IN THE DARK REVIEWS

Welcome to the Disney era of "Doctor Who."

Once upon a time, there was a globally popular, decades-spanning sci-fi TV series about a mythic alien trickster who changed into different lead actors every few years and who traveled through space and time in a disappearing blue box that was bigger on the inside than on the outside.

As the narrative became less accessible to casual viewers, due to the compounding complexity of its many backstories, it only took a handful of ill-considered revisions to that established canon, presented during less-than-deftly written episodes, to diminish the fandom enough for the show to go on hiatus.

Then, a showrunner named Russell T. Davies brought "Doctor Who" back with a big heart and some big-screen-size stylistic ambitions.

That was how "Doctor Who" returned to the BBC in 2005, following a 1996 TV movie on FOX failed to restart the series after its end in 1989, and it appears to be how RTD (as he's abbreviated by fandom) is revamping the show with a trio of weekly streaming specials on Disney+, after its last regular season in 2021 trailed off into a string of specials during 2022.

The original "Doctor Who" from 1963 through 1989 was limited by a modest production budget, occasionally hastily written scripts and a touch of over-reliance on dated contemporary genre tropes.

When Davies reintroduced "Doctor Who" in 2005, he was praised for injecting it with a fresh sensibility, similar to that of Joss Whedon's "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" TV series, by turning a more in-depth focus on the personal lives and relationships of the human characters whom the Doctor adopted as his traveling companions.

What Whedon and Davies wound up doing was to outline what became the subsequent Marvel Cinematic Universe formula by mixing snarky, self-aware comedy and manipulative familial drama with staggeringly apocalyptic stakes, well-suited for widescreen visuals.

That's what Davies' "Doctor Who" was about for five years, until he amenably ceded custody of the series to other hands in 2010. Based on "The Star Beast" - the first of Davies' three "Doctor Who" specials on Disney+, which began streaming Nov. 25 - that's the RTD who came back for this go-round.

Davies is joined in all three Disney+ specials by his primary incarnation of the Doctor (played by David Tennant, who remains one of the most popular "Doctor Who" lead actors in the series' history) and Donna Noble (played by Catherine Tate), who ranks among the most beloved of the doctor's companions in the post-2005 era.

After watching "The Star Beast," I can reassure fellow fans of the Doctor/Donna pairing that Davies retained both characters' distinctive voices while writing their dialogue. Tennant and Tate spark off each other as though they'd never left the show.

For those who haven't seen "Doctor Who," I can reassure you that Davies' storytelling brings new viewers up to speed on the key points of who the Doctor and Donna Noble are, what they mean to each other, and what the stakes of their reunion will be.

Even if you have no taste for fantasy-flavored adventures, the Doctor's chaotic interactions with Donna, and her family, should appeal to those who relish the rapid-fire farce of Bruce Willis and Cybill Shepherd's verbal duels in "Moonlighting," albeit without any of David and Maddie's more adult-rated chemistry (the Doctor and Donna really are just very good friends).

Beyond that, "The Star Beast" should be an effective litmus test for the degrees to which you'll find RTD's "Doctor Who" either endearing or difficult to endure. Like George Lucas and Ray Bradbury, Davies is a "science-fantasist," rather than a "hard-SF" storyteller, who uses the genre as a vehicle for social commentary and (mostly) well-done melodrama.

If you love cryptic but blatantly telegraphed teases for multi-episode story arcs, gratuitous strings of meaningless but semi-scientific-sounding jargon, and well-intended and frequent vague "Power of Love" resolutions that lean on the cosmic equivalents of "Care Bear Stares," you are going to adore Davies. I'm not even criticizing. When measured out correctly, his tropes make for great ingredients.

However, if you head into RTD's "Doctor Who" expecting it to be free of what you might consider "woke" messaging, as the "South Park" ski instructors would tell you, "You're gonna have a bad time." Davies is openly gay, and his stories have always been unabashedly inclusive of not only LGBTQ, but various other spectra of diversity.

Davies' outlook reveals itself in the most basic aspects of his tales, because when you begin from the premise that it's OK to be different, then it naturally follows that appearances aren't always what they seem. What might look like scary monsters are actually good guys.

For those new to "Who," the black-clad paramilitary-uniformed troops we see on the scene are part of U.N.I.T., aka the United Nations Intelligence Taskforce. In spite of their sinister attire in "The Star Beast," they're typically allies of the Doctor (when they're not being manipulated by villainous forces). Ruth Madeley is a welcome new addition as Shirley Bingham, the group's latest scientific adviser (a post the Doctor himself once held).

For fellow longtime Whovians, the new central console room of the TARDIS is already my all-time favorite, as it combines the pristine, streamlined futurism of the original series with the open-ended complexity and expansiveness of the modern TARDIS interiors, most notably the Eleventh Doctor's "elegant mess" of a jack-o'-lantern.

I love the spiraling catwalks and the multiple portals, perhaps as much as writers Pat Mills and John Wagner, and artist Dave Gibbons, apparently appreciate how well "The Star Beast" adapted what was originally their 1980s comic strip story for "Doctor Who Weekly" magazine.

Look for parts two and three of this trilogy - "Wild Blue Yonder" and "The Giggle" - on the Saturdays of Dec. 2 and 9 on Disney+, which should culminate with Ncuti Gatwa taking over as the newest "Doctor Who."

Author Bio

Kirk Boxleitner, Reporter

Shelton-Mason County Journal & Belfair Herald
[email protected]