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: Turn Left

“You’re not gonna make the world any better by shouting at it.”

Right. This is me back. The final push starts now. Still, it looks as though Series Three of The Sarah Jane Adventures won’t be out on DVD till November 1st, so there would have had to have been a hiatus, and it’s all worked out quite well.

Er, that’s the best excuse I can think of, anyway. Back to Turn Left…

It’s the pre-titles sequence, and the Doctor and Donna are nosing about on the Planet Of The Ever So Slightly Dodgy Ethnic Stereotypes. Donna sees a fortune teller (ever so slightly dodgy ethnic stereotyping within slightly dodgy ethnic stereotyping?), who seems uncannily similar to our late friend Chantho. Said fortune teller proceeds to use her alien reality-warping powers to force Donna to re-enact scenes from Planet of the Spiders. So that’s what all the “something on your back” foreshadowing was about.

Billie Piper’s name is in the credits. Ooh! And then it’s straight into that old TV sci-fi stand-by; the alternate universe. This is a trope which never fails, although sadly nothing can ever trump the example of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which had Evil Willow in it. Mmm… Evil Willow…

The episode is of course all about Donna, and thus reliant on Catherine Tate to put in a good performance. She really comes up trumps; this is probably the finest individual performance of any member of the regular cast in Doctor Who ever, even after Tennant’s stellar performance last episode. It’s also the Doctor-lite story, of course, and by far the most successful, being about the Doctor’s absence in a way no previous example has been.

We get to see a parade of recent episodes, starting with the appearance of the Racnoss star, except that this time Donna has been promoted, and so is both materially more successful- for now- and shallower than she would have been. She isn’t there to stop the Doctor, and so he dies. This is what we alternate history geeks (*cough* Alternatehistory.com *cough*) call the “point of departure” or “POD”, and it’s interesting to consider this story as an example of this sub-genre. Because, on the one hand, the world changes entirely because of one apparently minor decision by an apparently ordinary person, yet there is also an awful lot of convergence as regards the alien invasions. It looks as though the butterfly effect hasn’t spread as far as the Adipose or the planet Sto. It’s a nice touch how the Doctors could-have-been companions (especially Martha) all get noble deaths. Of course, the Master never gives his pocket watch a second thought in this reality! It isn’t Harold Saxon who order’s the destruction of the Racnoss ship, I notice.

Oh, and how come the satellite pictures of the falling Titanic seem to be looking from the ground up? Ahem.

This is a very different Donna, at least on the surface: her reaction to being laid off does not present her in a good light, and she shows no interest in Wilf’s alien obsession. But this is the last point in the story in which she’s relatively untested by adversity. And Sylvia’s casually delivered “To be honest, I’ve given up on you” hits like a punch.

Donna is visited a number of times by a very Doctorish Rose, and her reaction is a little more accepting each time, showing how the hardships she suffers bring out her resourcefulness. Things start to get very dark, giving us a glimpse into the bleak world view that lurks behind RTD’s light touch, as also seen last episode (interesting comment by Nuallain on Midnight about RTD using his last chance to write the sort of crowd-pleasing episode which Moffat has so far had the luxury of writing- we seem to have another example of this here). The inhabitants of radiation-soaked southern England become refugees, France has closed its borders, people are billeted, dozens to a property, in the residential streets of northern cities while the army patrols outside; there’s some kind of “emergency government”; and finally the obvious foreigners, including a rather likeable example of the ever so slightly dodgy ethnic stereotypes, are sent off to “labour camps”. It’s not spelled out for the kids, but Wilf knows exactly what’s going on.

Sylvia, by this point, is quite horribly, cripplingly depressed; Jacqueline King portrays this brilliantly. Her final scene with Donna (“I suppose I’ve always been a disappointment.” “…Yeah…”) is understated and utterly heartbreaking.

It’s clear something is coming; not only is Rose warning of “The Darkness” that’s coming. We seem to have heard this before; a very similar phrasing was used in They Keep Killing Suzie. But far more effective is Wilf’s realisation that the stars are going out. So on we zoom towards the final scenes, with a Rose so Doctorish she might as well start calling herself Romana, a dying TARDIS, and a nice little re-enactment of the mirrors scene from Kinda. Catherine Tate really is sublime here in her delivery of every line- I love her desperate denial of her own certain death. Well, sort of certain. It’s a bit timey-wimey.

Everything returns to normal with Donna’s sacrifice, the Doctor notes all the odd coincidences surrounding Donna’s life, and the phrase “Bad Wolf” suddenly appears everywhere for no obvious reason. That’ll be a season finale coming up, then.

Brilliant. Something that could only be attempted once, so it’s great that it was done well. The amount of fanwank was nicely judged, nice but not excessive, and there was just the right amount of dystopian pessimism. And then there’s Catherine Tate. Wow. Best actress in Doctor Who ever. 5/5.