From Newsgroup: rec.arts.drwho.moderated
From Address: jphalt{at}aol.com
Subject: The Beast Below: my review

THE BEAST BELOW

1 episode. Approx. 42 minutes. Written by: Steven Moffat. Directed by:
Andrew Gunn. Produced by: Peter Bennett.


THE PLOT

It is the distant future, a time in which Earth has been devastated by
solar flares and humanity has fled in generation ships in order to
survive. The Doctor and Amy encounter one such ship, the United
Kingdom... well, except for Scotland, which wanted its own ship.

But all is not as it should be. The culture of the ship is that of a
police state, with the people living in fear of mechanical figures in
booths. The ship's motion is impossibly smooth, with no engine
vibration. What's the secret? Amy knows. She's a British subject,
after all, so she viewed the video. But she chose to forget. Because
everyone chooses to forget the horrible secret that keeps the ship
alive...


CHARACTERS

The Doctor: His second episode gives Matt Smith one emotion to play
that was absent from his first: anger. When the Doctor discovers the
secret of Starship UK, he gets extremely angry. If this is a preview
of the Eleventh Doctor's anger, it's interestingly different from
earlier Doctors' angry scenes. What we see here is a cold, quiet
anger, in which the Doctor shuts everything else out and stops even
listening, intent only on what he has decided to do. If this is going
to be typical of him in a rage, it's a dangerous attribute. And that's
interesting.

Amy: She's very observant, able to quickly put together the pieces of
seemingly disconnected things she has seen, and willing to act quickly
on the conclusions she draws. She went with the Doctor for several
reasons. One is, of course, that his appearance during her childhood
had such a profound effect on her. But she is also running away from
her upcoming wedding (presumably to Rory, though that's still
unconfirmed), feeling like she's not ready for that commitment.
Because she hasn't made the choice yet, the voting booth on the ship
lists her marital status as unconfirmed. Until she decides whether to
go through with the wedding or not, she could be single or could be
married. A cat, either alive or dead, inside a box.


THOUGHTS

In my last review, I said that there's a big difference between
writing one episode per year of someone else's show, and being the
head writer on your own show. Steven Moffat wrote four very good to
excellent stories in four successive seasons of Russell T. Davies'
Doctor Who. In all four cases, there was something "special" about the
story, something unusual. This continued with The Eleventh Hour, a
story which was effectively tasked with relaunching the series. For
five straight stories, a Steven Moffat story was never "just another
episode."

The Beast Below is definitely "just another episode." One with a lot
of plotholes, too. The solar flares were devastating Earth, and only
the UK has been unable to leave. Even Scotland managed it, apparently.
I'm guessing they didn't thumb their noses at the Starship UK while
they were in the process of dying. Then the Great and Terrible Secret
that enabled the ship to work happened. And that, we are told, is when
they built the ship around this secret.

Hang on a minute. The immense ship that would, in ideal circumstances,
have taken a fair number of years and a large number of billions to
build was somehow erected, at the last minute, while the UK was in the
process of dying. That... doesn't really make sense. And yet that is
the timeline that we are given, when the explanation comes at the end.

That's not mentioning the "Smilers," whom I guess exist to enforce the
secret, but whose function never really seems to make much internally
logical sense. They're creepy as a presence, with their faces that
swivel from a smile to an angry frown to something truly nasty. But
outside of existing for effect, they don't... really make sense. The
half-human, half-smiler things make even less sense.

Oh, and while the ending is all very happy and heartwarming, are they
going to continue feeding the "useless" members of society to their
pet monster every so often? If not, won't the monster starve? If so,
shouldn't the Doctor really have some kind of a problem with that?

I don't want to be too hard on the episode. It is entertaining. It
does move along at a fast pace, and the leads remain effortlessly
likable. As an hour of television, it works. It doesn't work
spectacularly, but it works adequately.

I just wish I didn't feel I was being asked to switch off my brain as
a prerequisite to enjoying the ride.


Rating: 5/10.

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