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I liked this a lot! But I didn't love it by any means, I'm sad to say. I'd place it above Lucky Day and Robot Revolution in my rankings, but below Lux.

I was cautiously optimistic going into this. Eurovision has become fairly famously propaganda for a certain.... country that helps sponsor it. Banning flags, banning "political messaging" (but always happens to be messaging in a specific direction... curious, eh?), refusing to ban said country despite banning Russia, etc. And thus, despite having complete confidence in Juno Dawson, I feared that the BBC, Disney, and higher ups on the show would make this propaganda.

I am pleased to say that this did an attempt at being critical of Eurovision, and succeeded in many ways but failed in others. The Hellians are very obviously a stand-in for Palestinians, and the Corporation for Israel. Initially I thought this was just going pure anti-capitalism because of, well we'll get to that, but once the ball dropped for me I was so happy. And that ending with Cora! Beautiful stuff! I do hope though this isn't seen as "wow now all prejudice is fixed!" and more just as "people are reminded that these demonised victims of a conflict they did not cause are people too with their own cultures and lives, and deserve love and respect.

Now unfortunately, as I alluded to, I think it failed too. I think by having the villains be Hellian terrorists who want revenge, there's an angle of almost "both siding" this, especially as they don't just revenge solely on the Corporation, but on everyone at large. Is that really fair? Does that not give a lot of the right and the lobby that this episode is trying to criticise some ground to stand on? You can't give it to them, if you concede on even small points, you are opening the gateway for them to push more and more and deny your arguments entirely. I won't say this ruined the episode for me - again, it was more critical of Eurovision happily accepting said sponsor and banishing Palestine entirely than I was expecting - but it did leave a somewhat sour taste in my mouth.

Enough about the politics for now though (WOW DOCTOR WHO MORE LIKE DOCTOR WOKE AM I RIGHT FELLAS????), let's talk about the episode itself.

I had heard going in it was Die Hard meets Eurovision and I am SO glad it was more Die Hard than Eurovision. The plot was fairly light despite a lot going on, but it was fun! Maybe a tad too camp for my liking at points, but still fun! I love the idea of 15 and Belinda getting separated, though I don't think Bel got enough to do (other than continue to be a very good beating heart as all companions should be). I just wish she got some action or got to use her nurse skillset in some way.

Fab performances from the main cast as always, and I'm so glad that darker 15 has been pushed more and more to the forefront! I always love seeing companions scared of The Doctor's rage.

Side performances were fine this time. After the delight that was The Barber and the absolutely realness that was Aliss; the side cast were kinda just... There. Also how convenient is it that The Doctor ran into a nurse and a hologram engineer when he needed to? I wish these skillsets - especially Gary's engineering - were established beforehand because it felt almost like a copout to me.

Overall, the story itself was fine for me. I had a good enough time to give a 4 star, but nothing elevated it for me.

Oh wait. I forgot to talk about the reveals.

I jumped out of my chair when I saw Susan. I famously on the forums am super critical of her not appearing in season 40, so having her appear her - still portrayed by 84 year old Carol Ann Ford, who looks gorgeous for her age btw - made me SO excited and happy! Russell. Do not let the side down. We need her to have a sweet moment with 15. And preferably keep it vague so it doesn't retcon her adventures in the 8DAs <3

The Rani reveal was fine. I think the performances are fun, but I hate bigeneration! Why can't it be gone!! And why did Anita Dobson's Rani suddenly do a 180 personality wise and become subservient? It felt weird. The new Rani has amazing screen presence though and I'm hyped to see what Panjabi can do in the role. Also the reveal felt so weird in that it was just? Very casual? It left me with little impact. Though by having it here I'm hoping it means the two part finale will get plenty of room to breathe.

The everyone is The Rani meme is dead. Long live the everyone is The Rani meme.

4* - a very fun time that I have quite a few issues with, but the strengths of it carry me through those issues

OK, between this episode and Lucky Day, I'm really struggling to come to grips with the possibility that I might have to start boycotting Doctor Who, because it's tragically clear that the neoliberal/centrist BBC is infecting what used to be a bastion of aggressively radical-leftist programming.

First things first, i get that people can enjoy something at face value based entirely off of the "vibes" of the episode, and yeah, i can't really fault it for being just a really fun, campy romp of an episode, nor can i fault it for pulling off the juxtaposition of going really dark in places pretty well. And the return of Carole Ann-Ford as Susan audibly made me go "OH s**t!" On the surface, it really is an episode that if you shut your brain off and enjoy, you'll get a lot out of it. Unfortunately, sometimes, there are things that are vastly more important than just how well the episode was pulled off from a mindless entertainment perspective.

