Rate and Discuss: The Beast Below

[Alex]

Just re-watched it, and a few questions do present themselves.

But if they want to draw attention away from it, why chuck children into its mouth? What happens to them? Timmy turns up at the end, but it's not apparent where he's been. The Doctor only escapes by using his sonic to make it puke him up. Talking of which, why do he and Amy end up in an "overlow pipe" when the Whale's mouth leads out into space? What do the Smilers do if they catch you, unless they are armed and we just never see the weapon.

It was mentioned that the Space Whale refused to eat the children, so I presume they found some other way out / ended up being rescued, and then made to do menial work in the tower. For, er, some other reason.

Liz 10 throws up a whole raft of problems. Even since her last memory wipe, it's been 50 years. Has it really taken her that long to discover the secret behind the ship?

They said it was 10 years since her last memory wipe, she even had a bit of a distressed "It's taken you one afternoon to find out more than I have in 10 years" speech. That said, 10 years and being unable to discover anything is a bit rubbish, but perhaps the Smilers have been used to stop her discovering too much...

Talking of memory wiping, the scene with Amy's video STILL doesn't make any sense. I've just seen it again and the scene is continuous - there's not even a break where she passes out or 'slow blinks'. If she's supposed to record her video somehow in the middle of this scene, as someone else pointed out, why is there a facility to do this? And why exactly is she warning the Doctor away anyway? Just to save him the big decision? I think what's really niggling is that the "secret" is painted as so big and so terrible that no-one can bear to keep it in their heads but... well, it's not really is it?

I'm with you on that one. The scene suggested that as soon as she saw the video she hit the 'forget' button, though I guess we're supposed to believe there was a gap where she was able to record her message. Still, should have been a lot clearer.

Why does the Doctor immediately go to kill the Whale rather than, for example, just turning off the torture ray? What does he think would happen?

He thought the Space Whale would shake off the construct that they'd built on it's back, destroying it in the process.

Why build the ship without an engine anyway?

Good question! Though I suppose it could have come down to lack of resources / time considering the state of the Earth at the time / other Nations had used them up escaping themselves. But it was another thing that could have been easily explained with one or two lines of dialogue...

Despite all these flaws, I really enjoyed the episode, it gripped me from start to finish, I'm loving Matt's Doctor and Ms Pond, the dialogue was often very very funny, the Star Wars references a cheeky but enjoyable touch (especially the editing side sweep towards the end), and I gave it 9/10, and look forward to watching it again soon.

Tis just a shame so many people on the net (the American sites' especially, but also Digital Spy) seem to be so against Matt Smith just because they don't find him aesthetically pleasing. Tis tedious stuff, but well, as long as the ratings don't drop below 6 million I won't start to panic just yet.

[Si Hunt]

Maybe they built the ship and then planned to put the engine in last!!

Seriously, I have got to say that I absolutely did love this episode - picking apart all the plot holes is part of the fun for me. I would rather an episode have these leaks in it than be a dumb shooter that left you with nothing to think about afterwards. In fact, I'm just enjoying the whole Who experience so much lately! I didn't know how much I'd missed it. Love settling down to watch the new episode on Saturday night, then sitting on-line afterwards and watching the comments pop up on PS, then waiting for the ratings, then watching it again and commenting on the finer points. All this, and it's still not enough! I want more! I feel addicted to Doctor Who all over again! Woo!

Si.

[Alex]

I feel exactly the same Si, except that as I'm working on Saturday nights at the moment I don't get to do the online thing, which I really miss.

One of the biggest things for me is just how good Matt's Doctor has been, I really did have huge reservations after seeing clips of him in a few other shows, but I already love him and don't miss Tennant at all. Not to knock DT, he put in a great four years, but by the end it did feel like it was time to move on...

[Andrew Curnow]

Well why tell them the truth & give them the choice at all then?

I guess it was probably a satire on democracy. In the case of Starship UK, I guess they were obliged to give people the choice - but if they chose to 'PROTEST', in fact they ended up dumped in the Whale's gob, and if they should manage to escape that the only way back to the rest of the world was another 'FORGET' button.

Not to knock DT, he put in a great four years, but by the end it did feel like it was time to move on...

I agree, but only in hindsight. Even rewatching season 4 over the past couple of months, robbed of its brand new-ness it felt just that little bit stale. Seasons 1 to 3 still feel fresh, but 4 & the specials, in hindsight, often lacked something. This year (so far!!) has been a real delight, fresh & exciting - like Si says, I'm currently just enjoying it so much. For me it's like 1987 again when after things feeling a little stale, suddenly it was all new & fresh & different - season 24 obviously wasn't a huge success, but for me it actually renewed my enthusiasm for Who. This time round it's far more of a shared feeling!

