In which the Doctor and Belinda visit the Harmony Arena, in the year 2925. This vast space station is about to play host to the 803rd Interstellar Song Contest - a future incarnation of Earth's Eurovision Song Contest. The TARDIS has materialised inside one of the VIP Pods. One of the presenters is Rylan Clark, who has been taken out of cryogenic suspension for the event. The Vindicator has been set up and the readings taken - but, on seeing Rylan, Belinda wishes to stay and see the show, and the Doctor agrees.
She enjoyed the contest as a child, and the Doctor recalls being present in 1974 when ABBA won with Waterloo. It is announced that the show is going out live to some 3 trillion viewers across the western galactic arm.
Their arrival has been noted by Mrs Flood who is also in the audience - observing them through a pair of opera glasses. She too decides to stay and see the show, as she has managed to record the Vindicator readings. This is the final one required.
As the Doctor and Belinda wonder who should be in this Pod, the actual ticket holders - Gary and Mike Gabbaston - are locked out. They are barred from entering by a robotic Droneguard, which simply states that "Phase One is completed" before moving off.
In the production gallery, the Droneguards there repeat the same phrase. In charge here, directing the broadcast, is Nina Maxwell. She is surprised when a young man from the planet Hellion enters - given access by one of her crew, Wynn Aura-Kinn. His name is Kid, and Wynn is his girlfriend. He is armed, and announces that he has taken over the Droneguards.
The Doctor spots the discrepancy between the broadcast, which can be viewed in the Pod, and what they can see on stage. He leaves the Pod to investigate.
Nina is forced to give Kid access to the arena's systems. He sends a message to Rylan, before shutting down the arena's air shield. Everyone in the auditorium is ejected into space - including the Doctor, the TARDIS, and Mrs Flood. They become frozen, but a gravity field prevents them from floating away - and Nina tells Kid that they could all still be saved. The Pods have an emergency override which seals them, so Belinda is safe. These were activated by Wynn. Those in the corridors and rooms outside the main arena are also unharmed.
Kid has no interest in saving anyone, telling Nina that he has been called a monster all his life due to being a Hellion. He orders the Droneguards to bring in a delta wave generator for the final phase of his scheme.
A panicking Belinda leaves the Pod and meets Cora, who attempts to calm her. She also explains that the station is in a communications lockdown, to prevent people betting on the contest, so no-one will be able to come to their aid until after the show has ended. They encounter a man named Len, who is a member of the tech team. He is examining the computer systems and finds that something is rewriting them.
Nina realises that she cannot reason with Kid, but she noted that Wynn saved those in the Pods. She therefore tries to speak to her. This fails to work. What they are doing, they are doing for Hellia.
In space, the rapidly freezing Doctor has a vision of his granddaughter Susan, standing in the TARDIS, urging him to go back and find her...
He spots a confetti cannon floating nearby and grabs it - using it to blast himself towards one of the station's airlocks. He is given access by Gary and Mike. The latter is a nurse, and he is able to use a first aid medi-kit to fully revive him.
He explains that he was able to increase the strength of the gravity field outside, just before being ejected, so everyone outside can indeed be saved. They are in a form of cryogenic suspension at present.
Kid rigs the delta wave generator to activate on reaching a specific song. The Doctor breaks into the computer system and discovers this. If broadcast, it will destroy the brains of all 3 trillion viewers. It is currently 70% ready.
The computer script is recognised as Hellion. This race had a beautiful world, but is now an ecological wasteland. This has always been blamed on the Hellions themselves, who have a terrible reputation across the galaxy. Cora, however, tries to defend them.
The Doctor, Gary and Mike come to a museum dedicated to the contest, where there is a computer access panel. Gary is a technician, specialising in hologram systems. To demonstrate his expertise, he operates a hologram of Graham Norton.
The Doctor then experiences another vision of Susan...