My primary problem with the episode is that it falls into the same pitfalls as Lucky Day. Sure, Lucky Day tried to make itself seem nuanced in it's takes by pointing a giant finger at the fact that UNIT isn't in any way squeaky clean, but that's how they feel they can justify writing a story that smears anyone who dares to actually hold them to account as a lying grifter who's dangerously out of touch with reality. The Interstellar Song Contest is tragically exactly the same, it wears it's knowledge that the real life Eurovision is complicit in the Palestinian Genocide by way of continuing to platform Israel on it's sleeve (And don't try to imply this episode was written before the genocidal state of Israel became sheer poison, because Eurovision has been under fire from activists for doing this for a lot more years than you might suspect), and makes a suitable allegory in this story as well, with the evil Corporation that sponsors the event having devastated an entire civilization known as the Hellions, and it makes that the forefront of the Villain's motivations for revenge, a traumatized terrorist from that civilization. But ultimately, once again, that's just a way for them to pat themselves on the back for making the "brave" decision to be entirely open about Eurovision's crimes, and using that to make themselves feel justified in painting the villain as a creepy, psychopathic genocider himself who just uses it as an excuse to kill people.

OK, look. I'm well aware that there are people out there like that, but f**king hell, you couldn't have included representation of a protester who isn't a psychopathic monster to show that he's not indicative of the entire movement? And NO, Cora Saint Bavier doesn't f**king count. I'm not ashamed to admit that i absolutely loathed her, because she is the perfect example of what's wrong with this episode. This episode, once again, tries to be nuanced and show that she is indeed a sellout who left her people behind to work with the people who genocided them, and then she goes through this journey where she comes to terms with her heritage, and in the end, she raises awareness of the Corporation's crimes by unashamedly singing a mournful song of her people and trying to turn the tides from inside the system... and it works. All the people in the audience clap and we're left with the message that there is a right way to get justice for the people the Corporation has wronged, and you can do it if you'd simply be willing to put aside your grievances and watch and participate in this inherently flawed system. This resolution can get to f**k.

For one thing, Cora f**king IS a sellout, and no amount of trying to make me sympathize with her as "the good protester" is going to change anything about that. By the end of the episode, she's still choosing to participate in it, and the audience members who clap her bravery like good little fake progressives who like to think they're "#SoWoke" and then turn around and buy £150 worth of H*rry P*tter merch, guess what, they're STILL choosing to give this corrupt, genocidal organization that ravaged her home the time, traffic and money.

And The Doctor! I've thoroughly enjoyed Ncuti's performance in prior episodes, and i was willing to say he was giving Tennant a run for his money, but i hated The Doctor in this episode. I get that attempted genocide is a touchy subject for him, what with his own people, but christ alive, this is a betrayal of The Doctor's character. And i'm not talking about The Doctor's dark nature, New Who loves that s**t and does it to death every opportunity the can, and i've equally loved it when they do, it's just a part of The Doctor. It's because of this that i was really excited when i saw the news story that 15 was going to go really dark in this episode. Then came the actual execution of that scene. The problem i have with The Doctor in this episode is the reason WHY he goes completely apeshit on Kid, that's the part that ruins him here. Yeah, ok, The Doctor might be justified in brutally torturing an attempted genocider, but here's the thing, he's also torturing a genocide survivor, and then he gives special treatment to the Corporation, who are the real genociders. This isn't The Doctor taking a moral stance against genocide, this is The Doctor definitively deciding that one genocide is worse than another, and that, to me, makes him completely irredeemable. It actually makes me miss The Twelfth Doctor, because he would have reserved his anger for Kid, electing that he was just a symptom of this whole genocide business, and absolutely waged war against The Corporation, the actual disease, and anyone who continues to fund or promote it. But, no, as it stands, we now have a Doctor who has definitively taken the side of the Corporation, and brutally and angrily defended it's utterly horrid crimes.

On the whole, this was an episode where the BBC was clearly and cynically trying to get people to watch one of their other programs, and one of their more hard-to-defend ones at that. And, yeah, there are likely going to be a lot of people pointing out that i'm a fool of the highest order for looking for true progressive, socialist, leftist political leanings in a show being pushed by a neoliberal/centrist organization like the BBC, and that there are other episodes in the past that have had iffy politics as well, arguably done even worse than this one, but can you really say that that's a good enough excuse to tell me to switch my brain off and sleepwalk right into any centrist schlock that they try to shove into my face? To not kick up a stink about when they do something I find irredeemably, skin-crawlingly repugnant? To pretend that these issues just don't exist? Would you rather that everyone just lay down and took it, and unintentionally send the message that the BBC can make dangerous mistakes like the one in this episode with absolutely no fear of any kind of pushback? This is why, frankly, I'm starting to become a tad uncomfortable financially and vocally supporting Doctor Who any more.

