10 Worst Doctor Who Moments Of 2024

Opening the Fifteenth Doctor’s debut season with a story called Space Babies and having him say that title out loud every five minutes... was certainly a choice. 

Few will disagree that Space Babies was the weakest Doctor Who story this year, and that's largely due to the space babies themselves.

“Talking babies” isn’t an inherently flawed concept. Doctor Who has made the ordinary extraordinary many times before (hello Weeping Angels and Vashta Nerada), and it has the cute factor of stuff like the Adipose, the Pting, and the Meep.

But with the best will in the world, making it look like actual, real-life babies are speaking actual, real-life dialogue was always going to be a challenge. Yes, the mouths are somewhat synced up, but the results just don’t look natural. There’s a reason these shots are few and far between, and it’s not just because they were expensive to produce!

The solution was obvious, cheaper, and right there – ditch the whole synced-up mouths thing and have the babies speak telepathically. Or, y'know, just don't make an episode about magic babies. Come on Russell.

It’s a shame because there’s some genuinely impressive effects work elsewhere, from the Bogeyman, to the space station itself. But all anyone can talk about are the awkward CGI baby mouths, and it's not hard to see why.