Doctor Who (2023) 1-01: Space Babies (Quick Review)

Episode:

876

|

Serial:

305

|

Writer:

Russell T Davies

|

Director:

Julie Anne Robinson

|

Air Date:

11-May-2024

---

This week on Sci-Fi Adventures, I'm watching the first proper episode of Doctor Who's third volume, Space Babies! Like An Unearthly Child and Rose before it, it's the start of a whole new regeneration cycle for the series, so this is a major event here.

Though there were four specials leading up to it, so this is actually showrunner Russell T Davies' fifth episode in a row, and that's... a concern maybe. I mean, it's only a matter of time before even the best writer comes up with a terrible story, and he's churning out scripts right now.

Alright, there are going to be SPOILERS below, but only for this episode and the stories leading up to it. And maybe something from the movie Aliens. Oh, plus the Ray Bradbury story A Sound of Thunder.

---

First I want to mention that they've updated the opening titles a bit! Not as much as I hoped, they haven't got visuals synced up with the music nicely, but now the titles end with this new sequence of the TARDIS flying by some asteroids before disappearing into a vortex.

They've also changed the bit where the TARDIS ducks under the logo as it flies in. Now the logo materialises instead and it looks so much better. A big thumbs up to the Doctor Who team for fixing that. Even if the rest of the episode is terrible I can at least be happy about that.

Speaking of the rest of the episode...

RECAP

---

The Doctor accidentally destroys the human race by disregarding Ruby's concerns about butterflies. Fortunately he's able to resurrect the one that Ruby stepped on in the dinosaur era and save humanity, and then they take a trip to a space station in the year 21506. It turns out that the place is run by talking babies, who drive around in motorised pushchairs like Daleks, and they're terrified of the bogeyman in the basement. The Doctor is called to meet their Nan-E, who turns out to be a real woman called Jocelyn who stayed behind to look after them after the crew were sent away.

The Doctor and Ruby head down to the basement to save a hero baby, getting some support from the other babies and their flamethrower. Jocelyn takes the opportunity to eject the bogeyman into space, but the Doctor recognises it as another child and leaps into the airlock to save it. Then he uses the methane from the nappies to blast the station to another planet where the kids can be taken in as refugees.


REVIEW

---

Space Babies isn't just the first episode of series 14, or season 40, it's episode 1 of the Doctor Who re-reboot. The new jumping-on point for the next generation of fans. So Russell T Davies really needed to nail this one. Episode 4, episode 5, those can be a bit rubbish, no one will care that much, but episode 1 absolutely needs to show off the premise and sell people on the show or it could also be their last episode.

Does Space Babies pull it off? Well it's called Space Babies, so that wasn't a good sign right from the start. And you get exactly what it says on the tin, as this episode is full of babies in space. The VFX folks even superimposed mouths on them to make it look like they're talking, while the rest of their baby body language says that they are not. Because they are babies and have not read the script.

Speaking of VFX, the perspective is way off on this shot. They've used their Disney money to create some absolutely stunning CGI and sets, but they need to take some lessons from Star Trek: Discovery on how to integrate the two in the swooping window shots. I guess the Doctor did say he was going to give Star Trek a visit at some point...

The episode has some similarities to Rose Tyler's first proper trip in the TARDIS, and the characters soon find themselves in front of a big window on a space station looking down at the planet below.

There are big differences however, which show off how the Fifteenth Doctor has changed.

Doctor Who (2005) 1-03 - The End of the World

For one thing he didn't bring Ruby to see her own planet explode, so there's that. And he's not wearing a coat or a jacket in this one, which is just weird. Don't like that.

Also, the Ninth Doctor was extremely secretive about his past, reacting with anger when he was pressed to talk about it, while Fifteenth is entirely open. He's the Last of the Time Lords again, but now he's looking at the positive side: being the only survivor means that you're still alive, and he loves being alive.

The downside of this is that the beginning of the episode is a huge exposition dump, where the Doctor explains who he is, what the deal with the TARDIS is, why he's called The Doctor, and so on. There's no attempt to draw out the mystery to make new viewers curious. No one's asking 'Doctor who?' about this guy after this episode.

I realise that attention spans haven't gotten any longer since 2005, but it would've been even quicker if he'd just given Ruby a link to his Wikipedia page if the episode's not interested in making the drama relate in any way to his exposition. Well, except for the 'there's no one like me' bit, that part becomes very important later.

The episode scores points for finally doing what every companion's first episode should do: take them to see the dinosaurs. The Doctor's got a time machine, everyone who steps inside it wants to see dinosaurs, this makes so much sense.

What makes less sense to me, is having Ruby immediately do a Sound of Thunder and change the future by literally stepping on a butterfly. The episode tries to explain this by the TARDIS's butterfly compensator not being on, or whatever, but the whole premise of Doctor Who kind of relies on it being more difficult than this to make giant changes to time. Especially as the Doctor's not the only one with a time machine. The characters need to be able to have fun without worrying about all the children who'll never be born because they inadvertently made someone turn left instead of right.

I don't like the butterfly gag at all really, just like I didn't like the mavity gag in Wild Blue Yonder.

Hang on, is this season setting up an arc here, with history getting more and more mangled?

