The Real Reason The Star Beast Doesn't Work (Doctor Who)
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- čas přidán 7. 07. 2024
- Review of the Doctor Who 60th Anniversary special The Star Beast, an adaptation of the comic strip starring Beep the Meep which reintroduces David Tennant as the 14th Doctor along with Catherine Tate as Donna, as Russell T Davies returns as showrunner.
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0:00 Intro
0:55 Beep the Meep adaptation
1:53 14th Doctor and Donna reunion
3:51 It doesn't work because of Rose
5:36 Conclusion
Would you have liked to see the character of Rose get more focus in The Star Beast?
Yes
Hell no
@@watchmanuk74 any reason?
No. Not at all. The actress was great in HEARTBEEPS. Here, she has no rapport and no script to work with. STAR BEAST was fine as a comic and it should have been done that way. Rose2 should have been given her own story and her own back story rather than the cliche boring thing she was given. Donna is NOT good in this and the chemistry is awful. Donna does not act like Donna, giving away her money and blaming the Doctor and then wanting to sell Beep? WTF? scificfanhorrormedia.blogspot.com/2023/11/doctor-who-star-beast-okay-opening-is.html
Rose was supposed to have a character? Beyond just being a token?
"It devalues the stakes of the show if you know anything that happens from now on, no matter how tragic, can be just reversed at a later date." Thank you, that's exactly what I've been thinking, but everyone else seems to have no problem with that. Seriously, this is driving me insane.
I mean it's not the first time the show has done this, but still frustrating
Especially when it comes to "oh no, the stakes are how mega abstract undefeatable the godly ... never mind they can be defeated by a game of catch"
Jodie's era still did really well, Chibnall has talked about this, the thing is viewership across TV in general has been down across the board, yet Doctor Who consistently does well against much of it's competition which just goes to show how strong the brand is.
Yes I get that it is all relative and Doctor Who was still fairly popular compared to a lot of shows but viewership and interest had drastically declined, that's just a fact, and this was perceptible. I spoke to so many people who would say things like "I don't really watch Doctor Who any more since Whittaker/Capaldi" etc.
4:00 ❤❤❤❤❤! All stories do this and have to. How much can headcanon compensate for?
I feel like the Crisis should have been what brought the Toymaker back into mainstream reality
the nostalgia tour was just for the Tenth Doctor Again episodes. I find calling him Tenth Again much funnier than Fourteenth. The first Ncuti episode had pretty much no callbacks except for the Doctor mentioning that he recently found out he was adopted, most likely setting the tone for things to come
Trouble is the trapped in nostalgia cycle the show is in goes deeper than surface level. Sure Tennant is gone, but we still have the same familiar formula, complete with the mystery boxes, plus Murray Gold's slushy music and the "Whoniverse" icon slapped on the beginning. What I saw in the Christmas special is a show with no spine and barely anything new to put on the table.
@@MidnightChimeythe trouble is that the social/political messages are not in equilibrium with the plot and story anymore.
It used to be a balance between telling a story and also daring to challenge social/political/other concepts.
If you have seen Star Trek Deep Space Nine, I think that series managed to pull of the perfect balance between the core story and the message it wanted to send.
I feel today it is more about virtue signaling.
@@dr.julianbashir9193 There has been some clumsy implementation of the themes and messaging in some episodes, The Giggle comes to mind as a recent example, though I'm curious what yours would be?
Not the op, but I've got a few cases.
Rose: "Did you just assume he as a pronoun?" Every single person on the internet and their grandma have made the "did you jsut assume my gender?" joke. Nobody outside of a very narrow group of radical activists says this unironically. This only makes Rose look like an idiot by association.
Rose and Donna: "Doctor, you know nothing, we know everything, male-presenting Time lords cannot understand and let things go." This is misandrist (attacks men), transphobic (male-presenting includes trans men, for one, and for two, the Doctor literally transitioned from a man to a woman to a man).
