“The Beast Below” is the second episode of Doctor Who’s fifth series, with Matt Smith’s Doctor and Karen Gillan’s Amy Pond visiting Starship UK, a city-sized ship carrying the remains of Britain through space after a solar flare destroyed the Earth. The review follows the episode from the Doctor’s promise not to interfere, through the secret hidden below the city, to the Star Whale and the choice Amy finds for him.
It lands as a happy, enjoyable filler episode with no big twists, in which Smith settles into the role, Gillan nearly steals the show and the Tardis barely appears. The review ends on the teaser for next week, where a Dalek shadow stands beside Winston Churchill.
Let me start out by saying that I am happy. I don’t know what it is about Doctor Who, but just watching the show brings back memories from my childhood, and it’s escapism in its purest form. “The Beast Below” kept that going. After last week’s Eleventh Hour, I was looking forward to seeing how the new Doctor would settle in.
Matt Smith has definitely done a better job this week versus last week as the Doctor. He seems to be gradually finding his feet in the role, and while I don’t love “Geronimo” as a catch phrase, when it’s not shouted out at you it’s not as annoying. Karen Gillan as Amy Pond has again done a sterling job, although I think it’s time she changed her clothes and started to wear something different than a nighty and robe! If they’re not careful she might end up stealing the show from the Doctor. Doctor Who TV has a poll if you want to rate The Beast Below yourself.
Unfortunately we don’t really get to see any more of the Tardis this episode than we did in previous ones, which is a real pity, as I think some of the earlier Doctors’ explorations inside the Tardis itself were extremely memorable and the whole tesseract nature of the device is extremely interesting.
Starship UK
The new episode has the Doctor and Amy 1300 years in the future. The Earth has been destroyed by a solar flare and all of humanity has taken to the stars in giant city-shaped space ships looking for new homes. Again, this is a filler episode, as there are no huge “earth shattering” revelations or twists thrown at us, but it’s a necessary one to give the actors a chance to truly inhabit their characters and to allow us to get to know them too.
Starship UK, the remains of the British empire, is one such city ship, and the Doctor and Amy go down to explore. In a very amusing moment the Doctor tells Amy that he never interferes in the affairs of other peoples and is only there as an observer, and warns her to do the same. However, Starship UK is not what it seems and there’s a secret hidden below the city that the people aren’t talking about. When a young boy doesn’t pass his test in school he isn’t allowed to use the “vator” and has to walk home. Using the vator anyway, he’s plummeted into the fiery depths below and his friend is left at a loss waiting for him. The little girl cries silently, too frightened to seek attention, and this is when the Doctor and Amy arrive. Despite what he’d just said about not interfering (and if you’ve seen any episodes of Doctor Who in the past you would have almost laughed aloud when he said that), he leaves the Tardis to check on the little girl.
Once Amy sees him outside the Tardis she joins him, and the Doctor tries to explain that she has to be observant at all times and points out that the people are frightened of something. In a strange sequence he takes a glass of water from someone, puts it on the deck and leans down to stare into it. When Amy asks what he’s doing he blows her off, in rather typical fashion, and tells her to go and speak to the little girl while he investigates elsewhere.
The girl, the glass of water and Liz Ten
Amy follows the little girl and, in another nice sequence, is confronted by her. She knew Amy was following her and also knew the Doctor had “bumped” into her on purpose to get her wallet. It’s nice to see that she’s aware of things around her and that even though she’s young she’s by no means stupid. When Amy speaks to her she finds out that the Scottish people took their own city ship rather than joining up with the English, but that there are parts of the city she’s not meant to see. Amy being the Doctor’s companion, though, decides to break in and take a look anyway, and she’s confronted by a huge tentacle that looks very much like a scorpion’s tail, stinger and all, which tries to slam into her. Quickly escaping the stinger, Amy is overpowered and taken away.
While all this is happening, the Doctor’s initial actions with the glass of water have been observed and reported. A phone call is made to a lady who has a room full of water glasses set up in the same manner, and she confronts the Doctor outside the engine room, where he’s made his way. He’s extremely confused because he doesn’t understand how the ship is travelling. The glass of water was simply to show that engines would cause vibrations, and none were felt at all, because the water hadn’t even rippled. Liz Ten agrees with the Doctor that something mysterious is going on and gives him a device to help him find Amy. She actually calls him the Doctor at this point, even before he introduces himself, and seems to know something about him!
The vote and the tongue
In the meantime Amy has been taken to a “voting” booth. Basically all members of the British Empire are given a choice after their 16th birthday, and every 5 years thereafter, to know the “truth”. They can either vote to protest or forget the truth, and if 1% of the population votes to protest then the “project” is stopped automatically. Amy undergoes the procedure and is given the information. In an instinctive reaction she presses the forget button and the truth is wiped from her mind, but another message is left for Amy, from Amy. In tears, she gives herself a message to get the Doctor back to his ship and not let him explore any further or find out too much about what’s going on.
The Doctor finally catches up to Amy at this point and decides to press the protest button to see what happens. Immediately he and Amy are thrown into the same fiery depths the little boy was plummeted into at the start of the episode, only it turns out where they end up is a huge tongue! They’re literally in the mouth of a beast large enough to transport the whole city. The Doctor and Amy escape before they’re devoured and end up meeting Liz Ten again, this time without her mask. A striking lady, Liz Ten, or Elizabeth the Tenth (Liz X), is the Queen of England, and she wants to know what’s going on and what manner of creature is threatening her citizens.
The Star Whale
The Doctor and party are taken to the tower, which is actually in the dungeons of the city, and here they learn the final, horrible truth. The creature that almost ate them is a Star Whale, a species of huge, sentient, space-travelling aliens, and the one they’re on is the last of its kind. Humanity has been torturing it for generations to get it to move them through space. The Doctor is furious with Amy and humanity in general, and he’s left with two choices: destroy the city by letting the Star Whale go free, or destroy the mind of the Star Whale so it no longer feels pain while humanity still uses it as transport.
Amy, however, sees a third path. The Doctor had told her to observe, and what she saw was that the Star Whale was a lot like the Doctor. Just as he came to the rescue of the crying little girl, perhaps the Star Whale had come to the rescue of all of humanity’s crying children. Taking a great risk, Amy pushes Liz X’s hand onto the protest button and the torture immediately stops. The Star Whale chooses to keep helping humanity in its search for a new home purely out of love. The Doctor didn’t himself “solve” the problem, but his words helped Amy find the solution, and that’s the bit I liked most.
Now, despite what I said earlier about there not being any overarching story, perhaps the teaser for next week’s episode is the start of one. The Doctor receives a phone call from Winston Churchill and the shadow we see beside him can only be a… Dalek! Wooo hooo!