If the first episode of Doctor Who‘s new double-bill, the relatively fluffy “Space Babies”, set the stage for a new era, the second instalment “The Devil’s Chord” is a more hopeful indication of what Gatwa’s era will be like. This is the most fun, the most alive the series has felt in years.
The premise – which sees the Doctor and Ruby (Millie Gibson) travel back to Sixties London to meet the Beatles – is a classic example of necessity breeding invention. Showrunner Russell T Davies, you see, could never write a conventional story about The Beatles.
The Fab Four may have once made a cameo appearance in the 1965 William Hartnell series, but the current price to license their songs is so prohibitively high that the modern Doctor Who – even after its lucrative partnership with Disney – could never afford it.
The solution? No music, of course. When the Doctor and Ruby arrive at Abbey Road Studios, they find that humanity is no longer capable of making music. That includes The Beatles.
The culprit is Maestro, a devilishly camp new villain played by American drag queen Jinkx Monsoon (real name Hera Hoffer). In last year’s 60th anniversary special “The Giggle”, it was explained that Neil Patrick Harris’ Toymaker was an “elemental force” beyond the science of the universe – the physical embodiment of “play”. As the Toymaker’s offspring Maestro follows the same logic, personifying the very idea of “music”, with the aim of theatrically devouring as much musical talent as they could.
Monsoon is an inspired choice for a scenery-chewing god. Maestro, after all, is too strange and otherworldly to be real. What better way to portray that than with drag, an art form known for heightening reality by playing with artifice and performance. Over the top? Yes – that’s precisely the point.
Sure, there are similarities to 2019 film Yesterday (set in an alternate universe in which The Beatles never existed), but no-one could accuse “The Devil’s Chord” of lacking imagination.
It’s an extravaganza of smart ideas, funny gags and big creative swings. Just take Maestro’s first scene at a piano, breaking the fourth wall to play the opening notes of the Doctor Who theme tune, or the surreal image of them wielding musical notes like a lasso. Davies obviously had the time of his life writing this one.
Yet for every playful scene – such as The Beatles playing a comically terrible song about a dog named Fred – there is another loaded with pathos. It doesn’t particularly matter that actor Chris Mason doesn’t look like John Lennon; the moment he shares with Ruby about how angry and bitter he has become without music was powerful enough.
There is a profound idea at play here: music is nourishment for the soul. To illustrate this the Doctor travelled further down the timeline to a future in which, without music, humanity had wiped itself out. No love songs, no dancing… no Beatles. “Without music the human race goes sour,” he laments.
The episode’s only bum note is the lack of narrative momentum in its final act, which collapses into a visually arresting, albeit overlong sequence in which the Doctor and Maestro do battle by playing musical instruments.
Thankfully the grand finale provided redemption: a spectacularly joyous, completely barmy musical number, which sees Gatwa’s charming Doctor suddenly transform into an all-singing, all-dancing star.
We’ve never seen Doctor Who like this before – with a spring in its step and a song in its two hearts.
A double bill of ‘Doctor Who’ is on BBC One tonight from 6.20pm and both episodes are streaming on BBC iPlayer now.