Doctor Who: The Beast Below

Before I start my recap, I'd like to share some of my thoughts on this episode. It's pretty bad. It's easily the worst episode Steven Moffat has written for the series, which does not sound like much since he's other episodes are pretty much mind-blowingly amazing, but hear me out. It's bad in the worst way, because it seems like it's going to be great. It's got a lot of really interesting concepts that draw you in, but then most of them just don't go anywhere. And, you know, space whale. There are definitely bits I like, but, taken on a whole it's pretty much shit. But every show has their bad episodes and this is basically as bad as Who gets. The season started out strong, went a little shaky with this and the next episode, but it gets pretty awesome as it continues.

Previously: I recapped The Eleventh Hour here.

Now:

Moving on.

We open on a shot of a spaceship, seen above. It's a little derelict, but it has a giant union jack so its okay. We're given a closer shot and we see that the building looking things are emblazoned with various UK city names.

We then cut to a classroom, presumably on board this ship. We hear a computer-y voice telling various students "Well done" and so on as they leave the class. One student is still sitting at his desk and doesn't seem to want to go. Another student encourages the first one, Timmy, to get the hell on already and leave. When he gets up to a booth at the front of the class, we see what was talking.

Kind of friendly looking, but creepy. Instead of the positive feedback it was giving the rest of the students, it informs Timmy that he's a bad boy and received a zero. Its face starts to turn during this sentence and once it reaches the word zero it sounds absolutely demonic.

But Timmy gets to leave the class at least. He meets his friend from earlier, Mandy, at a "vator," which is their hip future term for elevator. Maybe that seems cooler in the UK since they call them lifts? I don't know. She informs us that he cannot ride on the vator if he got a zero, lest he be sent below, and he'll have to walk all 20 decks back to London, but she'll wait for him. Timmy, being a lazy bitch, gets on the next elevator. There's another smiler (those face guys) on the elevator and a screen showing a rather toothy girl reciting a poem ending in "Expect no love from the beast below!" as the elevator quickly drops to floor zero. The floor opens and Timmy screams, falling through. And the smiler reveals a third, SCARY face to us all.

And then it's time for the theme song!

Our next shot is the Doctor holding on to Amy's leg as she floats outside the TARDIS. She reminds us that she's Amy Pond, she had an imaginary friend, and he came back the night before her wedding. The Doctor brings her back in and apparently this was all to prove that the TARDIS is, in fact, a spaceship and not to give us a pretty space shot and inform us that the Doctor can extend the air shell outside the TARDIS, because that won't come up in a few episodes or anything.

Anyway! They happen to be floating by the Starship UK. He gives her the history of the ship, which boils down to the human race fleeing the Earth for the stars after solar flares roasted it. He waxes on about how it's not just a ship, it's an idea, an entire country full of people living and laughing and searching the stars for a new home. Through this Amy has been yelling for him, because she's slipped out of the TARDIS and is hanging on by the door frame. He drags her back in and fills her in on his (totally fake, just made up for this episode so Amy can save the day in the end) agenda. Namely, "We are observers only. That's the one rule I've always stuck to in all my travels. I never get involved in the affairs of other people or planets." She relates this to making a nature documentary, having to leave injured cubs to die, and happens to turn on a screen showing Timmy's friend crying. She says it must be hard being so detached and cold. The Doctor has, of course, already batman'd out of there and pops up on screen bumping into the girl. He gestures for Pond (which is what he calls her by the way) to come on already.

And so she enters the ship and finds the Doctor. She realizes that she's really in the future and her immediate thought is that she's been dead for centuries. Good on her, usually takes them a little bit longer to get to that conclusion. He asks her to find what's unusual around them. She points out bikes, thinking that's weird, but he counters by pointing out that she's in her nightie. Which she forgot about. The Doctor informs her that it's a police state on the brink of collapse and then gets distracted by a cup of water, which he borrows from someone's table and sets on the floor, citing a search for an escaped fish.





Amy asks what the fuck that cup thing was about, but he says he doesn't know because he thinks a lot and it's hard to keep track. They run off and an ominous looking dude in a robe (seriously, all the other guys are wearing like old time-y suits and bowler caps. I feel like if I were an ominous sneaky person, I'd probably don the normal attire) shows up behind them.

So this episode has been sort of outrageous thus far, but interesting stuff right? But right here is where I started to be apprehensive. The robe guy calls another guy, who is watching the Doctor on a screen. Robe guy says that he saw it for himself and asks if the other guy is going to tell "her." Apparently other guy is under orders to do so, so he calls someone else after telling robe guy to keep an eye on the Doctor.

And we cut to this bit of over the top, Phantom of the Opera bullshit.

