YMMV / Doctor Who 60th AS "The Star Beast"

• Anvilicious: Although the episode's themes around identity and acceptance were generally lauded, there was a feeling among some viewers that the delivery of these messages was somewhat heavy-handed and lacking in tact and subtlety. A "first look" article by the BBC itself even noted that the special had a tendency to become "preachy" at times.
• Ass Pull:
  • The control room of the spaceship being split in half by a wall of glass by the Meep, which, while it definitely amps up the tension, only serves to bring out the metacrisis, and really doesn't make much sense for a spaceship to be fitted with (let-alone what use it could have in standard operation).
  • Rose and Donna stopping the metacrisis from overtaking their minds by expelling the Time Lord energies within them. Not only does this just come off as a way to make Donna and Rose stick around, but nothing of the sort was ever implied to be possible, with mindwiping being shown as the only solution (even in the Cold Open, Fourteen seems pretty adamant that this was the only way to save her), and the "just let it go" solution feels as if it comes out of nowhere. It doesn't help that this solution is raised after the much better-foreshadowed twist of Rose having inherited half of the metacrisis, which could've plausibly served as a way of resolving this threat, by saying that the energy had been diluted enough so both of them could survive.
• Continuity Lockout: The entire special revolves around not just returning to Donna Noble's life, but the conundrum of her erased memories that was the resolution of "Journey's End". What makes this particularly significant is that in every country outside the UK and Ireland, this is the first episode of the series to air on Disney+, bringing in a plethora of new viewers to a special focused on a revisiting a plot point from 15 years ago in the show's run. The Cold Open tries to mitigate this with the Doctor and Donna giving a recap of Series 4's events, but first-time viewers will likely still struggle to keep up with the amount of returning characters and references to the show's past. As just one example, the Doctor's visibly shocked reaction to hearing Donna call out the name "Rose" is likely to go completely over any new viewer's head. This is even worse for the Japanese side as, despite being the most popular Doctor at the time, only Ten's first season was ever dubbed and viewers would get confused about what happened to Donna as the dub stopped at least her debut story.
• Fridge Brilliance:
  • Donna and Rose being able to "let go" of the Metacrisis may be subtly tying back into Ten's Pride. Rose and Donna, on their own, were able to think of a solution to their predicament, whereas Ten had already decided that a Mind Wipe was the only option to keep Donna safe (though, to be fair, the episode alludes that letting go was only possible when the Metacrisis was split between two people).
  • The announcement that Donna's daughter would be named Rose lead many fans to theorize that Donna either unconsciously named her after Rose Tyler or, in the case of Rose Noble being trans like her actress (which was unclear up until the episode premiered), that Donna somehow suggested or inspired "Rose" when her daughter was renaming herself. The reveal that Rose Noble inherited the Metacrisis and has been tapping in to Donna and the Doctor's collective memories for her creations implies that Rose likely named herself after Rose Tyler, so the name was a clue all along.
• Fridge Horror:
  • Donna gave all her money to charity out of a subconscious desire to be more like the Doctor. These instincts may have surfaced in other ways. Donna may have risked her own safety in the past because that's what the Doctor would do.
  • The Doctor's removal of Donna's memories wasn't done with surgical precision to erase only things pertaining to him or aliens; Donna is simply missing over two years worth of memories, everything that happened to her from slightly before "The Runaway Bride" to "Journey's End", and a fair chunk of that time was just her own regular life on Earth, albeit knowing all about aliens and actively searching for the Doctor. This means she has spent 15 years not knowing why or how her fiancé Lance vanished right before their wedding, and also means she has no recollection of her father Geoff's last days before he passed away. Her mother tries to pass it off as Donna having lost the memories due to an unspecified mental break down, but Donna mentions she's been going through life as if someone else (The Doctor) should be there and laying awake at night wondering what's missing.
• Genius Bonus: Rose's deadname, Jason, comes from Greek and means "healer"; in other words, in a roundabout way, Donna named her child after the Doctor.
• I Knew It!: Even before the title was revealed, those familiar with the Doctor's adventures in the comics believed that the bug-eyed creature living in Rose's shed was Beep the Meep due to their similarities.
• Like You Would Really Do It: Donna "dies" in the climax of the first of three specials featuring Donna and the Fourteenth Doctor. Pretty much no one would ever have believed she was going to be killed off in this episode, even if the BBC hadn't already put out promotional materials showing her present in the subsequent two.
• Narm: Go on, try listening to Rose and Donna say the phrase: "That's something a male-presenting Time Lord will never understand; just let it go", and try not to laugh at how absurd it sounds. What is meant to be an empowering moment for Rose and Donna comes off as unintentionally hilarious due to the clumsy dialogue. And that's not mentioning the Ass Pull this scene created.
• Salvaged Story: One of the praise points this episode received is to the episode taking the time to show Donna and her parents dealing with her missing memories. Many also consider it an Author's Saving Throw as Russell T. Davies didn't really elaborate on the consequences of this memory wipe in "The End of Time", not even briefly. But here, with 15 years of Donna's lost memories, it's of significant focus, and Donna is suitably frustrated and panicked because of what she doesn't know.
• Visual Effects of Awesome:
  • The new title sequence looks absolutely gorgeous.
  • Both the Meep and the Wrarth Warriors are largely practical effects and look astoundingly lifelike.
• Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: The Meep, of the Jerkass Woobie variety. The only reason the Meep is the way we see here is because of being mutated by the radiation of a living sun gone mad. The entire Meep race being once-peaceful creatures turned villains due to forces out of their control, causing others to have to kill them to the point of near-extinction, make them this, to an extent. The Wrarth Warriors themselves, who are there to arrest the Meep for crimes against galactic civilization, refer to the Meep's backstory as a tragic tale.

---