Oh, and not exactly a criticism of the episode itself, per se, but that ending reveal was the most boring, predictable, uninspired, cliche'd, ill-thought-out conclusion to a story arc that literally every single f**king person and their blind grandmother had already made a half-arsed guess about one and a half year ago.

Garbage.

The characters are all cardboard and flat and our main cast is barely 2 dimensional with some of the worst politics we’ve seen while probably well intentioned a Eurovision song saving the day and making all well is incredibly tone deaf when the Hellions are presumably an allegory for Palestine.

The torture scene sticks out as completely out of character for The Doctor even in their darker incarnations let alone Fifteen, I don’t think what Kid did should get that reaction when it was made clear they were all still alive for the time and especially when this is the same man that saved Davros of all people like it just felt unnecessarily cruel like it doesn’t even serve much of a narrative purpose with Belinda who has completely lost any semblance of her character from The Robot Revolution and now exists to be a companion stereotype.

Susan and The Rani are here too I guess in a very jarring way with Susan getting these random flashback things and then that stupid reveal that felt like a dime store YANA reveal especially after all that build up ughh awful stuff.

Season Two (Series 15); Episode Six - “The Interstellar Song Contest” by Juno Dawson

I am finding this season incredibly hard to rate. The Interstellar Song Contest is an episode I am in two minds about because whilst I want to just enjoy it as a fun run around, it’s too caught up in trying not to be. This whole season is like an emotional blind spot, trying to deepen its storylines and messages but clearly not knowing how, because every time it turns to melodrama. If there was an episode this season that needed to be purely fun, it was the Eurovision parody. There are twists, there are turns, there is fun to be had and problems to be explored, let's start the show.

The Doctor and Belinda arrive at the Interstellar Song Contest; but something is very wrong. After a disastrous attack leaves the lives of three trillion people in the balance, the Doctor has to contend with a devastating revenge plot and himself.

(CONTAINS SPOILERS)

So I’ve never watched Eurovision. I know, who’s more qualified to evaluate this episode than I? Because of that, I wasn’t totally bought into any of the homage stuff but luckily, that’s not what all the episode’s about. Unluckily, all the other stuff was exceptionally clumsy. First of all, I can enjoy a fun episode and when this story got going, it was nice, it was fast paced with a nice visual style and some good, classic RTD camp. Once again, amazing set and costume design that repeatedly blew me away with its scale and quality and, you know what, props to RTD2 for having a musical episode with at least passable songs. And stuff like the image of the Doctor flying through space on a confetti cannon is somewhere between bizarre and metal as hell and it really works (would’ve worked better without the marvel-esque “Did I just fly through space on a confetti cannon?” though).

You know what, let’s talk dialogue, because watching this I thought I’d been transported back into the Chibnall Era. No disrespect to Juno Dawson but every character just says exactly what they’re thinking at all times and it is tiresome. This also ties into my biggest problem with this episode: the attempt at political commentary. First of all, I love the sentiment; corporations suck and racism is a ridiculous and vile thing but you can’t change it through violence. Great, love that, but if there’s one thing I can’t stand, it's a bad allegory. This is all so on the nose and hard to take seriously because it’s Orphan 55 levels of just saying s**t to camera.

Didn’t help that this episode did not know what it wanted to be. One second it’s a fun Eurovision parody, the next second it’s Die Hard, then it's an ultra serious political thriller that pushes the Doctor to his limit, then it’s a fun Eurovision parody again. It’s not cohesive and each aspect detracts from the other, losing pretty much all impact. At first, I liked where it was going, the initial attack was masterfully directed and genuinely very tense; I found it especially to be a good subversion of expectations as I didn’t expect anything quite like it from an episode about space Eurovision. But then you hear that nobody’s dead yet and you know they’re all going to be magically fine at the end. Plus, the episode really didn’t keep the tension going, what with its constant genre changes.

I will say that this is by far this season’s best sidecast, with another Slow Horses actor showing up. Kid himself could’ve been a little more explored but what we got was good enough and, whilst they’re basically just convenient plot devices, Gary and Mike were well acted and likable.

