"The Interstellar Song Contest" - Doctor Who s15e06 Review

A lot of the discussion about this episode is going to inevitably be the final stinger that sets up next week. Given that, this is basically a more standalone “Utopia”. Needless to say, full spoilers are coming…

Weirdly, this might be a tricky one to talk about. There’s a lot of discourse around the Doctor Who doing Eurovision. There’s the return of some old Classic Series faces… and the show has yet to solve the claustrophobia problem (which is not RTD’s fault at all). But it’s also an episode that really serves as a great showcase for Gatwa.

It’s not a home run, but it’s a solid base hit in a season full of them. The future might still be ominous, but Davies isn’t going quietly if we’re approaching the end.

Discourse

Let’s not hide from it: Doctor Who doing Eurovision is them wading fully into a fraught topic.

On the one hand, this is the sort of pop culture tie-in RTD would do. This is the dude who did a finale that started with putting The Doctor, Rose, and Captain Jack into Big Brother, The Weakest Link, and What Not To Wear, respectively. His obsession with television would naturally draw him towards Eurovision, especially given international streaming has meant the event is more widely available than ever.

Cleverly, the promos gave basically nothing else about the episode away other than the premise. We knew the air bubble would pop and The Doctor would go flying, but there was no mention of the Hellian terrorist plot and the b-plot of a Hellian singer who just wants to sing.

And… that’s kind of the whole problem isn’t it? In its current formation, Eurovision is one of those cultural holdovers from the post-World War II ethos. Like the European Union, it’s an attempt to encourage peace and camaraderie between dozens of disparate cultures and countries. In 2022, the European Broadcasting Union expelled Russia after the Russian Invasion of Ukraine, shortly after which Russia left the EBU. Ukraine ended up winning that year, the invasion almost certainly playing a non-zero role in that win1.

To contrast, the 2024 Eurovision Contest featured controversy due to the inclusion of Israel, who had invaded Gaza the previous year in response to the Hamas-led attacks against them on October 7, 2023. To say this issue is hot-button is underselling its fraughtness. Eurovision had to up security. Protests broke out surrounding Israel’s inclusion. That’s continued this year, with more protesting and reports of the broadcast muting the audience shouting “Free Palestine!” (which I believe happened last year as well but don’t quote me on that). Israel finished 5th in 2024 (helped by coming second in the televote) and came in 2nd overall this year.

None of this is a comment on the actual quality of Israel’s performances2. It still stands, though, that the EBU excluded of Russia in the wake of the invasion of Ukraine (who were a fellow contestant) and then did nothing after Israel’s invasion of Gaza (who were not competing). It does create a double standard. Throw in the images coming out of Gaza, the suffering of Palestinians (including children), the potential war crimes, acts of attrition, and rhetoric that at times can at the very least flirt with “genocidal” and it’s easy to see the controversy as understandable. Take all of that, and add that Eurovision is a vehicle by which Israel can garner cultural support from anyone watching at home (where Palestine cannot), and it’s easy to see why all of this is problematic.

And like… there’s an argument that Eurovision is trying to leave politics and strife at the door, to not be political, to celebrate cultures and music, and encourage peace and harmony throughout the continent. But trying to ignore the rest of the world is, itself, political. Israel can have a performance broadcast to more than a billion households worldwide and it won’t change the fact that they’re bombing Gaza on a daily basis with no end in sight. Pretending everything is fine outside the Eurovision broadcast is, to many, a moral abomination. It’s saying that the suffering Israel is inflicting doesn’t matter in the name of “world harmony”, ironic considering what they’re doing to the Palestinian civilians (again, including children).

Whether Israel participates or not is going to draw ire, but the televote has massively helped their overall placement for the past two years. It raises their profile. Like… I get it.

There’s no way RTD is unaware of any of this. This episode has been in the can for a year, produced around the time of the 2024 competition. It's plot also centers around aliens from the planet Hellia, where the villains are Hellion terrorists and the big emotional catharsis performance is from a Hellion who’s been in hiding and just wants to sing a song on interstellar broadcast to honor her destroyed homeworld. Given the picture the episode paints of galactic perceptions of Hellions, it’s an argument against prejudice and celebrating the sort of harmonious co-existence Eurovision represents. It’s saying that countries are big and strange and complicated. The person on the stage can have national (or planetary) pride, but they are still a person with feelings and whose talent can transcend preconceived notions.

On the other hand, the Hellion terrorists plan to commit a mass interstellar genocide, using the broadcast to target the three trillion watchers at home. All of this in revenge for the actions of the Corporation that destroyed Hellia in the name of corporate greed (or whatever). It’s not like they represent Hellia in total either.

I, personally, see nothing wrong with celebrating the ideas at the core of Eurovision’s mission. But it’s also true that it’s putting Doctor Who extremely close to a livewire topic, one that threatens the harmony of that mission. RTD is certainly an extremely progressive, inclusive writer. I wonder how much of this is him pushing these issues and demanding more from the contest versus him trying to navigate it while staying a populist, all-ages show. It would be great to know his nuanced feelings on the current state of affairs (whatever they are), because this doesn’t really answer much beyond “the core mission is laudable”.

