Doctor Who: The Interstellar Song Contest

Eurovision is an annual music extravaganza, spawning pop royalty ABBA and Celine Dion.

One of my earliest memories of watching the Eurovision song contest was the year Bucks Fizz won in 1981. This coincided with a visit to family friends and the first time I ever experienced a toastie from a Breville sandwich toaster (my parents soon owned one, which was perfect for Doctor Who teatime viewing).

As I've written previously, a life-changing childhood trauma overshadowed my early life, so songs like Bucks Fizz's The Land of Make Believe became an inspirational anthem in the darkest days of rehabilitation.

So, in a timey-wimey twist worthy of the metaverse (no, not that one), The Interstellar Song Contest preceded this year's Eurovision grand final on BBC One. Is it a season two hit or miss?

With cameos from popular presenters Rylan Clark (a self-confessed Whovian) and Graham Norton, as themselves, it's a hit from start to finish. The Doctor (Ncuti Gatwa) and Belinda Chandra (Varada Sethu) take one last detour aboard the TARDIS before returning to Earth on 24th May, 2025. This time, materialising on a space station, the Harmony Arena, hosting an interstellar song contest 900 years later.

The event is hijacked, and trillions of lives are put in peril. The Doctor, Rylan, the contestants, and the audience are blasted into space where they freeze. An unconscious Doctor has a vision of his first companion, granddaughter Susan Foreman (Carole Ann Ford), and this sparks him back to life. This is a monumental moment for the Whoniverse, and I got goosebumps at the implication.

There’s a playful homage to Disney Pixar’s WALL-E as the Doctor, marooned in space, propels himself back to the Harmony Arena using a confetti cannon! Things twist from cosmic camp to horrifying dark melodrama as the Doctor is triggered by the trauma of Gallifrey's destruction and the demise of the Time Lords, and mistakenly thinks Belinda is dead. The Fifth Doctor (Peter Davison) infamously failed to save Adric (Matthew Waterhouse) from the Cybermen in Earthshock.

Once down the dark path...

As seen in Dalek twenty years ago, the Doctor becomes the torturer and electrocutes Kid (Freddie Fox) in a scene evoking the Emperor using Force lightning to kill Luke Skywalker before Darth Vader stops him in Star Wars: Return of the Jedi. This time, it's another vision of Susan that halts the Doctor from being seduced by the dark side. Belinda, very much alive, is struck by the Doctor's anger and, again, challenges him to be more open with her.

Rylan, the contestants and audience are revived by the duo of Mike Gabbastone (Kadiff Kirwan) and Gary Gabbastone (Charlie Condou) to the victorious sounds of Bucks Fizz's winning song, Making Your Mind Up. I was overcome with misty-eyed joy.

Norton, a staple of Eurovision, appears as an interactive hologram and harbinger of doom. He explains the Earth was destroyed on 24th May, 2025. The Doctor and Belinda board the TARDIS only to be greeted by the apocalyptic sound of the Cloister Bells.

During a mid-credits scene, a staple of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), Mrs Flood's (Anita Dobson) true identity is finally revealed. She is the Rani, first played by Kate O'Mara, who my late mum knew but I never thought to ask for her autograph (where's a TARDIS when you need one?), a renegade Time Lord, and undergoes her own bi-generation, introducing a second Rani (Archie Panjabi). In doing so, the Doctor's isolation as the last of his kind has ended.

Does this tease that we may see the Fourteenth Doctor (David Tennant) and Donna Noble (Catherine Tate) in the two-part finale? If this is the last season of Doctor Who for a while, we're getting our Avengers: Endgame.

New episodes of Doctor Who drop every Saturday on BBC One, BBC iPlayer and Disney+ outside the UK and Ireland. Season two is available for pre-order from Amazon (affiliate link).

Have you watched The Interstellar Song Contest? What did you think? Let me know in the comments below.