Doctor Who: ‘The Interstellar Song Contest' review: Camp!

Engadget

17-05-2025

Spoilers for 'The Interstellar Song Contest.'
No, really, spoilers from here on out.
Much like Eurovision itself, that was a lot , wasn't it?
And much like every other episode this season, 'The Interstellar Song Contest' was overstuffed, excessive and brutally short. It was also a lot of fun, even if the sheer volume of plot that I wish we'd had more time to explore remains frustrating. Unfortunately, it looks like the great qualities of this episode will be overshadowed by all of the dramatic lore reveals. As usual, head to Mrs. Flood Corner for the analysis, but let's talk about the rest first. James Pardon/BBC Studios/Bad Wolf
If you're in the US, you may not be familiar with the Eurovision Song Contest, even if Netflix did make a movie about it. It's an annual music competition that began in the post-war years that saw the major nations of Europe select an act and a song to compete. Judges from each nation would then rank each performance, with the winning act's nation going on to host the event the next year. Despite the name, participation isn't limited to Europe, with entries from Oceania, Africa and the Middle East. And the event, to use a technical term, is Extremely Gay , playing up its camp excesses and offering a space for queer performers. Lara Cornell/BBC Studios/Disney/Bad Wolf
The Doctor and Belinda arrive in a VIP box in the Harmony Arena, a large open-air (given it's in space, should that be an open-space?) venue. They're just in time to see the start of the 803rd Interstellar Song Contest, presented by (actual British TV presenter) Rylan Clark, who has just emerged from a cryogenic chamber. The Doctor takes the Vindicator reading, and has enough data to force the TARDIS back to Earth on May 24, 2025 — but the pair decide to stay and enjoy the show. Watching from afar, Mrs. Flood delights that the Vindicator is now primed and ready, but will stay around to watch the show as well.
It's a popular event, with three trillion viewers from around the universe watching the show, as it's broadcast much like a TV show. Unfortunately, the production gallery is stormed by Kid, a terrorist who has hijacked the arena's security drones with help from Wynn, someone from the production crew. Kid and Wynn are both Hellions, a race of beings with prominent devil horns that are reviled across the galaxy for how they look. People assume they are evil, engage in cannibalism and witchcraft, and it's hard for them to get jobs. The show's director even says that they were advised against hiring Wynn because she's a Hellion.
Kid switches the broadcast to the rehearsal feed, which didn't feature Rylan, which piques the Doctor's interest as there's a TV in their VIP box. He pulls out his sonic screwdriver and starts fiddling with the equipment, but as he's doing so, Kid opens the air bubble separating the arena from the void. And instantly, almost 100,000 people in the audience are blown into space, including the Doctor and the TARDIS, while Belinda is saved by the canopy's roof closing. Wynn closes the canopies to protect the life of Cora, the odds-on favorite to win and the show's star act. The director notices that the people may be frozen, but they're trapped within the station's mavity bubble and could therefore be rescued.
The Doctor, knocked out and frozen, floating in the void of space, is awoken with a vision of Susan (!) in the TARDIS telling him to 'find me.' He opens his eyes, spots a glitter cannon floating nearby, and propels himself toward the station's airlock, Wall-E style. It's there he meets Mike and Gary, the couple whose VIP box he inadvertently stole. They were thankfully safe in the corridor outside when the roof was opened. The Doctor, aided by his new friends, starts working out what the next part of Kid's plan is — to push a delta wave via the broadcast to all three trillion of its viewers. The wave was powerful enough to knock the Doctor to the floor and give them a nosebleed, and will likely kill every single viewer.
