After passing the test last week with an enjoyable introduction of the new doctor and his companion, it was interesting to see where Steven Moffat would take the series next, as having gotten the traditional big opening episode out of the way, the second episode provides a bit more room for experimentation. And, it seems that Moffat has followed the lead of Russell T. Davis’ first two series by following the first episode of the series where Doctor is introduced to his new companion (or where the companion is introduced to a new version of the Doctor), with a second that involves the two taking a trip to a human settlement in the far future – The Beast Below has a lot of similarities with Series One’s The End of the World and Series Two’s New Earth. Presumably this is because it’s an effective method of introducing the human characters to time travel, and its downsides – in this case the fact that it makes the characters realise that not only is their existence transitory, but things they have come to regard as constant are as well, particularly the planet Earth.

With humanity forced to leave Earth as a result of destructive solar flares, the people of Britain (with the exception of Scotland, who even in the far future pushed for devolution), have ended up on a vast spaceship named Starship UK, in which the various counties of Britain have lent their names to tower-blocks. As per usual all is not what it seems – Britain has become a sinister police state (of course there are plenty of people who would argue that that’s already the case, but thankfully not to this extent), the ship doesn’t seem to be running but still manages to travel through space, and, in a surprisingly harsh moment for Doctor Who, school kids who fail their exams are banished to the depths below to be fed to ‘the beast’.

Of course, it wasn’t that surprising to find out that the beast is the ship, hence why the engines are fake, constructed so that the people of Britain were shielded from the truth. Although even this wasn’t as straightforward as it seemed, it turns out that the concept of elections in this new Britain is fairly different in that instead of voting for a political party to take power, the adult citizens are given the facts every five years, and they either choose to protest (with potentially dire consequences), or forget everything they’ve learnt, which in the current run-up to the general election seemed like a nice bit of satire – despite everyone having an opinion about political issues, not many people bother to take action. To be honest, I did have a slight problem with this as seeing the shocked reaction Amy had to the information, and her instantly choosing to forget, I assume there were more distressing secrets than the ones we were shown, as I doubt she would have been quite so concerned about the ship being an empty shell constructed on the back of a giant space creature. Which is not to say that the story behind Starship UK was not upsetting – it turns out the beast was in fact a an old, lonely ‘star whale’ who, hearing the cries of Earth’s children as the planet became more and more hostile, volunteered to help before its kindness was taken advantage of by the UK’s government – it just seemed a little odd to me that Amy would be so shocked by something that she had no stake in really, as were the dire warnings of her other self that appeared on the voting booth’s TV screen, and the Doctor’s incredibly quick turn to hostility towards Amy when he found out the truth, although this has been covered in past episodes (such as when Christopher Eccleston referred to Rose, and the human race in general as ‘stupid apes’) it never seemed this sudden, it might be that Matt Smith’s incarnation of the Doctor turns out to be a more volatile character than his predecessors as the series develops. Luckily, while the Doctor wrestled with a dilemma of whether to let the star whale go free, thus dooming the inhabitants of the UK, leave the beast to carry on its painful duty (the government were keeping the creature in line by zapping its brain with a laser based in a recreation of the Tower of London, complete with dungeon and torture chamber) or render it a vegetable so it wouldn’t suffer any more, Amy recalled something that she had learnt from the voting booth, and noticing that the beast hadn’t harmed any of the children (so the child we saw at the start of the episode didn’t meet a sticky end after all), realised that it was actually willing to help and so shut off the laser – potentially gambling with the lives of everyone on board. The denouement, in which she and the Doctor patched things up was also quite touching with her comparing the Doctor to the whale as both were old, lonely and couldn’t bear to see children suffer, hopefully this means she sees the Doctor as more of a father figure than a romantic interest, as the whole sexual tension between the Doctor, Rose and (to a lesser extent) Martha got rather tired. It does seem that a romantic subplot will occur throughout this series as, with Amy disappearing with the Doctor before her wedding last week, and her checking her marital status in Starship UK’s voting booth, with an unsuccessful result, there’s going to be a bit of tension going on throughout the series as to whether she does make it back in time for her wedding or not.

Although there were some minor problems with the episode – in addition to the things I’ve mentioned above, certain ideas were disappointingly left unexplored, such as the government being ‘half human-half Smiler’, whatever that is (I suppose they were some sort of cyborg, with the robotic Smiler parts grafted onto the back of their heads, but it would have been nice to find out a bit more about them) – I would say that it was in many ways better than last week’s as with it not being based around a race against time there was enough of a break in the action to settle in and just enjoy the characters’ banter. The bizarre updates of British institutions were all rather imaginative too, from red and white construction workers’ tents being used to cover up places where the beast was breaking through the surface of the ship, to the Smilers which, even if it wasn’t entirely clear what they were, had a look of something taken from a particularly evil fun fair, the fondly-remembered Test Card girl now being a sinister computer generated poppet who spoke only in rhyme, and last but not least the latest occupier of the British throne, action-heroine Queen Liz the 10th, played by the ever reliable Sophie Okonedo. Rather unusually, the action also finished with a cliff-hanger link to the next adventure, where the Doctor received a call from another British institution, Winston Churchill, who seemed to be having some problems with a rather familiar looking foe.

So, once again what did you all think of it? It was good to see a lot of positive comments about the last episode and I would be interested to hear if you thought this episode lived up to the high standards set by that one.