Yep. That's a lady in a dramatically splayed robe, sitting in front of way too many water cups (for the purpose she's using them for, one would probably do), with a porcelain mask and A FALLEN CHANDELIER. Are you kidding me? Anyway, this is the "her" they referred to a second ago. She asks if he (the Doctor) "did the thing." And this is where my head explodes. It's one thing to be mysterious in a way that makes sense. Preserve the story and all that. But "Did he do the thing?" is a sentence that belongs in something penned by Joss Whedon, not Steven Moffat. No Buffy speak (not matter how much I love it) on my Who please. Anyway, when she finds out he apparently did do this thing (which is totally the water glass thing anyway, so come on), she sweeps herself off the floor and puts on the mask. Okay.

So we go back to the market area, where the Doctor points out that the strange thing is a child crying silently, which means she doesn't just want attention or something, she just can't stop. And none of the other people are stopping to see what's wrong, which means it's a VAST CONSPIRACY and they all already know there is something wrong but they can't do shit about it. Basically they're carrying on, which is surprising for somewhere called Starship UK, I know.

Okay so the Doctor informs Amy that her task is to talk to Mandy (who has disappeared, but the Doctor stole her wallet so he has her name and address to give to Amy), that crying girl/Timmy's friend, and find out what's going on and why everyone is scared of the booths (which he determines by noticing that the booths are clean while the rest of the ship is pretty dirty). She doesn't want to do this, because she's in her goddamned nightie, but he says her choice is this or Leadworth and he knows what she's going to do.

While she's taking care of that, he'll be doing what he always does: Staying out of trouble. Badly. She asks if this is how it always is, never interfering unless there's a crying child. He says yes. What he should really say is no, it's always interfering because I'm the goddamned Doctor and I have a TV show and it's nobody likes documentaries. But instead he lies and hops over the bench they're sitting on for no real reason other than his fabulousness.

So Amy goes to begin her task. She finds herself sort of lost in the ghetto of Starship UK. And then Mandy shows up and says she knows Amy is following her. Amy returns Mandy's wallet and Mandy knows that the Doctor stole it. Oh you street smart little scamp.

They stumble across a hole, covered in a large tent. Mandy informs her they'll have to turn round and take another path, because you can't go through there. Amy, being a companion and therefore being able to sniff out danger, decides to ignore the sage advice of her new street smart friend who has been (presumably) living here her entire life and go in. Or as she puts it, she can't resist a keep out sign. Mandy informs her they are not supposed to talk about what's below. Amy cements her self as a loose-cannon companion who lives by her own rules and chastises her for not breaking the rules, when there are fucking creepy as shit smilers that will send you basically to hell. Speaking of which, there's one watching all this go down and it doesn't seem happy.

That's the face Amy makes when thinking about the fact that she's getting married "a long time ago tomorrow morning" while simultaneously picking a lock on a mysterious tent thing on a spaceship in the future by the way. I thought you'd want to know.

So there's a big stinger tentacle thing under the tent and it starts trying to stab Amy. She makes it out of the tent fine though. Only to be surrounded by more of those mysterious robe guys, who knock her out with some gas from a ring.

I'm getting a little blah about this episode so I think I'll just hit the important bits. Which is what I should be doing anyway.

Oh wait, we're back to the Doctor. Maybe my indifference will pass. Yeah I'm basically live-blogging this now by the way, otherwise I won't get it done tonight. Plus my notes get increasingly nonsensical the longer the episode goes on, so I'm trying to force myself to write in complete sentences.

Anyway! The Doctor comes across a random glass of water, apparently placed their by the phantom lady, who confronts him and has a chat about the impossible truth in the water. Apparently he came straight to the engine room, because the water doesn't move which it would if there were an engine running the ship. All the power stuff isn't connected. So there isn't an engine.

Phantom lady is Liz X/Ten. So yeah. She says Amy is safe and gives the Doctor something that will help him find her.

We cut to Amy who is in a voting cubicle. She sees 3 buttons: protest, record, or forget. She is informed she will see a short history of Starship UK. The computer pulls her up, and because she was a citizen back in the day and the computer doesn't think it's word that she's impossibly old, she's allowed to vote.


Okay! I'd like to time out again. What's going on here is that they are going to show her the truth about the Starship UK, because she got too curious and checked out what was under the tent. She will be given the option to protest what's going on or forget what she saw. This is one of the better fleshed out concepts in this episode and I actually find the idea really interesting. If you protest you are sent below, but they don't tell you that (what they do say is that if 1% of the population does the same, shit is going to get real). The whole voting thing just makes the whole "we don't talk about what's going on" thing make a lot more sense. Every one (over 16) knows that they can find out, or they already have, and most elect to forget because the truth is terrible (but they accept the fact that it's necessary to survive). Basically it's a great way to suppress dissent. But back to the show!

Anyway, Amy is very upset by what she sees and elects to forget. She also left a message for herself telling her to get the Doctor off the ship so he cannot interfere.

The Doctor finds Amy and gets the lowdown on the whole voting thing from Mandy. Amy also hides the message she sent herself from the Doctor. Oh snap! "Once every five years everyone chooses to forget what they've learned. Democracy in action." Damn Doctor, that's cold.

