TV Recap: “Doctor Who” Takes Eurovision to the Stars with a Spectacular and Surprisingly Dark Episode

Fans of the Eurovision Song Contest will love this week’s episode of Doctor Who, which takes the iconic music competition into the cosmos for an adventure that is way darker than its subject would make you think. Here’s my spoiler-filled recap of “The Interstellar Song Contest."

The episode opens on a shot of the gigantic Harmony Arena floating in space, which serves as the setting for the Interstellar Song Contest. One of the two hosts of the festivities is revealed to be a cryogenically frozen Rylan, a real-life popular figure in the UK. It seems as if he’s been frozen and just keeps getting wheeled out for these events every few centuries. Meanwhile, the Doctor (Ncuti Gatwa) and Belinda (Varada Sethu) arrive in the audience to get a final vindicator result, before they both realize where they are and decide they have to stay – bringing us to the title sequence.

Post-titles, we see some of the genuine excitement and plenty of alien creatures enjoying the festivities, in addition to getting to see the control room for the event. One of the spectators is the mysterious Mrs. Flood (Anita Dobson), who is spying on the Doctor and Belinda with a pair of fancy binoculars. Belinda and the Doctor share a nice moment together, where she realizes that they’re inside a bubble on a station in orbit – the bubble allowing all the attendees to breathe in the vacuum of space.

The Doctor gets his final reading from the vindicator, which Mrs. Flood spots and thanks the Doctor (to herself), saying it's the final link. So while it seems her plan is ready to go, she decides to stick around for a while and enjoy the song contest. The Doctor wonders whose seats they’ve taken, and we cut to a couple, Mike (Kadiff Kirwan) and Gary (Charlie Condou), who are being blocked from entering their seats. We’re also introduced to the droneguards that provide security for the arena, who begin saying “phase 1 activated." This is revealed to be the first step of a plan by someone named Kid (Freddie Fox), who enters the control room after shooting some people. His species is Hellion, a race that is mostly humanoid – save for the horns on their head.

Kid has control of all the droneguards and moves most of the crew out of the control room, save for the woman in command, Nina (Kiruna Stamell). A mole was in place in the control room, another Hellion named Wynn (Iona Anderson), who appears to be involved romantically with Kid. Phase 2 of Kid’s plan is to switch the feed of the song contest from the live version to the pre-recorded dress rehearsal, which plays out while the first musical performance begins. The Doctor notices that something is amiss and jumps over to a control panel to do something with his sonic screwdriver.

The next part of Kid’s plan is then revealed, as the gravity (or rather, mavity) bubble is turned off, making the hundreds and thousands of people in the audience float into the vastness of space, including the Doctor. Belinda is under cover and is able to avoid this fate, partly because Wynn closes all of the fancy pods in which Belinda was located. Lucky Mike and Gary, who couldn’t get into their seats, look out in awe and horror at what just happened. The arena is now an empty vacuum, as Belinda also looks on in absolute terror at what just happened to everyone, including the Doctor.

Kid says that “I’m only doing the things you expect of me," as it’s revealed that Hellions are looked down upon by much of the rest of the universe – partially due to their horns and people’s ignorance. Nina tries to plead with the Hellions, saying that the mavity shield is still on and that the people floating in space are not dead, but just frozen. But there’s no reasoning with Kid, who brings out his final phase, a Delta Wave. Belinda meets with other survivors, one of the performers, Cora Saint Bavier (Miriam-Teak Lee) and her producer. She has a bit of a breakdown, but gets comforted by Cora. Belinda realizes that the Doctor got sucked out into space, and gets sad that she never got to tell him how wonderful he is.

Nina tries to plead specifically with Wynn to save the people, noticing that Wynn specifically saved the girl from Trion, Cora. Meanwhile, out in space, the Doctor is being frozen, but begins to hear a voice telling him to go back. This voice is revealed to be none other than his own granddaughter, Susan Foreman (Carole Ann Ford), the Doctor’s original companion from when the show first debuted in 1963. Apart from an appearance in the 20th anniversary special, this marks the character and same actress’ first appearance since then. She appears to be on board the TARDIS, telling him to go back and “find me." Mike and Gary notice the Doctor moving, who finds a confetti cannon which gives him enough momentum to get back to the arena.

Gary, who is a doctor, checks the Doctor’s vitals, commenting on his unique physiology, before restoring him. Back up and at ‘em, the Doctor reveals that he tripled the mavity field as soon as he realized something was wrong. Kid and Wynn are waiting for the Delta Wave to calibrate, which should be ready in time for Cora’s pre-taped performance. Using the sonic screwdriver to tap into the computer system, the Doctor sees that it has been corrupted by Hellion script, a species he’s not aware of. The Doctor taps the screen and it causes them to preview Kid’s plan, as a high pitched noise plays, debilitating the Doctor, Mike and Gary. Aimed at the temporal lobe of the brain, the Delta Wave routed through the station and transmitted would kill all three trillion people watching the song contest – Kid’s plan.

The Doctor, Gary and Matt head elsewhere on the station, to a museum of Interstellar Song Contest history. A hologram of popular UK talk show host Graham Norton appears, who sold his likeness in perpetuity. The Doctor recounts that Belinda would have loved to see this, clearly feeling immense anguish over what he thinks is her being trapped out in space. At this time, the Doctor also keeps seeing visions of Susan in the TARDIS, something he immediately tries to brush away.

