We begin with Rylan Clark and his glistening teeth emerging from cryosleep to announce the "803rd Interstellar Song Contest" is in full swing and I was ready to embrace myself for a bit of a rubbish, if not fun, foray into the camp ridiculousness of Eurovision which solely exists to tie into the real life contest airing on the exact same night. This quite quickly took a turn though and saved itself purely based on the intriguing things it sets up for the two part finale starting next week.
The actual plot itself is on the nose and not particularly interesting. It involves what is essentially a terrorist plot mirroring the destruction of the Doctor's own home planet Gallifrey involving a villain I really couldn't have cared less about. However the way this plot actually did tie into the Doctor's tragic past was what kept the entire thing afloat. Some of my favourite Doctor moments, for example David Tennant's Tenth Doctor declaring he is "Time Lord Victorious", are when that bottled up rage really get to come out and Ncuti Gatwa gets to play it up to 11 here, even becoming outright scary at points, giving one of his best performances as the character so far.
I do think a lot of people will find themselves jumping onto BBC iplayer to do some homework before next week given some of the reveals that will go over newer fans heads, so it's a good thing that here in the UK at least there's an extenstive library of classic Doctor Who to sift through. It does make me wonder though how well these reveals will translate over seas. The very final scene I can also see dividing fans because an already polarising lore update Russel T. Davies introduced previously in "The Giggle" is firmly doubled down upon.
So whilst the Eurovision aspect itself isn't something that I can say I enjoyed all that much, it almost doesn't really seem to matter in the grand scheme of things because sure there are a few (not very good) songs scattered throughout, but it's mostly just a setting for the true plot to take place in which is mostly an intriguing build up to a finale that I'm now quite excited about. There's a lot of pieces laid out on the board, so now we sit back and watch the game play out.
As a great man once said: Allons-y!
0 Comments