Doctor Who Series 14 Episode 2 Review: The Devil's Chord

Consistently funny and charming, Monsoon was the underdog winner of RuPaul’s Drag Race season five. Her subsequent rise to Drag Race’s “Queen of All Queens”, Broadway star and now Doctor Who villain has been gratifying to see, and she is without a doubt the MVP of this episode.

Maestro is a big, meaty role, a showboating, show-stopping antagonist, and a character that could have been completely unbearable in the hands of a performer with less control of tone. But Monsoon knows when to go big and when to dial it back, when to laugh and when to snarl, when to be hilarious and when to be genuinely menacing, and needless to say she has the pipes for the singing. She brings a sardonic, capricious energy reminiscent of Michelle Gomez as Missy – in fact, like many, I wondered at first if the name “Maestro” was a clue that this was a new incarnation – though the character in no way feels like a retread. Connecting her to the Toymaker makes much more sense, and adds nicely to the foreboding sense of forces lurking out there beyond anything we’ve seen before.

All that said, not everything quite worked. Having the Doctor initially running and hiding from Maestro makes sense in context – as he says, his last encounter with a being like her “took everything, it literally tore my soul in half … I can’t survive that again”. However, coming immediately after “Space Babies”, in which the Doctor running and hiding from a monster was used as a plot point specifically because it felt wrong to him, the impact here is somewhat diminished.

Of course, this could just be a consequence of watching these two episodes back to back, and it was compelling to see the Doctor’s fear push him to think on his feet and adapt to the challenge of a villain operating on the level of mythology and metaphor. But when Ruby said “You never hide”, I found myself thinking… he kind of does, actually?

The episode’s continuity references were also hit and miss. While it was nice to have the Doctor point fondly over at Totter’s Lane, Susan – the granddaughter that the Doctor left, against her will, in a war-torn 22nd century – feels like a can of worms best left unopened. Like the genocide of the Time Lords, the weight of the accumulated lore risks being a destabilising force, and while Davies might well be going somewhere with all this, in the context of this particular episode the moment feels too throwaway to satisfy veteran fans, while simultaneously raising a lot of questions that might confuse newer viewers.

And then there’s the twist at the end. Does it make sense to finish this episode, with all its musical references and multiple breakings of the fourth wall, with a big production number? Sure! But while the choreography is impressive, and full of fun little visual references to movies like Singin’ in the Rain and The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, the song itself is a bit lacklustre. As with the musical number from the Christmas special, it’s not really a strong point for Russell T Davies – so while this didn’t fall completely flat for me, like “The Goblin Song” did, it does feel like the show hitting a bit of a ceiling in terms of what it’s able to pull off.