5x02 The Beast Below (Grading/Discussion) (SPOILERS!)

[The Borgified Corpse]

I enjoyed the episode more than most, mostly due to the continuity porn tie-in to "The Ark in Space." I totally would have missed that had I not just rewatched "The Ark in Space" last week. But I would agree that there were a lot of half-baked ideas in the script. The Smilers, the giant scorpion tails, and the opening teaser with the child seemingly sent down into the fiery abyss seemed to be more like frightening imagery rather than something that made sense within the ultimate context of the story.

Concerningly, after loving Matt last week his "anger-acting" wasn't very strong here.

Agreed. Angry Matt Smith here reminded me of many of David Tennant's worst moments.

It was okay, nothing too special really if you ask me. Felt a little bit confusing and muddled in parts. The Smilers started off as quite scary and evil, but in the end they didn't really do much at all. Also, is the exodus from Earth in the 29th century intended to be the same one referred to way back in the Fourth Doctor story The Ark in Space, where Earth was abandoned for about ten thousand years? If so, that's a major blunder in continuity, as many past stories depict Earth as still inhabited and powerful in the timeframe this story is set in. Mavic Chen was the Guardian of the Terran Solar System in the year 4000 (The Dalek's Master Plan), and there were still plenty of nations existing on the planet by the beginning of the 51st century, as we know from The Talons of Weng Chiang. Is Earth mentioned at all in Planet of the Ood, set in the 42nd century?

It's possible that the solar flares were far less severe than anticipated. Thus, the Earth was suitable for repopulation less than 1000 years later, making it totally possible for "The Dalek's Master Plan" & "The Talons of Weng Chiang" to still happen. Meanwhile, Space Station Nerva was just sitting up there in space, totally unawares, letting all of these repopulations pass them by until, many tens of thousands of years later, Earth went back to being an irrelevant, sparsely populated backwater like we saw in "The Sontaran Experiment."

And what did Timmy do to get scolded by the Smiler like that in the classroom? I don't know about anyone else, but that was the saddest part of the episode for me, when all the kids got let off 'cept him.

He got a zero, presumably in a test of some sort.

It's a recurring theme, both here and in "Children of Earth." Students who score poorly on school tests will be fed to space aliens for "the greater good." Are you Brits having any sort of political problems with your education system that I haven't heard about?

Where were they going that they still needed the whale after the cleared the sun's rays?

Uhhh, Earth 2?

Magpie Electricals!

I was wondering when someone else was going to pick up on that "Idiot's Lantern" reference.

I'm looking forward to the upcoming Winston Churchill meets the Daleks story. That looks like a lot of fun.
Random idea: Maybe the Doctor can, at some point, run into the original Captain Jack Harkness.

 

[wamdue]

It's a recurring theme, both here and in "Children of Earth." Students who score poorly on school tests will be fed to space aliens for "the greater good." Are you Brits having any sort of political problems with your education system that I haven't heard about?

TBH its more likely that we would feed jobseekers, rather than under-preforming school kids.

 

[The Borgified Corpse]

It's a recurring theme, both here and in "Children of Earth." Students who score poorly on school tests will be fed to space aliens for "the greater good." Are you Brits having any sort of political problems with your education system that I haven't heard about?

TBH its more likely that we would feed jobseekers, rather than under-preforming school kids.

I thought the thinking was that under-performing school kids were likely enough to become jobseekers.

 

[wamdue]

It's a recurring theme, both here and in "Children of Earth." Students who score poorly on school tests will be fed to space aliens for "the greater good." Are you Brits having any sort of political problems with your education system that I haven't heard about?

TBH its more likely that we would feed jobseekers, rather than under-preforming school kids.

I thought the thinking was that under-performing school kids were likely enough to become jobseekers.

quite true, but there is still todays job seekers to be gotten rid of.

Is there anyone else who is fimilar with the joy that is the Digital Spy General Discussion forum?

 

[RTOlson]

I thought the episode was pretty good, but not great. However, I was most excited by the fact that the end credits theme saw the return of the "middle eight." It wasn't present during the season premiere (so it appears it is either a different edit or different arrangement of the new theme). It sounded good and I'm glad it's back.

Disclaimer - I'm watching the BBC America On-Demand versions of the programme, so they may be slightly different than the BBC America versions (which often run end credits in a special screen with the next episode trailer running in a smaller window). I suspect it's closer to the BBC One version -- the On-Demand versions nearly always say "Director's Cut" and for "Who" include the lengthy "Next Time" trailers that lead to the full end credits.

