- 10 hours ago
Star Trek, Aliens... and Wall-E? Doctor Who's in sci-fi heaven. Here’s our breakdown of Season 1's first episode - Space Babies!
Category
🎥
Short filmTranscript
00:00Hello everybody, Ellie here for Who Culture and I hope everybody has recovered from the double dose
00:05of Doctor Who that we got this weekend. I think I've just about calmed down, but no rest for the
00:10wicked because we've got plenty more to discuss with regards to these two episodes. So this video
00:15is going to focus only on Space Babies and there will be another one coming for The Devil's Chord.
00:20But we're going to discuss the easter eggs that we have spotted in this episode, episode one of
00:25season one. Now since the 2005 revival, most Doctor Who episodes have a cold open, which typically
00:32kind of sets the tone, maybe introduces the villain, then we go into the title sequence. Space Babies
00:38doesn't have this, it starts directly with the title sequence and this actually mirrors the very first
00:43episode of Russell T Davies' first series as showrunner, Rose, also started from the beginning
00:49with the title sequence. So there's a nice synergy here between series one and season one. The
00:55Doctor's finger snap to close the TARDIS doors. Obviously this was first introduced in the episode
01:00Forest of the Dead, you know, the one with River where she literally says that he can open the doors
01:05with the snap of his fingers and he's like, no I can't and then what? Oh my god I can! And this has
01:10been shown in various other episodes since then. We saw it in The Eleventh Hour, Day of the Moon and
01:16plenty of other episodes as well. In this particular episode it seems that it does more than just shut the
01:21door because the lights changed and all sorts of other things happened. So I think maybe the
01:25Doctor's learning that he can control the TARDIS in other ways with the snap of his fingers
01:29apparently. While they're in the TARDIS the Doctor explains that on Gallifrey the Time Lords tended to
01:35use titles like the Doctor rather than people's names. One of the names that was mentioned was
01:41the Rani. So the Rani is a renegade Time Lord who was a big villain for the 6th and 7th Doctors in the
01:47classic era of Doctor Who. She was last seen in 1987's Time and the Rani unless you want to count them
01:54the 1993 charity Doctor Who EastEnders crossover Dimensions in Time but I'll let you decide if
02:00that counts or not. Every single time there's a mysterious new character in Doctor Who, especially
02:04if they are a Time Lord, the Rani's name is thrown into the mix and there's speculation that the Rani
02:10will be returning. So I have no doubt that the mention of the Rani again here will just reignite
02:15those theories and all the speculation that the Rani will be returning at some point soon.
02:21But the Rani is not the only title mentioned here. We also have mention of the Bishop and the
02:26Conquisitor. Bishop was actually mentioned twice in this episode. It's mentioned here in this scene
02:31at the beginning. It's also mentioned again at the very end. So as it stands there is not an existing
02:36Doctor Who character, especially a Time Lord character, that's known as the Bishop. But this
02:40feels like maybe it's a hint, especially because it was mentioned twice, that maybe we will be
02:45introduced to a new Time Lord character at some point and maybe it will be the Bishop. Now the
02:49Conquisitor actually is an existing character to a degree. The Conquisitor is actually a Gallifreyan
02:55character from the expanded universe. And this character was featured in The Book of the Enemy,
03:01which is a novel in the Faction Paradox series, which in itself is a spin-off of the 1997
03:078th Doctor novel Alien Bodies. It's all very complicated, it's very niche, very deep, but we do know that
03:13Russell T Davies is a big ol' nerd. So it wouldn't be surprising if he would go this deep
03:19cut with the references that he makes. The Doctor then goes on to explain that Gallifrey and the
03:23Time Lords are all gone and that there was a genocide. And I would presume that this is in
03:28reference to the Master's destruction of Gallifrey and then the subsequent explosion using the death
03:34particle shortly after that kind of destroyed all organic matter on Gallifrey. Also in this moment,
03:39there's a slight musical motif to This Is Gallifrey, which is music that was very prominent,
03:45particularly in series three of Doctor Who. So there's a little just motif from Murray Gold in
03:50reference to Gallifrey and that musical reference as well.
