A new season of Doctor Who is an exciting, nerve-inducing thing—and that’s before you even look beyond the first episode. There have been some historic season openers over the years, but after last season kicked off with “Space Babies” (an episode about, well, babies in space that still leaves me baffled), Ncuti Gatwa’s era doesn’t have the best track record.
So fans will be delighted to know that the first episode of season two provides an infinitely stronger setup for the season than its predecessor. It’s an effective introduction to the Doctor’s sparky new companion Belinda Chandra (Varada Sethu), who after just one episode I already feel like I know better than his last travelling partner Ruby Sunday (Millie Gibson). The installment features impressive effects and sparky dialogue, with some unexpected twists and interesting aspects of political commentary woven in (albeit without the subtlety of, say, last year’s “Dot And Bubble”).
The episode begins, as many Doctor Who adventures do, with a flash back in time. We go back 17 years, where a mildly uncomfortable-seeming couple are sitting on a park bench, gazing up at the sky. She is Belinda, but you might recognize the actress as Mundy Flynn, a short-haired soldier from the 51st century who popped up in Gatwa’s first season. (Per Disney and the BBC, I will be referring to this as the second season of the show.) It’s Belinda’s birthday, and her awkward, somewhat cloying boyfriend Alan (Jonny Green) has bought her one of those name-a-star certificates. It’s a sweet but generic gift, one that appears personal but ultimately says very little about the buyer, the recipient, or their relationship.
We are welcomed back to the present day by the sound of the TARDIS materializing outside a hospital. The Doctor emerges, his grin wide, and strides into the building with all the confidence of a human-looking alien who’s never exactly taken a “you can’t go in there” warning seriously. Inside, Belinda is working as an ICU nurse, heading home after a long, hard day to passive-aggressive housemates who label everything in the fridge yet can’t even get Belinda’s name right.
Passed out splayed on top of the bed linen, Belinda is awoken in the middle of the night when her room starts shaking. Her star certificate, already fairly dishevelled, falls to the floor. An eerie yellow glow is beamed into her room, a bleary-eyed Belinda peaking through the slats in her blinds to see the unmistakable shape of a yellow spaceship in her garden.
She darts downstairs, just as two robots with bubble-shaped bodies and screens with cartoonish symbols in the place of faces take her door off its hinges. In low, metallic voices, the robots ask her to confirm that she is, indeed, Miss Belinda Chandra. “We come from the star Miss Belinda Chandra,” they say. Belinda, understandably, is bewildered. One of the robots holds up the very same star certificate that Belinda was given all those years ago. The realization hits her and the viewer in real time: A planet really was named after Belinda, and now the inhabitants want her as their queen.
Belinda? Not so impressed. “Oh, you are kidding me,” she says, displaying a tendency for sarcastic one-liners that instantly calls to mind the Doctor’s last really reluctant companion, Donna Noble (Catherine Tate). The robots escort her outside, and the ship blasts off, Belinda’s home getting smaller just as the Doctor runs after her, his arms outstretched. Using the TARDIS, the Doctor catches back up with the ship. But as soon as he comes into her line of vision, her world and words begin to glitch. “Oh, that’s complicated things,” he muses as the TARDIS’ lights flicker.
Belinda, meanwhile, arrives on the planet named after her: Miss Belinda Chandra Ville. There, she is introduced to a woman named Sasha 55 (Evelyn Miller), whose face twitches as she explains that the civilians now serve “robot overlords” before whispering to Belinda to “please help us.” As their queen, Belinda is taken inside to her throne, where she walks past a line of other humans dressed in the same crumpled beige linen fabric as Sasha 55. (Miss Belinda Chandra Ville is clearly not a planet with a steamer.) Among them—although Belinda doesn’t realize it— stands the Doctor, his hair a little longer than the cropped cut Gatwa has sported on our screens so far.
If Belinda looks uncomfortable on the throne, imagine her face when a heart appears on the robot’s screens and they tell her that they’re there to celebrate her royal wedding. Her brow near-constantly furrowed at this point, Belinda is not having it. “Who am I marrying, a spark plug?” she jokes. Nope, it’s just a horrifying robot creation, with red and green eyes, one half open, called the A.I. Generator. This creature says that it will show the citizens “no pity, no kindness, no mercy” by melding “queen and machine” and creating a human-robot hybrid in her. “And you want me to marry it?” Belinda says, not exactly thrilled by this premise.
Stepping forward in his official position as the crew’s “designated historian”, the Doctor gives Belinda a secret message that the robots can’t hear every ninth word and simultaneously readies the other civilians to prepare to attack. On the Doctor’s command, a dramatic and visually impressive battle scene unfurls, leading to the escape of the Doctor and Belinda and the tragic death of Sasha 55 in the crossfire.
Perhaps powered by the realization that many of the rebels hate her, Belinda gets straight to medical work on the makeshift ward set up in the north zone. Here, both parties have their big revelations. Belinda is fascinated to learn the truth of the Time Lord body. “Have you got two hearts?” She asks, incredulous. The Doctor grins. “Padam, padam.” He’s just realised that Belinda looks a hell of a lot like Mundy Flynn from “Boom.” Maybe this is why he was told she was someone important he should look out for? “But I’m not, I’m really not. Why me?” Belinda replies, echoing nearly word for word Donna’s repeated protestations that she was “nothing special” when she travelled with the 10th Doctor (and look how that turned out).