Kid notices the Doctor playing with the systems and begins to talk to him via the intercom. At the same time, Belinda is also watching and realizes that he is still alive. The Doctor tells Kid that he will stop his plans, in a somewhat darker manner than usual, telling Kid that he will find him, because he put ice in his heart. He says he will “cast your body out into the void. And I will stand and watch you freeze to death." Belinda hears this and immediately says that doesn't sound like the Doctor.

Cora reveals to Belinda that she knows Kid and Wynn. They were both foundlings whose mothers were shot. Cora herself is a Hellion, who had her horn shaved off, with just nubs remaining under her hair. Over all her years in the limelight, she hid who she was because Hellions are “treated like scum, right across the galaxy." She reveals that Poppy Honey, the sponsors of the Interstellar Song Contest, bought the entire population and planet to harvest their product. They took the seeds and burnt the fields so that the Hellions could never grow it back. Kid blames the corporation and is out to get revenge. Cora plans to get to the control deck to try to plead with Kid and Wynn, and Belinda wants to come, saying that if the Doctor is angry, “this whole world is going to shake."

Fighting against the clock, the Doctor tries to do some technical wizardry, while two droneguards approach. The Doctor easily dismembers them with one press of his sonic screwdriver. Back in the control room, we reach song 14, Cora’s song, and the Delta Wave is ready to transmit. The Doctor shows up in the control room, telling Kid that he’s met so many versions of him before, and that his cold heart just wants to kill. Taking the Doctor’s bait, Kid fires his gun, revealing that it was just a hologram of the Doctor. The Doctor pops back up, saying that he was able to turn the hologram into hard light, meaning a hologram can hurt. He transports over to Kid and touches him, giving an electric shock of some sort. Saying that Kid wanted to kill three trillion people, the Doctor goes over to Kid and says “how about we try this three trillion times?" The Doctor proceeds to continue shocking Kid, in a move that is quite literally shocking for the Doctor to be doing.

As Kid screams out in agony, Susan appears in the Doctor’s head, telling him to stop – but the Doctor keeps shocking Kid. It takes Belinda walking into the room for the Doctor to finally come to his senses. With Kid incapacitated, Belinda runs over to the Doctor and gives him a hug, while Nina overrides the droneguards and takes back control. Kid says “I’ll see you again Doctor" and the Doctor replies that he’ll be ready. The Doctor says that the ice put in his heart by Kid just might be there forever now.

As Belinda says, it still isn’t over and to save everyone, the Doctor realizes that everyone was frozen in space and using Gary’s hologram expertise, is able to get a tractor beam set up to bring everyone back in, and then bring them back to full life using Rylan’s cryogenic chamber as a revival booth. In a fun musical montage, the 100,000 people in the crowd are brought back to life and the Interstellar Song Contest resumes.

Given what just happened, the contest is mostly canceled, but we do get one performance from Cora, after she reveals herself to be a Hellian and tells the crowd of what the corporation did, before giving a truly beautiful performance. All is silent at first at the end, but soon the crowd erupts into thunderous applause, with even Wynn shedding a tear while tied up with Kid.

The TARDIS, which also flew into space, was recovered. Belinda tells the Doctor what she wanted to say earlier, and the two embrace in a warm hug. But she also says that he scared her with his actions, and the Doctor says that he scared himself too. He chalked it up to being triggered by the potential death of three trillion people, thinking of all the people of his home planet that died, in a single second – every last Time Lord. He starts to mention the image of Susan, but says to himself that it can’t be, and changes the topic to getting Belinda back home.

Before they reach the TARDIS though, the hologram of Graham Norton turns up again. But what comes out of the hologram's mouth is quite the revelation – that the planet Earth ended on May 24th, 2025. “It is said the planet disintegrated into rock and dust and ashes." The cause was unknown. The Doctor and Belinda rush back to the TARDIS, as Belinda asks how could the whole Earth have died on the day she left with the Doctor. Having finally gotten enough readings off the vindicator, the Doctor can finally get Belinda home and save the Earth. But before he can do that, the TARDIS cloister bell rings of imminent danger as the door to the TARDIS is swept clean off.

We then cut to a mid-credits scene where Mrs. Flood is seen being revived by Mike and Gary. She asks if the Doctor is gone, to which Mike and Gary say he disappeared without a trace. Mrs. Flood’s double brain stem froze, which is “lethal for a Time Lady." As regeneration energy begins to swirl around her, Mrs. Flood says “let the battle begin." Then, just as the Doctor recently did, Mrs. Flood bigenerates, with another side of her popping out. Her new form walks alongside her, played by Archie Panjabi. They are both the Rani, a Time Lord that has not appeared in the show since the 1980s (and a character fans have always clamored to have back in the show). The new Rani immediately takes on a more authoritative stance to the now more diminutive Mrs. Flood iteration. Grabbing the vindicator readings from Mrs. Flood, they walk off promising to bring the Doctor “absolute terror."

What an absolutely incredible episode this was. We’ve truly been treated to some of the best Doctor Who in years, with nearly every episode this season so far being an absolute banger. I wasn’t expecting the deep emotion and darkness of this episode, given the subject matter. It took something that could have been very camp and made it into a poignant comment on racism, and showing off a darker side to the Doctor. I’m very intrigued to see what is to come from the two part finale, which kicks off next week with “Wish World."