Doctor Who: Planet of the Dead

“I don’t believe it. Guns don’t work.”

Well, that was great. I really enjoyed that; a good swashbuckling romp. I’m glad we get a story like this right now, as the ending suggests we won’t be seeing another such light-hearted romp for quite some time.

I love the beginning; we have a cat burglar. As there are no cats available she proceeds to steal a Priceless Shiny Artefact from a museum in the coolest possible way, and then turns out to be played by Michelle Ryan. I love this sequence; it’s brilliantly shot. The many short glimpses of various police officers before Christina gets on the bus really make us feel that there’s no escape.

But there is, of course; the bus is off to another planet. Gareth Roberts has co-written this with RTD, and this whole scenario reminds me of the Eight Twelves from his excellent (though slightly metalhead-ist) Virgin New Adventures novel, The Highest Science. The whole visual aesthetic of a London bus in the (genuine) desert is most effective, too. I don’t think I buy the oft-stated view that they could have filmed this closer to home than Dubai and still had a desert which looked as good (this is the first story to have been shot in HD, I believe), but I’m enough of a wishy-washy liberal to wish it had been filmed somewhere with a better human rights record than the UAE.

There’s a bit of misdirection early on as we’re made to expect everyone to turn on the Doctor as per Midnight (Humans on buses, always blaming me!”), but that’s not how things turn out. Instead, Christina takes charge and shows herself to have a natural air of authority but also to be a pretty good leader. This scene is also good practical scripting, as Christina rather efficiently gets everyone to introduce themselves. That’s one of RTD’s many admirable qualities; making the exposition double as character development.

The most interesting of the others is Carmen, a psychic, and a genuine one, as the Doctor’s reaction makes clear. Already she can hear “voices of the dead”, and her premonitions are strategically placed throughout the story to build up the tension.

Back on Earth, UNIT have been called in, led by Captain Magambo from Turn Left. The best thing about them is the Sergeant Osgood-like Malcolm, who may be nothing but an absent minded professor stereotype but is brilliantly played by Lee Evans. Any you have to love anybody who name checks Bernard Quatermass.

We’re shown some friendly insect creatures, Tritovores (they remind me a bit of the Rills from Galaxy Four all that time ago), who are rather obviously there just to serve the plot, although this fact is subtly but deliberately played for laughs in a slightly fourth-wall breaking way. Before we discover they’re friendly, though, Christina gets a great and Tom-ish line “Ah, I’ll remember that as I’m being slowly tortured. At least I’m bleeding on the floor of a really well-designed spaceship.” Nice one! The Tritovores believe the Doctor (just there to serve the plot, so of course they do) and allow the Doctor to do one of the things he loves best; exposition. It seems that cloud approaching from the background consists of billions of large manta rays with metal exoskeletons, which despoil planet after planet through wormhole after wormhole. It’s a terrifying threat, an unstoppable plague of locusts, and it’s heading first for our heroes and then for Earth.

The scene where Christina retrieves the crystal is fascinating and nuanced. There’s a quasi-political class subtext here (“The aristocracy survives for a reason.”) which is more notable now, in Cameron’s Britain, than it was at the time. But I find myself not really minding it, although perhaps I should. Do I have something of the English forelock-tugging gene / disease in spite of myself, or is it just that Christina is so cool? Because she is, and she goes some way to redeeming herself for her criminal lifestyle here with here bravery and potential self-sacrifice. Besides, she and the Doctor are both thieves, with a parallel being explicitly being drawn between her threat of King Athelstan’s cup and the Doctor’s theft of the TARDIS.

As soon as the McGuffin has been retrieved, the Tritovores become superfluous to the plot, and as their sole function in life is to serve the plot, they are promptly killed. Hilariously, the dialogue even pretty much states this out loud at this point. I so love little fourth-wall breaking jokes of this kind.

Christina gives up her treasure (another little moment of redemption?) and we have a flying bus. This is really very cool indeed, as is every moment of the final few minutes, from the Doctor’s meeting with Malcolm to the mutual respect between the Doctor and Magambo, who was trying to kill him moments earlier by closing the wormhole but, crucially, was doing it for the right reasons. This is a slightly cuddlier UNIT than we’ve known in the recent past, although the Doctor’s unease with the modern organisation remains.

