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| A Smiler. Happy - but still creepy. |
1 episode. Approx. 42 minutes. Written by: Steven Moffat. Directed by: Andrew Gunn. Produced by: Peter Bennett.
THE PLOT
It is the distant future, a time in which Earth has been devastated by solar flares and humanity has fled in generation ships in order to survive. The Doctor and Amy encounter one such ship, the United Kingdom... well, except for Scotland, which wanted its own ship.
But all is not as it should be. The culture of the ship is that of a police state, with the people living in fear of mechanical figures in booths. The ship's motion is impossibly smooth, with no engine vibration. What's the secret? Amy knows. She's a British subject, after all, so she viewed the video. But she chose to forget. Because everyone chooses to forget the horrible secret that keeps the ship alive...
CHARACTERS
The Doctor: Matt Smith's second episode gives him one key emotion to play that was absent from his debut: anger. When the Doctor discovers the secret of Starship UK, he becomes utterly furious. The Eleventh Doctor's anger differs from earlier Doctors'. What we see here is a cold, quiet anger, in which the Doctor shuts everything else out and stops even listening, intent only on what he has decided to do. If this is going to be typical of him in a rage, it's a dangerous attribute. And that's interesting.
Amy: She's very observant, able to quickly put together the pieces of seemingly disconnected things she has seen. She is also willing to act on the conclusions she draws. She went with the Doctor for several reasons. One is, of course, that his appearance during her childhood had such a profound effect on her. But she is also running away from her upcoming wedding (presumably to Rory, though that's still unconfirmed), feeling like she's not ready for that commitment. Because she hasn't made the choice yet, the voting booth on the ship lists her marital status as unconfirmed. Until she decides whether to go through with the wedding or not, she could be single or could be married. The marital equivalent of Schroedinger's Cat.
THOUGHTS
There's a big difference between writing one episode per year of someone else's show, and being the head writer on your own show. Steven Moffat wrote four very good to excellent stories in four successive seasons of Russell T. Davies' Doctor Who. In all four cases, there was something "special" about the story, something unusual. That continued with The Eleventh Hour, a story which was effectively tasked with relaunching the series. For five straight stories, a Steven Moffat story was never "just another episode."
The Beast Below is definitely "just another episode." One with a lot of plotholes, too. The solar flares were devastating Earth, and only the UK has been unable to leave. Even Scotland managed it, apparently. I'm guessing they didn't thumb their noses at the Starship UK while they were in the process of dying. Then the Great and Terrible Secret that enabled the ship to work happened. And that, we are told, is when they built the ship around this secret.
Hang on a minute. The immense ship that would, in ideal circumstances, have taken a fair number of years and a large number of billions to build was somehow erected, at the last minute, while the UK was in the process of dying. That... doesn't really make sense. And yet that is the timeline that we are given, when the explanation comes at the end.
That's not even mentioning the "Smilers," whom I guess exist to enforce the secret, but whose function never really seems to make much internally logical sense. They're creepy as a presence, with their faces that swivel from a smile to an angry frown to something truly nasty. But outside of existing for effect, they... don't really make sense. The half-human, half-smiler things make even less sense (and aren't even particularly creepy).
Oh, and while the ending is all very happy and heartwarming, are they going to continue feeding the "useless" members of society to their pet monster every so often? If not, won't the monster starve? If so, shouldn't the Doctor really have some kind of a problem with that?
I don't want to be too hard on the episode. It is entertaining. It does move along at a fast pace, and the leads remain effortlessly likable. As an hour of television, it works. Not well, perhaps, but at least adequately.
I just wish I didn't feel I was being asked to switch off my brain as a prerequisite to enjoying the ride.
Rating: 5/10.
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