I had read that the middle eight had been largely cut during the last season due to time constraints (although it popped up in at least one of the specials). I'm glad they can keep finding ways to put it in.

As for the rest of the episode, many of the plot holes were kinda irksome. The biggest one in hindsight is the fact that the government kept feeding kids to the starwhale when it was blatantly obvious that the starwhale wouldn't eat the youngsters.

 

[David cgc]

Well, when it didn't eat them, they just used the kids as laborers. It was probably too much trouble to instal a separate network of trapdoors to get rid of malcontents under sixteen, so they just fish them out of the mouth afterward.

 

[The Borgified Corpse]

Well, when it didn't eat them, they just used the kids as laborers. It was probably too much trouble to instal a separate network of trapdoors to get rid of malcontents under sixteen, so they just fish them out of the mouth afterward.

Yeah, but then why set up that whole system with the elevator outside the school? Why are all "zeroes" sent down even thought it doesn't eat them? They seemed to have a specific system for that that was completely unnecessary.

 

[Rowan Sjet]

The Elevator goes to other floors than just the school, I assume it's multi-purpose.

 

[Starkers]

Also I doubt the kid would have been sent below if he hadn't tried to use the lift. Getting a zero seems acceptable, getting a zero then expecting to use the lift was a step too far apparently!

 

[Captain Shaw]

I happened to catch the Dr. Who summary show that was on before the new episode and the things that really caught my eye were those creepy angels that they had to stare at or else the angels would get them! So scary! Are those things coming back this series? I might have to enlist some friends to watch with me if they do!

Oh, that's just great...now looking forward to more creepy angels. yay!

If you can you should get hold of episode 3x10 called Blink its the first time you see the angels.
Also you should watch it in the dark

 

[The Wormhole]

An enjoyable enough episode, even if it was somewhat less than I was hoping. I guess I just loved The Eleventh Hour so much my expectations were a bit too high here.

After all the hype from Moffatt and others about how "creepy" the Smilers would be, I was disappointed by them. They weren't creepy, just weird.

I thought the Doctor decided to lobotimize the whale a bit too quickly. Likewise, simply pressing the "Abdicate" button seemed a bit too simplistic a solution. But I accept it since it is a further example of the whole "humans are ignorant douchebags" idea that this episode and Doctor Who in general always presents. The humans chose to torture and abuse the whale when a more peaceful and humane option was available.

On the nitpick side, how did the Doctor and Amy survive being in the whale's mouth? The thing couldn't have been airtight, so what was keeping the oxygen in there? And how did they get back inside the ship after it puked them up?

An enjoyable episode, if somewhat run-of-the-mill. Things like Liz 10 also having her memory wiped were predictable and expected, but so are a lot of things on TV these days.

Also, not really specific to this episode, but since this is the first time we see it in action, I'll take a moment to say I do not like the new sonic screwdriver. The one Eccleston and Tennant used was cool because it was simple and effective. This one just looks bulky and too large. It's almost as if the Doctor is overcompensating for something...

 

[BenRoethig]

A bit of a filler episode, but an enjoyable hour (and by hour I mean 4-45 mins) of television.

 

[Sci]

A bit of a filler episode, but an enjoyable hour (and by hour I mean 4-45 mins) of television.

In what sense is it a "filler" episode -- especially since most Doctor Who episodes are standalone, since it is not a strictly serialized series?

* * *

I had a thought, recently, about the opening teaser:

I think it's interesting that even after thousands of years, the British government aboard Starship UK still thinks it's okay to enslave underperforming schoolchildren for the "greater good" of society, just like they did in Children of Earth. Nice bit of symmetry there.

 

[Rowan Sjet]

On the nitpick side, how did the Doctor and Amy survive being in the whale's mouth? The thing couldn't have been airtight, so what was keeping the oxygen in there? And how did they get back inside the ship after it puked them up?

We only see the actual Starwhale after the abdicate button was pushed, and the whale released from it's confines and allowed to escape. Most likely there were several "basement" levels containing the whale for the purpose of "maintenance", and the Doctor and Amy were vomited up into one of these levels, safe as the rest of ship from the vacuum of space. These levels would have been jettisoned though after the abdication, leading to the heavy turbulence that followed. That's a big chunk of ship to lose.

It also explains why the Doctor wasn't able to see the Starwhale when they were in the TARDIS. It was hidden within the ship.

 

[Worf2DS9]

However, I was most excited by the fact that the end credits theme saw the return of the "middle eight."

I was pleased to see/hear that myself. Another great thing about the show airing on SPACE here is that they actually give us the full credits, unlike the CBC days when they squished them to the bottom or side in favor of adverts of some sort or other.