The butterfly gag does confirm one thing though: the Doctor can resurrect butterflies. Also Ruby's parents might be a mystery but at least one of them was descended from humans on Earth, as is she... when she's not a reptile person.

Though she's perhaps not an ordinary human.

The way that snow that follows her around is a bit of a giveaway. Plus there's the creepy flashback to the hooded figure pointing at the Doctor outside the church on Ruby Road. The dude's ended up with another 'impossible girl' to investigate.

That was some great makeup on alternate timeline Ruby, by the way.

It's a shame that the Doctor had to wipe out her entire race, but it would've been too impractical to continue the series in a world where everyone has reptile faces and antennae.

I mean how is the Doctor supposed to blend in as a human in a world with no humans? Also in this timeline Susan could've never gone to Coal Hill School, so the series' entire history would've been different!

Anyway the episode's actual plot eventually manifests and it turns out to be about space babies. The Doctor's very insistent on calling them 'space babies' as well, correcting himself whenever he leaves out the 'space' part.

It seems that Russell T Davies is using this fresh start to target a younger audience as this story of talking babies on a space station being tormented by a monster in the basement made of baby snot is... well, it's kind of childish. It does throw some sci-fi shade on countries that encourage people to have kids and then fail to support them, but this is mostly an episode for kids. With music to match.

Though there is a bit of horror, with the heroes having to brave a basement which doesn't just have an actual monster lurking to it, but also infrasound intended to make you terrified. This means we've had two episodes in a row where Ruby's faced her fears to save a baby she's just met.

The episode reminded me a lot of previous stories, as characters running down corridors to get away from a monster is kind of the fundamental basis of all Doctor Who, but there was one episode in particular that jumped to mind: Sleep No More. I don't like being reminded of Sleep No More.

Doctor Who (2005) 9-09 - Sleep No More

The two stories both have the space station, the surveillance, the monster stalking them made from ridiculous bodily waste, and they both gave me the impression that the director had seen Aliens.

In fact, this even has a homage to the airlock scene, with the twist being that the Doctor is actually trying to save the creature. After all, xenomorphs are space babies too.

I'm totally fine with the Doctor rescuing the bad guy, even if it is a bogeyman designed by a computer to terrify children, because he always gives his villains mercy if he can... though it seems like he's working on the assumption that it won't kill him after the door is shut and I don't think we know that.

This is my problem with the airlock scene: why is the Doctor pinned to the door? He's straining really hard to push the button, but why? What force is he struggling against? The wind rushing through the hole that's next to him? Also how long does it take for a room's worth of air to rush out of a hole that big?

Oh, here is some useful advice for you in case you ever end up on a space station in the year 21506: orange hazard stripes means it's a window, blue means it's an airlock. Don't get the two mixed up when you're pushing buttons.

And then the episode ends with a fart joke, as the space station propels itself across the star system using methane gas from nappies emitted from between its metal butt cheeks. See, that wind came right out of the hole instantly!

Obviously Russell T Davies knows you can't propel a space station to another planet with a fart, it's just a dumb joke for children. Adults are supposed to ignore that and instead be nodding their head at the very serious message about refugees needing to reach their refuge before they're safe, which is extra relevant as Ncuti Gatwa himself was a refugee who escaped the Rwandan genocide when he was a baby.

But you can't propel a space station to another planet with a fart. The episode gets points for understanding that an object in a vacuum only needs a push to get moving, but on average our closest planet is 140 million miles away, so you'd have to get your space facility moving at 16,000 miles per hour in one blast of baby gas to get there within a year and then you'd have to apply an equal force to stop when you got there.

Just tow it with the TARDIS, c'mon.

Anyway, I did think Jocelyn's story was very tragic and it raises the episode up a level for me.

But I don't want to start thinking too hard about her situation as then I start wondering about things like whether the babies are ever going to be able to grow up. Or why the station's educational software went nuts and created a bogeyman. Is that a metaphor for how our own education systems are letting students down or another dumb joke? I legitimately can't tell with this episode.


RATING

---

I guess if I'm going to pick an episode to judge this against, it's got to be Sleep No More or The End of the World, as there are mercifully few stories about babies in Doctor Who. Well there were the Adipose Partners in Crime I suppose. I can't compare this to any movies about talking babies because I don't watch movies about talking babies. They're creepy and I don't find them amusing.

Okay, Space Babies and Sleep No More are both cynical stories about gross weirdness on a space station, but I think Space Babies does a better job of justifying its absurdity. It's aimed right at kids and I suppose in hindsight, that's who a new jumping-on point should be aimed at. This isn't for adults who've been waiting for an excuse to give the series a go, this is for the next generation of Who fans.

Unfortunately it's definitely not for me, so I'm giving Space Babies a score of...

4/10

It would've actually been lower, but parts of it impressed me. Ncuti Gatwa and Millie Gibson are great (and great with children), the visuals have never looked better, the story has something to say and is connected to the companion's arc... there's a lot of good here. Enough good for me to rate it higher than Sleep No More at least. The Doctor says that nothing in the universe is as bad as this, but it's not the worst thing that's ever happened to anyone. I just wasn't into it.

---

NEXT TIME

Next on Sci-Fi Adventures, it's another brand new episode of Doctor Who, The Devil's Chord! They released them on the same day, so I'm reviewing them on the same day.

What did you think about Space Babies? Share your thoughts in the comments below.