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Warning - the following article features spoilers for The Star Beast.
The Star Beast, the first of Doctor Who's three 60th anniversary special episodes, blazed onto TV screens tonight, bringing back both David Tennant's Time Lord and Catherine Tate's Donna Noble. The episode also marks the return of showrunner Russell T Davies, who has penned all three of these new instalments.
As you might expect given the anniversary nature of these episodes, The Star Beast has more than a few Easter eggs and references to both Davies' first era, and Doctor Who as a whole. Indeed, with the episode being based on a comic - 1980's Doctor Who and the Star Beast - there are also a few cute nods to the show's extended universe. So, join us now as we catch up with the Tenth - sorry, the Fourteenth - Doctor and Donna once more. Allons-y!
“What? What?! WHAT?!”
We probably don't have to explain this one, but the Tenth Doctor's catchphrase gets several run outs in the episode. What with getting his old face back and then running straight into Donna, it’s been a pretty surprising day for the Doctor.
Nerys
Among Donna's friend group there is no one more infamous than Nerys. First appearing in Donna's debut, The Runaway Bride, played by Krystal Archer, she is seemingly both one of Donna's closest friends - and her worst enemy. She gets another furious shout out from Donna here. Basically, if anything weird or bad happens then it's safe to assume that it's Nerys's fault.
The psychic paper
The Doctor's psychic paper hasn't quite caught up with the Doctor's new body, yet - after all, it's only been an hour or so since he was Jodie Whitaker. It refers to him, rather unhelpfully, as "Grandmistress".
"Allons-y!"
The Tenth Doctor’s other catchphrase, "Allons-y!", also makes a comeback. It's French for "let's go," dontchaknow.
Donna Noble is not an old ruin
Donna is still going by her birth name in the new episodes, having refused to either take Shaun's surname or hyphenate to Temple-Noble as "it sounds like an old ruin". This is a nod back to The End of Time, Part One, where the Doctor, on hearing that Donna is getting married, asks Wilf: "Hold on, she's not going to be called Noble-Temple? That sounds like a tourist spot."
Susie Mair
Susie is another of Donna's friends, first referenced in season four's Journey's End with Donna, who has just had her memories of the Doctor erased, chatting to another friend on the phone. "I tell you what though, you're wasting your time with that one, because Susie Mair, she went on that dating site, and she saw him. No, no, no, no. Listen, listen, this is important. Susie Mair wouldn't lie. Not unless it was about calories!"
Mills & Wagner Steelworks
In the original Star Beast comic, the story takes place around Blackcastle Steelworks. In the TV adaptation the location has been sweetly-renamed in honor of Pat Mills and John Wagner, the writers of the original comic. Mills is the founder of the long-running British anthology comic 2000 AD, and John Wagner is the co-creator (with artist Carlos Ezquerra) of its most enduring character, Judge Dredd.
Meet UNIT's latest scientific advisor
Enter Shirley Anne Bingham, as played by Ruth Madeley. She's UNIT's 56th scientific advisor. As the Doctor notes, he was the original, which is a reference to the position that the Third Doctor, as played by Jon Pertwee, held when he was exiled to Earth by the Time Lords in the '70s.
We've seen a couple of the Doctor's successors in the job in the years since. Malcolm Taylor (played by Lee Evans) appeared in 2009's Planet of the Dead. He was replaced by Osgood (Ingrid Oliver) in the 50th anniversary episode, The Day of the Doctor. And if you want to delve into the expanded universe material then other scientific advisors have also included River Song and the Time Lord Iris Wildthyme. Still, 57 is a lot. What happened to the rest of them? And did any of them survive?
Resonating concrete
The Doctor notes that the sonic screwdriver is good at resonating concrete. This is a direct call back to the 2005 Christopher Eccleston episode The Doctor Dances (penned by Steven Moffat, rather than Russell T Davies), in which the Doctor uses his sonic screwdriver to resonate concrete and escape the gas mask zombies.
The Shadow Proclamation
The Shadow Proclamation was created by Russell T Davies and referenced in his first Doctor Who episode, Rose, back in 2005. Effectively a form of space police, the Doctor occasionally invokes their authority when dealing with tricky foes. In Rose he confronted the Nestene Consciousness under "convention 15 of the Shadow Proclamation," which seems to be about temporarily halting conflict in order to hold a discussion. He takes a similar tack in the The Star Beast while talking to the Wrarth Warriors and referring to “Protocols 15P and 6".
Sergeant Zogroth and Constable Zreeg
The two leading Wrarth Warriors are both named characters from the original Star Beast comic, faithfully realised here.
The Doctor's wig
The Doctor quickly susses out that the Meep isn't telling him the whole story and, having drawn in Zogroth and Zreeg, pops on a barrister's wig before questioning them.
This isn't the first time the Doctor has worn one of these - Tom Baker's version of the Time Lord popped one on in part four of the 1978 serial, The Stones of Blood.
Beep the Meep
For most of the episode the titular Star Beast is simply referred to as "the Meep". Older fans may know the alien by a slightly different name, however: Beep the Meep! This is briefly referred to in the episode, with Beep seeming to be a rank, rather than their actual name.
Deadlocked seal
If there’s one thing that the Sonic Screwdriver can do, it’s resonate concrete. And if there’s one thing it can't do, it's get through a deadlock seal. This foolproof method of keeping something locked up was first referenced in the Christopher Eccleston episode Bad Wolf and has been a mainstay of Doctor Who ever since, providing a handy way of escalating the tension.
The sealed room
The climax of The Star Beast features the Doctor and Donna on two sides of a sealed room, trying desperately to save London from the Meep’s Dagger Drive. It is, visually, almost a re-staging of the heartbreaking scene in The End of Time, Part 2, where the Doctor and Wilf are on two sides of a room that is about to be flooded with radiation. That scene ends with the Doctor fatally poisoned, eventually leading to his regeneration. This time, however, it is Donna who dies - if thankfully only briefly.
Rose's toys
As we learn at the end of the episode, the metacrisis has passed from Donna into her daughter. This has manifested in the imaginative toys that she has made: plushy versions of creatures encountered during Donna's original time in the TARDIS. There's a Judoon, an Adipose, a Dalek, a Cyberman, and an Ood. Now who's gonna make them for real?
You can watch The Star Beast now on BBC iPlayer in the UK and on Disney Plus in other territories. The second Doctor Who special, Wild Blue Yonder, debuts next Saturday.
For more, check out our Doctor Who release schedule so you don't miss an episode and then dive into some of the best sci-fi movies ever made.
