DOCTOR WHO: THE STAR BEAST

 

DOCTOR WHO: THE STAR BEAST

"I hate that."

 

Okay, the opening is pure RTD DW and it’s not bad. The one thing I can say that makes Donna look stupid is giving all her money away so her husband can keep working. What a dope. He says it was for charity and who knows if charities are really on the up and up and all that money went where it should go. The humor is again, as in most of RTD, from the circumstances and the character relationships and so far, it doesn’t jar or unbalance the plot or the viewers. Nice start.

 

Donna is stupid. You can’t help others if you can’t help yourself.

 

And…yawn. UNIT. UFO news report. Yawn. Boring.

 

In a few short bursts of dialog, RTD makes it so that we instantly relike Donna, this Doctor, and Sylvia. And through Donna, her husband and Sylvia’s dialog, like this new Rose to boot. He’s a master at getting us to like these characters, creating realistic characters, and at making the dialog natural and realistic. Was I foolish to ever doubt him? We shall see.

 

Thankfully, Sylvia’s mellowed and even is trying with her grand daughter, a trans girl named Rose. Donna and Sylvia’s relationship is stronger.

 

It’s been 15 years since Donna forgot the Doctor (see more JOURNEY’S END than END OF TIME).

 

Then, in a most unreal manner, Rose finds Beep the Meep (his Mmm Hmmm to Rose’s “Oh My God” must be a hint but an awkward one), AND Fudge is introduced (kid seems a good actor) AND he runs into the warriors after Beep. Fudge’s reaction is natural (run away in terror) but Rose’s is not (smile at it and start talking to it, calmly without any hint of trepidation, so WTF?).

 

Then things go south fast. Donna wants to sell Beep? What is she on about? Sylvia clocks the Doctor and it’s meant to be funny but it’s only mildly. The head of UNIT soldiers is totally hot though so there’s that.

 

Donna had money and wants to make a million quid by selling Beep? What a jerk. What was it I said about liking her? Scratch that.

 

So because dopey Donna gave up her money, the family couldn’t afford to finance Wilf in accommodations since he could not make the steps and needed to a home to live in. He’s now 93. So, they got lucky UNIT would help Wilf, who can’t make the steps any longer, stay somewhere for almost free. The Doctor assumed he was dead. This Doctor said he loved Donna to a driver and then said he loved Wilf. Okay while the love bit is great, the rest of this sequence, the whole long explanation about Wilf is badly written. Everyone’s telling this stranger about Wilf. It’s bad writing.

 

So the even worse sequence makes nothing clear: Meep’s pro noun is the definite article. The Meep. This is equally poor and denotes nothing: makes nothing clear. By happenstance, this is also bad writing and…well, I need not go further on this issue.

 

I’m not sure but UNIT members are shooting at Wrarth Warriors (different spelling than the comic book that this was from?) and I’m not sure why either. Aren’t these UNIT members possessed? Who or what are they possessed by? Are there two sets of Wrarth Warriors? I read the comic book but a long time ago. I liked it a lot but can’t recall a lot of it. There’s a lot of nifty action here so that’s good.

 

In THE DOCTOR DANCES, the 9^th Doctor took a long time to resonate concrete but here the Doctor resonates mortar quite quickly. I guess there’s a difference. The net can explain this but when I tried, there was a preponderance of ads and forced links.

 

 

Unpossessed UNIT men arrive and start shooting rogue UNIT. Men are being shot down. I don’t know who is who.

 

After escaping, the Doctor suddenly thinks “they” got things very wrong. No, it was just him. He stops in a car park and invokes Shadow Proclamation something or other and puts on a judge’s wig (shades of one of the odder moments in THE STONES OF BLOOD). This is a strange thing for the Doctor to do in this moment.

 

In another awkward scene, Donna holds Rose close to her. There is NO rapport between Yasmin and Tate at all. In fact, while I think Yasmin is a fine actress, here, she does not do a great job at all. Tate’s okay but her story is forced and pushing the DW envelope a bit too far.

 

Then, it all goes artificial as if RTD is still in writer block, DW burn out mode. He traps Donna in half the ship and the Doctor in another half, similar to Wilf being trapped in END OF TIME and David’s new 14^th Doctor has a similar breakdown, “WHY DOES IT HAVE TO BE THIS!!!!???” Gosh. Bad writing again. And seriously? Bad acting, too. David’s never been worse.