Also: "You look human." "No. You look Time Lord. We came first."

Once again, ANYWAY! The Doctor decides to hit the "protest" button and, as I mentioned, they get sent below. The Doctor is pretty excited, but Amy is freaked.

Liz X comes up to Mandy outside the voting booth, and they apparently know each other. So that's nice.

The Doctor and Amy go down a chute and end up in a big old mouth. Amy's nightie is officially gross.


The Doctor is, of course, excited by this giant beasty. It starts swallowing, so the Doctor makes it throw up. It's... unpleasant and, as the Doctor puts it, not big on dignity. And he yells Geronimo again. I'm sorry that I keep bringing that up, but I do not become okay with it until the season finale.

They end up in an overflow pipe and the government is apparently super prepared for this type of thing, because the only way out is to hit a "forget" button to open up a door.

The Doctor questions the smilers that are down there, and they just put their angry faces on and, it turns out they can get out of their booths. Liz X comes up and shoots them.

Turns out Liz X has not voted, because she isn't a British subject. She's also aware that he's the Doctor. Because she's the queen. Of course she is. Okay she's also hilarious, because she reveals this information like so:

"I'm the bloody queen mate, basically, I rule."

God I love puns. Shut up.

They find more of the stinger things. They come from the same creature they were in. Liz is very upset that they're feeding her subjects to it.

The guy that the original robe guy reported to sees that Liz has investigated the lower levels and tells someone to start the protocol.

The robe guy shows up and it turns out that he's a smiler too. So that's weird. He tells her she has to go to the tower, under the highest authority, which is clearly her, so she's given orders concerning this.

In the tower/dungeon we find out that the beast will not eat children and the Doctor and Amy were the first adults to escape.

Turns out the beast is allowing the ship to move, not an engine. They shock the exposed pain center of it's brain to keep it going.

The Doctor figures all of this out and explains it all to a very confused Liz X. She is stuck on the idea that it's an infestation, but really it's what is keeping them going and alive.

The Doctor does something so they can hear the cries of what turns out to be a starwhale (SPACE WHALE!). It's pretty awful and he quickly stops it.

It turns out, shockingly, that Liz X gave the orders to use the creature. Because instead of having ruled for 10 years, as she thought, she has actually ruled for over 200 years. Which the Doctor figures out by the age of her mask, which was made to perfectly fit her face. She's been living roughly the same ten years over and over again, always ending up learning the truth and voting to forget or abdicate.

Her video shows that the starwhale, apparently the last of its kind, came to the UK when it's children were screaming because the UK couldn't get its shit together (unlike every other country INCLUDING SCOTLAND) and build a ship that worked. They trapped it and built their ship around it. If she forgets she will start over and if she abdicates the starwhale will be released and (according to her video) their ship will fall apart.

The Doctor is mad that Amy tried to save him from the choice of saving humanity (really just the UK) or the starwhale. He says she's going home after this, because she decided what he needed to know. He's being kind of a bitch.

He decides that the right choice is to pass a huge charge through the starwhale's brain, leaving it brain dead, letting the ship continue moving without the whale having to be in pain. He's pretty pissed at people.

Timmy shows up again, and Mandy pets one of the giant stinger things. So she has a realization that the starwhale was offering itself to save the UK's children and they didn't need to trap it anyway. She uses Liz X's hand to hit the abdicate button, releasing the starwhale. Something akin to an earthquake happens, but the starwhale doesn't book it. I would have booked it since they fucking tortured me for 200 years.

"If you were that old and that kind and the very last of your kind, you couldn't just stand there and watch children cry." She's talking about the Doctor too, obviously. Since he revealed to her that he's the last of the Time Lords too.

The Doctor chastises Amy for putting everyone at risk, but then they have a really sweet moment where she shows she gets him. Despite my bitching about the whole "children crying" thing earlier, it still works. She understands that all of the shittiness he's had to deal with leads to him wanting to save everyone and always do the right thing. I'm a sucker for Amy and the Doctor's interactions, so even in this awful episode, it still gets me.

Oh and Amy goes "Hey, gotcha" while they're having this sweet hug thing. Remember that for the finale, because I sure as hell didn't until just now. Guess skipping this episode a lot leads to forgetting bits, who knew?

Amy thinks they should say goodbye, because she doesn't get the Doctor as well as she thought. She tells him she's running from something. He says he ran away once a long time ago, and she wonders what happened. He's still running obviously. But all of that discussion is going to have to wait, because Winston Churchill is on the phone for the Doctor.


So it's Dalek and Winston Churchill time, but first we need our arc thing. So they give us a shot of the starwhale, starship UK, and the crack from Amy's wall. Which, screw getting a screen cap of that. If you want to know what it looks like check out my Eleventh Hour recap. And trust me when I say you'll have plenty of opportunities to see it again.