An Often Pointless One-Off: "Planet Of The Dead" Is Less-Inspired Doctor Who!

The Good: Good chemistry between The Doctor and Christina, Some good special effects
The Bad: Light on character development, Christina outshines The Doctor, Despite being packed, the plot is fairly predictable.
The Basics: If Pitch Black were an episode of Doctor Who, it would be "Planet Of The Dead."


There are a number of genre works that are so extensive that it is hard to imagine what has not been done by the work yet. In the case of Doctor Who, the fifty plus year history of the franchise makes it hard for the show to do something that feels new. So, when something new pops up on Doctor Who, it is hard not to be inherently biased toward it. That said, new does not always mean a great execution. Such is the case with the episode "Planet Of The Dead."

"Planet Of The Dead" is a one-shot episode that was part of the denouement of David Tennant's Doctor. Following "Journey's End" (reviewed here!) there were a series of specials that led into the two-part exit for Tennant's Doctor and his journeys in that time period have The Doctor flying solo - without a Companion. "Planet Of The Dead" is initially engaging because it features The Doctor, sans Companion, TARDIS or (apparently) sonic screwdriver. But, despite the original-feeling set-up, "Planet Of The Dead" quickly transitions into something that feels troublingly familiar.

Opening in modern London at the National Gallery, Christina rappels in behind the security team guarding a chalice. The thief makes her getaway on a bus, where she is almost immediately joined by The Doctor. The Doctor is scanning the area, tracking a small hole in the fabric of reality, when the bus passes through the hole and it transported to a distant planet. The bus driver quickly illustrates the consequences of attempting to simply pass through the wormhole unprotected. While Christina takes charge inside the bus, back on Earth, UNIT is called in to investigate the wormhole on their end. UNIT Captain Magambo creates a defensive perimeter at the edge of the wormhole.

On the bus, Carmen exhibits genuine psychic abilities and she believes that something horrible is coming for them. As a storm moves in on the stranded bus, The Doctor manages to get a call in to UNIT and its crazy scientist Malcolm. Malcolm has developed a way to measure the wormhole, while The Doctor and Christina discover the impending storm is made of metal when they are captured by an insectoid alien. Using the computers on the insect aliens' ship, The Doctor discovers where the bus materialized and what a horrible predicament they are in. As a swarm of aliens descends upon the bus and the downed alien ship, The Doctor realizes that Earth is in danger from the swarm passing through the wormhole to devour Earth!

"Planet Of The Dead" has a lot in common with "Midnight" (reviewed here!), in the way that The Doctor is trapped with a bunch of strangers without real aid available to him while being hunted by an alien force. "Planet Of The Dead" includes a number of ambitious elements, from the fun new almost-Companion to the addition of a psychic to the insect race with telepathic translators. Unfortunately, the episode is packed without truly coming together.

In many ways, "Planet Of The Dead" underwhelms because it is a one-shot. The Doctor and Christina have great chemistry and David Tennant and Michelle Ryan (Christina) play off one another amazingly well. Christina being a thief allows The Doctor to have the episode's lone moment of decent characterization where he confesses that he was a thief, in stealing the TARDIS. The Doctor's unwillingness to kill the swarm creatures fits his established character, more than growing him.

But elements like Malcolm calling while The Doctor and Christina are running force the episode's humor. The science of "Planet Of The Dead" is particularly wonky; a wormhole ten miles in diameter over London would have all sorts of things colliding with it. And the idea that a scientist could both analyze and synthesize a solution to the wormhole on Earth (in our era) in just a few hours is problematic, if not ridiculous. Then again, the episode features a flying bus.

Ultimately, "Planet Of The Dead" is one of those episodes that does not feel unpleasant when one is watching it, but it does not hold up over much scrutiny.

[Knowing that single episodes are an inefficient way to get episodes, it's worth looking into Doctor Who - The Complete Fourth Season on DVD or Blu-Ray, which is also a better economical choice than buying individual episodes. Read my review of the final season of David Tennant as The Doctor here!
Thanks!]

3.5/10

For other Doctor Who episode and movie reviews, please visit my Doctor Who Review Index Page!

© 2016 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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The Return Of Donna Noble: "Partners In Crime"

The Good: Fun tone, Amazingly cute adversaries, Fun direction, Decent character development
The Bad: Pretty standard plot
The Basics: Donna Noble returns to Doctor Who where she reunites with The Doctor, who is investigating one of the weirdest alien invasions yet!


