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BBC Space Babies |
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| Story No. | 336 | 
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| Production Code | Series 14 Episode 1 | |
| Dates | May 11, 2024 |
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With Ncuti Gatwa, Millie Gibson
Written by Russell T Davies Directed by Julie Anne Robinson Executive Producers: Russell T Davies, Julie Garner, Jane Tranter, Joel Collins, Phil Collinson, Julie Anne Robinson |
| Synopsis: Babies --- space babies! --- are running a space station. But they're afraid of the boogeyman. |
"Baby's first Doctor Who!" by Stacey Smith? 1/10/25
Well, that's the under-two's viewing demographic sewn up.
If you're 8 years old, this is the best Doctor Who story imaginable. Bogey monsters! Almost swearing! Let it rip! And if you're a parent, this is probably pretty cute, because who doesn't love babies? Everyone else, that's who.
The first quarter of the story is great stuff... as well as being very packed with Doctor Who tropes. Ruby treading on the butterfly and changing history. A seemingly deserted space station. A terrifying monster. Unlikely inhabitants. It's all good stuff, but it's all very familiar.
Or is it?
Everything about Space Babies is designed to be an introduction to Doctor Who, but it all sits at a slight angle to what came before. We hit the ground running without a teaser (and, to be fair, where would you even put one?) but with a massive infodump for the new Disney audience. That probably can't be helped, although previous eras turned these moments into emotionally packed revelations, rather than a whistlestop tour of the iconography of Doctor Who. Gallifrey gone. Last of the Time Lords. TARDIS translation explained. Rejigged phone across the universe. TARDIS key. The terrifying monster becoming sympathetic once we understand it.
And yet... there are layers here. When any other Doctor mentions the destruction of Gallifrey, it's an actor conveying lines for a role. When Ncuti Gatwa talks about a genocide, that word is packed with meaning: this is the only actor to have suffered through a genocide personally, which is something you can really hear in his voice when he says that line. This isn't just escapist TV any more, this is connected to a real genocide, with real murders and real terror that this man lived through. The episode is worth it for that line alone.
Back in the 1980s, the first academic book written about Doctor Who, The Unfolding Text, devoted a lot of jargon to discussing the idea of "Similar, yet different" especially in the context of Doctor Who's origins. That's very much what we get here, in a brand-new origin (sort of). Everything is similar to what came before, only not quite.
There's a theory that says that the second story of every new Doctor could be a Hartnell story. It's pretty much true: The Ark in Space, Four to Doomsday, The End of the World. Better special effects, yes, but the Hartnellian tropes are all there. Space Babies is no different. Everything takes place on a few sets, which are deserted for the first quarter. There's a barely-seen creature chasing the regulars. The story is fundamentally about the morality of killing a monster and the debate that ensues. And there's a whackadoodle idea of an entire set of individuals that no sane television show should attempt to portray on screen. Yep, that all checks out.
However, there's also stuff here that's really clever. The changing memories are interesting, as is the snow on the ship, which is clearly setting up an ongoing arc for Ruby. She's the new impossible girl, a clone of Rose... and yet not really like either of those two at all. The Doctor noticing the butterfly shift and taking steps to correct it is very interesting, especially in the light of what happened with mavity. Similar, but different.
Speaking of which, after The Church on Ruby Road had a "mavity" line, here the word appears on the screen listing properties of Pacifico del Rio. Eagle-eyed viewers will no doubt know by now that Susan Twist appeared as the woman who talks to Isaac Newton in the opening of Wild Blue Yonder, as a concert-goer in The Church on Ruby Road and now on a recording as one of the staff who abandoned the station to the babies. This easter eggs are quite cleverly done and feel fresh and exciting, even as they're not all that dissimilar to Bad Wolf, Torchwood or Vote Saxon motifs from the past. Similar, but different again.
There are some real firsts here: this is the first time two episodes have premiered at once. The TARDIS translation is explained as a perception filter, which is such a stunningly obvious idea that you wonder why it's never been done before. There are also some things that look ahead. In episodes to come, there are multiple "Don't step on that!" plots, which also happens here with the butterfly, suggesting a fascinating pattern. It's been pointed out that the plot of The Devil's Chord is basically that of the Beatles movie Yellow Submarine, complete with musical number at the end. That movie featured the butterfly stompers, minor antagonists who stepped on anything they could. Space Babies echoes this with both its butterfly-stepping scene and the reappearance of the TARDIS jukebox (previously seen in The Giggle), which is clearly set up as significant in the opening scene, only for its payoff to occur an episode later... but on the same night for BBC viewers, thanks to the back-to-back screening. Likewise, the Doctor being scared of the bogeyman is due to infrasound (sound below the limits of human hearing, which can cause disorientation, vertigo et cetera) --- and it's very likely that the woman in 73 Yards is standing that far away from Ruby because that's the distance she needs to keep the infrasound from affecting herself. Oh, and the Doctor says "Baby boom" which is a triple-layered pun when you know what else is coming.
The real-world references range from the clunky to the sublime. The refugee metaphor is too heavy-handed, in part because the actress playing Nan-E isn't strong enough. The abortion metaphor is better, although that's always a tough one. The last time we had an abortion metaphor in Doctor Who, the moon turned out to be an egg. This time around, it works a bit better, partly because it's underplayed and partly because the focus is on the lack of attention to the kids. The strange planet refuses to stop babies being born but then refuses to look after them once they are. What's very well done is Ruby's line about the planet not being that strange after all. However, the Doctor's suggestion of a world going mad and banning kissing is excellent. It's a clear shot at the religious right and their attempts to ban things humans just do, and it works because it's not thrust down our throats.
Sadly, however, the Doctor Who story that this most resembles is Sleep No More. Space station running unethical experiments? Check. Found footage keeping the monster ambiguous? Check. The monster turns out to be made of a gross body by-product? Check. I think I could have handled something a bit more different and a bit less similar, thanks all the same.
As for the babies themselves... I'm not that bothered. This could never have been attempted before CGI got to a decent place; even so, it's not that effective. However, it's definitely creepy (even when it isn't meant to be), and if nothing else, the idea of a space station run by babies is so incredibly out there that only Doctor Who would even attempt such a bizarre thing. It probably shouldn't have, but that's by the by. That said, I'm not a parent or 8 years old, so this wasn't targeted at me. (However, I would have been all over the idea if it were Space Puppies!) I for one am ecstatically happy that Doctor Who has a range of appeal, especially to the next generation, so I really don't have any complaints. And fart jokes are by this point a classic New Series trope. We still love you, Doctor Who.
As fans, we love the familiar, and that's what this story delivers. A Doctor and companion adventure, with 40% new material, because that's what the fans demand. We want to be transported back to our youth and relive the glory days when the show was exciting and original, but we don't want any too much of that originality any more. Our growth is stunted. The meta Doctor Who tropes here are so strong and so familiar that they read like a story told to children. We are the babies.