The Doctor explains that it’s the mixed-up timelines from the star certificate that’s causing the problems, not her. Yet one rebel snarls, “This is all your fault, Queen Belinda”—and she agrees. Sneaking out of the Doctor’s sight, Belinda turns back on a harmless robot to signal their whereabouts to the robots. When they crash in, she shouts to her comrades that this is her doing: “My name is Miss Belinda Chandra. It’s about time I owned it.”
Belinda is taken to the fearsome A.I. Generator, who promises—albeit not all that convincingly—that she will find “serenity” in their marriage. Showing surprising bravery, she makes the robots promise to honor her death and end the war. “I’m doing this for you,” she says. “Just remember me as Belinda. You can drop the miss. Never liked it anyway.”
“Are you married?” the A.I. Generator asks. The question triggers something in Belinda. “That’s what he said. Those were his exact words,” she muses. The “he” in question is Alan, Belinda’s former boyfriend, the one who didn’t understand why she wouldn’t want to be known as “Miss Belinda Chandra” when he bought her a star, then ended up getting dumped when he tried to tell her how to dress and behave mid-marriage proposal.
It hits Belinda and the Doctor. This isn’t the A.I. Generator, but Al, short for Alan. The giant face opens up and an even more frightening sight is revealed inside. Alan has become a human-robot hybrid. He is half C3PO, his skin plastered in glittering gold panels, half Mad Max cyborg nightmare, with a missing torso and just one bloodshot eye that stares at Belinda with a manic glint. (The costume and make-up team doing some of their best work here.)
Never one for an appropriate response, Belinda says: “For god sake Alan, what are you doing here? I thought you’d moved to Margate?” “Stargate,” Alan replies, with a cheesy not-even pun that makes for a cheap and easy laugh. The robots came for Alan, but thanks to the time fracture arrived when robots and humans lived in harmony. In fact, Alan, drunk on power, was the one who started the robot revolution. “You’ve taken coercive control and made it complete control of the whole planet,” Belinda says, horrified, before branding Miss Belinda Chandra Ville “planet of the incels.” The spelling out is pretty heavy-handed, but Sethu is so powerful in this moment you can forgive some clunky writing. Alan, meanwhile, is grotesque, his tongue wiggling horribly against the back of his teeth as he pants excitedly.
With Alan brandishing his certificate to unite them, Belinda moves forwards towards her apparent fate, just as the Doctor passes her the other version of the star certificate. When the two documents touch, time ripples once more. An experimental vignette follows, with Alan, the Doctor, and Belinda ripped apart and reappearing in dimly lit but brightly colored empty rooms as younger and older versions of themselves flash into frame.
The Doctor is able to grab Belinda and pull her out, rescuing her while Alan is shrunk back down to a sperm and egg then rather unceremoniously swept up by a small cleaning robot. Understandably reeling, Belinda is left wondering WTF she’s just experienced. “This place is nuts,” she babbles, eliciting a “yas, queen!” and impressively limber high kick from the Time Lord.
Peace reigns, as the robots, now smiling, promise reparations for the civilians. Belinda is keen to get home and sceptical of the Doctor, despite his theories that they are “connected”. “I am not one of your adventures,” she says, asking him to take her home to the date she left: May 24, 2025. Yet when he pulls a lever, the TARDIS jolts and bounces off May 24. The pair run to the door and gaze at the wonders of space (as with the first season, the visual effects in these scenes are still astounding), but the Doctor says something is wrong. They’ll have to go “the long way ’round” to get Belinda back, he adds, and the TARDIS dematerialises. At least she’s en route.
But as the ship leaves, we see what the Doctor didn’t, as the Eiffel Tower, a black London cab, the Statue of Liberty all float into the space where the TARDIS was. They’re debris from a planet that is no longer there, along with a calendar showing that Earth never made it past May 24, 2025. It’s a heart-stopping twist, one setting up a season gearing up to be as unexpected as Gatwa’s new co-star.
Stray observations
- • It seems unlikely that Gatwa’s Doctor is ever going to be given a staple costume like his predecessors, which is a shame because this week’s look might just be my favorite. I mean, a pinstripe kilt with matching waistcoat and a matching tartan bomber jacket? Scots chic to the extreme!
- • As someone who has always found the whole explanation of Doctor Who’s timelines as “timey-wimey” to be pretty cheesy, Belinda responding to the term with “Am I six?” made for the perfect mic drop.
- • The mysterious Mrs. Flood (Anita Dobson) is still lurking around, this time as Belinda’s neighbor, hiding from the Doctor and breaking the fourth wall. I know we’ll surely find out about her this season, but can they hurry up, please?
- • I’m always a sucker for little details, and love the fact that the date of Belinda’s departure the whole series appears to be hinging on is the exact day of the season-two finale.