As Doctor Who progressed, one of the challenges the show faced was how to keep the series interesting through different Doctors and Companions. Perhaps the most incredible arc of the contemporary Doctor Who was that of Donna Noble. Donna Noble appeared in "The Runaway Bride" (reviewed here!) where she was quickly established as one of the least-likable, least-interesting guest stars to accompany The Doctor on one of his missions. The incredible thing about Donna Noble's character arc is that she evolves into one of the best, most important Companions The Doctor has! That arc continues with the return of Donna Noble in "Partners In Crime."

"Partners In Crime" begins as a screwball comedy, with a caper-style soundtrack. That tone carries through most of the episode and gets the tenure of Donna Noble off to an energetic start. In fact, the tone is so different from most other Doctor Who episodes that it is easy to overlook just how mundane the plot is!

Independent of one another, Donna Noble and The Doctor find themselves in London, investigating Adipose Industries, a diet pill company that advertises with the slogan "The fat just walks away." After getting customer records (and a buyer's incentive) from Adipose Industries, Donna visits Stacey Harris and The Doctor meets with Roger Davies. Roger informs The Doctor that his pound a day has been disappearing precisely by 1:10 A.M. each day and Donna inadvertently triggers the Adipose in Stacey, causing her entire body to be transformed into tiny creatures - the Adipose.

Donna returns home to visit her sky-watching Grandfather, Wilfred, while The Doctor returns to the TARDIS, where he studies the Adipose technology and finds himself talking to himself. Both The Doctor and Donna re-infiltrate the Adipose Industries headquarters, where Donna evades capture when Penny (a reporter) uses the same tactic as she does to try to avoid Miss Foster. Foster reveals to Penny (as Donna and The Doctor spy upon them) the nature of the Adipose and her presence on Earth. Pursued by Foster, The Doctor and Donna reunite and the pair works together to stop Foster from using the human race as incubators for the Adipose race.

"Partners In Crime" is a fun episode and it manages to do something that very few episode of Doctor Who does: it explores the effects of The Doctor on a secondary character. In the prior season, characters like Donna Noble and Sally Sparrow were affected by The Doctor and after the episodes in which they appear, they essentially disappear. "Partners In Crime" picks Donna Noble back up and it illustrates that after "The Runaway Bride" Donna Noble became obsessed with extraordinary events on Earth - rumors of alien invasions, bees disappearing, etc.

Similarly, The Doctor has a chance to reflect upon the idea that his last two Companions - Rose and Martha Jones - have left him abandoned and alone. He even has a moment in "Partners In Crime" where he is able to reflect on how meeting him might not have been the best thing for either Martha or Rose. Donna, however, is able to point out how Martha rubbed off on The Doctor and it is a pretty insightful observation.

Still, in true Doctor Who fashion, the humor is mixed with horror and the reflective moments fall away to plot. Threatened by The Doctor realizing who she is and what she is doing on Earth, Miss Foster begins to transform all the Adipose users into the cute little fat-based Adipose. With millions of lives in the balance, The Doctor and Donna struggle to stop the signal that is liquidating the Londoners. The emergency parthenogenesis that Foster induces is horrific.

"Partners In Crime" is well-acted and well-directed, even if the special effect of the Adipose is pretty ridiculous. The episode foreshadows the two big continuity aspects of the fourth season. Foster mentions how the Adipose nursery planet disappeared and that sets up the encounters Donna and the Doctor will have as they discover there are multiple planets missing. As well, "Partners In Crime" marks the first mysterious reappearance of Rose Tyler. This is Rose's first time back to our universe since she was condemned to a parallel universe at the climax of "Doomsday" (reviewed here!).

The result is a fresh-feeling start to the fourth season of Doctor Who and an episode that, in rare fashion, replays better than it initially seems!

[Knowing that single episodes are an inefficient way to get episodes, it's worth looking into Doctor Who - The Complete Fourth Season on DVD or Blu-Ray, which is also a better economical choice than buying individual episodes. Read my review of the final season of David Tennant as The Doctor here!
Thanks!]

For other science fiction comedies, please check out my reviews of:
"Our Man Bashir" - Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Men In Black
"Blue Harvest" - Family Guy

7/10

For other Doctor Who episode and movie reviews, please visit my Doctor Who Review Index Page!

© 2015 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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How Kylie Minogue Became A Companion: "Voyage Of The Damned!"

The Good: Themes, Acting, Most of the special effects
The Bad: Banal plot, No genuine character development
The Basics: Russell T. Davies and James Strong create a Doctor Who Christmas special that is all right, but in no way extraordinary.