 

Of course, the whole of London is in danger again as Meep tries to take off. Like Meep as a villain more.

 

Donna seems to regenerate into…Donna. The Doctor just uses words to bring her back to that. She blames him for giving away all her money. This scene falls flat. Totally. Tate is awful in this part.

 

As in the worst part of JOURNEY’S END, Donna talks like the Doctor. Dear God, make this stop. RTD is still in burn out mode and thinking what he’s writing is good. It’s not. The Doctor Donna was one of the worst things about 2005 to 2008. To return to THAT is sheer lunacy and desperation.

 

Then, the horrid Donna Noble Doctor presses some buttons and reverses lava filled cracks in the ground. It’s all cringe worthy here. Gosh.

 

Gee sus. Rose inherited the energy of the metacrisis so that saved Donna from dying if she remembered and gave Rose some of the intelligence of the Doctor so she also saved them by freeing the UNIT men by…pushing some buttons. Oh dear God.

 

Rose chose her own name. The memory of the shed is a TARDIS. Make this stop, someone. Someone fire RTD.

 

Her toys are creatures that the Doctor and Donna met. Please. No really. Make this shit stop?

 

It all relies on the Doctor being male and female. But Rose is neither. She’s more. What? What? What?

 

 

 

 

Meep, a good villain who is now threatening to use his engines to blow up the ship rather than take off and blow up London, threatens to blow up London AGAIN. More button pressing and the Doctor ejects him. Gosh, this downright awful. I expected some bad parts and maybe even an overall bad feeling but this just…god awful.

 

Another awful signpost of DW: a forced arc: here in this shit, Meep tells the Doctor, “Wait until I tell THE BOSS.”  “I hate that,” the Doctor says. He’s right.

 

More shit dialog now about Rose and Donna knowing everything and a shame the Doctor is not a woman anymore: she’d have understood (presumably because she WAS a woman). The way to get rid of it is to …just let it go. Something a male Time Lord will never understand. This is such shit writing and offensive to males everywhere. What crap.

 

They let go of the energy and new wheelchair bound unstereotype UNIT Shirley blows some of the energy out of her way. Is this totally poor? Yup.

 

Now, Rose, after all these years, finally feels as if she is herself, “After all these years I’m finally me.”

 

UNIT will sort out the house of the family that was destroyed: they have great insurance. God.

 

The Doctor asks Donna for one last trip. Donna forbids Rose to go inside, “…you’ll end up on Mars with Chaucer and a robot shark…”

 

Why has the TARDIS interior changed this time? Just because it’s a new era? Bad writing.

 

Tennant and Tate are so obnoxiously over doing it in this final scene in the TARDIS, it’s embarrassing. Horrid.

 

BTW, other than a few Rose and older bits, Murray Gold is as tired as he was in seasons 8 through 10. Get a new composer.

 

When Donna suggests he can do something completely new and have some friends, he acts as if he’s never had any. Clearly he has, in the old series and the new series.

 

As a total dope, Donna, who spilled coffee on a computer and lost her job, spills coffee on the TARIS console. What a jerk. It’s not funny and it’s so completely badly executed it’s made to look as if Donna did this on purpose. Which I don’t think was the intention?!

 

The Doctor’s not even mad at her.

 

Has Donna turned into Dr. Smith from LOST IN SPACE? And the Doctor a very forgiving John Robinson?

 

It’s a contrived cliffhanger, “We can end up anywhere in time and space.”

 

You’ve redone the theme song? I’m not bovvered by it but it stinks. I don’t like it.

 

How utterly horrible is this episode? I’d give it a 2/10 or even a 1/10 or a 0/10. More contrived than even JOURNEY’S END. THIS is anniversary special? In what way? It doesn’t celebrate DW’s past and history at all.

 

I can’t see how anyone can defend this in any way. There’s absolutely no feel of danger to the main characters; there’s over the top acting; there’s unfunny comedy; there’s contrived rescues and outs from death situations; Fudge is reduced to a very minor character; even Rose seems to fall flat and the talented actress wasted. There’s put downs of males and raising up of females trying to emasculate men.

 

The visuals are good, the monsters look great but that’s never going to make good DW or even a good show that’s not DW.

 

This is downright awful and RTD should be fired on the spot.

 

I recall the comic book being far superior to this in every way. This televised perversion of it is not entertaining, not funny, not meaningful, not even good escapist fantasy sci fi. It's downright shit.