I just wish I didn’t have to question is all.

Proper Gatwa

Prior to the return of RTD, the Chibnall era was a wasteland of writing that, on the best of days, struggled. Jodie Whittaker is a terrific actress and I loved at least watching her be The Doctor, but Chibnall never really developed her character. There wasn’t a clear vision of who she was, or how the little stat chart of “The Doctor” had moved shifted. Was she angrier? Chattier? Less self-righteous? Sillier? Cantankerousier? It’s really hard to tell because the entirety of the character rested on Whittaker’s performance. The show was too busy drowning to manage anything other than hanging her out to dry.

For Gatwa, the show has the good writing, but there’s not the space to really dig into his character. Of the sixteen episodes to date, three have been Doctor-lite, where his character is sidelined or he didn’t work a full shooting schedule3. Here, though, there was a tremendous sequence of The Doctor doing Doctor things. After he makes it back into the arena, he makes friends, puzzles through the problem, and devises solutions to the complications.

This shouldn’t feel like the revelation it seems. He’s had plenty of other moments where he’s done something similar, but this was pure comfort food. It’s a mark of how limited our time has been with him that something so basically “Doctor” can feel as soothing as this. For all that there are complaints that his Doctor is incredibly emotional (and he is), seeing him playing something different is so refreshing. His rage and anger at Kid threatening the lives of three trillion people stems from the “Gallifrey is dead and I have guilt and never again” that Davies has been doing for almost twenty years. In “Empire of Death” The Doctor lamenting his capacity to inflict pain and death on the universe’s monsters felt stale, like something the show should have long since moved past. Yet here Gatwa finds ways to bring nuance and freshness to the vindictive suffering he inflicts in that scene. His reaction to seeing Belinda again is wonderful and humanizing.

Gatwa is a terrific Doctor. I hate the rumors that he’s done in two episodes, especially given the accuracy of the leaks to this point. If this is the end, his bigeneration is going to be another question mark hanging over this mini-wilderness we’re about to enter. For all that it wasn’t good, the Chibnall era’s shortchanging Whittaker left her tenure as a wasted opportunity. I hope to god we don’t even up feeling the same about Gatwa, but I’m currently feeling like it’s even more so.

Many happy returns

The fans were finally right!

Going back at least a decade there have been rumors of The Rani’s return4. Yet here we are now, with not just one but two Ranis. Archie Panjabi is terrific casting, not the least of which is that it’s not the cultural appropriation of casting Kate O’Mara in the mid-80s. Davies is also smart in knowing that he would bigenerate her before deploying her for the main event. It means that Mrs. Flood never does anything except tease the eventual reveal (which she was very good at), and the character can be fully in the hands of Panjabi.

I can’t wait to see what she does next week.

The bigger surprise is the return of Carol Anne Ford as Susan, re-appearing for the first time since 1983’s “The Five Doctors”. That’s not exactly fair, though. That story is all fluff, no character development, just playing the hits for the show’s big 20th Anniversary crossover. This is the first time we’re getting to see her in a way that’s going to possibly build off The Doctor’s “yes, I will go back” (Big Finish 8th Doctor Adventures notwithstanding).

It’s terribly exciting, another development on top of what’s already promising to be a full finale.

Exploding TARDIS… again?

With the episode’s first cliffhanger being The Doctor and Belinda arriving back on Earth in time for whatever’s coming next week, the leftover concerns from earlier in the season are resurfacing. I’m very curious as to the “what happened to the Earth” that comes from hologram Graham Norton, but it is giving big “Pandorica Opens” vibes. The image of the TARDIS doors blasting inwards is evocative. It’s also not as cool as a Van Gogh depiction of the TARDIS’s destruction.

Whatever happens next week, it’s easy to keep in mind that “The Legend of Ruby Sunday” was a kinetic, exciting buildup to a dope cliffhanger and “Empire of Death” was big and bombastic in the way that RTD’s finales usually are. It still had similar issues to those of the first four seasons (plus the specials), where the richness of the solution wasn’t extremely elegant. Ruby’s mom was hidden because she just laid low? Sure. I mean she just stayed really quiet for like twenty years. Like really, really quiet.

This season-long, overarching mystery doesn’t play into Davies’ strengths. It can work if he just seeds the odd word here and there (“Bad wolf”, “Torchwood”, “Mr. Saxon”, “but why are the bees disappearing?”), but we’ll see how this one works out.

Ironically, for all that the big move in shows nowadays is a season-long serial mystery, that reached its apex in series five. The shorter season means that maybe Davies thinks it’d be easier to string together. Now that we’re at the point where he gets to take a second second swing at it, I guess we’ll find out next week.

Season 15 Rankings

1. The Story & the Engine
2. Lucky Day
3. Lux
4. The Interstellar Song Contest
5. The Well
6. The Robot Revolution