Logline

When the Doctor and Ruby meet The Beatles, they discover that the all-powerful Maestro is changing history.

Written by: Russell T. Davies

Directed by: Ben Chessell

  • Value Subtracted@startrek.websiteOPMEnglish
    2·
    4 months ago

    the climax that is apparently just about finding the right “anti-chord” to banish Maestro?

    I think this is the most “magical” episode of the season by a large margin, and as much as this sort of resolution makes sense for that kind of story…you have to really nail the emotional truth of the story to make the anticlimax works. In that sense, I agree that this episode doesn’t quite make it there.

    And the woefully underdeveloped Lennon/McCartney just happens to wander through the halls of Abbey Road and hit the right note to fill the CGI power bar?

    I actually kind of liked that moment, though it would have been nice for the Beatles to be more involved prior to that point.

    the silent moment where the Doctor’s sonic cancels out all sound

    Definitely the high point, dramatically speaking.

    • Handles@leminal.spaceEnglish
      1·
      4 months ago

      it would have been nice for the Beatles to be more involved prior to that point.

      Yeah, the whole Beatles strand relies on the viewer’s forehand knowledge of (and investment in) the band, particularly John and Paul. It’s surely a British thing, but also a generational one that I think RTD may have misjudged. The Beatles were surely huge for his generation, but he’s well out of the age segments the BBC or Disney want to attract.

      To me, more than a decade younger than RTD, the Beatles were a part of pop culture growing up, but their music is sort of meh, especially this early mop top, boy band era. So somebody much younger watching now might need some kind of in-show engagement with them beyond “this is how sad they’d be without music”…

      Come on, we’d all be. What makes these guys so special? Same as poor Timothy Drake, nothing evident in the episode.