it would have been nice for the Beatles to be more involved prior to that point.

Yeah, the whole Beatles strand relies on the viewer’s forehand knowledge of (and investment in) the band, particularly John and Paul. It’s surely a British thing, but also a generational one that I think RTD may have misjudged. The Beatles were surely huge for his generation, but he’s well out of the age segments the BBC or Disney want to attract.

To me, more than a decade younger than RTD, the Beatles were a part of pop culture growing up, but their music is sort of meh, especially this early mop top, boy band era. So somebody much younger watching now might need some kind of in-show engagement with them beyond “this is how sad they’d be without music”…

Come on, we’d all be. What makes these guys so special? Same as poor Timothy Drake, nothing evident in the episode.