The Toymaker: *does racism in German accent. For someone so keen on breaking evil stereotypes (RTD and his comments on Davros), RTD showed his true colours when he literally gave the main villain a German accent and made him a racist, literally one of the biggest stereotypes in media.
RTD: "I wanna represent the LGBTQ+ community!!!" Also RTD: *introduces his new, queer, black Doctor by... taking his pants off. Really? Are you TRYING to fulfill the "oversexualization" stereotype of the LGBTQ+ community?
@@MidnightChimey
@@quantumvideoscz2052 Yeah, those are some great points. I dont have any specific examples I can recall at the moment, but I would agree with your statements.
Great critique! It's very refreshing to hear someone talk about how rose was handled without getting bogged down in culture war bullshit.
Thanks, as a policy I stay far clear of "culture war bullshit" where possible
The problem is, the culture war is why Rose turned out to be an underwhelming character. If you only create a trans character to be able to say "We have a trans character!" and to be able to attack the fans who disliked the episode by calling them transphobes, you're very likely to end up with an unfinished mess of a character who's going to be just another token instead of the fully fleshed-out character they could have been. Why? Because if your reason behind the existence of your trans character is political, you're less likely to bother with actual writing for that character. Rose doesn't exist to be a character, she exists to represent trans people and to weed out any politically undesirable viewers. That's why her writing was less than stellar and somehow made some of her lines even transphobic (the "male-presenting" line at the end of the episode). She could have been a really cool trans character but alas, she ended up just another token.
@@quantumvideoscz2052 Wherever or not there is any truth to that, the discussion of Rose's character and inclusion in the show should be approached critically and intelligently, not from any bad faith culture war perspective. Also we should be careful when framing the mere inclusion of a trans character as "politically motivated," because that kind of implies that marginalised groups aren't allowed to be included in media without it being considered as a form of ideological statement. I don't know about you, but that's kind of messed up.
I am not calling a mere presence of a trans character politically motivated. I am calling the existence of THIS trans character politically motivated given how little character she received and how engaged in the culture war the creators of the episode are. My entire comment is campaigning for BETTER trans characters (which is done by writing them as characters, not as tokens). In fact, your interpretation of my comment is in terribly bad faith.@@MidnightChimey
@@quantumvideoscz2052 In what way is anything I have said in bad faith, and if so what is my agenda?
Also I think it would have been cool if the Meep was the child of the Meep from the comics plotting its revenge by following in its parents footsteps
That would have the advantage of not overwriting the canon of the comics
We ended up talking about some fairly similar things when we covered the 60th anniversary specials, but one thing we never keyed into is the question of Rose being centered in a previous draft. Rose being non-binary is straightforwardly a Chekhov's gun set up: it's set up, reminded twice and paid off in the one ep but it's not something you'd necessary gleam if you didn't watch the episode 3 times like I did which does lend support to the idea that perhaps it was more prominent in an initial draft. Also bonus points for picking up on the binary binary thing, that's a cute touch if nothing else.
And not to beat a dead horse that I suspect you already agree with but it's been... let's say "frustrating" (read as: mind-numbingly fucked) how elegant the episode's approach to Rose's identity is, undercut by the fact the show says it aloud at the end and all the brain-wormed numpties who are terrified that the world has any complexity whatsoever start screaming the word woke like they're on the playground, insisting that actually they are right plus infinity.
The corollary of your point about the soft toys being sort of retrospectively true is that it feels like a cheesy 2006 reveal in a way this episode is chasing. Like it's camp and undercuts the tone, and that's kind of Davies in the kitchen cookin his own version of Chibnall's hack "message" but making a good story.
Anyway, I love your stuff as does the rest of the team, we should collab on something at some point, your Who views are almost identical to mine.
