and seeing Ncuti take over from Christmas.

NEXT TIME: Wherever the Coffee Leads...