(758) The Beast Below

The Beast Below follows the traditional pattern of how a series begins. This is Amy’s first trip into space. The most memorable thing about this episode were the smiling faces in the booths. There are several faces but its one very angry face that is quite chilling. It quite good that the show can make these sort of things seem scary. What I didn’t expect when I watched in 2010 that they actually get out of the booth and start walking around.

One of the aspects of the story that does work is the idea that every five years people watch a video. You can choose to Protest or Forget. It all hinges of what has been done for Starship UK and Amy is put in that position this is her first test as a companion and she tries to interfere in the process and tries to take the decision out of the Doctor’s hand which creates a nice bit of conflict between the two.

Sophie Okonedo is one of the big names and plays Liz 10 who is the Queen and has been part of the five year forget plan. Okonedo is a big name actress and yet the role she plays isn’t the greatest. At first the character seemed mysterious and then when Liz started speaking it lost all of that mystery. Terrence Hardiman is the demon headmaster Hawthorne and he is the one that has been keep things ticking over while Liz 10 has been forgetting things. Due to the fact that I cant get past his Demon Headmaster I don’t quite believe the character and that’s a shame really.

They have been torturing the beast to move it under the assumption that they had to torture it to keep them alive but the space whale wanted to help them cause it couldn’t let the children cry. This worked quite well in the context of the story but I just think that it took too long for us to get to this moment.

There is a nice link into the next episode where Winston Churchill is calling the Doctor. What makes the end to this episode work is that there is a shadow of a Dalek. There is also another part of the crack story arc when we see the crack in the shell. It seemed at first that it’s a subtle thing but then the camera zooms in on it to make it quite obvious. I was never a fan of this episode before today and nothing has changed because its an ok episode but nothing special. I think the novelty of a new Doctor means that I can sort of forgive Moffat for writing a story that doesn’t quite hit the mark.