Big love from Australia,
- David
Thanks for sharing your thoughts, a collab would be cool, I just started listening to your podcast on the specials and am enjoying it so far
in my opinion, the whole non-binary line is veeerrry multifaceted because it has several elements that are related to completely different things. one being not that rose is non-binary in terms of gender but she isn't binary in a sense that she doesn't fit in with norms, and accepts from that and uses it to grow, also calling back to the whole binary line from journey's end and finally also being an something that is RTD doing what he does best, angering hateful people and pushing the status quo in his writing. i mean, we can see that throughout his entire original tenure from 2005 (jack and the doctor kissing in parting of the ways, literally the ENTIRETY of torchwood)
@@oniflora That may have been the point, but the phrase "non-binary" does have a specific meaning in the LGBTQ+ community and as Rose is an LGBTQ character it is probably a good idea to be sensitive to that and not just throw it out there at random
Good video. There were a few things I didn't even notice (the toys, for example), but even before that I thought this was at best a below-average episode of regular Who and in no way fit for a 60th anniversary episode.
Thanks, I did still enjoy the episode overall, it's mainly the ending and lack of attention on Rose that is frustrating
Bollocks
It doesn't?
Kind of a clickbait title but I'm mostly referring to the ending with the technobabble about Rose and Donna's memories being restored
@@MidnightChimey Doctor Who and technobabble are hand-in-hand.
@@GrabAStackofRocK technobabble in itself is not the problem, did you watch the video?
@@MidnightChimey yep
It end up forcefully braking through the four walls, leaving destruction in its wake bad writting bad story telling more about message and not doctor who
i haven't watched who in about a decade now and only stumbled upon this video by happenstance, but i am nonbinary myself and would like to throw my two cents in that it *is* possible for a trans woman (or trans man) to also use the nonbinary label. from my understanding (as i'm not a trans man/woman, just nonbinary), the label combination can indicate that the individual is undergoing a physical transition resembling what trans women typically undergo but that they also have more complicated feelings around their gender identity than just "transgender woman". but that's a pretty high concept for the average viewer to understand, and since i haven't seen this episode i don't know what is and isn't explicitly stated about rose's gender, so i have no idea whether it's an intentional choice or just a well-meaning throwaway line that ultimately just muddies the water
Thanks for the input, yeah it may be the intention she is a trans woman who uses the non-binary label, but to my knowledge at least Yasmin Finney doesn't and the fact it doesn't get referred to at any earlier point in the episode makes it feel muddy, I seem to remember Council of Geeks questioned it at the time
All excellent points, but the reason most fans hated it is that it's crammed full of divisive, controversial political and religious messaging, which seems to take precedence over storytelling. It's also horrifically sexist and attacks the Doctor himself for being male.
The episode also marks the launch of RTD's new venture into changing Doctor Who from a science fiction show into a magical fantasy show where literally anything can happen because there are no rules.
This means that when you watch the show now, you're just expected to sit back and watch a series of "amazing things" happening without any need for logical scientific groundwork. Moffat ventured into this shift toward the end of his run, but this new series has taken it to a whole new level. This episode sees the Sonic Screwdriver now treated as a literal magic wand that can physically conjure objects up out of thin air, and more.
Overall, RTD's writing in this episode (and series) just comes across as ultra-childish, crass, and lacking any sophistication. Out goes storytelling, character development, and suspense (the bedrock of Doctor Who) and in comes emotionalism, sensation and heavy-handed political activism pushing controversial ideologies that are highly offensive to most of the world. The overt racism of the production team is also highly contemptible.
Nothing wrong with the comic strip
I need to check it out at some point
Worked fine for me thanks. Try and remember its for kids
What's your point, that it being for kids invalidates criticism?
I found myself saying this when I didn't feel it would be fair criticising the 4th special for being "just a Christmas episode"
And then I watched XMen97 and remembered "oh yeah, something being for children is no excuse for shallow dumb writing. Children are smart and deserve better than this. Maybe if it's toddlers then it can be noise and bombast, but is Dr who only for toddlers now?" This is more of an issue for something like the Giggle than the star beast, the star beast at least has some grounded family drama.