In the gallery, Kid detects that the computer is being tampered with and appears on the machine being worked on by the Doctor. Elsewhere, Belinda and Cora are also able to see the exchange between Kid and the Doctor, though they cannot be seen by them. Belinda is pleased to see that the Doctor has survived - whilst the Doctor is still unaware of her fate.
The Doctor and Kid threaten each other, with Kid stating that he will open all the airlocks and kill the survivors throughout the station. The Doctor, in turn, tells Kid that he will track him down and throw him out into space. Belinda is shocked to hear him speak like this. Wynn appears to tell Kid that the generator is now at 95%, and she is recognised by Cora.
Kid terminates the conversation and sends Droneguards to the museum to kill the Doctor, after tracing his location.
Cora admits to Belinda that she knew Kid and Wynn as children. He got his name as his mother was killed before she could tell anyone his real one. She confesses that she is actually a Hellion, and removes her wig to show the stumps where her horns used to be.
She tells of how Hellia was home to a unique poppy which was used to flavour a type of popular honey, marketed by the Corporation, who had bought out the planet and its people. After stripping Hellia of its poppies, the Corporation then ensured that none could ever be grown again and so become a source of competition for them. They ruined the planet, and helped spread the terrible reputation of its people - to the extent that someone like Cora had to hide her true identity. The Corporation sponsors the song contest - which is why Kid is targeting it. She thinks that Kid might listen to her, so she must get to the gallery - and Belinda assumes that is where the Doctor would also make for.
Kid and Wynn see generator power reach 99%, as Nina continues to try to talk them into stopping their scheme.
The Doctor suddenly appears. Kid shoots at him, only to find that he is a hologram being generated by Gary. He destroys the generator and disarms Kid. He has adapted this hologram so that it has some physical substance, and uses a control glove to begin torturing Kid with electric shocks. Wynn and Nina try to get him to stop, but he only does so when Belinda arrives in the gallery with Cora - and he sees another vision of Susan imploring him to stop. Cora tries to speak to Wynn, but she refuses to listen as Cora ran away and abandoned her people - doing nothing to expose what happened to their world.
Nina takes back control of the Droneguards and Kid and Wynn are taken away to face justice.
There is still the issue of the thousands of people frozen in the gravity field. The Doctor has Gary adapt the hologram generator to turn it into a tractor beam, whilst Mike will adapt one of the VIP Pods to turn it into a revival booth, to process groups at a time.
The contest soon resumes, and Cora takes to the stage to sing as a Hellian one of their songs, highlighting the ruination of the planet.
The TARDIS has been found and placed in the museum. The hologram of Graham Norton is triggered, which tells the history of the original contest. He states that it ended with the destruction of Earth in May 2025. They take to the TARDIS and set the controls for 24th May 2025, but the TARDIS responds badly and the doors explode inwards...
When Gary and Mike restore Mrs Flood, she begins to regenerate. Instead of changing body, however, a second figure emerges from her, for this is a bi-generation.
Mrs Flood is revealed to have been the Rani all along...
The Interstellar Song Contest was written by Juno Dawson, and was first broadcast on Saturday 17th May 2025. The timing wasn't random, as this was the evening on which that year's Eurovision Song Contest was to be shown.
This was a gamble as there was live football on that afternoon, which may have gone to extra time / penalties in the event of a draw - in which case Doctor Who would almost certainly have been postponed as the song contest was a live affair being coordinated by multiple international broadcasters.
Juno Dawson had written a number of Doctor Who spin-off stories - both books and audios - and had been earmarked to write an episode for the second season of Class had it gone ahead.
If there's an earlier story from which this has drawn its inspirations, then that would be Bad Wolf / Parting of the Ways. In both we have an evil but never seen corporation behind popular entertainment, current TV celebrities cameo as themselves despite a far future setting, a pastiche of current popular TV shows, and use of a delta wave weapon is threatened.
The episode will mainly be remembered for four things: the return of Susan, as played by Carole Ann Ford; the appearance as themselves by certain celebrities; the return of the Rani; and that earworm that is Dugga Doo...
