The babies in Space Babies look atrocious, and the minute I said “really?” at one of those baby mouths, part of me went, oh, this is Doctor Who. Okay.

We’ve been waiting almost two years for this, since they first announced a new series was coming. The 60th anniversary was amazing, and they used it to give us a Christmas episode, which I’m so happy about. I started with Christmas episodes back with Eccleston, and I was really disappointed when we went to New Year’s episodes. I didn’t realize The Church on Ruby Road counted as episode one, so our reviews of the season are starting with episode two.

Baby Know-It-All was taking graduation pictures that day, so I zipped home and got in right at 7:01 to jump in with everybody else. It’s also Mother’s Day weekend, so happy Mother’s Day to Mrs. Know-It-All, the love of my life, to Mama Know-It-All and to Grandma Know-It-All. And the episode they put out on Mother’s Day weekend is called Space Babies. I have a feeling they did that on purpose.

If you’re in the US, it’s season 1 of the new era. Everywhere else in the world, much like the metric system, it’s series 14 of the 2005 reboot of Doctor Who.

This Feels Like a New Who

I’m going to use a phrase people use as a pejorative, and I’m going to use it positively. This feels like a new Who. It felt shinier. It felt glossier. You could definitely see the Disney money, and I’m all for it. We watched it on Disney Plus this time, and Disney is really leveraging the fact that there’s a whole new audience. Russell, the new old showrunner, is setting up for a new generation of Whovians.

That’s why I really like that the Doctor came out swinging, telling Ruby what he was and who he was. It was a genocide and they died, so the one that was adopted was the only one left. “I am the last of the Time Lords, and I am so glad to be alive.”

Going to the future for their first trip almost mirrors Russell’s very first outing with Billie Piper, when he introduced Christopher Eccleston and they went to a space station. Some people would say he’s going to his old bag of tricks. I liked the symmetry. This felt like home. I felt like I hadn’t dropped or lost a beat. I loved the Russell T Davies era. It went into the Moffat era, and some people have issues with Moffat, but I loved his whole run. I really didn’t have any issues until Chibnall. So to come back to this, I was super excited. Mrs. Know-It-All hadn’t even thought about that Eccleston episode until I mentioned it. We reviewed four or five episodes of that first season on the channel before I had to move and life happened.

The Butterfly Was a Bit

In the original preview for the season they showed us that moment with the butterfly, and me and a whole bunch of other reviewers online were speculating about it. Doctor Who has never had hard, fast time travel rules. It’s always been more or less, hey, what about a paradox, and the timelines by and large repair themselves. The only things that are static are fixed points. That’s the only rule. So we were all going, oh my gosh, are we really going to start introducing these weird newfangled rules?

They didn’t. It was a gag. She steps on a butterfly and becomes some kind of weird insect-like creature. He picks up the butterfly, more or less trying to ignore her, I think he breathed life into it, it came back to life and she was normal. Then he goes into the TARDIS and turns on the anti-butterfly whatever. I’m taking that as a throwaway. I don’t think there’s canonically a switch that says, hey, don’t screw up time. I feel like it’s Russell just having fun. We got to see dinosaurs out the gate because she went to the past, and then she goes to the future, and that’s where the fun begins.

A Little Bit of Camp

There’s no way, unless you go 100% CGI, to make a talking baby look realistic. I believe they used real babies, and they had to, because they make them talk. Some of these babies look terrified. There’s one scene where they’re all crying, and I told Mrs. Know-It-All, you know what they did? They filmed each baby as they were trying to set them up and dropped it in here and dropped it in there. It’s rough. Babies are fussy.

But Doctor Who has always been at its best, I believe, when it’s got a little bit of camp. When it’s just a little bit cheesy and you’re going, really? I like something that doesn’t quite look so glossy.

They’re on a baby farm, a ship that literally grows babies, and the crew abandoned it. The government ran out of money, but wouldn’t allow them to just terminate everything going on on the space station. I felt like that was a meta commentary, how they passed laws to protect the kids even though the money wasn’t there to pay for it. There’s definitely a commentary at work, even if it’s subtle.

The babies were wonderful. They got some really cute looking babies, and they all had roles. Baby Eric, adorable. And the captain: “I’m Captain Poppy and I kept the station running for mommy and daddy because we knew you’d come back for us one day.” Rock on, man. We never do understand how these babies are six years old.

