Doctor Who Season 1, Episode 1 Recap With Spoilers: “Space Babies”

Doctor Who has returned for its new season, the first in a new era for the long-running series. Doctor Who stars Ncuti Gatwa as the Doctor and MIllie Gibson as companion Ruby Sunday, with Russell T Davies returning as series showrunner. The new Doctor Who season is the first to release in partnership with Disney+, as new episodes debut on Friday nights on the streamer internationally before coming to the BBC on Saturdays. We’re here with the recap of the Doctor Who Season 1 premiere episode, “Space Babies.”

SPOILERS follow for Doctor Who Season 1, Episode 1, “Space Babies.” Recap begins now: 

Doctor Who Season 1, Episode 1, “Space Babies” (written by Russell T Davies and directed by Julie Anne Robinson) picks up right where the left off. Ruby Sunday (Millie Gibson) walks into the TARDIS, where she’s greeted by the Doctor (Ncuti Gatwa). As Ruby looks around in astonishment at the TARDIS, the Doctor takes this opportunity to catch her (and new viewers) up on everything she needs to know. She’s inside the TARDIS, a time machine, and he’s an alien named (for all intents and purposes) the Doctor. He’s from Gallifrey and he’s the last of the Time Lords.

To prove what he’s saying is true, the Doctor takes the TARDIS back in time 150 million years. Ruby expresses concern about changing time by stepping on a butterfly. The Doctor brushes off these concerns. Ruby immediately steps on a butterfly and transforms into an alien creature as she looks at the prehistoric landscape littered with dinosaurs. The Doctor scoops up the butterfly and breathes some residual regeneration energy into the creature, bringing it back to life and setting Ruby back to her human form. Normally this isn’t the type of thing Doctor Who worries about but the show quickly addresses this by having the Doctor note that he forgot to turn on the “butterfly compensation switch,” which presumably takes care of butterfly-effect-style ripples in the timeline during his adventures.

Now onto the adventure proper. The Doctor asks Ruby for a number correlating to a year, and she goes bold by listing 5 digits: 2-1-5-0-6. The Doctor sets the TARDIS on course for the year 21506.

The TARDIS brings the Doctor and his companion to a space station. Ruby compares the space station tech to Star Trek, and the Doctor jokes (presumably?) that they need to visit them. The space station is clearly in bad shape, with flames and sparks shooting out of the walls. The Doctor and Ruby soon hear a roaring sound. The Doctor at first assures Ruby that there’s no such thing as monsters, only creatures you haven’t met yet. However, he becomes as frightened as she is as soon as the gangly, big-toothed creature gets near them, which he notes once they reach safety, is strange for him.

The duo takes a lift to a higher deck and finds themselves in a room full of babies in liquid-filled chambers. The Doctor realizes they’re in a “baby farm,” used to boost the populations of worlds that have gone sterile or “gone mad and banned kissing.” He also notes that there seems to be some connection between Ruby and the babies, and they discuss the mystery behind both her and the Doctor’s respective birth parents.

The Doctor finds a button that opens an outer panel, allowing them to see the world around which the space station is orbiting, which fills Ruby with a sense of wonder. For a minute, they discuss the Doctor’s state of being, having survived a genocide and now living for moments like this and the freedom of his adventures. Ruby brings up her mother, who should be long dead by the year they’re in now. The Doctor modifies Ruby’s phone, letting her call her mother 10 minutes from when they left.

The Doctor and Ruby are greeted by a talking baby named Eric in a mobile stroller who immediately begins calling them mummy and daddy, despite their protests. They follow him to the bridge of the space station, where several other babies in strollers are running the station.

These children have been waiting for their mummy and daddy for a long time, ever since the adults abandoned the space station. Captain Poppy, one of the children, explains they’ve never had a home outside the station. The Doctor and Ruby begin lifting the children and holding them.

Some time passes as the Doctor investigates and learns that the crew disembarked the space station but, for some reason, left the children behind and the birth machine running. The “spaces babies” grew up but remained the same physical size. Captain Poppy asks if she and her crew “grew up wrong.” The Doctor assures her that “nobody grows up wrong.” She is what she is and that is magnificent. His parents left him just like her parents left all of them.

Meanwhile, Ruby gets to know some of the other space babies. They introduce her to Nan-E, a computer with a voice who cares for the children. The Doctor and Ruby watch an automated nose-blowing and dirty-tissue-disposal.

The Doctor asks about the creature downstairs, and the children start screaming. They call it the Bogeyman. The Doctor puts on a headset to talk to Nan-E more privately. He explains that the space station is in trouble and will have an explosion soon. Nan-E tells the Doctor to go to a storage room. When he keeps questioning, Nan-E speaks in a rather un-computer-like tone and snaps at him to go to the storage room.