Following the third season of Doctor Who (reviewed here!), The Doctor once again found himself adrift without a Companion. At that time, the BBC released a new Christmas special, "Voyage Of The Damned" without committing to the next Companion. The result is a bottle episode and it is not really exceptional, despite having some real veteran talents from the BBC - in the form of Geoffrey Palmer and Clive Swift - and guest starring some very popular individuals like pop star Kylie Minogue and Jimmy Lee.

Perhaps what is most notable about "Voyage Of The Damned," outside a couple of fun one-liners, it the return of the greed theme to Doctor Who. The first season of Doctor Who featured villains who were almost exclusively motivated by greed. Davies took a couple of seasons off from beating viewers over the head with negative impressions of commerce and avarice, but it comes back with a vengeance (along with his predilection for killer robots) in "Voyage Of The Damned." That, at least, makes the otherwise disconnected episode feel like part of the larger Doctor Who continuum.

Abandoned again, The Doctor finds himself (and the TARDIS) collided with the space vessel Titanic. Going aboard, The Doctor familiarizes himself with the people and setting. In 2007, an alien vessel run by the businessman Max Capricorn has taken up orbit around Earth. The Doctor befriends a waitress, Astrid Peth, two people who won their tickets and a diminutive alien named Bannakaffalatta. After a brief trip down to the surface of Earth, The Doctor and Astrid return to the Titanic where The Doctor discovers the shielding is off-line and a meteor storm is rapidly approaching.

Captain Hardaker knows the shields are down and he lets the Titanic get hit as part of an insurance scam which will allow his family to survive his imminent death from health problems. The meteors pummel the Titanic and lead to mass casualties, though The Doctor is able to save most of his little group. The Doctor sees the TARDIS drifting outside the Titanic and realizes he has to do what he can to save the ship in order to survive. With the robot angels that serve the Titanic for information going on a killing spree, The Doctor, Astrid and the other survivors of the meteor impacts must move through the ship to keep the Titanic afloat to save the citizens of Earth!

"Voyage Of The Damned" is a fair mix of horror (in the form of killer robots) and humor. The humor comes in the form of Mr. Copper's misconceptions about Earth and Christmas. While The Doctor calls him on some of the information he claims to have about humans and Christmas (every year on Christmas, Mr. Copper claims, the country UK goes to war with Turkey and eats the Turkey people!), the episode's funniest moments come when Copper has the chance to just spout complete b.s. Unfortunately, some of what passes as humor in "Voyage Of The Damned" is just cruelty for the episode's two resident poor hicks (the overweight Van Hoffs).

Opposite the humor is unadulterated greed in the form of Rickston Slade and Max Capricorn. Slade is overtly cruel to the Van Hoffs and greedy with phone conversations about his investments giving him an excuse to be mean to everyone else (like poor Astrid). "Voyage Of The Damned" is essentially one big fraud scheme from Max Capricorn and the episode illustrates well the human (or alien, in the case of Bannakaffalatta) cost of unrestrained greed. "Voyage Of The Damned" has a ridiculously high body count for a Christmas special.

"Voyage Of The Damned" is also a pretty straightforward episode in terms of plot and character. The Doctor loses a number of people around him (he makes a lot of promises he cannot keep in this episode!) and Astrid Peth is hardly given enough time to develop as a character to justify a big named guest star like Kylie Minogue. The plot is pretty direct as a story of survival. This is a muted chase story and it doesn't really have much in the way of surprises.

The acting in "Voyage Of The Damned" is fine, but unremarkable. Geoffrey Palmer is not given a chance to shine and Kylie Minogue running around in a French maid outfit with director James Strong focusing on her legs at any opportunity is hardly considered a great performance. The guest stars play opposite computer generated settings wonderfully and they all react to virtual weaponry fine. But there are few opportunities for big, great, performances, even as David Tennant is forced to emote big as part of The Doctor's reactions.

There is something unsatisfying, though, in the over-the-top reaction The Doctor has to Astrid compared to his lack of reaction to Martha Jones leaving him. That makes "Voyage Of The Damned" feel more forced and fit less well than it could have. And the ascension The Doctor makes with the angels at the end is just ridiculous. The result is a little more than an hour of average television, as opposed to a special that is actually bad.

[Knowing that single episodes are an inefficient way to get episodes, it's worth looking into Doctor Who - The Complete Fourth Season on DVD or Blu-Ray, which is also a better economical choice than buying individual episodes. Read my review of the final season of David Tennant as The Doctor here!
Thanks!]

For other works with Geoffrey Palmer, please check out my reviews of:
Paddington
The Pink Panther 2
Tomorrow Never Dies
"Goodbyeee" - Blackadder Goes Forth

4/10

For other Doctor Who episode and movie reviews, please visit my Doctor Who Review Index Page!

