Doctor Who time traveled back to 2008 to save the show in 2023

polygon.com:

The hero of BBC’s long-running sci-fi series Doctor Who is, famously, not a real medical doctor, but they have been a bit ill. What should have been a promising changing of the guard in 2018 — with new showrunner Chris Chibnall and the first woman cast as The Doctor since the series’ 1963 debut — only served to accelerate a gradual downward slide that began in the latter half of previous showrunner Steven Moffat’s seven-year tenure.

In response, the BBC has decided the cure to The Doctor’s ails lies with the man who revived the show from a 15-year coma in 2005: Russell T. Davies. And with his first episode, last weekend’s hour-long special “The Star Beast,” Davies has delivered the goods. “The Star Beast” isn’t quite the reboot Davies is here to deliver — that’ll come in 2024 when Ncuti Gatwa takes over as The Fifteenth Doctor. Instead, “The Star Beast” is meant as catnip for lapsed and disappointed fans that were introduced during Davies’ first Who revival. It’s a blatant nostalgia play that, hilariously, carries on as if nothing has happened since Davies left the show in 2008. And you know what? It kills.

Loosely based on “Doctor Who and The Star Beast,” a comics serial by Pat Mills and Watchmen co-creator Dave Gibbons, the new special pulls triple duty: delivering a snappy, classic Doctor Who adventure, introducing an overarching mystery that will tie “The Star Beast” to two more specials coming in following weeks, and briefly introducing the Doctor to newcomers. It excels at its first two tasks, and stumbles pretty extravagantly at the third. Luckily, there’s so much charm here that “The Star Beast” never feels anything other than delightful, even at its clumsiest.

That charm is essential, because Davies’ first Doc