What reunites them is the eponymous Star Beast, a giant Furby-lookin’ guy called The Meep, who crashes on Earth and befriends Donna’s daughter, Rose. But Davies bringing back Tennant as the newly-christened Fourteenth Doctor and also Catherine Tate as beloved companion Donna Noble is extravagantly cheeky, even for this show. For a show built around a time-traveling humanoid alien who never dies but instead “regenerates” into a new body with a new personality so the show can explain away recasting its lead, “continuity” has always been more a suggestion than a rule. The mystery at the center of “The Star Beast” and the specials that follow is why - and how - did The Thirteenth Doctor (Jodie Whittaker) regenerate back into the same body she had as the Tenth Doctor (fan-favorite David Tennant). That charm is essential, because Davies’ first Doctor Who episode in 15 years is lampshading what, in most circumstances, would read as desperation. Luckily, there’s so much charm here that “The Star Beast” never feels anything other than delightful, even at its clumsiest. It excels at its first two tasks, and stumbles pretty extravagantly at the third. Loosely based on “Doctor Who and The Star Beast,” a comics serial by Pat Mills and Watchmen co-creator Dave Gibbons, the new special pulls triple duty: delivering a snappy, classic Doctor Who adventure, introducing an overarching mystery that will tie “The Star Beast” to two more specials coming in following weeks, and briefly introducing the Doctor to newcomers. It’s a blatant nostalgia play that, hilariously, carries on as if nothing has happened since Davies left the show in 2008. Instead, “The Star Beast” is meant as catnip for lapsed and disappointed fans that were introduced during Davies’ first Who revival. “The Star Beast” isn’t quite the reboot Davies is here to deliver - that’ll come in 2024 when Ncuti Gatwa takes over as The Fifteenth Doctor. And with his first episode, last weekend’s hour-long special “The Star Beast,” Davies has delivered the goods. In response, the BBC has decided the cure to The Doctor’s ails lies with the man who revived the show from a 15-year coma in 2005: Russell T. What should have been a promising changing of the guard in 2018 - with new showrunner Chris Chibnall and the first woman cast as The Doctor since the series’ 1963 debut - only served to accelerate a gradual downward slide that began in the latter half of previous showrunner Steven Moffat’s seven-year tenure. The hero of BBC’s long-running sci-fi series Doctor Who is, famously, not a real medical doctor, but they have been a bit ill.
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