Scanning My Collection> The Original Beep The Meep Story

Admittedly, I’ve already reviewed this story for “Yesterday’s” Comic. In the 1980s Marvel US reprinted a few of their UK counterparts Doctor Who magazine stories, first as a trial run in Marvel Premiere and then in 23 issues of his own series. At the time the show was popular in the US, but aired on PBS rather than the networks the new show did so it wasn’t as widely known until the TV Movie, which as usual Fox screwed up because they have an odd disinterest in treating science fiction shows well on their network, or so their history would make you assume. However, this seemed like a good time to revisit it after the TV special decided to tear it apart for fodder. This isn’t the first time Davies has done this, mind you. The “Family Of Blood” pair of episodes was taken from the Seventh Doctor’s novel Human Nature, though at least the author was ripping himself off for the episode. Davies still wanted or was willing to use it.

This time, “Doctor Who And The Star Beast” was a comic, appearing in Doctor Who Monthly #s 19-26. The writers, Pat Mills & John Wagner, alternated between writing the strips making up the story, with Dave Gibbons on art. In this case Davies himself took a story that was popular enough with fans that Big Finish has adapted it and made further meetings between the Doctor and the villain of the story, Beep of All The Meeps, in audio dramas, to tell his version of the story with his characters. And social messaging because of course he did. This time it’s Tom Baker’s Fourth Doctor being replaced by Davies Fourteenth, who is just Doctor Ten screwing up the numbering system for the third time in this franchise, after the War Doctor and the Timeless Child nonsense has basically made counting the Doctors a moot point.

This is sadly the coolest K-9 will look in this story.

This is not going to be a review of the episode because I haven’t fully seen it. I’ve seen clips, I’ve seen a scene-by-scene review or two, but I don’t own Disney Plus, and from what I’ve seen and heard I’m not sure I’d want to see this story anyway when the comic did it better. I will say that undoing Donna’s lost memories was okay but the way they did it was lame, the new TARDIS is finally investing in lighting and bright colors but is mostly blank space with not much to it. Even when they get something right they managed to mess it up. As for the male bashing and trans allegory, I’m not surprised with the former and even when I explain my issue with the latter later I’ll still be called a transphobe just for disagreeing with it. At this point I stopped caring what people who don’t have time to listen have to say. Disagree with me all you want. That’s fine. Just make sure you get my actual point of view correct or don’t waste my time.

Also the new intro is kind of meh. The TARDIS flopping around through nebula clouds. I’m not impressed.

Finally, before this really long intro chases you all off, I’m working from the version that I have, namely the aforementioned Marvel US reprints. So the Meep is blue because the original comic was black and white and Marvel US colorist Andy Yanchus made him blue. So he’s blue in these pictures. Sorry if that bothers you, but I kind of prefer it. It makes him cuter, which is kind of the point of his twist. With that, let’s get on with the story.

A spacecraft crashes in the steel mills in Blackcastle, which will be a recurring location in the comics. We’re told this through a news broadcast, where authorities dismiss the ship seen in the skies. The next day we meet our important human characters. Well, Fudge is hardly that important to the story outside of giving us a place to go later and being a sci-fi geek. It’s his friend that really matters, Sharon. Yes, Sharon, not Rose 2.0. The sad part is, whatever you think about transgender aside, the performer playing Rose 2: The Rosening kind of looks like a modern update of Sharon. Sharon is tough but shows her girly side in how she treats the Meep, fawning over how cute he is and buying all the malarkey he sends her way. I wouldn’t go so far as to say she’s a tomboy. She wears a skirt (though it could be a school uniform) and isn’t really shown to be into traditionally “boy things”, but she’s also not a sci-fi fan like her friend.

It’s actually Fudge that leads the pair to the Meep, noticing a trail of “green slime” that Sharon thinks is just paint. It’s Fudge that’s curious, with Sharon worried they’ll be accused of trying to swipe something from the shed. Here they find the Meep, injured. Fudge’s first thought is to see what they can get from him when the creature doesn’t show any cool sci-fi stuff but Sharon’s first response is to…you know…stop him from bleeding out of that big hole in his side. She’s also determine not to let the grown-ups in on their secret. This is the most Fudge will do in this story outside of being a disappointed sci-fi geek.