03:56So the one that was adopted was the only one left?
03:59So once we're back in the TARDIS, the Doctor throws his coat over the TARDIS railing. And this
04:03is something that David Tennant's Tenth Doctor did a lot. He was famous for doing this. And even when
04:09David Tennant returned as the Fourteenth Doctor, he did the same thing in the Starbeast. Now in my
04:14mind, it's kind of like a rolling up the sleeves, things are getting serious thing. But it does very
04:18much instill this idea that all of those memories and habits of all the previous incarnations still
04:24exist within the next incarnation. So the Doctor asks Ruby to give him some random numbers to create
04:30a year to travel to. And she says 21506. Now we've been talking a lot about Susan Foreman on this
04:37channel. And actually we're going to do a little bit more discussion about Susan in the Devil's
04:41Chord breakdown. But for now, let's talk about another slight intentional connection that there
04:46might be here. So 2150 is the year that Earth was invaded by the Daleks in the Peter Cushing
04:52Doctor Who movie, Daleks Invasion Earth 2150 AD. Now that's actually non-canon, but it is great and
04:59you should definitely go and watch it if you haven't. It's got Bernard Cribbins in it, so if that's not a
05:03selling point, I don't know what is. So the movie was an adaptation of the Doctor Who serial, The
05:07Daleks Invasion of Earth, which is the serial where Susan Foreman, who is the Doctor's original
05:13companion, the Doctor's granddaughter, was left behind on Earth. Now granted, Ruby obviously adds
05:18the number six onto the end here, but maybe there is a connection. A slight nod towards the year 2150
05:25and the Dalek Invasion and Susan being left behind. At the very least, it could have been a nod to the
05:30Peter Cushing movies. The one you've all been waiting for, folks, Star Trek name drop. Ruby
05:35literally says when she realises that the TARDIS has gone through the walls, it's like the matter
05:40transporter in Star Trek and the Doctor says, we gotta visit them one day. It's pretty much
05:44confirmation that the Star Trek universe and the Hooniverse are one and the same. Now the thing is,
05:50Star Trek has been referenced in Doctor Who before. Rose kept wanting the Doctor to be more Spock-like.
05:56There also was a crossover in a comic book where the 11th Doctor met Captain Picard. But every
06:02reference to Star Trek that we've seen so far has been in reference to it as a fictional thing,
06:07as opposed to a reality. Now we know that Russell T. Davis is a Trekkie, and he even commented on this
06:13inclusion of the Star Trek reference in an interview with Collider, and this is what he said.
06:17The interesting thing about that reference is it's not the first time Doctor Who's referenced
06:21Star Trek, but it is the first time Doctor Who's referenced Star Trek as if it's real. He says,
06:26let's go visit them, so I think that should just cause excited ripples around the world.
06:30We see the Doctor and the Companion standing in front of a giant space window. Now this is a
06:35common sight for Doctor Who, and surely in this particular instance was a good nod towards Russell
06:40T. Davis' episode from his first era, The End of the World. This was also the second episode
06:46between the Doctor and a new companion. In this case it was Nine and Rose, and if you include
06:51the church on Ruby Road, this too. Space Babies 2 is the second episode between a Doctor and their
06:56new companion. Now the concept was also used in The Beast Below, where the 11th Doctor and Amy Pond
07:01had a very similar situation, and again this was their second episode together, so it seems like a
07:06common theme for the second episode to show this similar shot. Also in the scene, the Doctor
07:11Sonic's Ruby's phone so she can phone Carla. This is like a direct copy and paste of the scene in
07:18The End of the World. So again, it's nice to see these kind of repeated instances, these common
07:22themes that have come over from Russell T. Davis' first era into his second era.
07:27Mavity! Mavity is on the screen! Obviously we know from Wild Blue Yonder, Doctor and Donna
07:34interfered a little bit with history and influenced Isaac Newton to form the word Mavity instead of
07:40Gravity. And since then, Mavity has been the new Gravity in any Doctor Who episode. We had all the
07:46mass and density and Mavity exists in the glove, which was a line directly from the church on Ruby
07:51Road. Here on the screen it says Mavity, not Gravity, so it's clearly a running gag at this point.
