[COLUMN] Doctor Who Kicks Off Its 60th Anniversary Reminding Viewers How Far It’s Come | by Darren Mooney (Patreon)

This weekend, Doctor Who writer and showrunner Russell T. Davies reteamed with actors David Tennant and Catherine Tate for “The Star Beast.” This was the first episode of Doctor Who that the three had collaborated on since “Journey’s End”, which broadcast in July 2008. It was the finale of Davies and Tennant’s last full season of Doctor Who, although the pair would go on to produce a set of five specials to buy time for the incoming showrunner Steven Moffat to set up his tenure.

“The Star Beast” was the first of three weekly specials celebrating the 60th anniversary of Doctor Who. The series has a history of bringing older actors back for these events. William Hartnell and Patrick Troughton teamed up with incumbent lead Jon Pertwee for the show’s tenth anniversary special, “The Three Doctors.” Troughton and Pertwee reunited ten years later, joining Peter Davison, a recast Richard Hurndall in Hartnell’s role, and archive footage of Tom Baker for “The Five Doctors.”

Indeed, Tennant has already done one of these anniversary specials, reprising the role in “The Day of the Doctor”, starring his successor Matt Smith and written by Steven Moffat. In these cases, the older actors tended to play earlier incarnations of the Doctor, a character who routinely changes his face and personality as the role transitions from one performer to the next. These iterations are identified by number. William Hartnell was the First Doctor. David Tennant was the Tenth Doctor.

When Tennant appeared in “The Day of the Doctor”, he was playing the Tenth Doctor opposite Matt Smith’s Eleventh Doctor. Just like Jon Pertwee was playing the Third Doctor in both “The Three Doctors” and “The Five Doctors.” However, “The Star Beast” is doing something a little different. Tennant is not reprising the role of the Tenth Doctor. He is instead playing the Fourteenth Doctor, following on from Jodie Whittaker’s Thirteenth Doctor, who just happens to have the same face as the Tenth.

It’s all very strange. It would be easy to look at this as a cynical cash-in. Modern pop culture is saturated with older performers returning to their iconic roles to stoke audience nostalgia. Just this year, Michael Keaton reprised his role as Batman in The Flash and Harrison Ford returned to the title role in Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny. Davies, Tennant, and Tate worked on a beloved era of Doctor. “Journey’s End” marked the first time the show ever topped the British television ratings.

This nostalgia would be defensible. Under writer and showrunner Chris Chibnall, Doctor Who experienced a disastrous fall from grace. “The Woman Who Fell to Earth,” the first episode of the Chibnall era, was watched by 8.2m people live and by over 10m people over the following week. By the time that the era came to a close with “The Power of the Doctor,” that audience had been almost halved. The grand finale was watched by only 5.3m in the 7-day window.

There is a suggestion the show was in trouble when Davies reached out to the BBC about coming back for “a special”, “an extra” or “a one-off.” According to producer Matt Strevens, the team shooting Jodie Whittaker’s last episode didn’t know if the show was going to continue, which may explain why Tennant regenerated into his own clothes rather than wearing Whittaker’s old costume. Chibnall only discovered Davies was coming back 36 hours before the public announcement.

“The Star Beast” seems to tacitly acknowledge this. The episode finds a strange alien ship landing in London at an old steelworks, a common location throughout the Chibnall era. “It didn’t land in a steelworks by mistake,” the Doctor observes of the craft. “It came to be mended.” Shortly after reuniting with his old companion Donna Noble (Tate), the Doctor meets her husband, Shaun Temple (Karl Collins). Donna didn’t take his last name because Noble Temple “sounds like an old ruin.”

“The Star Beast” has its fair share of nostalgia. It opens with a recap of Tennant and Tate’s tenure on the show. Tennant dutifully repeats his catchphrase, “Allons-y!” At one point, Donna refers back to her old nickname for the Doctor, “spaceman.” Even the structure of the episode – an alien threat to contemporary London culminating in a convenient deus ex machina ending that works on emotional and thematic levels more than as a cohesive narrative – recalls Davies’ old work on the show.

There is a sense of wanting and needing to win the audience back. Initial figures suggest that this has worked. “The Star Beast” attracted 5m viewers overnight, the largest overnight audience the show has enjoyed since the New Year’s Day special at the end of Chibnall’s first season nearly five years ago. “The Star Beast” is a good meat-and-potatoes episode, showcasing Davies fundamental strengths at writing character motivations and human interactions, sorely lacking under Chibnall.

This nostalgia makes sense in the context of repairing a damaged brand and celebrating a big anniversary. It is also worth noting that Tennant’s second tenure will last precisely two weeks and an hour, with the character regenerating into Ncuti Gatwa’s Fifteenth Doctor at the end of “The Giggle”, the third weekly special. Gatwa will then jump directly into a Christmas Special, “The Church on Ruby Road”, exactly one month after “The Star Beast” broadcast. This nostalgic indulgence is excusable.

However, “The Star Beast” suggests that Davies is doing something more interesting than just playing the hits. He is returning to these characters because he has something to say about them. He is effectively writing a coda to his previous tenure as showrunner of Doctor Who, before turning the page and starting something new. “The Star Beast” is not a resurrection of the Tennant era. It is an epilogue. It allows Davies to demonstrate how far the show has come in his decade-long absence.