Meanwhile, an alien vessel has tracked the Meep to Earth, declaring that it must die. It’s here that the Fourth Doctor and best Companion, K-9, make their appearance. The Doctor has spent the recent stories trying to get to Benidorm, Spain. He’s not making it this time, either. For those of you who only know New Who, Tom Baker’s Fourth Doctor is to Classic Who fans what David Tennant’s Tenth Doctor is to the new people, making Fourteen (or 10 mark 2) stealing his story extra disappointing. Oddly enough my favorites are the next ones in the list, Peter Davidson’s Fifth Doctor and Matt Smith’s Eleventh Doctor respectively. I had more exposure to 5, having just come in at the tail end of Baker’s stories on PBS and Eleven reminds me of Five, which isn’t surprising because Steven Moffat’s favorite Doctor is also Five.

Points to the show for pulling off a really close version of the Wrarth Warriors in prosthetic make-up rather than going CG.

Looking for a light switch, the Doctor accidentally grabs the eyeball of one of the Wrarth Warriors, who promptly destroys his sombrero. And somewhere, River Song is giggling. I have to say I really like the design of the Wrarth Warriors. The claw for one arm and tentacle fingers for the other, the overall look, and even the tongue having digits on the end, which he uses to choke the Doctor out after it knocks K-9 offline. As a K-9 fan I’m disappointed but I kind of understand it. His abilities, even if his laser is ineffective against the Warriors’ bodies, could offer a good advantage but might lower the tension in a few spots. He could sense Beep has a gun, or that the  Wrarth are coming when they need to surprise our heroes. So for the sake of the story I begrudgingly accept this event.

Now here’s one part of the story I haven’t heard showing up in the adaptation. The Wrarth Warriors implant a bomb in the Doctor’s stomach. It only gets used for a later cliffhanger when the Doctor realizes why is tummy is acting all weird but for the most part it’s not something the episode would need anyway. Then they allow him to go, sure that the Doctor is in league with the Meep. Why? Because he’s here and has a spacecraft, I guess.

Back on Earth Sharon and Fudge take the wounded Meep back to his house because its nearest, with Fudge worried about transformations or space diseases because they’ve been in sci-fi stories before. He also corrects Sharon when she calls it a “space rocket” instead of a “starship”. Part of me is glad we don’t see Fudge again but making Sharon a sci-fi geek might have kept us from even needing him. I don’t see his absence from the episode as any great loss. Unless he has an analog in there, in which case I hope he’s less of a putz. Given that the message is that men are dumb in how they undo Donna’s “Doctoring” and the heavy-handed pronoun message I kind of doubt he would be. Let me mark off the section for you to avoid in case you don’t want to read my rant and focus on the review. It’s three paragraphs you won’t need otherwise but I want to vent. Ignore it if you want.

Look, I’m not against trans people. I do see that tomboys are being forced into being treated as trans, at least in the realm of fiction, unless they’re butch lesbian or non-binary. I don’t think tomboys should be forced into a false label any more than you do trans people. I don’t understand transgender that much but my philosophy is let them be what they want once they’re old enough to determine that with less chance to hate themselves and their parents for doing it later in life. I do question how activists upset with “outdated stereotypes” are basing who is trans or gay or non-binary on those very same stereotypes and othering other people in the name of their own cause, in turn ruining their own cause for people able to decide for themselves if they’re transgender or not, but my big issue with Rose 2: Electric Rosealoo is that it’s Russel T Davies replacing a perfectly good comic Companion with his own “I’m a gay man totally supportive of LGBT+ people so much that their being LGBT+ is more important than making them their own character” reuse of a name he can’t seem to get over.

Davies was obsessed with Rose Tyler in the same way Elon Musk is obsessed with the letter X.  That apparently hasn’t changed. This is where the Rose sequel gag is coming from, by the way, not an attack on the performer or character.Why did Donna name her Rose? Apparently they were hiring her character under the name “Lilly” according to an interview with Yasmin Finney, and they were specifically looking for a trans actor, whose performance I can’t really review. Also, according to someone on a podcast this morning 2 Rose 2 Furoseus is non-binary because of the Doctor/Donna metacrisis stuff she got from her mom at birth or…something. If that’s actually stated in the episode, I’m not even sure how that affects the analog. Can you be nonbinary AND trans? How am I supposed to understand this cultural shift when the folks promoting it don’t even know what it is?

