GALLERY
CAST
Regular Cast
David Tennant (The Doctor), Catherine Tate (Donna Noble)
Guest Cast
Yasmin Finney (Rose Noble), Miriam Margolyes (Voice of the Meep), Karl Collins (Shaun Temple), Matt Green (BBC Reporter), Jamie Cho (Colonel Chan), Ruth Madeley (Shirley Bingham), Jacqueline King (Sylvia Noble), Fudge Merchandani (Dara Lall), Cecily Fay (The Meep), Brian Herring, Phill Woodfine (Meep Animatronics), Robert Strange (Wrarth Warrior 1), Stephen Love (Wrarth Warrior 2), Jordan Benjamin (Wrarth Warrior 3), Vassili Psaltopoulos (Wrarth Warrior 4), Isabella Carey (Soldier), Ronak Patani (Major Singh), Ned Porteous (Voice of Zogroth), John Hopkinson (Voice of Zreeg), Anna Martine Freeman (Chief Technician), Archie Backhouse (Sergeant)
CREW
| Written by | Russell T Davies |
| Directed by | Rachel Tahalay |
| Produced by | Vicki Delow |
SYPNOSIS
The Doctor is caught in a fight to the death as a spaceship crash-lands on London. But as the battle wreaks havoc, destiny is converging on The Doctor’s old friend, Donna..
PLOT
In a cold opening in the vastness of the universe, the Fourteenth Doctor recaps the adventures he once had with Donna Noble. He notes after she had gained his memories and intelligence during their last adventure, he had to completely wipe her mind of their adventures and of the Doctor himself to save her life, as it put her in danger. Donna on the other hand can’t shake the feeling that deep down something is missing in her life, however there’s one thing on The Doctor’s mind right now that he can’t fully figure out or understand: his face. Why has he regenerated back into a body identical to his tenth incarnation? The Doctor has only one guess: it has something to do with Donna, and maybe the last time they were together wasn’t the end of their story like he originally believed.
The TARDIS lands in London in 2023, as The Doctor ventures out and strolls down the road. He wanders into a bustle of people before seeing a woman holding a large pile of boxes, which he tries to help with. He helps her with a few and is shocked to discover Donna, who doesn’t remember him. Her daughter, Rose Noble, runs up as Donna becomes distracted with her boxes, missing the spaceship that crashes to earth not too far away. Donna and Rose head off right before Shaun Temple drives up in his taxi. The Doctor convinces Shaun to take him to the crash, and as they drive he pumps Shaun for information, claiming to be a friend of Nerys’s.
The Doctor manages to access the crash site inside the steelworks even as UNIT has established a perimeter around it. He isolates himself inside and begins to analyse the data from the crash as Shirley Anne Bingham comes up and offers him her readings on the site. He expresses hesitancy to work with UNIT — he doesn’t fully know who he is at the moment. He has his old face again and he’s not sure what to make of that, or of the fact that he ran into Donna Noble almost immediately after. Soldiers come up and mention that they’ve found the escape pod to the wreck and are sending a team after it, prompting The Doctor to leave with them.
After The Doctor leaves, UNIT manages to unlock the ship and sends a squad of soldiers to secure whatever’s inside. As the door opens, tendrils of light flow out into the eyes of the soldiers, leaving them aglow as they turn and walk away.
Meanwhile Rose and Donna return to their house and three boys (including Josie Wingate’s son) on bikes harass Rose by calling her “Jason”, her deadname. Donna is appalled by this, but Rose tells her to leave it. They come back to see Sylvia who’s cooking dinner. Donna asks Sylvia if she heard anything about the spaceship that everyone’s been talking about, which Sylvia resolutely denies. Rose finds a creature as she’s taking out the recycling. The creature names itself The Meep and insists that there are others after it, “monsters”. Rose hides the Meep in her backyard shed though Donna stumbles in. Donna first mistakes the Meep for a stuffed toy before prodding it in the eye, realiSing that it’s alive and panicking. The Meep tries to calm Donna down and Sylvia intervenes, insisting that the entire thing is just a hallucination – the Meep doesn’t exist. The Doctor shows up at their house after UNIT stops nearby, realising that something must have happened, unlocking the door using his sonic screwdriver.
