Doctor Who: The Beast Below

After the sheer joy of the first episode of this new series of Doctor Who, this second episode seemed much slower. It was certainly darker; dystopian in a fairly typical Doctor Who kind of way. The menace firmly lay in the apparently normal not being normal. I've only ever seen those Victorian grinning face fairground things since moving to the UK as an adult. They unsettle me. To have them everywhere - creepy.

We start with the children.

I'm noticing this with Moffat. There's children in all his episodes (so far) and mostly the episodes start with the kids. Smart move in two ways. First, it gets the kids watching. Others have observed that Moffat's child characters, regardless of their age, are written as adults and as a result kids don't feel talked down to - something I remember impressed me about Press Gang. The second thing is that the danger that the kids are put in freaks their parents out. And it's that which scares/reassures the kids in a family audience. Neat, huh. What's even neater is that as an adult who has never had kids I have never felt left out by that and that is because the kids in the story are so well written as characters. What delights me is that none of the actors have let the writing down! The kids in "The Beast Below" don't disappoint in any of this.

Yup. I admit it. I first thought the mysterious masked lady was River Song. But, no, and I love this Liz 10 character. Or should that be Liz X? More, please. And there really is no denying it about that small matter of Doctor 10 and Liz I getting it on, is there?

I like Amy. A lot. She's full of the wonder of travelling with the Doctor, and has a grasp on his honest-but-unreliable quirk, but only really just beginning to fathom how alien he really is. That is played beautifully in this episode, with some wicked lines that had me and my flat mate laughing out loud. Then Amy shows what she's made of: she's a quick learner who pays attention to the Doctor even if she might not do what he says (but, since he doesn't always do what he says... what's a girl got to do?). Perhaps she is as unsure of the mistake she made as the audience might be, but she spots the solution that's there all the time before any one else does. And she acts on it.

I wrote all the above last Sunday but didn't have a chance to post it until now. I've read some pretty bizarre comments on Facebook about how Moffat really has to lift his game if it's going to improve. He has to because this was rubbish, blah, and the next one looks even worse, blah, and doesn't he know anything about continuity, blah, and Terry Pratchett did this story, blah, blah, and blah. Those sorts of comments weren't the majority, even among my friends who didn't enjoy the episode, and I seriously and genuinely have no problem if people didn't enjoy it. As I said in my review of "The Eleventh Hour", Doctor Who is diverse and not everything appeals to all people. I think it's the melodramatic "look at me, I'm being controversial" element of some of the comments I read that pisses me off most. Oh, and if you've ever thought Doctor Who has cared particularly about continuity, please go watch the series again (here's a clue, it really doesn't)... and Terry Pratchett wasn't the first to come up with a lot of his story elements (which doesn't make him any less original, by the way).

Finally, though, did anyone else notice that this episode was a bit cynical about elections and aired just after the official calling of the next UK General Election? I don't think the pro-Tory and pro-BNP tabloids noticed. Phew.