The Beast Below

A fantastic premise with a challenging ethical dilemma at the heart of it, dealt with in a child friendly way. There is a moment where Amy and The Doctor doubt each other before Amy makes the decision The Doctor wasn’t able to.

I loved the Winders and how they loomed over this future British society at every level, stopping people from questioning. I liked the aesthetic even though it was done on a budget, the ideas were strong enough that they carried through even though it looks a bit cheap.

I do think something went wrong in the production when trying to realize the geography of the space whale and the spaceship at large. It gets quite confusing with the small tentacles, brain and teeth on what is a dense, country-sized animal. The impact of this is that the story that’s being told isn’t quite the one you’re seeing, so you have to use your imagination a bit.

I also think they re-state the similarities between The Doctor and the star whale one too many times, I think they could have reigned that back a bit and we would have still gotten the point.

I get the sense that Moffat thought there was a little more drama to this then there actually was. The intrigue was good, but after a whole episode of building up the mystery, when you find out the resolution there are not actually that many layers to it.

I still feel though, that this is impressively separate from what came before. It is such an exciting and modern take on Doctor Who which has an incredible energy to it. It feels like they are pushing what they can do with the show, the tone of the show, what it can look like. It feels like it has moved on 5-6 years, not 1 year since 5 the last incarnation. It still feels new 13 years later.