Doctor Who: The Star Beast Review - 9 Ups And 3 Downs

We’ve got the king of Doctor Who back, but this is the price. Rusty D is, unfortunately, prone to the odd deus ex machina, and while the climax of this episode hits all the correct emotional beats, the logic is… a little weak.

The idea of the Metacrisis being hereditary is good in practice, but does feel like it takes Rose’s agency and self-realisation journey away a little, which is a shame. Even so, we’ll accept this explanation.

What we find a little harder to give a pass is the following scene, in which Donna fixes the Metacrisis problem by just "letting go" of it – this isn’t a particularly satisfying resolution after 15 years of waiting, and the extreme levels of technobabbling in the lead-up don’t mask the tremendous leap of logic required to accept it. Also, the earth-shattering lava cracks that conveniently confined themselves to roads and helpfully closed themselves for no reason were, frankly, nonsense.

On the topic of lazy resolutions, could we not have decided on a better plot device than ‘Donna spills coffee on the TARDIS’ to get us to next week? Come on.