[Paul Monk]

I'm not enjoying reading this thread, the negativity really gets to me, especially when I've really enjoyed an episode. I find reading negative comments saps my good mood. I'm sure its much harder to defend an episode than it is to tear it to shreds.
So I may not appear in these threads too often. Nothing personal though.

[Andrew Curnow]

I didn't think there was much negativity - I think the vast majority are still feeling the love!

[brandynigma]

My review is now up on Critiqal Theory.

[MinaHarker]

Tis just a shame so many people on the net (the American sites' especially, but also Digital Spy) seem to be so against Matt Smith just because they don't find him aesthetically pleasing. Tis tedious stuff, but well, as long as the ratings don't drop below 6 million I won't start to panic just yet.

I think it's really funny you saying that Alex, considering how you went on and on and on to me about how you'd never take him seriously because of his "enormous forehead"!

Talking of memory wiping, the scene with Amy's video STILL doesn't make any sense. I've just seen it again and the scene is continuous - there's not even a break where she passes out or 'slow blinks'. If she's supposed to record her video somehow in the middle of this scene, as someone else pointed out, why is there a facility to do this? And why exactly is she warning the Doctor away anyway? Just to save him the big decision? I think what's really niggling is that the "secret" is painted as so big and so terrible that no-one can bear to keep it in their heads but... well, it's not really is it? They are torturing a big creature and that's horrible, but at the end they all find out and manage to muse on what to do (when they are watching Liz's video) for several minutes without their heads exploding. Surely at least ONE person down the years would have managed not to hit the "forget" button? If it's SO terrible, surely that makes it MORE likely that the most morally centred of the passengers would want to remember in order to stop it from going on? Or at least organise a meeting and talk about it. Every member of the human race would have to be selfish beyond belief to immediately decide that not knowing the truth is better than doing something about it. Why does the Doctor immediately go to kill the Whale rather than, for example, just turning off the torture ray? What does he think would happen? Even if the whole ship came to a standstill in space, wouldn't that be ok until he could sort something else out? Why build the ship without an engine anyway? And if the humans encounter the Space Whale because they don't have any other means of travel, how on Earth do they know it's the last of its kind?


Si.

I think we are seeing it from Amy's POV - she wouldn't be aware of any "gap". Ever been knocked unconcious? Coming to and finding everything different around you and people staring at you will make you jump out of your skin - you are not aware of the time you were out so it's like a sudden BLINK and everything changes.

The camera did linger on a "RECORD" button when we saw "PROTEST" and "FORGET". Anyone who pressed PROTEST was fed to the whale - that bit about "if 10% of people protest..." was a lie.

The Doctor wasn't going to kill the whale - he was going to damage it's brain so that it no longer had any higher functions. That was it would continue to carry Starship UK on its back but would not feel any pain or distress. It would be a vegetable, basically.

Why build an engine when you have a perfectly good whale? (I like that, I think I'll make it my tagline). It was there, so they used it.

I honestly didn't notice the queen was black until afterwards.

Pretty good episode I thought, although the Smilers were badly underused. Still, I'm not sure that's a bad thing as I found the "bad" faces utterly terrifying. I have a terrible problem with cybernetic killers - they scare the bejeebus out of me.

I like the new Doctor very much.

I don't think the actor playing Winston Churchill looks remotely like him, so I'm worried that's going to spoil next week for me.

[Alex]

I think it's really funny you saying that Alex, considering how you went on and on and on to me about how you'd never take him seriously because of his "enormous forehead"!

Oh I know, my original reaction to the casting was definitely OTT, but I'm so so glad to say that I was completely in the wrong about him.

I'm not enjoying reading this thread, the negativity really gets to me, especially when I've really enjoyed an episode. I find reading negative comments saps my good mood. I'm sure its much harder to defend an episode than it is to tear it to shreds.
So I may not appear in these threads too often. Nothing personal though.

I sort of know what you mean, but then I do think it makes the thread a bit livelier when there's lots of differing points of views. Plus all of the more negative comments have been well constructed which counts for a lot, and it's not just some idiot blathering on about not liking the new Doctor due to the size of his enormous forehead!

[P-Bal]

The Doctor put pay to the space whale cruelty, but left in place a regime that murders children for not being top of the class... Hmmm!!

[Si Hunt]

I'm not enjoying reading this thread, the negativity really gets to me, especially when I've really enjoyed an episode. I find reading negative comments saps my good mood. I'm sure its much harder to defend an episode than it is to tear it to shreds.
So I may not appear in these threads too often. Nothing personal though.

I hope you didn't glimpse my big list of pinnickity plot loopholes (which I had huge fun compiling earlier!) and get the wrong idea Paul. I'll say again, I loved this episode and so did most people, judging by the poll ratings - almost 80% of posters gave it 7/10 or more which is pretty good!

