Doctor Who Season 2, Episode 6 Is A Callback To The Cruelest Version Of The Doctor
This article contains spoilers for "Doctor Who" season 2, episode 6, "The Interstellar Song Contest."
Disney+ "Doctor Who" may be heartfelt and cheesy, but it doesn't play around when it comes to villains. From omnicidal extra-dimensional gods to some of the most chilling and realistic "Doctor Who" monsters out there, Ncuti Gatwa's 15th Doctor has found himself facing antagonists who either transcend mere everyday evil or embody the dark pettiness that lies in the hearts of people. In "The Interstellar Song Contest," the good Doctor has to face a bad guy who combines both traits: Hellion terrorist Kid (Freddie Fox), who invades the episode's galactic far-future Eurovision contest in order to get revenge on its sponsor — a food company that has turned Kid's race into pariahs in order to harvest honey flavoring from their planet.
Sympathetic backstory aside, Kid's response is just a touch out of proportion. First, he hijacks the space station the contest is held on and ejects 100,000 people into space. Then, he attempts to use the broadcast signal to kill the three trillion people watching the show. To say that the Doctor — who ends up as one of the aforementioned 100,000 before a mysterious vision wakes him up and he saves himself — doesn't particularly like Kid's plans is an understatement. However, the severity of his reaction is surprising, especially since this version of the character is very easy-going and friendly compared to some of his predecessors. This is not your average "Doctor Who" episode where the Doctor defeats the villain with a clever plan and a rousing speech. Instead, the Doctor skips the speech part and begins a lengthy torture scene where he torments Kid with hard light holograms that administer energy shocks.
Kid is the first villain the Doctor has been willing to torture since the Family of Blood
The Doctor will never knowingly hurt an innocent, but he will take a life if needs must. Even the compassionate and caring 15th Doctor will choose violence if that's the only way to save the day, as evidenced by him killing the Goblin King in the 2023 Christmas special, "The Church on Ruby Road." In the season 1 finale, "Empire of Death," he does the same thing to the death god Sutekh. However, the Doctor values all sentient life, even when circumstances force him to take one. One of the key tragedies surrounding the character is that he constantly ends up in situations where good people die around him. This is a major plot point in the season 1 episode "The Doctor Dances," where the Ninth Doctor (Christopher Eccleston) is ecstatic to complete just one adventure without anyone dying.
Against this backdrop, watching the Doctor outright torture somebody — a wannabe mass murderer or not — is strange and disconcerting. Before this episode, only one Doctor has resorted to explicit torture: David Tennant's 10th Doctor. In the season 3 episode "Family of Blood," he attempts to spare the immortality-chasing titular villains by hiding from them. When they force a face-off, however, the Doctor easily defeats them and traps them in custom-designed hellish scenarios for all eternity.
"Doctor Who" season 2 has been unsettling before, but establishing torture as part of this Doctor's tool kit takes things to a whole new level. Granted, the 15th Doctor's actions aren't quite on the "Family of Blood" level here, but the revelation that he's willing and able to torment a sentient being is surely bad news for his enemies ... and, quite likely, himself.
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