I seem to be making a habit, these days, of saying I’m no longer bothered by something which annoyed me on original transmission. This time it’s the Doctor allowing Christina to get away; on second viewing I feel on balance that she’s been genuinely magnificent and redeemed herself enough to earn it. The kiss is cool too. But once again the Doctor is adamant that he travels alone. This can’t bode well.

Oh yes, and there’s Carmen’s prediction. I’ve had enough of things returning through the darkness- how many times is it now? But we’re told again that the Doctor’s song is ending. And that “He will knock four times.” Brr.

Magnificent. 5/5.

Doctor Who: Partners in Crime

“You’re not mating with me, sunshine!”

Ooh, new theme music! And no pre-titles sequence; it seems we’re relaunching the show again, and once again we’re doing so by focusing on the new(ish) companion. It’s a tried and tested formula, and it works well here, but all the same its noticeable that RTD is repeating his tricks and tropes. This isn’t in any way a problem at this stage, and it’s an unavoidable consequence for any writer, even a great one such as RTD, who writes so many episodes of a series. For the first time we’re made to realise that this production team have been around a while and probably shouldn’t stick around for that much longer. None of which means that this episode, or indeed the series at this point, are anything other than great.

This is a textbook example of a “fluffy” RTD episode, I suppose- again, repetition of tricks and tropes- but such a perfectly crafted one. Compared to, say, New Earth, this is perfection. The parallel opening narratives, with both the Doctor and Donna investigating this week’s threat, are perfectly written and staged for comic effect. And the scene at the windows is the funniest thing in Doctor Who ever.

The baddies, Miss Foster and the Adipose, are quite rightly relegated to the background a little so that the episode can focus on Donna, but personally I love the little things. Susan Hampshire is quite deliciously villainous, too.

But this all about Donna. Happily, we’ve already been introduced to the character, so we need waste no time on establishing the character and we can get straight into some quite nuanced character stuff; I love the way the scene is shot where Sylvia is nagging Donna in the background (“No one’s gonna come along with a magic wand and make your life better”), and the way this is immediately followed by a contrasting scene with Wilf. Both Catherine Tate and Bernard Cribbins are superb, something which no doubt I’ll soon be taking for granted.

Donna’s character has had to change, of course. It’s subtle, but this is no longer the, er, abrasive Donna of The Runaway Bride. Instead we get a good look at a character who has been changed by her experiences with the Doctor- an ongoing theme of the series, of course- after several months have passed. It’s great to see her investigating Adipose Industries on her own initiative, and doing such a fine job of it too. I love the tense scene in the ladies’ loo. Dammit, there’s no way of putting that last sentence which doesn’t sound wrong.

The chat at the end between the Doctor and Donna is extremely revealing; the Doctor is full of guilt at how he mistreated Martha, refusing to acknowledge her feelings for him and doing a lot of damage to her family. But it’s made clear that his relationship with Donna is going to be different. And I’m looking forward to it. This is Donna Mark 2, retooled for permanent TARDISeer status. And she’s great.

Oh yes, and that scene at the end packs quite a punch. It’s a great statement of intent for the coming season. And what was that about the bees disappearing?

Yes, this is all pretty much done to a template which is very familiar by now. But it’s done superbly. There's one thing that dates it a bit, though, even though this was only two years ago. "It's not like the 1980s," says Sylvia. "No on's unemployed these days, except you!5/5.

Doctor Who: Time Crash / Voyage of the Damned

Time Crash

“You mostly went hands-free, didn't you? ‘I'm the Doctor! I can save the universe with a kettle and some string. And look at me; I'm wearing a vegetable…’”

Hooray! At last I get to watch this with subtitles and catch all of Tennant’s dialogue! Not to be churlish, though; this is fantastic, and his performance is too.

Peter Davison’s appearance is a powerful and wonderful moment, and all the more so in the context of the Marathon. Although I can’t help wondering why he’s wearing a hat, what with it being indoors and all…

It’s interesting how different Davison’s performance is here. Partly it’s the fact that he’s older, more authoritative and, well, more authoritative. But there’s also the obvious point that this is the version of the Doctor he plays in Big Finish these days.

But just as good as Davison himself is this fantastically witty script from the Moffmeister General, in which Tennant’s Doctor gets to make some great quips about his predecessor. I love the digs at the celery, and the revelation that both of the Doctors wear glasses for purely cosmetic reasons. Davison gets the best line, though. (“You’ve changed the desktop theme, haven’t you?”)

