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Doctor Who/Recap/S31/E02 The Beast Below: Difference between revisions
Doctor Who/Recap/S31/E02 The Beast Below (view source)
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Just then, the Doctor arrives. He examines the lightbulb at the top of the room -- standard memory wipe, must have erased about 20 minutes. But why? And why would Amy choose to forget? Well, according to the crying girl from earlier, Mandy, everyone chooses to forget. But the Doctor isn't scared, and smacks the {{smallcaps|protest}} button. Unfortunately, this catapults both him and Amy down an air-pressure cannon. They land in what appears to be a rubbish dump. But the Doctor soon figures out that it's a tongue. So they're in a giant mouth. Great. The Doctor triggers a vomit wave to escape, but the switch to exit this dark chamber... is a {{smallcaps|forget}} button. And those Smiler androids in the back are getting pretty irritable.
The pair are rescued from the Smilers by Liz10, who takes them up to her quarters whilst making remarks about the Doc's history with her kingdom. And why is it ''her'' kingdom? Well, that would be because she's been Queen Elizabeth X of England for 10 years! They slowed her body clock to keep her looking like the stamps. In her room, there are a lot of water glasses. And her mask... it's rather old. Very, very old, an antique. Porcelain, too. Stays on because it's perfectly sculpted to her face. So what? So ''everything'', Liz... Just then, some of those hooded blokes show up and ask to take Liz to the Tower of London. She refuses, but it seems that ''these'' particular politicians are half-Smiler.
Down in the Tower's torture chamber they find a rather odd installation: a laser in the ceiling perpetually fires shots into a very large pain center. Piecing together the puzzle, the Doctor figures out that this pain center, the mouth, and the tentacle from earlier are all part of one creature, and... it's what they have instead of an engine. And they're torturing it to keep it going. And then we find out what's wrong with Liz's mask. It's at least 200 years old... and perfectly sculpted to her face. Wait, that can't be right, she's only been Queen for 10 years! Oh... dear. The same 10 years... over and over again, always leading her to this same place -- a voting booth. It's her choice: {{smallcaps|forget}} or {{smallcaps|abdicate}}. Her own recorded message to herself starts to play.
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She grabs Liz's hand to press the {{smallcaps|abdicate}} button and release the whale, at which point Starship UK starts moving ''faster''. But why? Surely the Whale would take its opportunity to escape? No, the kindly old [[Space Whale]] simply ''wanted'' to help in the first place. They didn't need to torture or trap it. It came because it couldn't bear to see the children cry.
Afterwards, the Doctor tells Amy she couldn't have known that. She responds that maybe ''he'' couldn't have known, but that an alien, the last of his kind, who has been through pain and anguish, and just become kinder and unable to see children cry, was something ''she'd'' already seen. The Doctor stares at her for a minute, then yanks her into his arms and buries his face in her shoulder. They return to the TARDIS when the console's phone starts ringing. It's [[Winston Churchill]] and [[Doctor Who/Recap/S31
As they leave, though, we see that there's [[Arc Words|a crack]] in the starship...
=== Tropes ===
* [[Action Girl]]: Liz 10 is very much made of [[Badass]].
* [[Anvilicious]]: Hit us a little harder with the "Doctor = Space Whale" parallel, why don't you?
* [[Apocalypse How]]: Solar flares toasted the Earth; probably rating around a Class 4 (biosphere extinction). Destroying Starship UK would have been a Class 0, as each nation had their own ship.
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* [[Attack of the Monster Appendage]]: The tentacles/stingers are seen at various places in the ship before the reveal that they are all part of the body of the Star Whale.
* [[Bad Vibrations]]: Played with -- the Doctor's first hint of the Beast's existence is when he notices that the liquid in a glass of water ''isn't'' vibrating, which it should be if the Starship had engines running.
* [[Big Damn Heroes|Big Damn Heroine]] Liz 10 blasting those smilers.
* [[Bizarre Alien Biology]]: The Star Whale grows tentacles into the ship and has some sort of anti-squid tentacular tail.
* [[Belly of the Whale]]
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* [[Cloudcuckoolander]]: Eleven, turning it [[Up to Eleven]], fittingly. {{spoiler|Of course it turns out to be a case of [[Obfuscating Insanity]]. Or fortuitous insanity, we'll see...}}
{{quote|'''Doctor''': Sorry, checking all the water in this area; there's an escaped fish.}}
* [[Continuity Nod]]: The solar flares that drove people off the Earth, previously mentioned in "[[Doctor Who/Recap/S12
** There's also a large [[Doctor Who/Recap/NS/
** Liz 10 knows about [[Doctor Who
** And that the Doctor and [[Queen Vicky]] [[Doctor Who
** [[Doctor Who
** The Doctor's extremely brief explanation that he is the last of his kind. "[[Doctor Who
** Apparently the British government still believes that [[Torchwood|sending underperforming children to a]] [[Fate Worse Than Death]] [[Torchwood: Children of Earth|for the benefit of society]] is still acceptable.
