Russell T. Davies, David Tennant, and Catherine Tate do a hard reset on the beloved sci-fi show, taking it back to basics and resolving its own metacrisis.

For the last few years, Doctor Who has been in trouble — and not for the first time. Under Chris Chibnall’s tenure, the show, riding high off its international success during the Steven Moffat era, squandered goodwill through three seasons of an overstuffed TARDIS, a visibly lowered budget, and a Doctor (Jodie Whittaker’s Thirteen) who never got the chance to make the role her own. (Whittaker herself made gravy out of the role, but the writing let her down.) But with “The Star Beast,” we have change, my dear, and not a moment too soon.

Of course, before the biggest changes come to audiences — namely, Ncuti Gatwa’s hotly-anticipated Fifteenth Doctor — the show needs to get things back to basics for its 60th anniversary. And so, armed with a lavish budget (thanks to a spendy international deal with Disney, whose streaming service Disney+ will host the new show) and the return of some of its most popular creatives and stars, Doctor Who comes out of the gate both barrels firing with a fun, flighty, and deeply sincere special to bring skeptical audiences back into the TARDIS.

“The Star Beast” zips us right back to London, and to the dynamics longtime Who fans remember as the highlight of the revival’s lifetime: Showrunner Russell T. Davies, who first revived the series, is back in charge, and he’s dragged the Doctor/companion dynamic people remember most fondly — David Tennant’s take on the Time Lord and Catherine Tate’s Donna Noble — back into the spotlight. This time, Tennant is the Fourteenth Doctor, a new man with an old face, as he lands in London hoping to figure out why his body has put him back in the old suit and trainers. And like fate, barely a minute passes before he’s shoved back into the vicinity of Donna Noble.

A quick refresher, since even Disney recognizes that it’s been more than a decade since these two were on screen together (as evidenced by the talk-to-the-camera prologue from the pair): Donna Noble once absorbed the Doctor’s knowledge and memory and DNA, and even saved the world with it. But it nearly killed her: the Doctor was forced to wipe her memory and leave her back with her family in London. If she ever sees him again, or remembers what they did, she will die.

Naturally, that complicates their reunion, especially when it coincides with a crashed (or parked?) spaceship in a London steelworks, and the reveal of a cute, furry, E.T.-like alien called the Meep (voiced by Miriam Margolyes). Donna’s teenage daughter, Rose (Yasmin Finney, Heartstopper), finds the Meep in their shed, hiding from seven-foot-tall insect warriors called the Wrarth. Throw in some hypnotized UNIT soldiers, a three-way battle on a London street, and more technobabble than you can shake a sonic screwdriver at, and you’ve got a classic Doctor Who adventure, amped-up with Disney’s big expensive money machine.

The show looks as gorgeous as ever, making the most of its bigger-on-the-inside budget with fancy new clothes and a sonic for Tennant (it looks like a marriage of his, Smith’s, and Capaldi’s magic wands; no sign of Jodie’s amber melted-forks contraption). The new TARDIS interior is massive, so much that Tennant runs a 5K whirling around its expansive curving corridors: reminiscent of the classic series’ eggshell-white interior, with a gamer-rig RBG color scheme that ought to lend new scenes a hint of menace. Even the Wrarth, whose costumes are appropriately chintzy, fit the homespun vibe the show’s always had. It’s nice to see that, even with a blockbuster amount of money, Who can still hold onto its charms. (Plus, I never thought we’d miss Murray Gold’s bombastic, everything-plus-the-kitchen-sink score, but it’s a delight to have it back.)

But the real magic, of course, is in the Doctor-Donna pairing, Tennant and Tate picking up right where they left off without skipping a beat. Donna was always the acerbic counterpoint to Doctor 10’s sunny enthusiasm (and, fittingly, his moments of apocalyptic darkness), and even a memory-wiped Donna can wipe the verbal floor with him. Tennant can do this kind of role in his sleep, but it’s so refreshing to see Tate back in fine form, layering her sitcom-mum brashness with deep wells of sensitivity and melancholy. She gazes in confused reverie when she tries to explain to her mum Sylvia (Jacqueline King) what she feels she’s lost in her missing memories; in the same scene, she gushes about Rose, who is trans, and the “beautiful” daughter she never expected to have.

It’s these moments, and the overt sitcomminess of the script, that makes the hour feel most like Davies has returned. His previous run on the show was full of these kinds of corny, sincere progressive gestures. Not only does Rose’s transness become a major plot point (even a resolution to the whole dilemma of Donna’s life-threatening metacrisis), the show even introduces a wheelchair-bound UNIT advisor (Ruth Madeley) whose disability becomes a bit of a superpower. (Two words: Wheelchair darts.) It absolutely reads as unapologetic gestures to Who‘s queer and disabled audiences, in ways that are corny and unabashed but feel part and parcel of the show’s giddy spirit of inclusivity.

Like so many introductory stories, “The Star Beast” spends so much time running from setpiece to setpiece that you’re not meant to really be able to break down the loops in logic or think about character implications too closely. (The Doctor and Donna’s ultimate solution to both their planetary and interpersonal crises might as well be magic.) But who cares when it’s this flighty and fun? “Cryptic — I hate that,” the Doctor muses when he realizes there are more mysteries to come his way; it practically feels like an open rebuke to the mystery-box plotting of Davies’ predecessors, even though the man himself engaged in quite a bit of that in his old run.

For now, “The Star Beast” — and Doctor Who itself — seems content to play the hits, easing its old audience (and ideally, a new one) into a comfortable sense of familiarity before ushering us into the reign of Ncuti. Till then, we’ve got two more adventures with the Doctor-Donna to soak in. Allons-y!

Doctor Who is currently streaming on Disney+, with new Tennant-starring holiday specials airing December 8th and Christmas Day.