The following contains spoilers for “Space Babies.”
You can’t help but admire the courage of Russell T. Davies. He rips off the rights to do Doctor Who From the BBC. He’s getting Disney+ to write a big check to revive the show in a way it’s never been seen before. Then, with so much money at stake and a month-long promotional campaign, he opens the door to season one and new fans. this.
We begin at the end of The Church on Ruby Road with the Doctor’s final companion Ruby Sunday (Millie Gibson) entering the TARDIS for the first time. The doctor introduces himself and offers to briefly review the provisions for the people at home. They are aliens, then adopted by the Time Lords of the destroyed Gallifrey. This leaves the Doctor (once again) as the last of his kind; a quasi-immortal time traveler who can go anywhere in the universe.
To set the scene, the pair travel back to prehistoric Wyoming to see a detailed view of some CGI dinosaurs. This is a show that boasts what it can do with its new bigger budget, even for a throwaway scene. And it helps to banish the memories of some less successful attempts to make a dinosaur episode when from the past.
Ruby is already familiar with the conventions of the time travel genre and questions the risks of causation. steps on the butterfly. The Doctor dismisses the idea before Ruby, causing inexplicable damage to the timeline. Butterfly quickly revives and the Doctor returns to the TARDIS to activate the Butterfly Compensator. Which is as close as it comes to saying that this show has never been, and never will be, a hard sci-fi show.
For their next trip, they travel to the far future, landing on a space station that is breeding babies for colony projects. The bowels of the ship are haunted by an eyeless, toothy monster, while the upper deck is haunted by talking babies. Seconds after the show proves it can make decent-looking dinosaurs, it goes overboard and adds a horribly creepy CGI mouth to the baby. I’ve seen it in movies and commercials and it never works and please God stop trying.
The Doctor and Ruby encounter the crew, a bunch of babies with the minds of preschoolers and the mouths of adults or something. They are released to operate the station, with pulleys and cables that allow them to control special on-board functions, and smart buggies to transport them around. The only other presence on board is NAN-E, an AI who acts as a comforting voice for the children.
Ruby’s genre savvy kicks in again here, and she almost looks like she’s there story book quality to the situation. A bunch of kids are threatened by an unwanted, thieving presence below and need a hero to swoop in and save them. The pair give the babies some much-needed hugs and are then invited to another part of the station by NAN-E.
On the way, the pair discuss their origin stories and how Ruby wants to use the TARDIS to find out who her parents are after the events of “The Church on Ruby Road”. As they speak, snow begins to fall down the hallway as Ruby stands on the steps of the eponymous church. Ruby’s memories and history somehow carry over to the present, or she can do something to change the universe.
However, they can’t pay much attention to it as they are interrupted by NAN-E, who turns out to be a human and not an AI. Jocelyn Sancerre (Golda Rosheuvel) is the last adult crew member left on the station to take care of the children when everyone else is ordered to leave. The government of the planet below pulled funding for the stations and ordered the adults to leave, leaving the children behind. However, since the planet is also against abortion, they would not end the unborn babies, preferring them to die slowly from external factors. Hey, do you think they can talk about us?
As this will be framed by US audiences as a post-Roe story, it’s worth saying that the UK Conservative Party has taken a similar approach. In 2010, the Labor government attempted to significantly reduce child poverty and homelessness with a number of targeted programmes. These were quickly opened up by the incoming Conservatives, not only undoing all these gains, but making matters worse. Thats it UN – UN! – all the people insulted the nation.
The silent part continues to be said out loud as they devise a plan to rescue the babies, opting to take them to another planet in the system. It’s a world that accepts refugees, but you have to get close to the planet’s door to get any help, because it won’t lift a finger to save people in need from further afield. Again, this is not so much an oblique reference to the UK’s terrible policy of trying to block refugees from arriving by sea. It is a point of great pride for the Prime Minister that he boasts of what he has done to prevent boats from crossing.
It is all the more poignant because for a brief moment the country was reconsidering its approach Death of Alan Curdy, a two-year-old boy who drowned while trying to cross from Syria to Europe. The image of her body became the sad and defining image of the day, but the press quickly tried to stifle any pro-migrant sentiment, allowing the country to spend millions of pounds building a prison in Rwanda, allowing migrants to be abused. -Relocate UK asylum seekers as ‘deterrents’.
As one of the babies, Eric (sorry, space babies), descends to a lower level to deal with this little guy, the adults can’t dwell on their problems for long. There’s a moment where Ruby runs to save the child far ahead of the Doctor, continuing a theme from Christmas: Ruby Sunday, steel pipe in hand, ready to throw herself into action rather than wait for help. Doctor Who A name we’ve saddled with since 1963, it’s always thrived when companions are active figures in the narrative. Each of the show’s protagonists, bar one, has its own fervent fans, but commanding figures like Sarah Jane and Ace are always the favorites.
After the baby is saved by the other babies using the gas pipe as a flamethrower, they are sent upstairs while the Doctor and Ruby confront the hunter. Ruby’s assumptions are proven correct when the alien is revealed to actually be a sister-man, as if made of bone. The station’s malfunctioning systems attempted to create a child-friendly environment and used children’s literature as a template.
Jocelyn works so she can force the gardener into the airlock while she keeps the Doctor and Ruby safe. He then unleashes the monster into the void of space, but the Doctor cannot be so cruel to another lonely, misunderstood figure. He enters the airlock room and closes the door to seal them both to save the chimney sweep’s life.
The episode ends with the Doctor realizing that he can remove 6 years of dirty diapers to navigate the station’s refugee planet. Solving a crisis caused by naughty bodily fluids with a poo joke is totally fair game.
Crisis averted, he and Ruby return to the TARDIS, giving her the key and welcoming her to the team, before adding that no matter how much she wants to, she can’t return her to the moment she left. He secretly begins scanning Ruby to find out what the deal is and why she is able to bend the universe. (And yes, there are shades The Impossible Girl arc how it’s played.)
The TARDIS returns to Ruby’s house, destroying the kitchen and the Christmas dinner there.
I imagine it won’t be long after the episode airs that a culture war will be raging in the usual corners of the internet. Davies has always been a political writer and is unapologetic about his perspective on current affairs. His first stint on the show was rooted in the late Blair and Brown years, fueled by righteous indignation around the invasion of Iraq. It’s all the more surprising given that it aired on Disney+, a model of conservative restraint.
During his first tenure, Davies would begin the production of each episode with a pitch meeting outlining how each episode would maintain a consistent feel in the writing, acting and direction. By comparison, “Space Babies” begs for brutality: poop and fart jokes one scene, disturbing horror the next, serious examinations of human morality. Jocelyn’s “nanny filter” scenes of adult dialogue are a good source of comedy, oddly juxtaposed with high drama.
But it more or less does Doctor Who one of the best shows on television – its ability to do anything it pleases. If the strangeness of what you’ve just seen appeals to you, then you’ve just become human Doctor Who fan. If not, you may find that the next episode will provide what you’re looking for.