This is woven into the story. There’s a funereal atmosphere to “The Star Beast.” At the climax of the episode, Donna asks the Doctor about his familiar visage. “Why did this face come back?” she wonders. “To say goodbye?” At the end of the episode, the Doctor promises Donna “one last trip.” She pushes back and asks, “We can have more days, can’t we?” The Doctor doesn’t answer. “You've been given a second chance,” Donna urges her old friend. “You can do things different this time.”

Davies has been paying attention to the work done by Steven Moffat and Chris Chibnall, the two showrunners who followed him. He has taken cues from both. “The Star Beast” owes a lot to the commendable inclusivity of the Chibnall era, placing diverse performers on screen in key roles. Transgender performer Yasmin Finney plays Shaun and Donna’s daughter, Rose. Wheelchair user Ruth Madeley plays Shirley Bingham, the new scientific advisor of the Doctor’s allies at U.N.I.T.

However, while the Chibnall era often struggled to reflect that progressiveness in its storytelling, Davies weaves these themes into the show. Davies’ first tenure as showrunner was fairly criticized for its handling of transgender characters, but the writer has emerged as a strong proponent of trans rights in the years since. These issues are also personally important to Tennant. “The Star Beast” foregrounds these themes, making Rose’s identity central to the resolution of the narrative.

There is perhaps a mea culpa here. Towards the end of Davies’ original tenure, Doctor Who shot the special “Planet of the Dead” in the United Arab Emirates. This choice was subject to criticism by journalists, who saw the decision to shoot in a country with a horrific track record on gay rights as a betrayal from a show with a gay showrunner and a long queer history. In “The Star Beast”, Rose runs a side business selling dolls to Abu Dhabi, a choice that feels deliberate in an episode foregrounds its queerness.

However, it’s also clear that Davies has been paying attention to the work done by Steven Moffat. Moffat reinvented Doctor Who, and one of the bigger issues with Chibnall era was the extent to which it failed to build upon or engage with any of the ways that Moffat had expanded the scope of Doctor Who, developing and reinventing the role of both the Doctor and his companion. Davies seems to really understand what Moffat was doing, and how it engaged with his own work.

Davies’ original tenure rigidly enforced the boundaries between the Doctor and the companion. Whenever a companion attempted to assume the narrative role of the Doctor, there were horrific consequences, because there was an order to things. When Rose (Billie Piper) pilots the TARDIS at the end of “The Parting of the Ways”, the Ninth Doctor (Christopher Eccleston) dies to save her life. The next season, Rose’s attempts to overrule the Doctor get her trapped in an alternate world.

This was particularly obvious with Donna Noble. Donna was truly an equal to the Doctor. She could stand up to him like no previous companion. In “Journey’s End”, she absorbs some energy from him that allows her to tap into his gifts and abilities, saving reality itself. However, she flew too close to the sun. The Doctor has to wipe her memory to save her life, even as she withholds consent. Only the Doctor can shoulder such power. Any companion who steps into that role will be punished.

Moffat rejected this notion. Moffat’s Doctor had companions who were truly his equal, like his time travelling archeologist wife, River Song (Alex Kingston). He embraced domesticity with Amy Pond (Karen Gillen) and Rory Williams (Arthur Darvill). Clara Oswald (Jenna Coleman) gets to play at being the Doctor in episodes like “Flatline” or “Dark Water.” Moffat critiques the patriarchal power structures that traditionally defined the dynamic between a male Doctor and female companion.

In fact, Moffat’s “Hell Bent” plays as a criticism of Davies’ resolution to “Journey’s End.” Clara stepped into the role of the Doctor in “Face the Raven” and was killed for her hubris, that classic Doctor Who trope. However, the Twelfth Doctor (Peter Capaldi) refuses to accept this. He breaks time itself to give Clara a second chance. In the end, when they decide one of them must have their memory wiped, they agree to randomize the experience because they are equals. The Doctor forgets Clara.

Watching “The Star Beast”, it is clear that Davies has seen “Hell Bent” and considered what Moffat had to say about his treatment of Donna in “Journey’s End.” The climax of the episode builds to a moment when Donna has to recover her memories of her adventures, something that the Doctor believes will kill her. However, it doesn’t. Donna is restored to her previous self. She is just as brilliant as she ever was. The Doctor – and perhaps Davies - gets a chance to undo his mistake.

Ultimately, Donna survives because of her daughter Rose. Rose can process that energy. Once again, it feels like Davies has learned from Moffat. Moffat’s first season built to a climax where the Doctor is saved by Amy, a companion who had encountered him as a girl and whose childhood memory was strong enough to pull him back into reality from oblivion. It was a metaphor for how childhood fans of Doctor Who kept the show alive during its cancellation and brought it back into being.

This feels like a bold statement from Davies, a realization that nostalgia can only get the show so far. “The Star Beast” marks a triumphant return for Davies, Tennant, and Tate, but it also understands that the next generation will carry the show forward. It’s great that “The Star Beast” acknowledges that Doctor Who has changed significantly since Davies was last in charge. However, it’s even more exciting that Davies has already sent the show hurtling towards a brighter and bolder future.