Davies’ response to comments by fans complaining that Rose 2: The Other Rose is not a character but a token lifestyle embodiment coupled with the odd belief that a disabled Davros means his audience will see wheelchair users as evil because wheelchair and not “accelerated his people’s mutation to turn them into space Nazis in tanks shaped like pepper pots and once declared that he’d would love to have the power to wipe out all creation” was met with the same kind of “you’re just jerks” that a lot of creators are using to play the token shield card to hide the real issue with their stories: the writing and dull characters. You’d think Davies wouldn’t need that, but this is the man who gave us farting space nudists who wanted to turn Earth into sellable space fuel by starting a nuclear war. The competent writing was handled by other writers. He may have brought the show back, but he’s not why it was good. I’m not here to bash Rose 2: The…darn, I can’t think of another sequel title from a second movie right now. I didn’t see the episode, remember, though the clips aren’t promising. It’s Russell T. Davies’ attitude coming back and his obsession with Rose. I warned you all his return wasn’t the celebration moment you were hoping for, and even I didn’t call “heavy handed pro-woman, pro-trans allegory that takes away from an otherwise good story for no other reason than to have it in there”. When Jack Harness was here, he was polyamorous and nobody cared because that wasn’t as important to his character as “I want to find out why the Time Agents messed with my head so I’m struggling to survive long enough to find out”, which was dropped the moment he became immortal. No, there are lots of other reasons I find him annoying but that’s another article. Sharon is also the actual first black Companion, the first teen girl Companion, and none of that matters to her story or her character in later stories. She’s just Sharon and she’s a great Companion. Instead we get Rose The Second.

Now we’re back to the review itself. The Wrarth trick the Doctor into “escaping” because they’re sure he’s a Meep agent. As it turns out the TARDIS is somehow set on a broadcast of a news story showing the steel mills and recognizing it as flames from a neutron star drive. So he heads to investigate, unaware of three Wrarth warriors hiding inside. How did they get in? Beats me. I’m trying to figure out why the Doctor’s repairs make K-9 think he’s Leela, then gets stuck in “cat” personality the rest of the story.

The Doctor arrives at the mill just as Sharon and Fudge do. The Wrarth attack Sharon, and Fudge doesn’t know what controls the damaged ship’s weapons. Luckily the arriving Doctor does, managing to scare them off. The kids lead him to the Meep just as the Doctor realizes he’s a living bomb, but the cliffhanger is easily solved by grabbing some of Fudge’s tin roof over his mom’s objection and blocking the signal. Like I said, it only exists for the cliffhanger to the next issue. My version also uses this as a cliffhanger and as Classic Who cliffhangers go it’s not bad. Don’t worry, the bomb is removed at the end of the story. This is all we need to care about the bomb.

Blue or white, the original Beep is cuter than the not as fluffy TV version. Amazing puppet work, though.

Also what works dividing here is that issue 2 of the US comic (issue 22 of the magazine) is where we finally get Beep talking as he tells his story, so there’s no reveal in issue #1, making for a better twist in the telling. The Wrarth Warriors want him dead, having attacked his planet and destroyed the rest of his race, or that’s his story anyway. Fudge’s mom notices the Wrarth are in her rhubarb patch so the Doctor builds a device that uses ultra white light to mess with the Wrarth’s infra-red vision. The comic version of the Fourth Doctor was space MacGyver. We also get to “hear” the Meep’s thoughts, and…his thoughts are not so pure, annoyed about how Sharon is treating him like a puppy instead of the “most high”.

Also questioning his innocent nature? Pulls a laser out of a hidden pouch in his body and killing one of the Wrarth, trying to play off the Doctor’s rebuke with “but I was so scared” while his thoughts are more like “how dare he rebuke me!”. I don’t think our little Beep is all that friendly. The Doctor, Sharon, and Beep take a double-decker bus, but has to use his scarf as a leash for the Meep because the driver won’t let him on even though they’re being chased by two aliens firing at them. Sometimes the rules aren’t that important, dude! This just piles on to Beep’s rage at what he’s forced to endure to trick these two into action. Remembering Fudge and his mom, the Doctor opts to return to the house while Sharon takes Beep to his ship, but Fudge is using the most dangerous weapon possible in keeping the Wrarth at bay….sci-fi fanboying and going on about his favorite superhero, Captain Starflash. Maybe I was wrong about Fudge. Bring him back!

The Doctor, however, is suddenly suspicious of everything. Why? Maybe the whole “kill an enemy in cold blood” thing because you don’t have to have 13’s “I hate guns but I’ll let killer ants suffocate in a panic room and ruin someone’s business and unemploy all his workers” mindset to be bothered by that…though these are the guys who PUT A BOMB IN YOUR STOMACH, DOCTOR! As it turns out, he’s right, and showing off his medal for taking down the Cybermen is enough to convince them he’s not a Meep agent. So they explain their story.