At the end of the day, Dr Who is meant to be For All Ages thus should have the thematic depth of Pixar not Sesame Street.
@@B-MC There are plenty of examples of thematic depth in children's entertainment
I really, really, really dislike how they write everything bad that's happened in the show as, actually it's all fine. Donna is fine now, all of the companion deaths are not actually deaths but saved in some way, and even Tennant is back. Twice!
You know what, I was thinking about this yesterday after listening to Big Finish's Lucie Miller/To the Death (if you don't know, BRUTAL things happen in that story and it sticks), I don't get why in the TV show everything has to always be "and then they woke up and it was fine" all the damn time. Moffat and RTD are writers who both like to puff up their chest and talk about breaking the rules and doing bold things, yet they have always been so scared of ACTUALLY committing to writing anything tragic into the show. You don't have to do happy endings all of the time. The audience can take it you know.
@@MidnightChimey I don't know that story, my only exposure to Dr Who is the show and, aside from a few select episodes, only the modern one at that. Sounds like I should get into the audiobooks though because I agree with what you're saying and I think a lack of consequences is what has driven me away from the show.
It became far more evident in the Chibnall years that the show is just doing whatever now without consequence or rhyme and reason but, as you point out, it's not limited to him.
@@SilverEye91 I mean I'm not a proponent of writing deliberately "dark" stories where lots of characters die for the sake of it, but at the bare minimum if you do write in something like the death of a main character, you have to follow through with it, it's this halfway approach where there are "no consequences" as you say that is the problem. Also yes, I will always recommend the audio stories!
@@MidnightChimey Exactly! A story doesn't have to be dark, but the show has some genuinely great moments where it was, and those were ruined by cop outs later on to say "no, actually it's all fine".
About the audiobooks: Are they largely self-contained or do I have to do them in any kind of order?
@@SilverEye91 With the audio stories it depends which one, there are literally thousands and thousands of them, some are self-contained and others are part of series that are linked. Which Doctor(s) would you be interested in listening to?
a fan since 63: the last five minutes, wherein the doctor was emasculated left me disgusted and i can't watch it anymore, though big finish are now my doctor who 'fix'.
Emasculated in what way? Just want to be clear on what we're referring to here
I mean, there was the whole line from Donna about if he was still a woman she'd understand. Nice transphobia from the BBC by the way lol.
Was the Doctor not emasculated while SHE was female ?
@@mage2105 huh, I never really considered that line as transphobic before
@MidnightChimey I mean there was clearly a Trans allegory for the doctor in that episode, so it feels ironically transphobic to talk down to a Trans man who just transitioned.
bro really watched Doctor Woke unironically
Yep, good show
I appreciated your review its genuinely critical without harping on certain aspects, such has rose being Transgender.
I wish more people could objectively review things without putting politics into it.
It is much harder to have meaningful discussions about something when people are coming to it in bad faith unfortunately. As far as Rose being transgender, that's literally not an issue, there's nothing wrong with that, if anything it's good to finally have some half decent representation in the show.
It does work
It worked it was successful, isn’t it time you guys grew up, I mean what have you got against people enjoying themselves? This was a funny fast paced piece of entertainment, this video comes across as desperate,
I don't have anything against people enjoying themselves?? Also I'm curious who you're grouping me in with when you say "you guys"
You just encountered the exact problem. This is exactly what everybody is complaining about. By "you guys", they're grouping you in with hate groups and transphobes. They just identified you as a villain in their little culture war. @@MidnightChimey
Are all whining arrogant trolls trying to scam money by slamming the shows they are too feeble minded to comprehend ?
Maybe, I dunno. That's a very broad and unspecific question you're asking there
The Star Beast was superior to trash like Heaven Sent and Hell Bent.
Heaven Sent and Hell Bent is an interesting one, overall I think it is not a terrible finale, might cover it at some point