Ford had last been seen in the programme proper in 1983, when she joined the cast of The Five Doctors. She later featured in the CiN Doctor Who / EastEnders special Dimensions in Time, and has continued to play Susan on audio. Susan's return had been anticipated by fans for some time, with hints that she might have been in the Vault in Series 10, or that Susan Triad might be a later incarnation of her in the previous series.
The Rani had been introduced in The Mark of the Rani opposite the Sixth Doctor and had returned to face the newly regenerated Seventh Doctor in Time and the Rani. She too featured, as the main villain, in the Children in Need affair. Throughout she had been played by Kate O'Mara, who had died in 2014.
Like Susan, her return had been anticipated often - with just about every enigmatic female character about to be exposed as the Rani.
Fans had actually sussed that Mrs Flood was the Rani the year before.
Playing themselves are Graham Norton and Rylan Clark, who are both associated with Eurovision itself.
As for Dugga Doo, it was simply a pastiche of the irritatingly catchy melodies many countries come up with for the competition. The song is "performed" by a black and orange puppet.
How much you like this episode really depends on your level of interest in Eurovision. I used to watch it in the 1970's, but have no interest in it at all these days. Even people who have never watched it know what it is about, however, as it often makes the news anyway. Turkey never votes for Greece and Greece never votes for Turkey because of Cyprus, the UK gets nil points, and a number of countries boycotted this year's contest because of Israel's inclusion. The winner is someone you will invariably never hear of ever again. That's it in a nutshell.
Despite my ambivalence towards its source material, I was actually enjoying this episode but it all went wrong for me half way through. The image of the floating bodies in space, lit by a hellish red glow from beneath, was one of the most striking images I've ever seen in the programme - not just because of what it looked like but because of what it represented. I thought that maybe this time someone had made the brave decision to show a massacre of innocent bystanders. A really shocking moment.
But then they suddenly announce that the people aren't really dead, and all can be saved - and you just know that this is exactly what is going to happen before the end of episode. Narrative cowardice in my view.
There are other problems. We have a very stereotypical contemporary gay couple - Gary and Mike - who are obsessed with the contest. Between them, they just happen to have the exact skill sets needed for the plot. Gary knows all about holograms, and Mike is a nurse. It's like "Plot Writing For Beginners". There's something lazy about the writing, what with its stereotypes and fairly unimaginative storyline.
Another problem is the presentation of the Doctor. In this he becomes someone else entirely and begins to threaten to get even with the villain, and then goes on to torture him. I could well see this coming from Capaldi's Doctor, but Gatwa has been such a lightweight in the role that it simply doesn't ring true. The Twelfth was dark and unpredictable, but Fifteen has always been too shallow a characterisation.
Kid is made out to be a monster - he admits as much himself - but one man's terrorist is another's freedom fighter, and when you learn his backstory and that of his planet, you can begin to see some reasoning behind his actions - even if you abhor the way he intends to go about achieving his revenge. The episode seems confused on the issue. If Kid really was a monster, killing for no reason, then we might have sensed why the Doctor reacts the way he does. But we get to see that, in his own mind at least, Kid has justification for taking the actions he does - making the Doctor's reaction an aggressive knee-jerk one, leaping in without gathering facts or making any informed decision. This is something we rarely see from him. He makes mistakes, but doesn't resort to this kind of cruel behaviour.
It's an attempt to make this incarnation of the Doctor more threatening - but just doesn't work. We too used to seeing him burst into tears over everything that upsets him by this point.
Belinda says she's shocked to hear the Doctor threaten Kid, and fears what he would be like if left unchecked - but she's only known him five minutes. It's a watered down version of Donna Noble's "You need someone to stop you" in The Runaway Bride.
My final criticism is the bi-generation. It was made out to be something pretty unique when used for the Fourteenth / Fifteenth Doctor, but now looks like any old Time Lord can do it. At least it let us use "The Two Ranis" joke (and I've a sneaking suspicion that this is exactly why RTD2 did it).