Whilst we’re at it, let’s talk about this episode’s conveniences, because there are a lot. The biggest offenders are Mike and Gary magically having the perfect jobs for the situation but there’s also stuff like Kid and Wynn not just wiping out the survivors whilst they had the chance for no reason and Deus ex Susan saving the Doctor from deep space somehow. The actual resolution was fine but I didn’t think the Doctor’s anger was particularly built up; he’s been through worse and been less furious. There have been worse examples of unsatisfying revolutions in RTD’s eras but it’s enough to make the end of the episode not feel earned.

Now, we should probably get onto what will likely be this episode’s claim to fame - it’s twists. First of all, whilst I’m happy she’s returning, Deus ex Susan was done in such a weird, sudden way that it felt more like a jumpscare than a reveal; I mean, that quite literally came out of thin air. As for the Rani, it’s just so utterly predictable and banal. I literally went “yeah, no s**t” when it happened. Also, two seasons of build up and that’s how you’re going to reveal that, randomly in a post-credits scene? Russell’s just become a parody of himself at this point, all of Season Two has basically been a verbatim retreading of the previous one, down to the series arc. However, I’m not going to list these as a negative outright because it really depends on where they go. Yeah, these were awfully constructed reveals uncharacteristic for even RTD but if they go somewhere, I don’t really mind. I really hope they go somewhere.

The Interstellar Song Contest really needed to choose what it wanted to be. A fun run around is alright, and so is a serious political commentary that questions the Doctor’s character, but you can’t just have both, at least not without some masterful tinkering. Its twists are not very turny and its beats are not very surprising, but it’s certainly a fun episode that I can say I enjoyed. Does not change my opinion that I think the script is weak though.

5/10

Pros:

+ Really fun when it wants to be

+ The sidecast felt decently characterised

+ Incredible set and costume design

+ Fantastic direction and cinematography

???

~ The twists really could go either way but aren’t promising as of now

Cons:

- Fails at simple allegory

- Not tonally cohesive

- The dialogue is on the nose and clunky

- Resolved through a series of convenient deus ex machinas

I was intially quite pleased with how this wasn't as camp as I was expecting it to be (the prospect didn't particularly excite me), but instead I got what feels like the complete opposite.

I feel like it's old news to complain about the Doctor being violent, especially when they've outright directly lead to the deaths of people in previous episodes (such as Kerblam, or Dinosaurs on a Spaceship) or even just killed people (Hell Bent). But there was something different about this. Overall I felt like this season's attempt of giving 15 "dark moments", like what he said to Conrad in Lucky Day, have felt... empty? Not necessary, and sort of edgy for the sake of it? But this episode has taken it way too far. The Doctor standing above someone, hearing them scream in pain while shocking them again and again and again. It felt so incredibly wrong. And the attempt to "address" it near the end just was not enough. I felt little remorse from the Doctor, and everyone around him didn't seem to care too much either. "Triggered" is a perfectly fine word, but not for this. This man was torturing someone. This same person who extended their hand out to Davros, responsible for inumerable attrocities, lost the plot and decided to torture this genocide survivor? I mean, what a perfect opportunity, from one genocide survivor to another, to explain a better way of expressing his anger that wouldn't result in Kid doing the same as was done to him. I mean for cyring out loud, the emotion such a scene would draw from Ncuti himself! To come from Ncuti, whose family ran away from the Rwandan genocide; such a moment would feel so impactful. But no. So sorry not sorry, it just made me uncomfortable and it sadly overshadows the rest of the episode for me.

And what's this episode's messaging? Be more like Cora: be ashamed of who you are, hide yourself away, work in a system and for organisations that hate you, because eventually you may get an opportunity to show yourself. Otherwise, if you're angry about these people who caused the genocide of your homeworld then clearly you seek violence and only wish to murder people. What's the reason for this false dichotomy? Show that people can rightly express their anger without killing people! Show protests! It's the right way to feel! All this showed was: if you're angry, you're wrong. I mean, what will happen now? Was the corporation supporting the contest shut down? Or is Cora just going to keep singing at these events? Funded by the genociders of her homeworld? We once saw 12 instigate the downfall of space capitalism, explaining that the results of their actions caused it. But we don't even so much as get a short explanation of any resolution to the tragedy that caused this episode's events in the first place. Well I guess the two extremists were apprehended so job done! Guh-huh. Actually baffling.

On the surface, the very surface, this episode could be fun. It had genuinely funny moments. And the surprises are ones I'm not going to forget. I realise I'm just not touching on much else in this episode such as music, acting etc. But I just can't be bothered simply, this has left a bad taste in my mouth.