Kid and Wynn are doing this because their home planet, Hellia, was bought by the corporation that sponsors the song contest. It was the home of a poppy that could make honey flavoring, and when the corporation bought the planet, it took the poppy and burned the rest, including its people. The Hellions were scattered, victims of a genocide, looked down upon by the rest of so-called respectable society. Wiping out both the audience and the viewers at home at an event sponsored by the corporation will, Kid hopes, balance the books. James Pardon/BBC Studios/Bad Wolf
Belinda winds up with Cora, the show's star act (and her partner). The trio hack the system to work out what is going on. Belinda, believing the Doctor is dead, is full of remorse at having never told him how wonderful she thinks he is. Thankfully, they're able to access the station's video calling software to see the Doctor and Kid meet via an intra-station call, where the Doctor is giving Kid a glimpse of how furious the Time Lord can get, much to Belinda's surprise. Cora has skin in the game here, too, revealing after the call that she is also a Hellion, but cut her horns off in order to fit in with the rest of polite society, becoming a star in the process.
The Doctor is able to use the station's holographic technology to project himself into the production gallery. Kid shoots the hologram, giving the real Doctor enough time to walk in, casually destroying Kid's gun and the delta wave box. The Doctor then starts channeling the station's power through his hologram body to shock Kid. The Doctor said that Kid had put 'ice in his heart,' and now he would pay back the attempted murder of three trillion people by giving him three trillion shocks. Beinda walks in, to see the Doctor essentially torturing Kid, and even the Doctor himself is plagued by visions of Susan telling him to stop.
With Kid and Wynn locked away, the Doctor works out another way to use the holograms — as a tractor beam. We see a montage of people being pulled in from the void and reactivated, first using Rylan's cryogenic chamber, then on a larger scale in a VIP booth. It's not long before the whole crowd is returned, and with it, Cora takes to the stage. She tells them her story and sings a song from Hellia, and while the audience is initially hostile, she wins them over by the end. To the applause, the Doctor and Belinda head back to the TARDIS, but not before a holographic Graham Norton — talk show host and the BBC's face of Eurovision — tells them the Earth was destroyed in mysterious circumstances on May 24th, 2025.
The Doctor and Belinda sprint back, determined to push the TARDIS to that date and solve whatever issue is coming. But even with the Vindicator plugged in, the TARDIS refuses to co-operate, ringing the Cloister Bell and switching to the all red lighting scheme. There's a sinister noise from outside the doors that the Doctor identifies as the "sound of May 24th," before the TARDIS doors explode. And the credits roll...
... only to be interrupted after the first crew card to cut back to Mike and Gary on Harmony Arena as they revive the last person blown into space. It's Mrs Flood, who reveals her double brainstem froze while out in space, "lethal for a Time Lady, but I've got my own knack for survival." Breaking the fourth wall, she says "let battle begin," and then bi-generates, splitting herself into Mrs. Flood and The Rani (Archie Panjabi), with Mrs. Flood becoming the subordinate to her newer self. As the pair walk off, the Rani says she will bring "absolute terror" to the Doctor, telling Mrs. Flood to shut up when she points out she's already done that. James Pardon/BBC Studios/Bad Wolf
Honestly, Doctor Who can sometimes be a bit like a teddy bear with a razor blade hidden under its palm. Sure, it may look lightweight and cuddly, disarming you with its charm, but then it'll cut you so deep you won't even realize. 'The Interstellar Song Contest' is, without a doubt, one of the most affecting episodes in the run. This episode comes less than a decade after the Manchester Arena bombing that killed 22 people and injured more than a thousand. The visual of the 100,000 people being blown into space was staggering in its brutality. Juno Dawson's already written for Doctor Who's wider world, but her debut script for the TV series goes hard .
But even if it's a harrowing watch at times, it's also filled with enough moments of levity. The Doctor's flirting with married couple Mike and Gary at various points in the episode is delightful as they're both increasingly smitten with him. The music is delightful, and Cora's final song was designed to melt people's hearts, plus there's a few background gags for the more novelty act songs that appear every year.