The UNIT team with glowing eyes order those who are guarding the escape pod back to the steelworks and begin to search for the Meep.
The Nobles, the Meep, The Doctor, and Shaun, who came in not too long after The Doctor, discuss what to do with the Meep, with The Doctor and Sylvia insisting that he should take the Meep. The Meep explains to them all that the Wrarth Warriors used to hunt meeps for their fur, and when the rest of the galaxy put a stop to the practice they decided to kill the entire species. UNIT soldiers knock at the door, and as The Doctor answers it he scrolls up their visors, seeing glowing eyes. The Doctor closes the door on them right as the back entrance is smashed open by two Wrarth Warriors, the UNIT soldiers crashing through almost immediately after. The Doctor, the Noble family, and the Meep escape through the attics on the street using the sonic screwdriver to weaken the brick walls between them. The group drives off and stops in a car park.
The Doctor dons a wig and uses his sonic screwdriver to summon two Wrarth Warriors, Zogroth and Zreeg. The Doctor notes how there was no damage done to the taxi and that the fallen UNIT soldiers weren’t killed, merely unconscious. The Wrarth Warriors confirm, their weapons apply an anesthetic. They consider the tale of the meep to be tragic, a species whose sun turned psychedelic and mutated them all into maniacs bent on conquest. The Wrarth Warriors were summoned to stop their conquest. As they all fight to the death, only this last one remains, their leader, the worst of them all, the Meep. The Doctor asks the Meep if they have anything to say in their defense. Instead, the Meep pulls out a weapon and kills both of the Wrarth Warriors as UNIT soldiers, brainwashed by the psychedelic sun, arrive. The Doctor manages to convince the Meep that they’re more useful as hostages than dead.
The Meep takes the group back to the steelworks and shows off the ship present there. The Doctor insists that the ship can’t be used – it has a dagger drive, it gets its power for propulsion by stabbing downwards, it would use the whole of London as fuel. The Meep laughs and orders the group taken aboard the ship. Shirley assaults the soldiers taking them aboard and frees The Doctor and the Nobles, telling him that he needs to get aboard to stop it from taking off and pointing the family towards an exit. As he runs away, Donna decides to follow him, calling him “Doctor” for the first time. She enters the ship after him, watching him as he darts around, flipping switches and buttons to prevent the takeoff as best he can. The Meep lowers a screen from above, splitting the room in two, each caught on the other side as he still tries his best to stop it. Time runs out as the Meep activates the dagger drive.
The Doctor explains to Donna that time’s run out, that there’s only one chance left. Donna insists that he needs to do it – that there’s no time to wait. It will kill her, she’s told, and she accepts that, because it will save her daughter, and the lives of everyone else in London. The Doctor lowers the mental block she has in her head and regeneration energy spills out of her. In a flurry of technobabble the two set to work on dismantling the ship. The drive fails, and Donna collapses. Soldiers of the Meep storm in to kill The Doctor, the light drains out of their eyes, and Donna gets back up. Rose absorbed aspects of the Doctor’s mind that were too much for Donna both as she was born and as the mental block fell away, allowing her to turn off the psychedelic sun emitters.
The Wrarth Warriors show up to arrest the Meep and imprison them for ten thousand years, and as they part, the Meep teases The Doctor that two hearted species are so rare – someone called “the Boss” will be told about him. The Doctor is put off by this but brushes it aside, returning to the issue of Rose and Donna having too much knowledge for any human, it was slowed down but not stopped. Rose and Donna acknowledge this, but say that there’s just another way, one men would never understand. They decide to just let the power go.
The Doctor suggests to Donna that they take one last trip in the TARDIS, to see Wilf, one last time, for him to no longer have to worry about all the secrets he’s kept. They enter a fully revamped TARDIS interior that the two of them spend some time goggling over, complete with a coffee maker. The Doctor offers Donna a coffee. She joyfully accepts, and not two minutes later spills it on the TARDIS console, causing it to burst into flames and take off.
