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WATCH ALONG | DOCTOR WHO | 5x2 | The Beast Below
🕑 Added 2022-11-25 15:01:02 +0000 UTCA Few Notes:
- Please no spoilers beyond this episode unless you see that later episodes have already been released. In that case, no spoilers beyond those episodes.
- This video is in a watch-along format. This means you'll need your own copy of the episode to watch alongside my reaction. This is in an effort to avoid copyright infringement.
- If you're based in the UK (or using a UK streaming site), here are instructions for how to get your copy to sync with mine.
- The show footage will play for the first 30 seconds with both video and audio. After that, the show footage will be silenced, and the video will be blurred for the remainder of the episode. There is also a count-up timer that begins once the episode has started. These things will hopefully make it easier for you to keep your copy of the episode synced with mine.
- This episode was viewed on HBO Max.
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Comments
James Brooks
I'm glad you liked this, it was a very polarizing episode and like most I wasn't crazy about it the first time but on future watches it's always been a minor tearjerker for me.
David Blau
This isn't one of my favorites, but it's a good one for showing Amy's character. I'm very excited to see you react to some of the episodes later this season.
Michael Oswald
Actually, at my first time watching this episode, I was a bit disappointed and normally skipped it on my rewatches. But now I kinda like it, especially for the interaction between Amy and the Doctor. Now rewatching it with you brought up some subtle nuances which I haven't noticed before. Nice!
Steven Cooper
I'm glad you liked this episode so much; at the time, it was generally seen as a bit of a disappointment after the high of "The Eleventh Hour". Part of the problem was that the pre-publicity for the episode (and the season as a whole) built up big expectations for the Smilers, making it seem like they would be a major new foe for the Doctor. They turned out to be more like the Nodes in "Silence in the Library" -- a subsidiary element of the story mainly just there for macabre effect. They're still successfully creepy, though, particularly when you consider the fact, which the story never makes a point of emphasizing, that they have two faces, but three expressions -- smiling, frowning, and demonic. So they can't just be inanimate dummies; something's happening out of sight when those heads spin around... The script is also not as polished as the previous episode's, but it's full of ideas, including taking some inspiration from a well-known 1973 short story by Ursula K. Le Guin, "The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas," where the citizens of a utopian city are required to come to terms with the dark secret at its heart. I especially liked the way it comes up with a plausible way for the Doctor to be beaten to the solution by Amy. The Doctor is of course a genius, but he can't see himself from outside. Amy, with the advantage of having spent fourteen years obsessing about him, can spot the similarity between the lone Time Lord and the lone starwhale. It's unfortunate that the script unsubtly hammers the point home no less than three times in succession, but it's important and significant that Amy proves herself worthy of being a companion, not just tagging along but providing a viewpoint for the Doctor that he can't provide for himself.