* [[Creepy Child]]: With matching creepy nursery rhyme, natch!
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* [[Everybody Lives]]: While it's implied that people have been fed to the whale through the <s> years</s> centuries, from the start of this episode to the end, not a single character dies.
* [[Earth-That-Was]]
* [[Five-Finger Discount]]:
{{quote|'''Doctor''': This fell out of her pocket when I accidently bumped into her. Took me four goes. }}
* [[For the Evulz]]: Apparently, the rulers of England allow the people to vote on whether or not to continue torturing an ancient creature... or die. Why bother? Unless [[Fridge Logic|it's because they need to feed it]] and can't be bothered to build a farm on their gigantic [[Space Whale]] star ship for all of England...
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{{quote|'''Presenter:''' Here, then, is the truth about Starship UK, and the price that has been paid for the safety of the British people. May God have mercy on our souls.}}
* [[Infant Immortality]]: Justified, and the clue as to what's really going on.
* [[Internal Homage]]: As in "[[Doctor Who
** As ''[[Torchwood]]'''s "[[Torchwood/Recap/S2
* [[Iron Woobie]]: The Star Whale. Say what you will, there's something [[Crowning Moment of Heartwarming|touching]] about choosing to continue ferrying [[Humans Are Bastards|the humans who tortured you for roughly two hundred years.]]
* [[Karma Houdini]]: The secret police, who fed the star-whale with everyone who hit the protest button, and "undesirables".
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* [[Older Than They Look]]: Liz 10.
* [[Pajama-Clad Hero]]: Amy, spending the whole episode in her nightdress.
* [[Poor Communication Kills]]: Man, wouldn't everything have been easier if the Star Whale could have just told them it was volunteering its services?
** That happens when you can't even communicate in the audible wavelengths.
* [[Powered by a Forsaken Child|Powered By An Endlessly Tortured]] [[Space Whale]]
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* [[Punch Clock Villain]]: It turns out neither the Smilers nor the Winders are actually evil. [[What the Hell, Hero?|They were acting on the Queen's orders.]]
** The Doctor doesn't like people who are [[Just Following Orders]].
{{quote|'''Doctor:''' [[Doctor Who
* [[Robotic Reveal]]: The hooded men reveal themselves as hybrid Smilers by turning their head around.
* [[Royals Who Actually Do Something]]: Liz 10, who has been trying to solve the Starship UK's problems for <s>ten</s> three hundred years.
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* [[Sadistic Choice]]: Everybody's options basically boil down to: (1) Continue torturing the Star Whale, or (2) kill the entire country.
* [[Schizo-Tech]]: Life on the spaceship involves a large number of very low-tech things.
* [[Schmuck Bait]]:
{{quote|'''Amy''': Oh, don't mind me! Never could resist a "Keep Out" sign.}}
** The "Protest" button.
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** All of humanity fleeing their devastated homeworld on a fleet of ships, sinister robots that can impersonate people...this episode could almost be called [[Battlestar Galactica|''Battlestar Britannica'']].
** The superfast propulsion powered by a tortured alien is similar to the ''[[Star Trek: Voyager]]'' episode "Equinox". It could just be that they're running off of the [[Powered by a Forsaken Child|same trope]], though.
** From the outside, Starship UK resembles [[
*** Or one of the cities from James Blish's "Cities in Flight" books.
* [[Space Whale|Star Whale]]: The last of them.
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* [[Time Travel Tense Trouble]]:
{{quote|'''Amy''' (about when she will/was get/got married): "Well, it's kinda weird. A long time ago, tomorrow morning. I wonder what I did."}}
* [[Title Drop]]: Three times:
** ''Though the man above might say hello, expect no love from the beast below...''
** ''The dream must end, the world must know, we all depend on the beast below.''
** ''No, that's not going to work on me. Big ol' beast below decks, and everyone who protests gets shoved down its throat. Is that how it works?''
* [[Town with a Dark Secret]]: Except it's a starship, but the trope still holds.
* [[The Un-Reveal]]: "Amy Pond. Age: 1,306. Marital Status: [Amy waits in suspense] …Unknown."
* [[Viewers are Morons]]: OK, so the Star Whale is this clever metaphor for the Doctor see? He keeps saving mankind but is put through unending pain because of his choices. He just needs someone to show him again that it's a choice, not a painful obligation. Pretty darn blatant. Then why did we have to have it explained to us in the episode THREE WHOLE TIMES!?
** They even include the line "The Star Whale is the Doctor".
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