It’s hard to believe, as the Fifth Doctor heads back to times of “Nyssa and Tegan, Cybermen and the Mara, Time Lords in funny hats and the Mara”, that this has been just eight minutes long. It’s pure joy. 5/5, no contest. Oh, and I do believe this is only our second every “wibbly wobbly, timey wimey”.



Voyage of the Damned



“Any day now they start boxing!”

Ah… there’s nothing so surreal as reviewing a Christmas special in late May as the Spring blossoms are behind us and the hay fever drugs are starting to kick in…

It’s the Christmas Day blockbuster: time for something light in mood yet exciting and action-packed for the post-Christmas Dinner hours, and easy to follow for the benefit of those of us who had a little bit of wine earlier cos it’s the one day of the year you can start drinking in the early afternoon. And this delivers splendidly; before the credits roll we’ve already established that this is indeed the Titanic, there are apparently aliens on board, Kylie Minogue is on board, and, oh, said ship is flying through space. How very Enlightenment. Not only that, but those angel robots look suspiciously Robots of Death to me. That’s two conscious homages in the space of a minute!

The first third of the running time, before the peril kicks in, are devoted to introducing us to the situation and to the characters who are soon going to be struggling for their lives. The script sparkles here, giving exactly the sort of humour the festive circumstances demand. The highlight of all this is of course the dodgy history lesson given by Clive Swift’s Mr Copper, along with the brief trip to earth which helps the Doctor to bond with Kylie’s Astrid Peth- and her joy at what we would think mundane is wonderful. We also meet a newspaper vendor (it’s London, innit?) played by Bernard Cribbins, but there’s no need to dwell on him as he’s probably just a one-off cameo.

Incidentally, we’re told again that Earth is indeed a “Level 5” planet. That settles it; there is indeed a consistent system.

Oh, and Geoffrey Palmer’s in it, too, as the Captain, and Russell Tovey’s in it, too! But here’s when things start to turn serious as the Captain deliberately allows the ship to be hit by meteors, and the Heavenly Host turn nasty. Not only that, but they have haloes of death! It’s now, in true disaster movie style, that every character has a secret and all the nice characters die, mostly nobly (I love our sweet competition-winning couple, but knowing RTD’s scripting I feared for their life expectancy the minute they opened their mouths…). Unfortunate that the black guy dies first, but probably not a deliberate use of the trope…

The Doctor’s big speech, in response to Rickston Slade’s sneering, seemed a bit over the top at the time, but in the context of what’s to come (I know that’s not really in the spirit of the Marathon!) it now looks far more like a part of a character arc with, in hindsight, a defined direction, than it ever did at the time. I also love his Christmas quip soon after (“I was there. I got the last room”).

Things are going well with Astrid until she agrees to be the Doctor’s companion; at that point you know she’s doomed, just like Lynda with a “y” in a similar scene. This is where it starts, though: RTD, awesomely great writer though he is, has been writing the series for three years ago, and from this point onwards we’re bound to get little bits like this where he repeats his earlier tricks. It can’t be helped, and it in no way undermines RTD’s stature as a genius, but it’s there.

Still, RTD is often criticised for his climaxes but there’s nothing to criticise here. The doctor’s plan to get himself to the bridge is genuinely clever, Max Capricorn is a great villain, superbly played by George Costigan (yes, I know his performance is a tad broad, but so it should be- that’s the character, and it’s appropriate villainy for a Christmas special). The final revelations tie things up nicely- and were even foreshadowed earlier. Unfortunately, Astrid has to die at this point. Even more unfortunately, the Doctor ascends to the heavens with two angels. Now, I’ve been quite tolerant of this pretentious Christ imagery, but this is the point where, for me personally, the screaming starts. Please let there be no more…

Again, it’s interesting in the light of later events (not strictly in the spirit of the Marathon, again!) to see the Doctor trying so hard to bring Astrid back, insisting that “I can do anything!” Importantly, though, he fails. Not yet is he the Time Lord triumphant, but he’s travelling alone, and certain tendencies are going unchecked…

The last scenes with Mr Copper are splendid. I love the metatextuality of Mr Copper's comment, after Rickston Slade again shows himself to be an obnoxious git, that “Of all the people to survive. He’s not the one you would have chosen, is he?” But anyone making such a choice (ie, the writer) would be “a monster”. Is this RTD commenting on his own rather more than usually homicidal tendencies as a writer?

