Chatter Box Film

This review does contain some spoilers for The Star Beast special including: title sequence and the TARDIS interior descriptions, as well as crucial characters to the plot.

Russell T. Davies reunites The Doctor (David Tennant) and Donna (Catherine Tate), back onto our screens once again, for three 60th annniversary specials of Doctor Who. Here’s a review now that the first episode has aired titled; The Star Beast.

There was a clunky recap of previous Tennant and Tate episodes at the beginning; with The Doctor and Donna talking and looking directly into the camera at viewers, combined with old clips, to quickly ease new fans into the show.

Title intro sequence review

The Doctor Who title sequence which followed directly after this recap was awesome!

Impressed by the digital physics properties that have been set up in this animation; which has a wide shot of the TARDIS interacting and pushing through space dust clouds, and a close-up of the blue box gliding along an illuminating time vortex, topped off with an incredible score by Murray Gold, although it have better to correctly synchronize it.

There could have also been some improvements made, to create more of a 3D logo, and better transitions instead of a choppy spinning png image.

Main episode review

It was fun to see David and Catherine back in Doctor Who; bringing the same energy, chemistry and comedy into their new scenes together. As well as other new and returning characters such as Shirley, Rose, Shaun and Sylvia.

The pacing of this first episode did seem all over the place, and the plot was rather light although still being fun to watch, with some short bursts of action sequences.

Dialogue and line delivery was also rough to watch at times during this 57-minute special and some of things that happened was very convenient in being fixed; especially, with the damages to London!

Doctor Who brings classic 70’s comic book characters into live-action with wacky aliens; The Wrarth Warriors and Beep the Meep.

The costume for Beep the Meep looks fantastic combined with pupeteering and CG overlays. Miriam Margolyes did really well at voice the character, and the voice acting reminded me a lot of Toby Jones’ Dobby from Harry Potter.

When seeing how excellent the Meep looked on-screen, it was jarring to have more of a static foam looking Wrarth Warrior alien costumes alongside this. I was also hoping that the Wrarth Warriors weren’t so rushed in.

In this special, Davies also brings in overt awareness/representation to the transgender community, with Donna’s daughter Rose Noble (Yasmin Finney); who has a rather crucial part to the plot and this character involvement ties up fairly well to the ending of this episode.

Visuals

It’s surprising to see the new things they’ve done with some of the sci-fi tech that’s been shown; the Sonic Screwdriver has some impressive upgrades, which made multiple scenes so cool and different to watch.

For the interior of the new TARDIS, it’s just got a whole lot bigger on the inside! With the classic light up roundels, quite a few railings and slopes all over, and very clean plain white and grey surfaces. I’m in awe at the practical set design work, that has gone into this.

Also, there’s beautiful cinematic colour grading, with a palette of warm orange and blue tones, and I love how characters are lit in scenes, especially in the streets at night, and when David Tennant is walking upstairs in a factory.

Music

As mentioned near to the beginning of the review about the music; Murray Gold has been a brilliant artist for creating really nice soundtracks for Doctor Who. Bad Wolf and Russell T. Davies made a great decision to bring Gold back!

Final thoughts

The budget for this franchise has been stepped up considerably, and it’s certainly noticeable that they are flexing a huge influx of cash from Disney, who are now co-producing the series.

Looking forward to seeing where the TARDIS has gone to, in the next special title Wild Blue Yonder. I currently have a theory about this second special which could be involving The Land of Fiction.

Click here to see all of the episode titles, posters, release dates and times, for the rest of the 60th anniversary specials.

Update: Read the review for Wild Blue Yonder here.