They’re being chased by what they call the bogeyman, and it’s a really weird leap in logic. The computerized education system on the ship ran out of material, and all kids need stories, and every kid needs a monster under the bed, because that’s part of growing up. So it created one.

Then there’s the nanny. She keeps telling him to go to access portal 357, he’s like, what, and then he’s, oh, got it, got it. You can tell he knew in that moment. They find her, and she turns out to be the accountant, but she didn’t want to leave the kids, and that touches the Doctor in a certain kind of way. There’s a planet they can have refuge on, but they literally have to wash up on its shore. That’s the only rule. They’ll take anybody in, but you’ve got to get there. It’s basically Cuba.

The Last of Its Kind

She wants to save the kids and get rid of the bogeyman, and it hits the Doctor differently this time, because he’s the literal last of his kind and there’s no other connection to anything else. This thing is the last of its kind too. He feels mercy, and Ruby gets it immediately. I loved that. In my opinion she’s going to go down as one of the better companions. I can already tell. At least until there’s a bigger reveal, which we’ll talk about next episode. They mesh so well, and seeing the Doctor and Ruby react to everything was really awesome. I liked their chemistry.

There are so many people out there who want to classify him as, well, he’s the new gay whatever Doctor. I don’t feel any of that. I feel like he’s someone who has freed himself of a lot of his baggage, whatever the David Tennant stuff was that went with it. Now he seems very open.

Russell T Davies has said he’s not shying away from the Timeless Child, and I firmly believe he’s going to lean into using it. When he first rebooted the series, the first thing he did out the gate was a major change. Time Lords are dead. No more Time Lords. What does that do to someone like the Doctor? It gave him pathos, something he had to actually deal with, and every exchange was now tainted by that knowledge. So what does Russell do now? Thanks, Chibnall. He takes that and goes over here with it. He’s the last of the Time Lords, but he wasn’t even a Time Lord. He’s where everything comes from and he doesn’t know what that means. So what is he doing? Not even addressing it. And I’m down.

You’ll notice a lot of tie back to when Ruby was left on Christmas Day. Snowflakes and babies again, and he’s starting to piece it together. People used to call this the question box. JJ Abrams kind of coined it with Alias and Lost, and Russell was known for doing that kind of thing back in the day. He’s done a lot of really high-profile shows since and he’s evolved as a writer, so I’m hoping to see more of that level of writing, and I kind of feel like we are.

The Doctor Got Scared

The Doctor is at his best when he’s solving problems and trying to figure things out. The times he felt bland were when he was dealing with political intrigue on Gallifrey and other silly things. When he encounters something new and goes, whoa, something is new, that’s when he really starts to shine.

We got new things here. The very first time they step out, Ruby looks at a computer screen and says, oh look, it’s in English. He says, oh no, that’s the TARDIS, does this cool hand motion, and you see the actual language. I was like, oh, that’s new.

And he felt fear. Most Doctors up until now have been confrontational, investigative. They say the creature puts it out, a frequency thing, and I do believe that had to do with it. But I firmly believe that level of self-awareness is a new trait for him. I think it’s so cool when writers take the opportunity to have a new regeneration be something new. It’s like Matt Smith’s first episode, when he’s trying out his taste buds and finally settles on fish fingers and custard. Hey, that’s what tastes good in this mouth. Similarly, this one’s going, why was I scared? He does something similar in the next episode, and we’ll talk about it then.

Let It Rip

They finally manage to save everyone with probably the most crass joke I’ve seen done expertly. The ship has to fart. Everything that’s been building up for six years gets expelled in one giant blast of gas that propels the ship forward and takes them where they’re going.

Mind you, he does have a TARDIS that once brought an entire planet home. This was way more fun.

The Verdict

Doctor Who: Space Babies lands at an 8 out of 10 on the Know-It-All Index.

A solid eight, and for both of us it’s an eight. There are some nerves in that number. We always say three episodes, and this is really the first. But I’m so excited for this season. I think I’m going to like this, and so does Mrs. Know-It-All. Give it a shot if you haven’t seen it.

Tell me what you thought of Space Babies. The conversation lives in the comments on the video above.