In the Wrarth galaxy the Meeps were so cute and peaceful that their name was a byword for happiness. Then their sun turned into a Black Sun (you can guess why the episode went with “Psychedelic Sun”, though the should-have-been Fourteenth Doctor’s outfit kind of resembles a 60s outfit) and turned them evil, and they were really good at being evil…and still oddly cute about it. They became a threat to the whole galaxy so the Wrarth were genetically engineered from the five strongest races, becoming “law enforcers of the stars!”,  a statement that must have sent Fudge for a change of knickers because he and his mum are basically gone after they have cake. No, really. The next chapter in the magazine version starts with a tea party.

It’s the Doctor’s Sonic Screwdriver. He’s probably safer with it than your claw. Not that we see him use either.

Why do they have time for this when the Doctor realizes Sharon is in danger? I don’t know, but please tell me this is in the episode. It’s my favorite part of the story, whether it makes sense or not. Just make it when Constable Zreeg is telling the story rather than after the cliffhanger so they’re not calmly having cake while not-Sharon is in danger. This part does read weird in the Marvel US reprint.

Meanwhile, Beep and Sharon arrive at the mill, where the workers are upset that UNIT has shut the place down. If you’re expecting a huge battle between controlled and free members of UNIT or anything more than a simple footrace to the bus, you’re going to be disappointed. Not every story needs the big huge fight scene, and this story was fine without it. Beep and Sharon sneak in but when a UNIT soldier finds them, Beep blasts him, insisting to Sharon that it’s only a stun blast. Spoilers, kids: it isn’t. Beep activates the Star Drive, powered by a small Black Sun, which turns everyone in the mill into their willing slaves.

The usual reaction to the person too scared to get off the high dive and holding everyone up because they don’t want to help him get off safely.

This is when we see Beep in his “Most High Chair”, as the Doctor calls it. I haven’t had an opening to mention it until now but I do like how the word balloons change to show the speaking patterns of the Meep when he’s using his actual evil voice in his head or out loud, and I hope the episode captured that well. It hasn’t been in any of the clips I had time to check out. The same goes for Sharon’s voice when Beep sends a controlled Sharon to attack the Doctor but despite also being at ground zero of the blast she manages to shake it off after the next cliffhanger. However, she refuses to believe that the cute little Meep is actually evil. Beep doesn’t even try to hide his evil voice as he calls Sharon back, ready to kill her, but the Doctor saves her but tripping the chair with his scarf then goads Sharon into making a scary jump to escape the cuddly wuddly monster. It’s also a good moment.

Meanwhile, the workers and UNIT soldiers drag Beep’s ship out of the mill, but making his star jump on the planet will destroy the planet, so the Doctor manages to sneak in and mess with the controls, temporarily limiting the damage to Blackcastle. The Doctor is crucified to a set of girders during the event and being there hurts a lot, but it does undo the radiation. The Wrarth finally move in and rescue the Doctor, who takes the workers in the TARDIS (someone tell me how K-9 got on top of the console before he could fly like in the Australian show–he only THINKS he’s a cat) to the part of Blackcastle that didn’t get sucked into a black hole while the Meep is surprised to see the Wrarth ship right above him, ready to arrest him. The Wrarth also rescue a kidnapped Sharon, who no longer falls for the Meep’s lies. The usual thanks and end gag are made, the bomb is removed, and the Doctor prepares to return Sharon home as well, but she’ll actually end up being his new comic Companion, even getting physically aged up in a later issue via time warp because that’s how maturity works in fiction. The end.

This is a really great story. No prolonged street battles so Russell T can pretend to be Michael Bay, no “men suck and stop using dead names” nonsense instead of letting the characters be people, and yet the fate of the planet still matters. Sometimes a story just needs to be a story, not a flashy allegory for this month’s cause du jour. This also didn’t need to be adapted into the proper Whoniverse. Doing so, like with Human Nature, wrings out what little canon it had by relegating it to not mattering. Why read the non-canon story when the show made a reworked version definite canon? While the designs of the Wrarth Warriors and (to a lesser extent the Meep) are amazingly good given that prosthetics and puppetry were used instead of CG (except presumably where necessary to complete the look, but they even had an alternate head for evil Meep) it looks good. It’s nice to see that practical effects are evolving alongside digital effects. From what I’ve heard, looks are the only thing good about it, so find the original, better comic version. This isn’t the only time it’s been reprinted and it’s worth tracking down to see why fans really loved this story enough for Davies to rip it off.

And some of you want Frobisher in the show? Think how they’d ruin our favorite shapeshifting penguin. We’re better off if they don’t.