On the way there, The Doctor questions Ruby about her birth parents again, noting that she seems to be connecting everything. Ruby says they didn’t leave anything behind but her in the snow, and suddenly the Doctor is back on Ruby Road in the snow, watching Ruby’s parent walk away after leaving her at the church. The hooded figure turns, face still obscured, and points straight at the Doctor. Suddenly, Ruby is in his line of vision and he’s back on the space station, but it’s snowing inside, as if a memory came through somehow. Ruby asks if this is a time travel thing, but the Doctor says he’s never seen anything like it. He wonders who Ruby’s mother is and why she’d point at him.

The Doctor and Ruby are beckoned into the storage unit by a woman, the voice of Nan-E. She shows them videos of the crew disembarking under protest after receiving orders from the company that owns and operates the station to do so. “Nan-E” – Jocelyn (Golda Rosheuvel), the on-site accountant — explains the recession led to the station being abandoned, but the law prohibited them from shutting off the birth machine. Ruby spells out the metaphor – The planet below refused to let them turn off the birth machine but wouldn’t care for the children after their birth. What could Davies be getting at? — and Jocelyn remarks that it’s a “strange planet,” to which Ruby replies, “It’s not that strange” (ahem). Jocelyn couldn’t bring herself to leave the children, so she stayed behind. For 6 years, she’s done her best to hold the station together and care for the children from afar but couldn’t bring herself to be with them face-to-face when she knows they’re bound to run out of air and food soon enough.

Ruby wonders why they don’t fly the station somewhere safe, but Jocelyn explains it’s a station, it doesn’t move. The Doctor laments this since there’s a nearby system with a DuBarryDuPlessy world, which takes in refugees. The problem is that no one goes looking for refugees, they have to find their way themselves, and the station is still stuck in orbit. That TARDIS could help, but the Bogeyman is in their way of getting there, and Jocelyn has no idea what it is. Ruby puts together that it’s all like a children’s story that’s come to life, with a nursery, a nanny, and a monster in the dark.

They notice Eric playing hero, going into the lower level to confront the Bogeyman. Ruby and the Doctor rush to his aid but find only his damaged stroller. Jocelyn helps navigate them through the lower level, speaking through the Nan-E filter (which censors her more colorful uses of language, which Davies uses to comedic effect).

The Doctor and Ruby find Eric hiding in a locker, but the Bogeyman is nearby and gives chase. Captain Poppy and the other space babies come to their aid, using a flame thrower to scare the Bogeyman off.

The space babies go back to the upper level while Ruby and the Doctor remain to investigate the Bogeman and find a way back to the TARDIS. Jocelyn tells them about how the Bogeyman first appeared six years ago, without explanation, rattling and howling in the lower levels just after the babies were born. The Doctor notices something oozes out of the pipes and walls, forming a gross web.

The Doctor uses a console to analyze a hunk of the gunk and suddenly, he puts it all together. It’s all one big machine. The parthenogenesis machine gave birth to the babies and the Bogeyman. When the education software went haywire six years ago, the computer decided the children needed stories and a monster. The Bogeyman roars at a frequency designed to cause fear. Oh, and it’s built out of the children’s discarded snot. It’s a literal Bogeyman.

The Bogeyman finds them and begins chasing them through the lower level. Jocelyn helps them stay ahead of the creature and get on the other side of a closing door. Jocelyn then seals off the chamber with the Bogeyman inside and begins venting the chamber into space. The creature hangs on as the Doctor tries to convince Jocelyn not to kill it. She’s not listening, so the Doctor sends Ruby to stop her. The Bogeyman is a unique creature, and the Doctor relates to it being “the only one of his kind.” He opens the chamber and steps inside, risking his life to save the Bogeyman. It’s a struggle. He reaches and pushes the button to close the hangar door and repressurizes the chamber.

Later, the space babies are finally with Jocelyn and the Doctor shows that the Bogeyman is fine. The Doctor shows them the world they want to go to. Luckily, for six years, the ship’s computer has been storing the baby’s used nappies on a single deck, which has led to a build-up of methane that, when vented, will be strong enough to get them to the sanctuary planet.

The Doctor and Ruby return to the TARDIS, where the Doctor presents Ruby with a TARDIS key and invites her to be his companion. She accepts. The Doctor tells her that there’s one thing he can never do: take her back to the church on Ruby Road on the Christmas night she was left behind. The potential ramifications are too dangerous to risk, and he thinks the snow from earlier was a warning. Ruby, clearly a little emotional, insists they will be visiting her mom at Christmas. They return to Ruby’s present home, where her adoptive mother and grandmother are waiting, and are shocked to see the TARDIS come through the walls. Just before he exits the TARDIS, the Doctor puts a DNA scan of Ruby on a screen.

New episodes of Doctor Who debut on Fridays exclusively on Disney+.