Good to see the recently departed Verity Lambert get an acknowledgement, too. Casts me back to the early days of the Marathon, that does.

Brilliant. Not quite up there with the 5/5, but one of the very top 4/5’s.

Doctor Who: Daleks in Manhattan / Evolution of the Daleks

Daleks in Manhattan



“I know some guys are just pigs, but not my Laszlo.”

This story just brilliantly evokes the New York of 1930, from the soundtrack to the show tunes to the men working on girders hundreds of feet up. It’s a fantastic setting, with iconic sights and loads of atmosphere, and the Depression setting is powerful, in fact much more so given the events which have happened in the years since this was broadcast. It’s not just Hooverville, the poverty, and the appalling pay and conditions the desperate need to accept if they want work; Tallulah’s words to Martha on having to soldier on and perform every day, even with a broken heart, just to pay the rent and keep going gives a horrifying sense of the abyss that lies beneath ordinary people.

Oh, and I just adore the Bugs Bunny accents. I have no idea how accurate they are but how could you possibly dislike anyone who talks like that?

The Cult of Skaro is back, of course, and their straitened circumstances have made them somewhat more philosophical than usual. The Dalek’s musings to Diagoras as they look out over the city hint at a slight resentfulness for the human capacity for growth and survival, but this also implies an acceptance of Dalek failures. This is something the story goes on to develop at great length. These Daleks are interesting, already showing signs of dissent against Sec from quite early on.

Solomon’s a great, charismatic, dignified character who manages to earn the Doctor’s respect as few guest characters do, actually getting an apology from the Doctor after being given a glib response. Tallulah’s wonderful, too. I love the line about musical theatre. I’m not sure about the portrayal of the Doctor, though. He says of the Daleks that “They survive. They always survive, while I lose everything.” This kind of self-centred bitterness is one of this otherwise great Doctor’s less appealing qualities.

The cliffhanger should in theory be great, and certainly has potential for exploring some interesting ideas, but visually I’m not sure that a human Dalek quite works.



Evolution of the Daleks



“New York City… If aliens had to come to Earth- oh, no wonder they came here.”

This story’s title suggests a homage to a certain story from the ‘60s I could mention, even to the point of involving the “Human Factor”. I don’t think the parallel quite works, though; the Daleks’ motivation here is desperation rather than power and they’re acting far more reluctantly, and the Doctor’s role is entirely different. It’s sort of exploring the same concepts, though, and concludes in a kind of civil war between Daleks with the “Human Factor” and without.

All this has knock on effects, of course. By far the funniest thing about this episode is the gossiping Daleks sharing their doubts over their leader, one of them even looking around with its eyestalk to make sure it’s not overheard! But these concepts are not always handled well or consistently, and there’s a certain lack of focus about themes and characterisation here.

Solomon’s speech to the Dalek before being exterminated is a powerful scene and the centrepiece of the episode, but the Doctor angrily goading the Daleks to kill him feels awkward and wrong. There’s nothing which suggests to me that the Doctor is in any way bluffing, so I have to conclude that the Doctor does indeed have a momentary death wish here. This is not a good thing, to put it mildly. If for no other reason, what about Martha, potentially trapped in 1930? For the second story in succession the Doctor’s being horribly cavalier about her fate. And Martha even has to prompt the Doctor to ensure the lives of the people of Hooverville are spared. All of this is terribly misjudged.

Oh, and the atom had been split before 1930.

All that aside, though, it’s not a bad episode, albeit lacking in a certain polish. Martha gets some good scenes, doing a bit of Doctoring, flashing the psychic paper and coming up with a clever plan to use lightning against the pig slaves. The humanised Dalek Sec is great, too; his gradual move away from Dalek thinking and the growing rebellion against him are well developed throughout, and his insistence that Davros, in relation to removing certain emotions from the Daleks, “was wrong” is genuinely shocking. Unfortunately, this prompts the other Daleks to go all Nyder on him, but in the meantime it’s fascinating that the Doctor agrees to help. His dialogue to Laszlo indicates he doesn’t really expect any of this to happen but he has to try.

The genocide of the human Daleks would have made for a downbeat ending, so it’s appropriate that we end with the Doctor’s saving of Laszlo.



I was quite impressed with this, although the problems with the Doctor’s characterisation and a certain lack of polish mean it only gets a 3/5. A promising start on Who proper for Helen Raynor, though.

