I loved this episode. It was well paced and the celebrity cameos were well handled. The guest cast was strong and I loved all the referencing of Eurovision. The story itself reminded me of The End of the World and it had a lot of similar beats to it. It was good to see a little of the darker Doctor trope, as it’s one that I find particularly unsettling.
Now for the spoilers. Seeing Susan as a kind of memory ro telepathic link I thought was a good use of the character. I kind of hope that that will be the only way she’s seen, as I suspect an actual meeting would fall very short of expectations. As for Mrs Flood and the Rani, I was underwhelmed. It seemed a trite way to end the mystery around the character, and the bigeneration felt very weak. We seem to be matching the set up for The Sound of Drums/Last of the Timelords, which I’m not a great fan of. I just hope that RTD2 won’t give us Dobby Doctor 2, as well. I also hope that he remembers that the Rani isn’t the anti-doctor that the Master is. She’s amoral, not outright evil in her schemes. We shall see.
I thought it was exciting, enjoyable, camp and life-affirming, so it’s a solid 8/10 from me.
I’m the opposite. I’d be disappointed if that’s all we get of Susan, because there’s so much dramatic potential in a grandfather and granddaughter who were close meeting after many years of being part. I think RTD would be in his element writing that kind of scene, because he is best at the character work and the scenes that are more rooted in a sort-of domestic reality (even if 15/Susan are more otherworldly, but a meeting between two relatives is basically a real-world scenario, if that makes sense.)
Does anyone else watch Blind Wave (YouTube reactors, phwoar Calvin) they didn’t remember the midnight entity which had the comments in uproar but today they didn’t bat an eyelash at Susan
Not necesseraly episode-related but I wonder how will Interstellar Song Contest age as a ‘controversial’ one in a sense that I think there may be a possibility the whole Hellions situation may be resolved later, like the Oods. For example, I don’t know how I would feel about Oods as a race and slavery metaphor if there were no Planet of the Oods (the Satan two-parter may give a wrong impression of them)
Kinda think RTD was lowkey catfishing us with her acting more like someone like Iris Wildthyme than the Rani… (Although at the same time I think RTD has better things to do than try to trick the minority of megafans like us lol)
I do want to shout out Gary though, he was seriously one of the best parts of this episode. It was like having a plotline from Queer As Folk dropped into Doctor Who and it made me very warm and fuzzy inside.
I really loved this one. 9-10/10 for me. The crowd all being sucked up into space absolutely shocked me. So did Susan! That was AMAZING to see her again. I loved that whole sequence. The gay couple were great, Belinda’s breakdown over being stranded was great, and the Doctor’s dark side - I loved that. And the song Cora sang at the end, particularly with the others reactions and the intercutting of the scenes of destruction of the fields of poppies was so emotional. This episode had me very invested. So good!
And frankly I was shocked we finally did get the return of the Rani! I know it’s been theorized and probably leaked, but it’s exciting to me that she’s actually back in the new series now. I’m looking forward to seeing the direction they take her in! Especially with the bigeneration, which I for one actually like. This version of bigeneration is interesting in that it’s like the newer version of the Rani is “in charge” and the older becomes subservient. That’s fascinating to me!
