The Beast Below

"We should never have come here."

Writer: Steven Moffat

Format: TV

Broadcast: 10 April 2010

Series: 5.02

Featuring: Eleventh Doctor, Amy

Synopsis

The Doctor takes Amy to the distant future, where she finds the mysterious Liz Ten, a Star Whale, and all of Britain inside a spaceship.

Verdict

The Beast Below is a decent episode to continue my rewatching of the modern era! Matt Smith’s tenure as the Eleventh Doctor is off to a strong start now and whilst I must say this probably does go down as one of my least favourite stories in his era, it’s still far from bad which says a lot about his time at the helm! It’s quite fun to have Amy’s first adventure in the TARDIS with her in her nightie, and that’s a fact that doesn’t come to her attention far too late into proceedings. She’s so swept up with everything that’s happened in her life and being taken away on the eve of her wedding day that she didn’t even realise what she was wearing in the presence of humans far into her own future. I think the concept and setting of Starship UK is decent but I’m not quite sure the scale is believable. Certainly not from the imagery that was presented on screen. The moment at the end with the crack from Amy’s bedroom wall being seen is great continuity for the series arc and I really enjoyed how her first reaction to being in the future was realising that she was long dead. That’s quite daunting! This episode was a lot darker than I remembered and at first I commented to Gemma’s statement that this was terrifying with some blunt humour. But it actually was! It is a scary episode. The opening scene with the little boy going below as the elevator opens up as he scored a zero was quite something and really set the tone for the episode ahead. The Smilers are a brilliant design when it comes to the fright element but they don’t really do much in the episode. I was even more baffled by just how little Hawthorne and Pete the Winder offer so it’s confusing to me why I have a figure of each sitting on my shelves upstairs! Of all the characters from the first half of the series to make figures of! I think Amy hanging out of the TARDIS and the journey she goes on just in this episode is great. She’s full of awe and wonder but then she sets her mind to helping the children crying. The Doctor will also interfere when children are crying because why wouldn’t he? Amy taking initiative and not being scared by keep out signs or padlock gives her instant strong companion qualities, but the Doctor thinks she gets a little ahead of herself at the story’s conclusion. The revelation of the star whale is pretty good and the decision faced by the Doctor initially seems horrifying. He must choose the whale or the human race. So for him to be planning on giving the whale a massive electrical impulse to essentially turn into a floating vegetable of a pilot is just awful. But Amy knows the truth of what’s being forgotten. Liz 10 is a fun character and the way she found the Doctor was good with him testing the movement of the starship with the glass of water. The truth about her and the Winders acting under her orders as she constantly chose to forget over the course of two centuries was quite shocking, but Amy made her abdicate and that saved the whale. It was a volunteer and it was playing with the children which was lovely. The Doctor aggressively saying she would be going home and talked almost in a derisory way to her about being human was unexpected, but it showed that this version of the Doctor was different. Things worked out and the ending with Churchill being on the phone and a Dalek shadow seen is fantastic. Overall, a decent episode. 

Rating: 7/10