Space Babies – Spoiler-free review

This is a spoiler-free review of Space Babies. My spoiler-filled review will be coming out after the BBC One Broadcast of the episode this evening but here is an overview of my initial thoughts.

Space Babies has a lot to do in a forty-five minute episode, and perhaps it is no surprise to see that it calls back quite a lot to Series One in doing so. The story has to set up who the Doctor is, what the TARDIS is and essentially 60 years of history to clue in a new audience brought in by the Disney + partnership and increased publicity that the show has been getting overseas. It is to Russell T Davies’ credit that this is handled well and, speaking as someone who has watched a lot of Doctor Who, didn’t feel like we’d heard this all done before. I think that it helps that the budget increase allows the Doctor and Ruby to have these discussions in a pretty dynamic, fun and visually dynamic way.

I will go into it in more detail when I write my full review later, but the story has a pretty weird story behind it, which mostly works, and is certainly a good way of introducing a new audience to just how weird Doctor Who can be. There are elements of the traditional in here too, which I’m sure will appeal to the more established members of the fanbase. There is also a message in this story here too, but it is perhaps dealt with more subtly than say The Giggle.

I’m not entirely sold on the titular Space Babies. Whilst it is an idea that Doctor Who has not done before, there’s part of me that feels like there’s a good reason for that. Whilst the budget increase does demonstrate itself on screen, there is the practical difficulty of making it looking like babies are actually talking, and I’m not sure there’s any amount of money that can make that look organic and realistic. The story also takes opportunities to delve into toilet humour, which also feels like it harks back to Series One. I wasn’t a fan of it then and I’m not really a fan of it now, but all I can say is that I hope it is limited to this episode. I think mileage will vary between people as to how much they like this one. Having a story with the Boogeyman as the villain is a good idea, and the effects work on this creature are particularly strong, but I was a little big frustrated with some of the choices of how the creature was shown and I think I struggled to quantify the scale of the creature before the final moments because of this.

I said in my review of The Church on Ruby Road that Ncuti Gatwa has a dynamic screen personality and that remains the case here. My eye was constantly drawn to him when he was on screen, and he does give an indication of multiple facets of his Doctor, which bodes well for the future. Millie Gibson is also great here and I particularly like the chemistry between her and the Doctor. It is still early days, but there are very promising signs for this Doctor and Companion partnership.

For my review of The Church on Ruby Road, please click here.

Join me back here later for my full, spoiler-filled review of Space Babies!