Si.

[Si Hunt]

Ever been knocked unconcious?

No, never. I've had a fairly boring existence overall and never been in any situations where I've been knocked out!

The Doctor wasn't going to kill the whale - he was going to damage it's brain so that it no longer had any higher functions. That was it would continue to carry Starship UK on its back but would not feel any pain or distress. It would be a vegetable, basically.

Although I feel I should point out that a few moments later he described this action as "murdering an innocent creature in as kind a way as possible". Amy interpreted it as effectively killing the creature as well.

it's not just some idiot blathering on about not liking the new Doctor due to the size of his enormous forehead!

I agree and we were talking about this earlier. I read the Digital Spy Comments Section on this episode and it's like a stream of witless gut reactions compared to the, I have to say, very reasonable comments we get on here. Very few come on and say the episode is "crap" for no reason, almost everyone puts a good point accross and that leads me to enjoy reading PS posters comments almost all the time, even if they are less than complimentary. I think we're quite lucky really with the standard of poster we get on here.

Si.

[SiHart]

No, never. I've had a fairly boring existence overall and never been in any situations where I've been knocked out!

It's a very strange sensation, like a crack in reality. It confused for days after it happened to me after my fits. That feeling that you've lost something and couldn't get it back, no matter how hard you tried was really bewildering.

Si xx

[Jason Thompson]

The Smilers are the most obvious "why" to start with,

I agree. They seemed to be thrown in just because the episode needed a 'monster' of some kind, and seemed the weirdest thing to make to control the population, especially when there are a bunch of people walking around patrolling the ship. I presume the keys they carried around were to wind up the Smilers, or did I miss something?

Also I agree with your other point: how do they have three faces? Their heads turn 180 degrees from a smile to a miserable face, then another 180 degrees to the really angry face!

Talking of memory wiping, the scene with Amy's video STILL doesn't make any sense. I've just seen it again and the scene is continuous - there's not even a break where she passes out or 'slow blinks'.

No reason there would be. Memory is continuous. It's not like a computer hard drive where you can check back and see where things have been erased. I've had it myself when I've dozed off in front of the TV. Last time I was wathcing The Gunfighters, and my memory of it goes right from the middle of part 2 to the cliffhanger scene of part 3. I only realised I'd lost time because I knew where the scenes actually happened. One time I accused my family of turning off my personal stereo because I fell asleep listening to it and woke up to silence, when my last recollection was being in the middle of a tape!

If she's supposed to record her video somehow in the middle of this scene, as someone else pointed out, why is there a facility to do this?

That's a little harder to explain!

And why exactly is she warning the Doctor away anyway? Just to save him the big decision?

That does seem to be the implication. The trouble is, at this point in the narrative I don't think she knows him well enough to know how he'd react to the information, so I think his annoyance at her actions later was quite justified.

Surely at least ONE person down the years would have managed not to hit the "forget" button?

Yes, but it seems that if you press the 'Forget' button the door opens, and if you hit the 'Protest' button you drop into the whale's mouth, so it seems that there will be no-one walking around outside who didn's hit the 'Forget' button.

Why build the ship without an engine anyway?

I though they said they built the ship around the whale, so they didn't need an engine in the first place. That would fit with the idea that releasing it would cause the ship to disintegrate, as it would have to be an integral part of the construction for that to happen rather than just attached to a pre-existing construction.

Overall I liked the episode. Matt Smith is really nailing the part, and Amy is also turning out very well. The Doctor's excitement at the prospect of bieng vomited up by a giant space creature was great. Matt Smith's angry outburst was instantly better than any of Tennant's mad anger scenes. I liked Amy figuring out the connection between the whale and the children, though I agree that the Doctor seemed a bit quick to accept that his only choices involved killing people or killing the whale. Amy was also very quick to just hit the button, rather than trying to explain it first.

The drawing a parallel between the Doctor and the whale seemed a little out of place too. Amy identifies him as someone very old and very kind who can't bear to hear children crying, which sounds great to us, who have followed him for years. The implication is that her own experience with him made her think of him that way, but if you look at what actually happens, he turned up, demanded food, showed her a huge alien eye through the crack in her wall, then abandoned her for twelve years, then saved the world, then sodded off for another two years! Because of him she went through four psychiatrists! Doesn't sound like someone she would think of as 'very kind'.

The lead in to the next episode was nice too, but then we still had a 'next time' trailer. Was the episode doubly under-running so they had to tack on an extra scene as well as the trailer?

So overall a neat episode that worked well for 45 minutes but shouldn't be thought about too hard.

[Jason Thompson]

the companion out-thinking the Doctor - was bad enough in Dalek and Doctor's Daughter, and only shows the companion as being good by showing the Doctor as being crap.

