The sixth episode of Doctor Who’s fifteenth series coincided with Eurovision 2025, which is used as an inspiration for “The Interstellar Song Contest.”
The Doctor and Belinda land on a space station/arena just as the Interstellar Song Contest is about to start. The pair decide to stay, but their visit is disrupted by a terrorist attack committed by an alien called Kid (Freddie Fox).
Doctor Who can be a campy show, especially during Russell T. Davies’ first time as the showrunner, and Eurovision has been seen as the carnival of camp, so the two seem like a perfect match. It wouldn’t be the first time Doctor Who has made a sci-fi fantasy twist to real events like the voyage of the Titanic and popular British TV shows like Big Brother and The Weakest Link. “The Interstellar Song Contest” did lean into some campy aspects: the presenters Rylan Clark and Graham Norton had cameos, and the episode did highlight the crowd, scale, and elaborate costumes. People who hated “Space Leia” in Star Wars: The Last Jedi will hate what The Doctor does with a confetti cannon.
The episode’s writer, Juno Dawson, described “The Interstellar Song Contest” as Die Hard meets Eurovision. That was an apt description since the episode had a Die Hard setup, although it was condensed for a 45-minute runtime and had much less action (The Doctor has never been an action hero). “The Interstellar Song Contest” was a restrictive episode, even with all the CGI spectacle. An intended consequence was the episode reminding me of the Rick and Morty episode “Rick: A Mort Well Lived” where Summer had to live through the Die Hard monomyth.
“The Interstellar Song Contest” aimed to give villains some depth. Kid and Wynn (Kiruna Stamell) were Hellions, horned humanoids who were discriminated against because of rumours they destroyed their home planet. Wynn’s boss in the control room pointed out that she took a chance hiring a Hellion since no one would hire Hellions. One Hellion had to mutilate itself to hide their true identity. There was more to the story than what the public believed, and it explored typical themes for Doctor Who regarding racism and corporate exploration. Kid was a radicalized fanatic who wanted brutal revenge, but the rest of the Hellions were more sympathetic. Hellions were meant to be a stand-in for displaced people whose homelands have been exploited and forced to take extreme actions, so paralleling recent conflicts. The episode was using The Hellions to take the light-hearted setup down a more serious route.
The other aspect of the episode was the character development. The relationship between The Doctor and Belinda has been key during the season. Belinda was forced into adventuring with The Doctor, but as the series progressed, she enjoyed the adventures and started to care for The Doctor. In the previous episode, she rushed to help The Doctor in the barbershop, and in “The Interstellar Song Contest”, Belinda grieved when she thought The Doctor had died. Gatwa’s version of The Doctor has been shown to be a fun-loving character, but in this episode, he showed his dark side when confronting Kid. Gatwa was excellent in showing The Doctor being more vengeful, but it was underdeveloped why Kid would get the brunt of The Doctor’s wrath when he has been in darker places mentally and faced much more dangerous villains.
Finally, the episode had an excellent mid-credit scene and set up the finale. It whets the appetite.
“The Interstellar Song Contest” was a solid if unremarkable episode of Doctor Who. It had strong characterisation whilst it looked at familiar topics and was tonally mixed.
