r/doctorwho • u/PCJs_Slave_Robot • May 11 '24

Doctor Who 1x01 "Space Babies" Post-Episode Discussion Thread Space Babies

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392 Upvotes
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66

u/Kintor01 May 11 '24

All of that Disney money and we still end up with a basic 'base under seige' story and a rubber monster. The script probably could have used another pass as well. Why are we saving the snot monster again? I'm with the Nannie on this one, send it straight to hell.

14

u/Historical_Doctor629 May 11 '24

It didn't have a chance to be anything other than a snot monster. Not trying to save it goes against the fundamental point of Doctor Who.

28

u/Kintor01 May 11 '24

Doctor Who kills innocent people and monsters all the time. Just deliver a patented David Tennant "Sorry, I'm so sorry..." and move on. I'm not going to weep for a snot monster as it's unceremoniously flushed out the airlock.

6

u/weluckyfew May 11 '24

The difference is he had a choice. They had it trapped in the airlock so it was no threat to anyone. There was no reason to kill it.

14

u/Kintor01 May 11 '24

Letting the snot monster starve to death in an airlock hardly seems the more humane approach. That seems too much like Chibnall and the needless suffering he inflicted upon those spiders before they slowly died.

7

u/weluckyfew May 11 '24

I think the idea is he could do what he ultimately did, keep it in the airlock until they could do something else with it. Of course that leads to the question of what you could do with it - if it's a predator animal you can't exactly release it anywhere. But then also, if it wasn't eating any of the babies how was it surviving in the first place?

I also didn't get the whole baby thing anyway - why were they able to talk, exactly? And who rigged up all the elaborate Rube Goldberg levers and strings to push buttons? If it was Nan-E why didn't she just do it herself if she was already out there long enough to rug that all up?

For that matter, the whole idea of her locking herself away made no sense either -

6

u/FramboiseMaudite May 11 '24

But the only options aren't just to let it starve or flush it out. Once it's trapped, we can try to understand it, see if communication is possible, check out the logs from when the station made it to see if it's meant to be dangerous or just scary. Is it really alive ? Does it have consciousness ?

Also we may assume that when they get to the planet they're going to, they'll have the means to deal with it. Maybe study it, let it live in some kind of natural reservation for snoot monsters, or just kill it anyway. My point is that I don't think it's a really "doctor" thing to do to just kill it without giving it a thought when there's no immediate threat.

2

u/sanddragon939 May 12 '24

Yeah the Doctor wanting to save the Bogeyman made sense in context, particularly with the aspect of both of them being the "last of their kind". So it was an emotional decision for sure, not just a purely rational, or even a purely moral one.

I'll take this anyday over Thirteen's "You had no right to do that!" in her debut episode.

9

u/pantstheterrible May 11 '24

As a mother I was so bewildered. Why are we saving the baby eating monster? Yeet it!

18

u/FramboiseMaudite May 11 '24

The thing is I'm not even sure the monster is actually dangerous. The station made it up specifically as a scary thing for the babies, and all it does is roam around, and yell at the ceiling. Unless I missed it, I don't think the episode gave us any reason to think it ever harmed anyone or was going to. Everyone justs runs away from it because it's disgusting and engineered to be scary.

It may just be a misunderstood creature that scares people because it's ugly but is actually harmless, and the doctor gets it. I feel like it's a common trope in doctor who, even if it maybe could have been made more clear this time.

7

u/StingerAE May 11 '24

Yeah. No evidence it ever actually hurt anyone physically 

4

u/Happy_Philosopher608 May 12 '24

A few more passes of the script could have made it clearer and more tragic, like it was just trying to get up to the deck to rejoin its fam or something 🤷‍♂️ Could have been a lesson on prejudice and judging books on covers etc.

2

u/BetaRayPhil616 May 11 '24

Nah, it's just spot on doctor who. The very first thing they do on meeting the monster is run down a corridor! It's literally a sample saying: 'this is what you can expect in a typical doctor who ep'

I really enjoyed this.