NOTES
The psychic paper takes time to properly reflect The Doctor’s gender in titles, as the change is still recent. When The Doctor attempts the title “Master”, it says “Mistress” instead.
Rose points out that The Doctor assumes the Meep’s pronouns, bringing up gender identity.
Although not explicit at the time of release, the Redacted audio drama Redemption leads directly into The Star Beast, as the characters Cleo Proctor and Apex Costa watch the Meep’s star cruiser fly through the skies of Camden Town. [nb 1]
Doctor Who The Official Annual 2024 contained several works of fiction which teased some of the characters in The Star Beast:
The short story We Are Family hinted towards the reunion of the Nobles and the Doctor, and Rose meeting the Meep.
The Doctor mentions “wearing a bowtie”, being “a Scotsman”, and “a woman” in his last three incarnations.
Rose’s toy designs are based on Daleks, Cybermen, Judoon, Ood, Lupari and Adipose.
Bingham briefly mistakes the Fourteenth Doctor for the Tenth, referencing his involvement with UNIT in The Sontaran Stratagem etc. The Doctor likewise recalls that he was UNIT’s first scientific advisor, as seen in Spearhead from Space.
The TARDIS surprises The Doctor with a new console room, which it had previously done in The Eleventh Hour and The Ghost Monument
The Doctor carries a Barrister’s Wig and conducts a trial like his fourth incarnation in The Stones of Blood.
The Doctor once more shouts Allons-y when encountering Shaun in his taxi, a common catchphrase from his tenth incarnation.
The Doctor also mentions the Shadow Proclamation again, this time using Protocols 15P and 6.
The Doctor and Shirley mention Jammie Dodger biscuits. It was a favourite food of the Eleventh Doctor as seen in Victory of the Daleks and The Bells of Saint John.
The Doctor mentions the Sonic Screwdriver is good at resonating concrete. He mentioned this before in the episode The Doctor Dances.
The Sonic Screwdriver however is still useless against a Deadlock seal. This was first mentioned in Bad Wolf
Donna spilling coffee on the TARDIS console has a similar reaction when Iris Wildthyme spilt gin on her TARDIS’ console in Iris Wildthyme and the Panda Invasion
The Star Beast marks the first appearance of the Fourteenth Doctor’s sonic screwdriver on television.
The Doctor’s Theme is briefly heard when The Doctor uses his screwdriver. Likewise, a variation of the Eleventh Doctor theme song “I Am The Doctor” is heard in this episode.
The title card includes a credit for Pat Mills and Dave Gibbons as the writers of the comic story it was based on.
The Star Beast aired one year, one month, and two days after The Power of the Doctor, marking the longest gap between two consecutive stories since the show’s return to TV in 2005.
It’s the first time since Doctor Who that the executive producers have been credited straight after the title sequence.
This is the first episode to air on Disney+ internationally. The Disney logo also appeared in the endboard.
An in-vision commentary was released on BBC iPlayer immediately after the episode, which featured David Tennant, Phil Collinson, and Vicki Delow. It was recorded on 19th April 2023, according to Georgia Tennant’s Instagram post, in which Tennant talks about Russell T Davies possibly not being able to do it the next day.
Though The Star Beast is not the first TV story to be adapted from other media, most other adaptations were written by the the same person as the original source material, such as Dalek (adapted from Jubilee, Human Nature, and The Lodger.
Comparison with comic version
Doctor Who and the Star Beast is also a comic strip story by Pat Mills and John Wagner, which featured the Fourth Doctor meeting Sharon Davies after she had been tricked by Beep the Meep, with The Star Beast featuring the Fourteenth Doctor meeting Rose Noble during a reunion with Donna Noble that involves Rose being tricked by the Meep.
Rather than over a cup of tea at a kitchen table, the Wrarth Warriors explain the Meep’s villainous nature in a mock trial in a car park, and are swiftly killed by the Meep, while they survived to arrest him in the comic