Doctor Who's First Musical Episode Should've Taken A Cue From Buffy The Vampire Slayer

The new "Doctor Who" season's second installment, "The Devil's Chord," is the closest the show's come to a proper musical episode. Sure, there was that brief musical number in the latest Christmas episode, and that one song-based resolution in season 7, but we've never seen the show embrace the music quite like this one. There are multiple original numbers, including a battle where the villain's using floating notations like a cowboy swinging a lasso around. It's fun when "Doctor Who" goes full weird, and this episode is an exciting promise of more musical weirdness to come. 

But judging the episode by proper musical standards, how does it hold up? Well, not great. There's the problem that "There's Always a Twist At the End" is the only genuine catchy banger in the bunch, but more importantly, we never really got to hear the Doctor and Ruby sing about anything that matters. Sure, they get to play instruments and dance at the end, but there is no showstopper where the Doctor or Ruby get to sing their hearts out. It's particularly a shame because, as cheesy as that goblin song was, both Ncuti Gatwa and Millie Gibson proved that they definitely vocal chops to pull such a thing off. 

The only instance of the music properly shining light on the characters is when a hypnotized Ruby sings those notes that the Maestro seems to recognize. But even then, the revelation's mainly a plot-focused one, not a character one. It's there to further along the season-long mystery of Ruby's parents, not tell us anything interesting about Ruby's personal character arc. It's especially disappointing because when "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" gave us its own musical episode over twenty years ago, they understood the assignment perfectly.  

The season 6 "Buffy" episode "Once More With Feelings" follows the same basic monster-of-the-week format as "The Devil's Chord." Instead of a mysterious alien creature stealing the world's music, "Once More, With Feeling" centers on a mysterious demon forcing the whole town to burst into song whenever they feel particularly emotional. Both episodes let their respective bad guys have a fun time — for "Who" it's Jinkx Monsoon's Maestro and for "Buffy" it's Hinton Battle's dancing demon, Sweet — but in the "Buffy" episode, the demon is more of an afterthought than a genuine scary presence. He's defeated easily, and barely interacts directly with the main cast. 

This turned out to be the right choice, because it freed up room for the episode to give all its main characters (except Willow) a chance to shine. Anya and Xander are finally forced to confront their misgivings about their upcoming marriage, Spike's forced to sing his love for Buffy, and Buffy's forced to reveal to her friends that they hadn't actually saved her from hell at the beginning of the season. Instead they ripped her out of heaven — a reveal that has pretty major implications for every character. 

The episode's surprise highlight, however, was probably Tara and Giles, whose individual melodies about their dwindling relationships with Willow and Buffy came together in a heartbreaking duet. It's made even more impactful by the fact that their actors (Amber Benson, Anthony Head) have the best voices in the cast. It's a tragic sequence, delivered perfectly.

The most striking thing about "Once More, With Feeling" is just how dark it is despite its initial cheery veneer. It's the episode where Tara and Willow's relationship starts to fall apart, and where Buffy is at perhaps her most depressed. But even when things are at their darkest, the episode doesn't stop singing. It gives us "Walk Through The Fire," in which Buffy sings about feeling alone and abandoned. The song quickly builds up to a triumphant ensemble piece that escalates into all the characters singing together. 

"The Devil's Chord" has a similarly dark moment, where the Doctor runs away from Maestro and confesses to Ruby that he's terrified, that he doesn't believe he can save the day this time. There's also a powerful bit of acting from Millie Gibson as the Doctor takes Ruby back to her own time and she sees that the whole world's been destroyed. But neither of them sing. When the episode wants to get real, it puts the music on pause. 

This is the most disappointing aspect of the episode, because if you're going to do a musical episode, you might as well go all out. When the Doctor tells Ruby he can't save the day, he should singing it a la Giles in "Standing." When Ruby tries to cheer him up, she should be singing like Spike at the end of "Give Me Something to Sing About." This is likely our only "Doctor Who" musical episode for a while, possibly the last one ever, so why not make the most of it? It feels like "The Devil's Chord" is afraid to go full musical, and it ends up squandering its best opportunity yet. 

