“Did I just fly through space on a confetti cannon?”
“Yeah.”
“Camp.”
The Interstellar Song Contest is a very strange episode of Doctor Who, both inside and outside the narrative.
Internally, there is a surprising tension within the episode, which is transparently “Die Hard at Eurovision.” This is an inherently camp premise. It is, in classic Doctor Who tradition, a “frock” premise. It is goofy, silly, and inherent queer-coded. However, once the episode gets moving, it shifts gears into something much darker and more intense; this is an episode which opens with the audience blown into space, weaves through genocide and builds to a sequence of the Doctor sadistically torturing the villain. The episode balances on a tonal knife-edge.
Spaced out.
However, there is also an uncomfortable tension in the air around The Interstellar Song Contest, a story that was conceived and written two years ago, intended to air on the night of Eurovision, and which was obviously intended as a criticism of consumptive capitalism, but which takes on a lot more weight by simple virtue of the events that have unfolded in the time between when the episode was commissioned and when it was broadcast. The Interstellar Song Contest is an episode is watched in a different context than it was made, despite being ostensibly tailored for this moment.
The result is a deeply fascinating and unsettling episode of television, one that demonstrates both the urgency and the immediacy of television as a medium, but which also illustrates the risks that come with that.
Tune in.
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