So, “The Beast Below.” I’ve never really been one for the episode as it is used as a secondary introductory episode, not just of the companion, but the Doctor too. I have other, less prophetic, reasons for not liking it too much, but I think I’ve finally figured out why I didn’t like “The Eleventh Hour” all that much. It was meant to be introducing Amy more than anything, it was also trying to completely reintroduce the Doctor as well. That is not a bad thing, but I have a theory.

Since Tennant, every regeneration has come at the end of a series or special, with the final line being the cliffhanger that pulls you into whatever is next. Each Doctor has defined their era with those lines, “Hello, ok–” Tennant takes the pause to digest the new-ness of himself, “New teeth, that’s weird. So where was I? Oh, that’s right, Barcelona!” That’s when we got the frantic Doctor akin to the 4th. Smith checked himself, flicked a switch, and “Geronimo!” Capaldi collapsed clutching his kidney, shouting about them both. When Clara asked about that, he replied, “I don’t like that color.” Jodie said: “Oh, brilliant!” pressed a button, and the T.A.R.D.I.S exploded and spat her out (the T.A.R.D.I.S, she’s a Daily Mail reader).

The point I am trying to make is, for all the much darker moments each Doctor has featured, their character is displayed in that momentary pause. The time where we get that line, crash to the credits, and a moment later we get a trailer or an announcement of something to come. That is how Doctor Who works, and that’s great. However, for the first three episodes of Series 5, we’re setting up not only Wendy Darling in Amy. We’re also setting up the nearly thousand years of torment that is pulling at the Doctor every day. Every battle, every sacrifice, and every awful memory of the Last Great Time War. I’d argue, in some small way, do we really need to set all of this up, again?

So, “The Beast Below,” is one of those 6 PM kids horror episodes, the ones I don’t like and ones that will come to define that Moffat and Gatiss-heavy (later just Moffat) era. I’ve previously said of Gattis’ work that I wasn’t looking forward to covering a majority of it because of this horror streak in him, but I am looking forward to next week. In fact, to stay on the tangent, I’m also looking forward to the first two Clara-episodes he wrote as well. I’d actually gone back out of either boredom or interest, to watch a majority of Smith and Coleman’s run together as they wrapped Series 7. I’ve come round to “Cold War” and “The Crimson Horror.”

Moffat’s the one I’ll be talking about again this week, however. He helmed the ship as it set sail and left the docks, and as I said last week, I don’t care much for either episode. The former is an episode I have a strange love-hate thing for. I am still not willing to call it perfection, but neither of them are episodes that I am willing to go lower than a 7 on a bad day. “The Beast Below” is another story, one that follows the very child-like wonder of not only actual children raised in a police state, but also Amy’s established Wendy-ness. She’s still in her rather demure nightie that aches for the energetic Englishman that won’t grow-up in green (Ok, it’s brown, Victorian school teacher brown) ready to pull her away from life as she knows it.

The awkward thing about saying, “I don’t like it!” is that I wouldn’t ever give it a Chibnall-sized score of two. I don’t think I’d go down to five either, six at a push if I were bothered by the men in the cabinets too much, but no more. I don’t like the dark horror of it all, the porcelain men with the faces that are specifically designed to upset children and unsettle others, or the theological police-state themes pulled from the human men in the cloaks that are almost monk-like. I can’t stand the idea that we need so much time establishing and defining that the Doctor is confronted by the premise that the episode has been unraveling, but I understand it.

I think that is the biggest takeaway from “The Beast Below.” I understand it but don’t love it all the same. This is something Doctor Who has all over the place: The wavering quality, be it personal grievances or not, that makes an episode something you either love, hate, or have very little opinion of in each direction. I do love Liz’ X though, she’s brilliantly mysterious and cockney at the same time. I love her: “I’m the bloody Queen, mate. Basically, I rule.”

As for the elements with the kids, I don’t hate them today. Mandy isn’t all that childish, but still inquisitive as anyone in Who should be. That said, Timmy (the one from the “‘vator”) is entirely disposable, the big childish toothed Welsh 8-9-year-old in the “‘vator” is annoying, and the rest are just background actors. They are all doing what kids should be doing their age, working! Who needs an education anyway? If it was good enough for the kids in my arctic city in Frostpunk it is good enough for the kids of the UK.

That returns us back to the rather Orwellian-lite “contains in-app purchases” version of 1984. The reason kids are hidden away working is they can’t vote. They can’t vote to overthrow the government or simply forget what the government is doing to a harmless creature. Anyone over the age of 16 can elect to (and they will) forget via sci-fi off-screen magic mind-control, all because of a simple video. A video of all our horrible wars, famine, and general disregard towards others. The idea is great in concept, but later on it falls apart a bit.

Most notably it would be the joke about Scotland wanting to secede from the UK, an off-handed line about wanting their own ship. Again, a great idea for an off-handed moment, but the power for the Starship UK is the last of the Star Whales; The crux of where the Doctor comes into the story as a simile. The end is centered around a question. Do you continue to harm this creature as the Starship has done for years already but in a vegetative-state, do you let humans die by setting it free, or do you simply stop torturing the creature to do your will?

Ultimately, I like the sci-fi of it, the questions posed upon humanity in the contemporary while displaying the far-flung future of ignoring the signs. I love a great, bold, Black woman being Liz X, as portrayed by Sophie Okonedo’s second run-in with Doctor Who; The first being “Scream of the Shalka,” the animated Richard E. Grant lead mini-series with Derek Jacobi as the Master. However, the angry faces of the men in the boxes do, indeed, fit the tone of the episode. Sadly, they are only there to upset and unsettle.

By no means is it the worst episode of the series: Chris Chibnall has a two-parter coming up later in this run. Anyway, we’ve already got the phone call for next week’s episode. Good ‘ol Winston is on the blower and we need to go find out what he’s doing in the cabinet war room with a couple of tin cans of hatred. It shall be fun!

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Doctor Who "The Beast Below"

7

Score

7.0/10

Pros

• "I'm the Queen, Mate!"
• Great moral sci-fi.

Cons

• For some reason, the horror seems to just unsettle.
• A bit of a clanky ending.