Once again, I'm compelled to say the 45-minute format does nothing for Doctor Who when it's treading this high a wire. The themes of this episode include indifference to evil, pinkwashing, passing privilege, cultural identity, commodification, the inhumanity of replacing customer service with computers, the perpetuation of abuse and the value of revenge. Given Eurovision presents itself as an explicitly queer event, I'm sure better-qualified writers can speak more authoritatively on the episode's deeper subtext and political themes. And possibly explain in better detail where its sympathies lie.
Every episode this season feels like it had enough material to fill three half-hour episodes of late '80s Who. Much like last week reminded me of 1989's 'Ghost Light,' this episode put me in mind of 1988's 'The Happiness Patrol.' That episode is, on its surface, about a planet where you'll be killed on the spot if you show any signs of visible unhappiness. Of course, it's really about the UK under Margaret Thatcher, Operation Condor and the gay rights movement. If you're curious, read Elizabeth Sandifer's essay on the episode.
Hopefully, too, you'll notice the thematic parallels that are running through many of these episodes. Conrad in 'Lucky Day,' The Barber in 'The Story and the Engine' and Kid here are all presented as characters looking for revenge. But while the middle member of that trio has been ostensibly redeemed, the other two crossed the Doctor and made him angry. If his speech to Conrad was full of vitriol, then Kid is the first time we've seen Gatwa's Doctor in full vindictive mode. This has been a recurring theme for most of the post-2005 series, that the Doctor needs to hold themselves back from unleashing their full power and fury. Dan Fearon/BBC Studios/Disney/Bad Wolf
Doctor Who was born before the home media age, where episodes were broadcast on a more or less one-and-done basis. If you were a fan looking to revisit an old episode, you had to read the novelizations that started coming out when the show became a hit. But Doctor Who wasn't originally built to support a six decades-long global multimedia franchise, and that's an issue. When it started, the Doctor was joined on his adventures by his granddaughter, Susan (Carole Ann Ford), and two of her teachers who followed her home one night. Long before any talk of Time Lords or Gallifrey, Susan was just the kid who needed to be rescued every third or fourth week.
Carole Ann Ford wasn't happy with how poorly served her character was, and so opted to leave in 1964, a year after the show started. During 'The Dalek Invasion of Earth,' the Doctor exiles his own granddaughter to 22nd century Earth because she wants to kiss a boy. He doesn't even grant her a real goodbye, locking the doors of the TARDIS and giving a speech that only shorn of its context sounds noble. But Susan's mistreatment isn't just about the casual way she was dumped off the show, but how her existence does (or does not) fit with the show's lore. If she is a Time Lord, a quasi-immortal shape shifter, then dumping her in one time and place because she fancies a boy is quite the outrageous act. To view this content, you'll need to update your privacy settings. Please click here and view the "Content and social-media partners" setting to do so.
Susan's existence also raises questions about the Doctor's other familial relationships that have never been directly addressed on screen. The show's unspoken modus operandi was summed up by producer John Nathan-Turner as 'No hanky-panky in the TARDIS.' But if he has a granddaughter, does that mean the Doctor also has a partner/s or children waiting for them to return to Gallifrey for thousands of years? As much as the character, especially in recent years, has implied they're happy to screw around the cosmos, they're not looking to settle down. And aside from one small appearance in a 1983 anniversary special, and a picture in the Doctor's study in 'The Pilot,' Susan's existence has more or less been swept under the rug.
That was, until an actress called Susan Twist was cast in 'Wild Blue Yonder' and then again in 'The Church on Ruby Road.' Twist would go on to appear in every episode of Ncuti Gatwa's first season in a series of cameos that the characters became increasingly aware of. 'The Devil's Chord' even ends on a fourth-wall breaking musical number called "There's Always a Twist at the End.' The show was very loudly hinting Twist was playing a regenerated version of Susan, who was explicitly discussed at the start of that same episode. By last season's finale, however, Twist's inclusion was a double bluff — part of Sutekh's plan to trap the Doctor.
