New season is here! This month is going to be an embarrassment of riches. First, there’s Daredevil: Born Again continuing on from March, and I was just recently able to start reading Sunrise on the Reaping. Now we’re starting Ncuti Gatwa’s second season as the Doctor, and this week, Ryan Coogler’s vampire movie with Michael B. Jordan and Hailee Steinfeld is coming out, along with Fire Island’s Andrew Ahn directing a remake of The Wedding Banquet, where we get Lily Gladstone and Kelly Marie Tran playing a couple! Season 2 of Andor starts shortly after that—three episodes a week(!!!) And when April is over, we’re getting Thunderbolts*??? I may not survive.
17 years ago, Belinda Chandra’s now-ex-boyfriend named a star after her. The trouble is, one of the planets in this system is undergoing a bloody conflict, and a pair of robots from Miss Belinda Chandra 1 has just shown up to bring their “queen” home. Belinda’s first space journey is a troubling one, and the Fifteenth Doctor is on hand to try and help her—along with the people of Miss Belinda Chandra 1—get through it safely.
I like a lot of aspects of the story. Robots coming to collect a human who’s had a star named after them feels very quintessentially Who for me, and in particular, I’m reminded on “The Girl in the Fireplace”—when you add in a big dose of timey-wimeyness, I had to double-check that Moffat didn’t write this. There’s an interesting wrinkle in the robots’ programming that allows the humanoid characters to convey hidden messages to each other, which appeals to my Lemony Snicket-loving heart. And we get a few hints at ongoing arcs as well. But the individual parts of the story don’t come together in a fully satisfactory way. There are some intriguing oneshot characters who don’t get the fleshing-out they deserve, the timey-wimey aspects mean motivations get sort of jumbled up, and some of the most interesting points of the plot get dropped at random.
That said, I still really enjoyed the episode, and that’s largely down to the Doctor-companion stuff. I’ll forgive all kinds of plot nonsense for the sake of a good Doctor-companion dynamic, and I’m excited by what we get here.
All right, new companion, who dis? I was already primed to like Belinda, since she’s played by Varada Sethu (a.k.a. Cinta from Andor!) And I do like her. I love that, as she’s forcibly escorted by robots onto a ship, she calls to her neighbor, “Apparently I’m the queen of outer space, if you could tell the police!” I like that she’s overwhelmed and upset by everything that’s going on, but she’s also a quick study who figures out how to adapt on the fly. I like that she’s a compassionate nurse who rolls up her sleeves and gets to work when people are hurt, even when she’s on a new planet.
Her introduction to the Doctor is interesting. We’re gearing up for another companion mystery—but as with Ruby, we’re simultaneously getting a decent sense of Belinda as a person, beyond whatever her “deal” is. This means, though, that the Doctor was looking for her before things really pop off. And when they do, he’s already in the thick of it, several steps ahead, and Belinda is playing catch-up. The Doctor skips multiple steps in their early interactions, which the Doctor is wont to do anyway, but it’s turbo-charged here by lots of timey-wimeyness, and Belinda isn’t necessarily picking up what he’s laying down. I’m very intrigued to see where we’re going with these two.
Ncuti Gatwa continues to be simply inspired in the role. The writing can be hit or miss at times, as it too often is with Who, but he consistently shines. Here, I love how sweetly the Doctor deactivates a little floor-polishing robot (this makes sense in context,) and I’m obsessed with his delightful high-kick as he snaps off a “yes, queen!” to Belinda. Also, I really like this thing Fifteen does where he laughs when he’s being sincere. This is a Doctor who has very much not shed all the baggage they’ve been carrying over the centuries, but he often portrays himself as the happy-go-lucky good-time Doctor. When things get serious, he sometimes lets out this little burst of nervous laughter, like he’s not quite sure how to square his sunshiny persona with the demands of the situation. It’s like a small pressure-valve release, giving him space to recalibrate and meet the moment. I love it!
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