Doctor Who: The Devil's Chord Review - 8 Ups & 2 Downs

Russell T Davies was wise to manage expectations when it came to the involvement of The Beatles in The Devil's Chord. This absolutely isn't a celebrity historical in which the Doctor and Ruby team up with the Fab Four to defeat a music-stealing god.

Instead, it's a story about the importance of music to our lives, and so The Beatles are a shorthand to demonstrate how bleak a world without songs actually is.

Even knowing this, it still feels like The Beatles are short-changed slightly. For example, the Doctor and Ruby couldn't care less about George Harrison or Ringo Starr, who barely even get a namecheck in the whole episode!

Worse still, when the band finally get their mojo back at the end of the episode, they sound more like Busted than The Beatles.

RTD has always seemed like a writer who prefers Cilla Black to The Beatles, so perhaps he just isn't all that interested in exploring the impact of Maestro on the band. It's a shame because it does feel like there's a lot of untapped potential in the concept of "What if The Beatles were rubbish?"