RTD managing to pack more humor and time shenanigans into a single Children in Need special than Chibbers managed in 3 entire seasons.

 

Was that the first of Tennant's return to who?

I did love him as the Doctor.

 

Can't say anything about previous seasons, I skipped them, but this is good. I definitely will be back for RTD's Doctor Who.

 

Besides his regen tidbit from Jodie's last scene, yes. Specials start in 1 week.

 

Awesome. I shall return for this.

 

It's back!

Definitely more emotional and significantly more interesting than most of Chibnall's era. Are there some nitpicks? Of course. But it's definitely back!

 

I thought The Star Beast was a good episode. Not a great one, but a very good one, and a solid return to form in virtually every aspect. Loved loved loved Miriam Margoyles as Beep.

Tennant and Tate slipped into their old mannerisms fairly easily. There were some great jokes here and there.

Few points where the script is just banging you over the head with messaging that I thought were far more forced than the rest of the episode ("meep's pronouns" and the "male-presenting Doctor can't let it go" moment), but Tennant is nigh impervious to awkward dialogue. Can easily make fairly bad lines feel cheesy and charming.

The new Tardis is glorious.

 

Really liked it though that battle scene was a little weird for Doctor Who with its scale. I suppose Disney budget helps.

I was fine with the message until that last one. I just feel that if you want a message of not talking down to the people then doing it to the main character is not the right way.

 

Is this about a special or a new season?

 

About the first special out of three with Tennant. A new season will be 2024 though before that the 2023 Christmas special will be with the new Doctor.

 

What would I search it as?

 

Not sure. Disney+ has it as Doctor Who Special 1 and its title is The Star Beast.

 

Yeah I have no problem with the "message". It's a great message tbh; a well-intended take on trans representation. There were other moments that were really trans positive AND totally realistic. Rose2's "just ignore them" in regards to her bullies, Donna's "I will decend", Sylvia's clumsiness with the gender change and her loving well-meaning apology, and the "binary, binary, binary, nonbinary" bit.

It just missed the mark here and there, and walked into sloppy stereotypes of sjw "did you just assume pronouns?!" aggression and "men can't possibly understand basic emotions" gender essentialism.

It was a fun episode tho and I can certainly ignore this little bit of bad writing.

 

Mixed feelings about The Star Beast, although in fairness it might be fairer to judge it as part one of three than its own thing, in which case I'll revise my opinion after the third episode. However, based on what we've had so far...Tennant and Tate were fine, just the same as ever. I wasn't super fussed about having them back, so that in and of itself didn't do much for me, but they were fine. The Meep plot was, again, fine, just a pretty standard Who episode with a better budget, and welded to the clearly more important character stuff; again, fine, but I'm not really feeling it as the 60th anniversary special, you know?

The gender stuff was...clunky. I get that in the wider context of (British) media there's vanishingly little pro or even neutral trans stuff, so there's some value in having what is still one of the biggest franchises in the country come right out and fly the flag, and I'm certainly not against the ideas it presented, but god damn was it heavy handed. Nice idea, shame about the execution.

I think broadly where I'm coming down is that thus far, the main selling point of the 60th is that they've brought back Tennant and Tate, and isn't it exciting to see the old gang back together and develop that plot, and that's not something I'm especially interested in, especially when it's told through a fairly standard episode of the week. We'll see how the next couple of episodes go though.

 

It was a fun episode. I’ll judge it after finishing the third part. It did make me nostalgic and now I’m binging 10’s run. The new Tardis interior is gorgeous! I can’t wait to see Ncuti on screen.

 

Wild Blue Yonder was excellent. First actually scary episode since Heaven Sent.

Spoiler

The No-things were a proper cool villain. RTD was channeling his Midnight tension writing skills there. I wish the CGI for the expanding bodies hadn't been so goofy looking though.

I'm not really seeing a connecting thread for these specials plotwise. I guess the Toymaker episode is going to attempt to tie it together? Maybe?

 

Spoiler

Shapeshifting aliens that had all the Doctor's memories. Why *didn't* they add cameos of other faces?

I wish they did more of the psychological rather than the body-horror. It's definitely interesting, definitely another Midnight-like epsiode, but I never really got why Midnight was so praised.

 

That was a big improvement over last week. Really well done.

 

I genuinely understand why RTD was the one to revive Doctor Who

What a fun, interesting episode. Nothing Gattis did even compares

Man, my biggest hope is that Gaiman and Moffat will want to right at least one episode for this new season/

 

The Giggle was a nice, if odd ending to Tennant's run, but I feel like they were really just setting up the inevitable spinoff.

Spoiler

I was fairly onboard with the rumored bi-regen, thinking it was going to be Toymaker shenanigans. But then the Toymaker seemed confused by it as well. So... what the fuck? It just... happened without explanation?

At least the metacrisis had the "handy spare hand" gimmick. This wasn't even given a handwave.

Anyway, it was fun, but the second special was better.