Now, it appears that showrunner Russell T. Davies has been playing the longest of long games with the fans. The season-long and highly-visible fakeout means I was actually surprised when Carole Ann Ford's face appeared on screen. She appears twice, the first time when the Doctor is at death's door, with her urging him to 'find me' (harkening back to what Reginald Pye's ghost wife told him before he blew up the film canisters in ' Lux .') The second time, she admonishes him for torturing Kid for his would-be genocide.
In many ways, Susan's appearance completely overshadows the reveal that Mrs. Flood is none other than the Rani. That's the (classic) series' far less well-known Time Lord foe, who appeared in only two official stories during its original run. But the Rani gained an outsize reputation among fans as she was played by Kate O'Mara (perhaps best known in the US for her role in Dynasty ) who imbued the character with high camp excess. Which maybe blunted the idea that she was a sort of Time Lord Mengele, carelessly using people as fodder for her grisly experiments. Unfortunately, the Rani was created so late in the original series run that she only returned once in an episode most people would prefer to forget.
It appears that Russell T. Davies' hidden mission for the streaming era was to rehabilitate some of the concepts that didn't work back in the '80s. After bringing Mel back as a UNIT employee last year, now he's doing the same for the Rani. Interestingly, both of those were created by Pip and Jane Baker — writers who are as emblematic of the series' wider decline before its dramatic revival under Andrew Cartmel. It's also notable, perhaps, that the name Rani is a Sanskrit word that broadly translates to 'Queen,' but Panjabi is the first actress of South Asian descent to play the character.
I'll be honest, if nothing else, I'm relieved that Mrs. Flood has turned out to be the Rani if only to stop people going on about that character. It's not that she's a bad character per-se, but when the series already has the Master, a renegade Time Lord who concocts elaborate traps for the Doctor, it's hard to see the Rani as anything other than a 'will this do?' alternative. Hopefully the finale can establish a real distinction between the Rani of the classic series and the new one beyond breaking the fourth wall.
Now, I have to apologize last week for not clocking the child Belinda saw in the alleyway was Poppy (Sienna-Robyn Mavanga-Phipps) from 'Space Babies.' Obviously, some fan theories have suggested it was a sign that the stories from 'The Story and the Engine' were leaking out of the pocket dimension. But at Comic Con Cardiff at the end of last year, Anita Dobson (Mrs. Flood) said that the second season would tie into ' Space Babies ,' which was another episode with a similarly fairytale premise.
If that is the case, and everything that has unfolded in the last two years is all part of some grand plan then it must have started at 'Wild Blue Yonder.' It's the second of the three 60th anniversary specials, and the episode that saw David Tennant's Doctor disrupt Isaac Newton's discovery of gravity. It's been a running joke ever since that the force is known as 'Mavity,' and that episode is also the one that allowed the pantheon of gods to enter this universe. Given Susan Twist was playing Isaac Newton's maid, perhaps the series shifted into the Twistverse at that point. Or, you know, the prevailing fan theory that this era takes place in the Land of Fiction, a pocket fantasy universe depicted in 1968's ' The Mind Robber .'
One subtle running thread this season has been the Doctor's almost insistent urging that Belinda enjoys their travels. He's made more than a few references to Belinda getting the hang of traveling with him in the TARDIS and starting to loosen up and enjoy things. If the only reason he met her in the first place was because of Conrad , then perhaps he's unwittingly building his own bootstrap paradox. Which would be, you know, a bad thing .
Finally, it does appear that every episode of this season is going to share thematic parallels with its equivalent from last year. 'Dot and Bubble' and 'The Story and the Engine' both explicitly engage with ideas around how the Doctor's changed racial identity affects his life. 'Rogue' and 'The Interstellar Song Contest' both deal with queer themes through the lens of a pop culture phenomenon. If true, then 'Wish World' will likely be an episode where the story gets picked apart and the tension rises to another grand cliffhanger, followed by 'The Reality War,' which can't possibly hope to live up to the promise of its first half. You know, just like last year.