Doctor Who, series 14, review: Ncuti Gatwa shines among the clunky culture-war posturing (3*)

The Doctor is in: Ncuti Gatwa and Millie Bright on a new adventure in space and time – BBC Studios/Bad Wolf/Natalie Seery

After a Christmas episode of Doctor Who (BBC One/Disney+) properly introduced the new Time Lord Ncuti Gatwa, we’re down to business with a double-bill launching the new series. The first, Space Babies, will delight an audience of under-10s. The second, The Devil’s Chord, might bore you to tears whatever your age.

Since Disney joined forces with the BBC to create the Whoniverse, the show has taken on a new tone: slick, expensive and nothing here to scare the horses. Mostly, there’s nothing here to scare anyone who has recently graduated from Bluey and Peppa Pig. The Doctor Who episodes that linger in my memory from childhood do so because they were unsettling – Logopolis, featuring “the Watcher”, terrified the life out of me. Now the show is so unthreatening that one of these episodes turns into a musical.

First, Space Babies (three stars). The Doctor and his companion, Ruby Sunday (Millie Gibson), visit a space station populated by babies who can talk, and who zoom around the place in their buggies. It’s cuteness overload. The plot involves nappies and bogeys, which makes it fun for younger viewers but a bit cringe-worthy for adults. An entry-level episode in many ways, it has the Doctor explaining the basics to Ruby: he comes from Gallifrey, he has two hearts, the Tardis is a time-travelling machine based on the kind of police box we used to have on street corners, etc. (Indeed, Disney is marketing this series as “Season One”.)

The talking babies make for a silly bit of storytelling, but I enjoyed it on my children’s behalf. Then it’s on to The Devil’s Chord (two stars), which is best appreciated by people old enough to be familiar with the Beatles.

With the whole of history at her disposal, 19-year-old Ruby chooses to go to EMI Studios in 1963 to witness the Beatles recording their first album. But music has been stolen by a villain named Maestro, meaning that the Fab Four produce lyrics such as: “I’ve got a dog, he’s called Fred / My dog is alive, he’s not dead.” Paul McCartney explains that he just wants to “make a bit of money out of cheap old rhymes”. John Lennon says sadly: “I’m no good at anything.” In the next studio, Cilla Black is singing badly (albeit not as badly as the real thing).

Discord: Jinkx Monsoon as Maestro in The Devil’s Chord – BBC Studios/Bad Wolf/James Pardon

The episode has a good opening scene but then goes on for what feels like forever, with drag queen Jinkx Monsoon chewing the scenery as Maestro. The Beatles idea is thrown away. And it’s logically inconsistent: if we’re in a world where no one whistles or hums or taps their feet, why is anyone recording an album in the first place? How have the Beatles lost the ability to write lyrics but not to sing in harmony? How can they play instruments properly but the orchestra can’t?

Writer Russell T Davies makes clunky attempts to be current. Ruby mentions Beyoncé and Sam Fender. The Doctor claims to live in Shoreditch. And, of course, there’s the politics. We’re fighting the culture wars, not the Daleks, and Davies wants us to know which side he’s on. So Space Babies references refugees and government cuts and restrictions on abortion (“The planet refused to stop babies being born, but once they’re born they don’t look after them?” “It’s a very strange planet”). Gender pronouns crop up – continuing a theme begun in The Star Beast episode – when Jinkx Monsoon arrives. “Get away from him,” a character warns. “Them,” retorts Maestro. “I’m them.”

The main asset of the new Doctor Who is Gatwa, who carries the series along with the force of his megawatt charisma. When the Doctor tells someone: “Nobody grows up wrong. You are what you are, and that is magnificent,” it may be another example of Davies hammering home a point, but in Gatwa’s delivery it becomes a joyful message of self-acceptance.

Episodes one and two of series 14 of Doctor Who will be available on BBC iPlayer and Disney+ from Saturday 11 May; the episodes will be shown from 6.20pm on BBC One on the same day

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