Torchwood: They Keep Killing Suzie

“That’s all we are in the end- just a pile of boxes.”

For the first time we get some footage from a previous episode in the pre-titles bit; at last the series is starting to acquire a mythology of its own. We then move to the teaser itself and Yasmin Bannerman as Detective- surely Detective Inspector?- Swanson. It’s quite an effective teaser, with the reveal reminding me of Seven. Swanson directly blames Torchwood for the murder; it soon turns out that she’s right. This episode continues the recent run of episodes implying that our protagonists are not the good guys and do much more harm than good.

This episode is by Paul Tomalin and Daniel McCulloch. Who they? I remember at the time there was speculation that this was a pseudonym for RTD, but frankly the dialogue doesn’t feel polished enough for that. Still, it’s a good episode, with the earlier scenes quite strongly foregrounding the themes of the episode, which by now are looking to be the themes of the season. The murder victims are linked by Retcon in their bloodstream; the connection is Torchwood. This in itself implicates Torchwood in some dark stuff, but their decision to use the glove means we see them making a morally troubling decision here and now. Crucially, Gwen, the new girl and still the group’s conscience, is specifically implicated in its use.

It’s not all moral murkiness, mind. This episode sees the start of Ianto’s line in dry quips. And the Ianto / Jack thing. And the stopwatch. But from the resurrection of Suzie to her final death all this stuff is pretty much foregrounded. Interestingly, Suzie spend two years confiding in Max and then giving him a retcon pill; this is exactly the same urge to talk to someone about what happens with Torchwood that we saw with Tosh and Mary last episode- in fact it’s such a blatantly exact parallel it pretty much hits you over the head. The implication seems to be that Suzie is the end result of what the Torchwood lifestyle does to you; in the end the moral compromises have turned her into a serial killer. Come to think of it, that’s two separate serial killing sprees…

The scene shifts to a rock club, rather depressingly playing some nu-metal rubbish instead of the sort of thing they used to play in my day. Sigh. I mean, is a bit of White Zombie or Therapy? Or The Almighty really too much to ask?

Anyway, Suzie turns out to be rather clever, having planned this entire situation to happen in the event of her death, making use of Max and Emily Dickinson. Unfortunately, this means Gwen is going to die by being shot in the head. Slowly. Clever but with collateral damage; yep, that’s Torchwood all over.

I’m glad DI Swanson gets to have a good laugh at Torchwood’s expense because let’s face it; she’s the only character in this episode with a speaking part who can possibly be described as a “goodie”. Torchwood aren’t a bunch of incompetent failures who mystifyingly never seem to get fired; these “failures” come from moral failings which arise from who they’ve become by working for Torchwood. And they’re not constantly failing to save the world; they’re not trying to save the world- that’s not the point. Torchwood is a murky, unaccountable organisation with its roots in a fit of xenophobic pique which can do whatever it likes and seems to do little but satisfy its own curiosity and succumb to temptations which lead to very dark places culminating ultimately in killing sprees. Its existence is not a good thing. All its members- even Gwen, even Jack- are corrupted by belonging to it. I’m starting to suspect that the subdued version of Jack I’ve been having such trouble with is supposed to show that he realises all of this but is trapped.

Or, on the other hand, I could be barking up the wrong tree entirely with all those sweeping statements I made just then. I’ll see what I reckon at the end of the season…

Ahem. Interesting description of the afterlife from Suzie, because it seems that there is an afterlife; it may be that there’s “Nothing. Just nothing,” but it seems from the way things are phrased that Suzie was consciously experiencing that nothing. Oh, and there’s something in the darkness, it’s moving, and it’s coming for Jack. Lovely. In no way is this foreboding.

Anyway, another good ‘un but not quite up there. 4/5.

Torchwood: Cyberwoman

“I’ll hide the body. Everything’s going to be ok.”


At last Ianto gets to come out of the background and show himself, and the results are… rather embarrassing.

It all starts out intriguingly enough- Ianto is hiding something in the hub, and rather impressively he speaks Japanese. But the revelation that he’s been hiding his half-cybernised girlfriend somewhere in the hub is impossible to take seriously. Admittedly a lot of this is to do with the costume- what were they thinking with the metal bra and high heels?- but there are all sorts of problems. At first I was thinking there was a continuity error, as it’s been established that the alternate universe Cybermen simply transpose brains into metal bodies. But this is explained, if not too convincingly; Lisa was one of the last to be cybernised, where whole bodies were used out of desperation. Worse than this is the suggestion that Ianto could somehow manage to hide her from the rest of Torchwood for all these months, which just won’t wash.