07:56History has been altered and they're sticking with it. Mavity, what is Gravity?
08:02Mavity!
08:03The Doctor says that the TARDIS has got a perception filter that translates the on-screen text for
08:09Ruby to be able to read. Now, perception filters have been used throughout Doctor Who, especially
08:14New Who, to disguise people and objects. For example, you've got the Doctor's Fob Watch in
08:19Human Nature and the Family of Blood, and then obviously the Master has the same thing. You've
08:23got the top of Craig's House in the Lodger. Now, as far as I can tell, this is the first time they've
08:28used a perception filter as a translation device. Usually the explanation for why a companion can
08:34understand all languages is the TARDIS translation matrix, as opposed to a perception filter. The
08:41translation matrix basically means that anyone who travels in the TARDIS has this kind of
08:45automatically applied thing in their brains where they can read and understand all languages that
08:51they come across as like a little bonus of travelling in the TARDIS. But this seems to give a different
08:56explanation for that. Another Star Trek reference! Captain Poppy's command chair. Pretty reminiscent of
09:03Captain Kirk's command chair in the original series on the Enterprise, especially the buttons on the
09:09sides and the shape of it from behind. So, Ruby is going through the names of the different babies,
09:14and one of the babies is called Boo. Now, this wouldn't be the first Disney baby with the name Boo.
09:19Of course, there is young little Boo from Monsters, Inc. And I know that some of you are going to go,
09:25oh, you just referred to Doctor Who as Disney, but kind of is at this point. Now, Ruby also says that
09:30one of the babies is called Tasha, and considering all of the other Star Trek references throughout
09:34this episode, it's possible that this could be in reference to the Next Generation character Tasha
09:39Yar, who was a bridge officer on the Enterprise D. And this is a baby bridge officer on the Space
09:46Baby Station. Even more Star Trek references! So, we see the original Space Station crew on the
09:53little screens at one point. The uniforms they're wearing very much look like they were inspired by
09:58Star Trek uniforms, all the way down to the colours. You've got the captain wearing red,
10:02you've got the chief engineer wearing yellow, and you've got the comms officer wearing blue.
10:07Usually, the comms officer will be seen in Star Trek wearing yellow or red, but it's not impossible
10:11for them to be wearing blue, and before anyone comes to me, I asked my resident Trek encyclopedia,
10:17Sean Ferrick, if that was possible. He said it was. So, as we've said, Russell T. Davis is a big fan
10:22of Star Trek, so I don't believe for a second that this wasn't done on purpose. While we're on the
10:27topic of those original Space Station officers, one of them is Chief Engineer Lucia Colosanto. Now,
10:34this is extremely deep cut, but this is not the first member of the Colosanto family to have appeared
10:40in the Hooniverse. All the way back in Series 4's turn left, when Donna has her own little parallel world
10:46created around her. There is a moment where she and her family are put into a house in Leeds with
10:52many other refugees, and one of those refugees is Rocco Colosanto. He's a brilliant character,
10:59he's part of one of the most poignant scenes in the entire episode, so refresh your memories on that
11:03if you haven't, if you've forgotten it. The fourth series of Torchwood, Miracle Day,
11:12there's a character called Olivia Colosanto, played by Nanar Visitor. Just another Star Trek
11:18reference there. Olivia's grandfather was Angelo Colosanto, who had a very close relationship with
11:23Captain Jack Harkness in New York in the 1920s. Now, obviously, it's not been explicitly stated that
11:29all of these Colosantos are part of the same lineage, but we like to think that they are,
11:34especially when you think about the fact that Angelo and Rocco are both Italian,
11:39and it would seem that Lucia is also Italian, especially when you look at the actress who
11:44played her made a post on Instagram and said that she was playing an Italian astronaut. So I think
11:50it's supposed to be that all of these Colosantos are from the same family. Another one of those crew
11:57members on the screen was, of course, Susan Twist. Now, I think I just need to just remind everyone,
12:03because I have fallen into this trap as well. Susan Twist is the name of the actress, not the
12:07character, but because there's so many different characters, we all just keep referring to this
12:12one overall mystery as Susan Twist. So as of Space Babies, Susan Twist has had three separate,
12:18seemingly unrelated appearances in Doctor Who. Mrs. Meridue in Wild Blue Yonder, there was a woman
12:24in a pub in the church on Ruby Road, and now the comms officer here in Space Babies. Now,
12:29she also has a small role in The Devil's Chord as well, and we've seen in the trailers for Season 1
12:34that she's going to appear in at least the finale. But who she is, what her motives are,
12:39how she's appearing as all these various different people does remain to be seen at this point. But
12:44arguably, this is one of the most fascinating mysteries of the show so far. I would go as far
12:50as to say I'm more intrigued by who this random person is than I am about who Ruby is at this point.