The other big appeal of "Once More With Feeling" — the thing that constantly ranks it at the top of musical episode lists — is the sheer specificity of every single music number. A song like "I'm Under Your Spell" could only have been sung by Tara during this one period of the show, just as "I'll Never Tell" could only have been sung by Xander and Anya in early season 6. The music is not just strongly tied to where the characters currently are, but it pushes all their arcs forward in a meaningful way. It never feels unmotivated.

Meanwhile, all the music Ruby and the Doctor play in "The Devil's Chord" feels disconnected from them. Only Spike could've given us "Rest in Peace," but Ruby's song on the piano could've been played by anyone. It feels a little lazy, like the script said "[insert song here]" every time the Doctor or Ruby had to do something with music. "Buffy" managed to throw on these lovely character-specific songs for almost everyone in the cast. "Doctor Who" only had two characters it needed to do justice to, and it still let them both down.

The bright side is that no musical episode could ever be lazier than "That '70s Musical" from "That '70s Show." It's a jukebox musical where all the songs seem to have been picked at random from a playlist of popular '70s hits. Because most of the music comes from Fez's fantasies, the music sequences are almost completely disconnected from both the characters and the plot. It's as half-assed as a musical could get, and leagues below "The Devil's Chord."

If anything, the approach of "Doctor Who" seems about on the same level as "Community," which had a season 3 Christmas episode that featured all the main characters singing in a zombie-esque fever trance. Some of the songs feel loosely connected to what we know and love about our favorite study group characters — like Troy's Jehovah's Witness-themed Christmas rap — but half of them feel chosen at random. Annie's "Santa Baby" parody is fun, sure, but it also has nothing to do with Annie as a person. The music's driving the characters rather than the other way around. "Community" pulls it off because it's "Community," but this isn't the best approach to a musical episode. 

That's why "Scrubs," with its extremely character-specific soundtrack, still reigns supreme among the sitcom musicals. "My Musical" may not be as crucial to the show's longer-running storylines as "Once More, With Feeling," but here the characters are the ones driving the music. Only Dr. Cox could've sung "My Rant," just as only Turk and JD could've sung "Guy Love." The songs both further the plot and shine a fun light on all the main characters — well, except Kelso. It didn't feel like the writing and the music were done by two completely separate teams.

Although "Doctor Who" and "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia" don't have a ton in common — in fact, they're pretty much polar opposites — the latter show's season 4 episode, "The Nightman Cometh," plays out in a structurally similar way to "The Devil's Chord." Here, the songs are similarly disconnected from the rest of the cast, but they also don't feel too directionless because they're all serving a clear plot purpose. Just as Ruby and the Doctor need to play a song or two to fight Maestro, the Paddy's Pub gang needs to perform a musical in order to help Charlie woo the Waitress. Charlie gets to be the eccentric maniac who drives the plot here, much like Maestro, although he's not defeated at the end so much as he's experienced a mild setback. (Just as magical beings related to the toymaker will continue causing chaos, Charlie would continue to creepily stalk the Waitress for a solid ten more seasons.)

Still, it feels like a mistake for "Doctor Who" to let its musical episode follow along the playbooks of sitcoms like "Always Sunny" or "Community," when the golden blueprints were right there with "Buffy." The 2002 episode proved that an episodic sci-fi show could have its cake and eat it too, that it could give audiences silly one-off musical performances while also furthering the plot and deepening the characters. When looking at just how much "Once More, With Feeling" accomplished with a similar run-time, it's hard not to wonder how a more ambitious "The Devil's Chord" could've played out. It's still a fun, energetic episode with a lot to offer, but it could've been so much more. 

New episodes of "Doctor Who" release Fridays at 7pm E.T. on Disney+.