Unsurprisingly, Lisa goes bad, and there’s some rather gruesome body horror with those nasty looking cybernisation machines from Rise of the Cybermen. Gareth David Lloyd is impressive playing Ianto’s conflicted reaction to finding the Japanese doctor’s body, but the character doesn’t feel quite convincing at any point, and I suspect this is down to the script.

I like Owen’s reaction to the Cyber-tech, but as soon as the place goes into lockdown it’s clear that the whole thing’s going to be a boringly formulaic base under siege story. Ianto and Jack pulling guns on each other doesn’t work either, failing at every point to generate any real drama; you don’t believe at any point that either of them is going to shoot. And why on Earth is Ianto not sacked after what he’s done? Allowing him to stay completely undermines the seriousness of his actions and is completely implausible.

Still, at least the pterodactyl gets something to do. And this snog between Owen and Gwen suggests consequences…

An implausible plot, unconvincing characterisation, an episode so bad that it comes alarmingly close to permanently damaging the viability of the characters and the show… it has to be a 1/5, and I don’t give out many of those. And for the second story in a row we have an uber-serious Jack.

Doctor Who: The Impossible Planet / The Satan Pit

The Impossible Planet



“And how can man die better
Than facing fearful odds
For the ashes of his fathers
And the temples of his Gods?”



For all that this extraordinary story more or less stands on its own, the teaser is just the sort of thing we’ve come to expect by now. It plays amusingly with both the Doctor and Rose’s relationship and the tropes of the show, as they burst out laughing at the mere suggestion they might perhaps decide not to explore where they’ve landed and just get back into the TARDIS. It’s also a nice little cliffhanger and resolution. But from this point on everything just feels different from the rest of this series. However much Matt Jones has utterly nailed the two regulars, he’s done something completely new and different and fantastic with this script.

It’s not the first time the “New Series" has taken us to a new planet, but it’s the first time it’s done it properly; this isn’t just somewhere that might be Earth. And this is where the show’s new aesthetic of space travel is established; as Rose says, it’s not “whizzing about, teleports, anti-gravity”- it’s tough. A very lived-in, post Alien style future, and although it’s not the first time we’ve seen this sort of thing in Doctor Who it’s never been either as well-realised or as refreshingly free from Eric Saward’s nihilism as this.

It’s a wondrous yet precarious situation that the Doctor and Rose find themselves in; a planet balanced, just, in orbit round a black hole, something which takes incredible quantities of energy which originates from somewhere below the surface. And almost as precarious is that the crew can only return to Earth as long as the black hole continues to generate some kind of bizarre gravity chute. Naturally, then, it’s here that the Doctor and Rose lose the TARDIS and become stranded. Makes you all nostalgic for the early Hartnells, doesn’t it?

Brilliantly, though, grim as this all should feel, somehow it doesn’t. And this is because of the crew- every single character has their foibles but is basically well-rounded and likeable, and there’s something noble in the human desire for knowledge and exploration which has led them here. The Doctor certainly seems to think so, and he has a point. For all that the mission has a practical purpose in that there’s the possibility of a new energy source, the crew seem just as interested, even enthusiastic, in the pure science and archaeology there is to discover on the planet, and whatever the grubbiness of their living conditions the romantic side of their work is not lost on them.

There’s something very New Adventures about the whole feel of this, incidentally, and that’s something which we haven’t seen on screen before. I haven’t read Matt Jones’s effort (is it any good?), but this reminds me a lot of the “Future History Cycle” novels from early in the range. It’s the whole mood of the thing, I think; for all that there is a dark threat, and even a dark side to humanity (the huge ethical problems with the Ood being used as slaves are not dwelt upon, but they are addressed, and that’s important), we care about these people, and that makes us more scared for them. The “don’t look behind you” scene with Toby is particularly effective (and isn’t it great to hear Gabriel Woolf’s voice again?) but Scooti’s horrible death is effective for a completely different reason, and really sold to us by the reactions of the crew. This really seems like a tight-knit group who care about each other.