12:55So Jocelyn mentions the nanny filter. Basically translates whatever the person is saying into a nicer
13:02way of saying it, you know. So we all know what waste products was supposed to be,
13:07or what an illegitimate child was supposed to be. Nanny is spelt N-A-N-E. Now I have no doubt that
13:16again, this is another nod to a Disney Pixar character, Wally. And when you actually look at
13:21that film with the idea of the humans that are kind of sat in their high-tech chairs and they're
13:25moving around, it actually is quite similar to the image we have of the Space Babies, zooming around in
13:31their little robot prams. Jocelyn blasts the bogeyman out of an airlock into space, or at least she
13:38tries to blast the bogeyman out of an airlock into space. This is almost definitely a direct nod to
13:44the film Aliens, when Ripley does pretty much the exact same thing, blasts the alien queen out of an
13:51airlock. Obviously Ripley has a little bit more success than Jocelyn does, but it does make you
13:56wonder that if the Doctor was there when Ripley was doing that, whether he would feel sorry for the
14:00alien queen, as he did for the bogeyman, or whether he would agree that that one needs to be spaced.
14:05The Doctor says to Ruby, as he is leaving the TARDIS to go and see Carla, tell your mum not to
14:10slap me. Now this is a trope for Russell T. Davis' Doctor Who, for the Doctor to be slapped by the
14:15companion's mother. The ninth Doctor was slapped by Jackie Tyler because she thought that he had
14:19kidnapped her. The tenth Doctor was slapped by Martha's mother, Francine, because she's trying to
14:24warn Martha to stay away from the Doctor. And then the fourteenth Doctor was slapped by Sylvia,
14:29which is Donna's mum, because she was trying to protect Donna from her mind exploding in the
14:35Star Beast. So it seems that Fifteen probably has a little bit of PTSD when it comes to mothers of
14:40his companions. Now to be fair, Carla actually has very good reason to slap the Doctor when you look
14:45at the damage he has just caused to her kitchen ceiling. We have the Doctor performing a scan on
14:51Ruby inside the TARDIS, because like us, he is very confused about who the hell she is and where
14:57the hell she's come from. Now the scan didn't actually reveal anything that we didn't already
15:01know, but it did feel like a direct repeat of a moment that we had in series six. So we have the
15:07eleventh Doctor scanning Amy Pond to check whether she was or wasn't pregnant, because at one moment
15:12she said she was, and then all of a sudden she wasn't. And the TARDIS couldn't make up its mind,
15:16it just kept flittering between pregnant, not pregnant, it couldn't decide. This is because Amy was
15:21actually in two places at once, we had the ganger version and the real version. To cut a very long,
15:25complicated story short, things were not as they seemed. So is this a little bit of an indication
15:30that things are not as they seem with Ruby? I mean, we kind of already know that things are not as
15:34they seem with Ruby, but it definitely indicates that there's something more to this character
15:41that remains to be seen at this point. Especially when you filter in the fact that there was snow in
15:46the TARDIS while this scan was going on. As I mentioned at the beginning, we will have an easter
15:50egg video for The Devil's Chord coming out very soon as well, so keep your eyes peeled for that,
15:55and go check out our ups and downs reviews for both episodes if you haven't already.
15:59In the meantime, I've been Ellie for WhoCulture, and in the words of Riversong herself, goodbye, sweeties.
Be the first to comment