The Food of Love (episode)


*The following article is written from an Out of Universe perspective.*

The Food of Love was the fifth episode of Season 49 of Doctor Who. It was written by Simon Guerrier, directed by John Dahl and featured Samantha Bond as the Fourteenth Doctor and Montserrat Lombard as Erin Stevenson.

Synopsis

Proven 'Not Guilty' by the judicial board, the Doctor and Erin find themselves on Tolia during the 1300th annual Intergalactic Song Contest. However, the Doctor realises something odd is happening with Earth's contestant and it isn't long until an old foe is awakened.

Plot

In a holding cell, on the Tolian spaceship, a Guard is presiding – after a moment of awkward silence, the Doctor quips “Are we nearly there yet?” in a deliberately annoying way. The Tolian Guard sternly says, “That’s none of your business”. The captain’s voice comes over the PA saying, “We have just exited the Time Vortex, please bring the Prisoners to the Bridge”. The guards then grab hold of the Doctor and Erin and escorts them up to the bridge. Captain Maion welcomes them and tells them to sit down. The Doctor is a little confused, but the Captain informs them that the Judicial board have found them not guilty, after investigation. The Doctor annoyed asks if they can be taken back to Earth in 2014 – the Captain says, they can do in a few days’ time, but he wants to watch the Intergalactic Song Contest. The Doctor beams and says, “Oh I love the Intergalactic Song Contest, can we join you, if you have room obviously.” The Captain laughs and says “We have more than enough room, we have over 100,000 seats! Tolia won last year, we’re hosting it! Sure come along, I have seats in the VIP box!” We then cut to the ship landing, over Tolia and past the arena with a giant sign saying, “Celebrating 1300 Years – The Intergalactic Song Contest – Tolia 3256!”.

The Doctor, Erin, the Captain and a group of other people walking towards the arena, with a load of other people surrounding them too. Erin asks if the Intergalactic Song Contest is similar to Eurovision, and the Doctor says that its actually the same contest that rebranded itself after the formation of the United Earth, and the Earth Empire – it spread out into the galaxy, and 1300 years after its creation – here it is on Tolia, the Doctor then jokingly warns Erin that its quite different to what she would know in 1977, even 40 years later, in Caitrin’s time, she says, – it’s a whole different animal, imagine what its like 1300 years later. We then cut to them finding their seats and the contest begins.

The contests opens with a flag parade of all the competing worlds, and we see many old faces including the Bellonsions, the Sontarans, the Ice Warriors, the Alpha Centaurians (entering a group called Green Thing) obviously the Tolians and the Humans too, plus a bunch of new alien races. However, as the Human Contestant, Suzie Q, walks across the stage, the Doctor notices something strange, an orange flicker above him (that makes her feel slightly uncomfortable), she asks if Erin saw this, but she just says its probably a trick of the lights.

The Doctor as slips backstage to investigate and she sneaks into the greenroom, dressed as a Steadicam operator, and she discovers that Suzie Q is most definitely not quite herself, as she finds her in an almost hypnotic state. The Doctor is made to actually become a Steadicam operator to film a link, in quite a humorous manner – she isn’t very good, and one of the Floor Assistants tells her that she’s on thin ice. It turns out that Suzie Q’s song “The Food of Love”, which is a pretty generic schlager type song, contains a secret code which will unlock a fisher in the fabric of reality to bring a swarm of something through… The Doctor ponders this with Erin, when she gets back in her seat (while the Sontaran performance is on), and she says this all seems very familiar. It turns out that it's, in fact, the Carrionites, and they have used Suzie Q, to perform a song with lyrics which would unlock their people from the darkness, as they tried before with Shakespeare. The Doctor and Erin realise that at all costs they must stop Suzie Q from performing but as they race back to the green room, the Floor Assistant before is standing in the corridor with some security guards and point towards the Doctor, they then promptly arrest her and Erin. In one of the back rooms, they are held guard, and they see the contest being broadcast on a screen in the room, and its Earth’s time to perform – the Doctor and Erin try and escape as the performance starts and they manage to do so. They race back towards the stage, and from backstage they see Carrionites beginning to form up in the top of the arena – people begin to notice, ogling them see them as a special effect. The Doctor and Erin run onto the stage, and they grab hold of Suzie Q, but security run up onto stage thinking them stage invaders… They grab onto the Doctor and Erin, but the Doctor manages to take the microphone and she says “I name thee, Carrionite” – and the Carrionites begin to hurtle back in pain, security stop at this point and notice, as Suzie Q wakes up from this trance. She says to security, let them go, they (pointing to the Carrionites) must be stopped. The Doctor says it isn’t enough, and she says that they need to fight them back with their own medicine. Erin then says “I think I know just the thing” and she takes the microphone and begins singing Puppet on a String by Sandie Shaw, the winner of Eurovision from 1967, this pushes the Carrionites back into the fisher, and closes it off. The audience stands in awe, confused but spellbound and then after a pause, they applaud.

Back in the spaceship and the Doctor and Erin leave, on a screen they watch a news report which states that TBK, the host broadcaster, is claiming that the “Sandie Shaw incident” was, in fact, a planned celebration of the 1300th Anniversary, that was meant to interrupt the human contestant, aptly. It also shows that in the end, the Sontaran performer was victorious, with his song “My Last Battlefield”. The Doctor chuckles and says, “I’ll tell Sandie next time I see her that her song saved the world”, Erin chuckles, as we cut to them arriving back in 2014 and getting into the TARDIS as it dematerialises, and we hear distantly in the background of the dematerialisation the last few notes of Te Duem.

Cast

The Doctor - Samantha Bond
Erin Stevenson - Montserrat Lombard
Captain Maion - Chris Stanton
Kazie Boiell - Maureen Lipman
Suzie Q - Lucie Jones
Kine - Dan Starkey
Skalron - Spencer Wilding
Toma - Ted Robbins
Vulpes - Foxes
Floor Manager - Karen Winchester
News Reader - Andrienne O'Sullivan
Security Guards - Sam Callis, Mark Heal
Tolian Guard - Jo Stone-Fewings
Commentator - Graham Norton
Voice of the Alpha Centaurions - Ysanne Churchman

Crew

Created by Sydney Newman, Donald Wilson and C.E. Webber

"The Food of Love" composed by Bear McCreary and performed by Lucie Jones
Carrionites created by Gareth Roberts
Sontarans created by Robert Holmes
Ice Warriors & Alpha Centaurians created by Brian Hayles
Bellonsions created by Russell T Davies

With thanks to the European Broadcasting Union

Memorable Quotes

To be added.

Background Information

Production History

Filming starts - 16 December 2013
Filming ends - 23 December 2013
Broadcast - 18 October 2014

Development

To be added.

Pre-Production

To be added.

Production

This episode was the third to be shot, and was part of Block 1.

Post-Production

To be added.

Reaction

To be added.

Story Notes

To be added.

Continuity

To be added.

Home Video Releases

To be added.