*As I say, spoilers.*
Okay, finally getting back to mixing in some Sunday Who Reviews. My brain is still thoroughly latched onto Our Flag Means Death/Joel Fry, but I have a bit of space for other stuff too. So let’s revisit “The Interstellar Song Contest,” especially how it handles Kid and the Hellions.
Look, there’s some stuff here I like. Cora is a good character, and even if I could guess where things are going with her before the reveal, it’s still affecting to see what happened to her horns. I also appreciate that “good” characters like Gary and Mike aren’t immune to the propaganda about the Hellions. It’s horrific to learn that the Corporation bought a planet wholesale, exploited its precious poppies, and burned the fields so no one else could copy their product. This story reminded me a little of a ruthless capitalist take on the Ghorman story from Andor, which was airing around the same time.
But then, of course, there’s Kid. An angry, broken young man from a ravaged planet, whose mom was killed before he could even be named. He, and all the Hellions, have staggering legitimate grievances with the Corporation over the countless deaths and environmental devastation they’ve caused, not to mention the mercenary propaganda campaign. And how does he decide to get his revenge? Staging an attack on the Interstellar Song Contest, killing literally trillions of people so that the Corporation, the contest’s main sponsor, will be ruined.
We see this in genre media a lot: the antagonist with a tragic backstory and understandable motives, who aims to commit villainy so heinous that the hero obviously has to take them down by any means necessary. The MCU is the first that comes to mind—Killmonger, the Flag Smashers—but it’s hardly the only franchise to do with. The antagonist’s legitimate points lose all credibility because they’re so over-the-top extreme in their ideology, allowing the story to say, “Look, complex villain! So nuanced!” while also giving the hero a straightforward “clean” victory with no anguish over what’s really the right decision.
What makes all this even thornier is the parallels to real life. Over the last couple years, I’ve heard about the controversy surrounding Eurovision blocking any participation from or onstage references to Palestinians, while Israel freely competes without pushback. The Hellions’ situation isn’t precisely like that of Gaza, but it’s still uncomfortably close, and the batshit handling of Kid creates a portrait of the issue that kind of both-sides it.
So here we have the show telling a story about a campy interstellar song contest that nods directly to Eurovision. They introduced an oppressed minority from a ravaged homeland, and the sponsors of the contest are directly responsible for the destruction of their planet. We meet none of the destroyers and three of the oppressed. Of those three, two of them commit a terrorist attack—with one eager to, again, kill trillions of people. It’s clumsy, and because the storyline alludes to such devastating real-world events, that gives us an episode that’s pretty troubling.
Additionally, there’s the Doctor’s reaction to Kid. In fairness, the Doctor is with Gary and Mike, and he only hears the propaganda version of the Hellions. He doesn’t know what really happened to them, and he does know that Kids wants to kill trillions of people, I will never shut up about that. I’d say here, the Doctor goes past the Oncoming Storm, past the Time Lord Victorious, in something genuinely scary. Ncuti Gatwa plays that coldness really well—ooh, his delivery on, “You have put ice in my heart, darling. You put it there”—but it’s disturbing to watch the Doctor repeatedly torture a man, even one who’s committed a horrific crime and attempted one that’s infinitely worse. And the fact that this story is the one that brings out the Doctor’s vicious side? This antagonist? And that, unnerved as she is, Belinda hugs him afterwards and they don’t fully deal with it? And that we pivot from that into a peppy resolution where the Doctor saves everyone and a poignant resolution where Cora sings a song from her broken planet? It definitely leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
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