We get a nice little interlude between the Doctor and Rose where the character arc stuff gets a bit of action. Billie Piper is particularly brilliant here. And, of course, the fact that Rose seems to want to settle down with the Doctor in domestic bliss but knows she shouldn’t just come out and say it in no way means that the relationship is going to end soon or in tears, so that’s all right.

Lots of fantastically scary things keep happening- the things said by the Ood and computers are easily as scary as anything we see- and the response of the crew is fantastic. I particularly like the way Jefferson, the gruff security guard, could so easily have been something of a cliché, but he isn’t. He’s no closed-minded bigot, so we get no tiresome suspicion of the Doctor and Rose, he’s capable of listening to reason, agreeing not to shoot Rose in the next episode when Rose reasons with him, and he’s a cultured man, who quotes Macaulay, good old-fashioned nineteenth century Whig that he is. Come to think of it, there’s something very much of the Whig interpretation of history in this story’s themes of human progress and daring.

The Doctor, of course, volunteers to accompany Ida on to the planets surface, and mentions a number of names for the devil, including “Abbadon”. Wonder if we’ll be hearing that again any time soon?




The Satan Pit



“Maybe that’s what the Devil is in the end- an idea?”



There’s a slightly disappointing resolution to the biggest cliffhanger yet, but fear not- the excellence continues pretty much non-stop. We get a bit of a contrast between the action sequences above ground and the more contemplative sequences between the Doctor and Ida below ground. And these in particular are brilliant; this Doctor has never before been shown quite so philosophical as he is here, but the characterisation never fails to ring true.

We begin with the Captain’s order to withdraw, and the subsequent discussion between the Doctor and Ida. The Doctor muses on the human urge to explore, but ultimately decides against the temptation. Fascinatingly, we’re touching on the themes which caused me to be underwhelmed by this story first time round; the Doctor seemed first time round to be implying here that there’s space in the universe for supernatural forces into which science should not pry. And being myself something of a rational, empirical, pro-Enlightenment sort of chap, I tend to be somewhat alienated by such messages.

We get a brilliant scene in which the Devil speaks to everyone, with a brief statement for each individual which serves to round out their characterisations rather nicely. And Rose, incidentally, is going to die in battle”. Ooh! This doesn’t stop her taking charge of the situation, though; having been more than a little annoying and selfish in recent episodes she more than redeems herself here in performing the rather Doctorish role in encouraging the crew to find reserves of strength and brilliance within themselves and survive. But everyone’s magnificent, above all Jefferson, whose noble death uncannily reflects the subject matter of the poetry he was quoting earlier.

There’s a nice Fanwank thrill from the Doctor as Ida lowers him into the pit; we get mentions of Draconia, Daemos, and the Kaled god of war. But the cable comes to an end, and beneath is only darkness. In a leap of faith, the Doctor jumps. Again, I had problems with this scene on original transmission. But on this viewing the scene it (and the story) seems not so much to be about the theme of faith versus reason but about human courage and curiosity, and the urge to climb Everest, walk on the Moon, leap into the unknown, all in spite of the dangers, because it’s there. Again, a very Whiggish view of human progress.

Mind you, we do get a brief musing on religious themes, albeit obliquely. The Doctor expresses agnostic sentiments, but arguably he’s not really talking about religion so much as his willingness to have his certainties challenged. But then he says something really quite charged: “If you get back to Rose, tell her… tell her… oh, she knows!” And then he jumps. We’re kept in suspense for the next several minutes as to whether he survived.

While the Doctor’s working out what’s going on and preparing to save the day, Captain Zachary Cross Flane finally gets to move away from the control panel and show himself to be a worthy and decent leader, whatever his doubts. He’s quite right to restrain Rose and take her with his to safety; too many people have indeed died. And he gets a wonderful line as they’re all seemingly plunging to their doom, pointing out that they’re making history, being the first people ever to fall into a black hole. Arguably his character represents the story’s view of the human race as a whole.

Fittingly, not everything is explained, but that’s okay as the writing and the nature of the Beast aren’t really relevant to the plot. And there’s a point here; not, as I used to think, that there were more things in heaven and earth than dreamt of in my philosophy, but that it’s good to have unknowns so that we can carry on exploring.



Wow. I liked that rather more than I was expecting. 5/5- in fact, it pushes The Robots of Death out of the top ten. A brilliantly constructed thriller with themes, character, and depth.