I don't think it does in this case. The Doctor didn't see the whale being nice to the shildren, which was what prompted Amy's thought process, and the implication is that her own experience with him parallelled the whale's response to the crying children, so she figured it out because she had more information and a different perspective. The Doctor may be brilliant, but there's no reaosn he should be the one to figure out everything all the time.

And perhaps revising Newton's Laws of motion would remind him that you don't need an engine to move through space if you're already moving !! (no wonder my GCSE students don't get it either!!!)

Agreed. However, the absence of an engine would still be a problem, as you'd need one to start moving in the first place. If the ship never had an engine it couldn't be flying in the first place.

[Rob McCow]

I don't mind about the three smiley heads. There could be many ways it could be done. The smiley face could morph into a grotesque face while it's out of view. Or it could be made of LIVING PORCELAIN!

The one that bugged me was:

Wouldn't the whale have vomitted them into space?

[Darren]

no hugging humans for no. 11 it seems

Errmmmm, except at the end.

Liz 10 or whoever; annoying as a character, didn't need all that Torchwood-Virgin Queen tosh being dredged up again

I liked that. It sort of showed the Doctor as a constant in the universe. Even when he's moved on stories are told and people he's never met are already waiting/hoping for him to enter their lives.

The lead in to the next episode was nice too, but then we still had a 'next time' trailer. Was the episode doubly under-running so they had to tack on an extra scene as well as the trailer?

The lead in was good, I think, to show a bit of continuity as opposed to a hard reset where all sorts of stuff could have gone in between.

The Doctor wasn't going to kill the whale - he was going to damage it's brain so that it no longer had any higher functions. That was it would continue to carry Starship UK on its back but would not feel any pain or distress. It would be a vegetable, basically.

A fate worse than death, then.

I'm not enjoying reading this thread, the negativity really gets to me, especially when I've really enjoyed an episode

Aha, but, and this is unique I think, most of the people who have highlighted negatives, have also loved it despite or because of them.

[Darren]

Wouldn't the whale have vomitted them into space?

No they were forced back up the pipes.

[Si Hunt]

Yes, but it seems that if you press the 'Forget' button the door opens, and if you hit the 'Protest' button you drop into the whale's mouth, so it seems that there will be no-one walking around outside who didn's hit the 'Forget' button.

One other small thing that got me - if everyone instantly forgot, how did the little girl KNOW that they all instantly forgot, if none of them remembered to tell her?

The girl's presence continued to bug me a little, but not for any particuarly good reason. I just find it odd that she was introduced and then sort of hung around and didn't do anything!

I don't mind about the three smiley heads. There could be many ways it could be done. The smiley face could morph into a grotesque face while it's out of view. Or it could be made of LIVING PORCELAIN!

I'm not happy with the morphing suggestion, simply because they were mechanical. If they could morph, they wouldn't turn round at all! But I did have an idea to explain this, and that's that perhaps the 'demonic' face was a special hidden one at the back. So when the smiley face turned round to become the frowny face, then the smiley face flipped over at the back to become the demonic one. Perhaps because the demonic face was a late addition? It would seem to me that the whole justice system may have started off as a mild disciplinary measure, say to punish petty criminals, then spiralled out of control and wound up punishing school kids. So maybe the demonic face was added later.

Si.

[Si Hunt]

No they were forced back up the pipes.

Why would they be forced BACK up the pipe? Wasn't the whole point to make the Whale vomit them out? They kept mentioning sick. How would you propel a person BACK up a pipe hanging from the roof??

Si.

[Simon R]

Come to think of it, the Whale's mouth was shown at the end as being in space as it were and not undercover apart from above, so how come Doctor Who and Amy Pond could breathe in it's mouth rather than suffocate in the vacuum of space etc, etc.

Presumably there was a force field, air shell like in the TARDIS.

[Si Hunt]

Maybe it's lips were air tight!

Si. :mobile

[Rob McCow]

Perhaps it had another mouth on it's back

[Paul Monk]

I hope you didn't glimpse my big list of pinnickity plot loopholes (which I had huge fun compiling earlier!) and get the wrong idea Paul. I'll say again, I loved this episode and so did most people, judging by the poll ratings - almost 80% of posters gave it 7/10 or more which is pretty good!

I did read it Si. Don't worry though, I won't hold it against you

[SiHart]

It's been bothering me how the pipe got into the whale's mouth in the first place... it looks from its position that it was drilled right through the whale's skull. No wonder it was so angry!

Oh and as Brendan mentioned in his blog, maybe the smilers are used like CCTV cameras. If the population has been drilled into fearing them in childhood, then putting them around the streets will be an added incentive to behiave and make London a crime free zone.

Si xx