The main guest artist is Freddie Fox, who plays Kid. He's a member of the well-known British acting dynasty - his father is Edward Fox, and mother Joanna David. His sister is Emilia Fox, and his uncle is James Fox. Cousin Laurence Fox, ex-husband of Billie Piper, is infamous for his right wing politics these days. Freddie appeared in an episode of Lewis opposite him.
Freddie previously featured in RTD's Cucumber and Banana, and has played Lord Alfred Douglas on stage, and featured in the film adaptation of Wilde's An Ideal Husband. He also appeared in the 2023 "Ghost Story For Christmas" - Lot 249 - and GoT prequel series House of the Dragon.
Wynn is Iona Anderson, who is relatively new to television. She recently appeared opposite John Simm in crime drama Grace.
Playing Cora is Miriam Teak-Lee, who is best known for stage musicals.
Ex-Coronation Street regular Charlie Condou plays Gary, opposite Kadiff Kirwan as Mike. He has appeared in Black Mirror, Slow Horses and Inside No.9. Condou is at time of writing appearing in RTD's latest drama Tip Toe, which stars Alan Cumming and David Morrisey.
Nina is played by Kiruna Stamell, whose first film role was in Baz Luhrmann's Moulin Rouge. She was a regular in daytime medical soap Doctors.
Also amongst the cast is Christina Rotondo, playing singer Liz Lizardine. Rotondo had previously played Janis Goblin in The Church on Ruby Road.
Joining the series as the new incarnation of the Rani is Archie Panjabi, star of The Good Wife. She has guested in many of the British detective dramas, as well as comedies such as Still Open All Hours and The Thin Blue Line. Film roles include East is East and Bend It Like Beckham.
Overall, it could have been so much better had they allowed it to go darker - but tying it in with the lightweight Eurovision Song Contest meant that was never going to happen. The terrorist / hijack scenario might be ten a penny in US crime shows and movies, but it's rare for Doctor Who, and maybe should have been saved for another time and another context. Biggest disappointment will be one of hindsight, as we now know Susan's reappearance is going to lead absolutely nowhere...
Things you might like to know:
- Dawson's first idea was for a disaster movie set-up, similar to The Poseidon Adventure. Not only was this deemed too expensive, it also had obvious similarities with The Voyage of the Damned. Instead, RTD2 suggested "Die Hard meets the Eurovision Song Contest".
- Dawson and Davies contributed lyrics to some of the songs, though Dugga Doo was entirely the work of Murray Gold, who wrote four new compositions for the episode.
- Bucks Fizz's Making Your Mind Up can be heard in the episode. This won the 1981 Eurovision Song Contest for the UK.
- Rylan Clark wasn't in the original version of the script. In his place was a blue-skinned being named Xylan, presumably based on him.
- Freddie Fox was named after Fred Zinnemann - director of the original The Day of the Jackal, which starred his dad.
- The bi-generation scene was recorded later, once production on Wish World had got under way.
- The Droneguards will be back in the next story, based in the Rani's Bone Palace.
- The song performances had to be filmed first, so that they could then be shown on screens in scenes shot up to 10 days later with the main cast.
- The planet Trion gets a mention. This was homeworld to the Fifth Doctor's companion Turlough, and has recently featured again in the ancillary material for the Season 21 - The Collection box set. The Doctor and Tegan visit the planet in the comic strip which concluded the events of the specially made trailer.
- The aforementioned Liz Lizardine is, in appearance, potentially a member of the same race as Malpha, one of the Planetarians in Mission to the Unknown and The Daleks' Master Plan. Or maybe not.
- Alpha Centauri and Trenzalore are also mentioned. One of the performers is also said to be a Zygon.
- Susan's earrings were based on the signet ring worn by her grandfather.
- It was Ncuti Gatwa who had suggested that the Rani return, though I suspect that RTD2 did not need much persuading.
- Gatwa was to have been the UK's voting spokesman for Eurovision on the night, but dropped out very late in the day, replaced by Sophie Ellis-Bextor - daughter of a Doctor Who guest artist.
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