© 2015 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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“Evolution Of The Daleks” Is The Worst Of The Daleks!

The Good: One or two seconds of performance
The Bad: Melodramatic acting, Preposterous plot, Terrible effects, Poor character development (when there is any)
The Basics: Saving the past from crazed, diluted Daleks and Dalek-hybrids makes “Evolution Of The Daleks” an impossible-to-recommend episode of Doctor Who


The second part of an episode is very rarely better than the first part, I have found. I think that might be because it is so easy to set-up a compelling conflict, but resolving the situation that puts beloved characters into the worst possible situation almost always undermines the set-up. In the case of Doctor Who, “Evolution Of The Daleks” the pay-off was almost guaranteed to be a failure given how mediocre “Daleks In Manhattan” (reviewed here!) was. Despite confirming that Dalek Sec was the Dalek that disappeared from an emergency temporal shift at the climax of “Doomsday” (reviewed here!), “Evolution Of The Daleks” has very little to offer fans.

At the climax of “Daleks In Manhattan,” which left four Daleks in 1930 Manhattan reconstructing their race using DNA from humans and creating human/pig hybrids. The Dalek that escaped the future has gone somewhat crazy and melded with the foreman who was picking off the residents of Hooverville. The result was a ridiculous creature – Dalek in human form – that makes it entirely impossible to take the Daleks seriously as a menace.

Confronting the new biped Dalek/Human Sec, The Doctor taunts the Daleks and escapes using a radio to confuse them. Fleeing back to Hooverville is a futile plan for The Doctor, Martha, and the rest. The Daleks attack and after Solomon attempts to reason with them, he is exterminated. The Doctor convinces the Daleks to spare the residents of Hooverville in exchange for his going with them. While Martha tries to figure out why The Doctor gave her the psychic paper before leaving her, The Doctor learns the final plan the Daleks are preparing. The Daleks have harvested a stockpile of near-corpses and plan to reanimate them as human/Dalek hybrids.

Getting into the Empire State Building, Martha works to figure out what the Daleks have done to change the Building. On a lower floor, The Doctor figures out the final plan and he begins to assist Dalek Sec in creating his new race of Dalek/human hybrids. But the remaining three Daleks revolt and in the ensuing encounter, the Doctor puts his life on the line to stop the Daleks and the Dalek humans.

“Evolution Of The Daleks” offers the chance for the Daleks to be altered and it is hard to take the episode as credible given that it occurs in the 1930s. The concept of Dalek Sec desiring a new home for a new Dalek race is not a terrible one, but the execution of the idea in “Evolution Of The Daleks” is pretty awful. At the top of the problems, “Daleks In Manhattan” created a plot that needed so much explanation that “Evolution Of The Daleks” is saddled with delivering a lot of exposition.

The second problem with “Evolution Of The Daleks” is the supplemental characters who flesh out the episode. Tallulah is essentially a pathetic stereotype of a 1930s New York City woman; she resonates about as realistically as a soap opera character. It seems like the whole point of Tallulah is to give Martha Jones someone to have “girl talk” with. Almost completely absent from the episode is Martha Jones’s strength, intelligence and resilience. Instead, Martha Jones fawns over The Doctor and laments his lack of romantic interest in her.

Despite a decent monologue from Hugh Quarshie, most of the acting in “Evolution Of The Daleks” is pretty terrible. Miranda Raison’s performance as Tallulah is over-the-top and ridiculous. Even the usually-wonderful Andrew Garfield has moments where his Southern American accent comes across as canned and awkward.

The Doctor’s high moral stance is virtually negated by the cheesy reuse of the same cheap plot technique used to get the Daleks into the situation; it assures that the Daleks will return yet again. After the sour taste left by “Evolution Of The Daleks,” that is the last thing fans might want!

For other works with Andrew Garfield, please visit my reviews of:
The Amazing Spider-Man 2
The Amazing Spider-Man
The Social Network
The Imaginarium Of Doctor Parnassus

[Knowing that single episodes are an inefficient way to get episodes, it's worth looking into Doctor Who - The Complete Third Season on DVD or Blu-Ray, which is also a better economical choice than buying individual episodes. Read my review of the second season of the Tenth Doctor here!
Thanks!]

.5/10

For other Doctor Who episode and movie reviews, please visit my Doctor Who Review Index Page!

© 2015 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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This Is Where They Lose Me On The Daleks: “Daleks In Manhattan!”

The Good: Decent acting, Moments of character
The Bad: Packed with irrelevant and distracting guest characters, Ridiculous plot, Mediocre special effects.
The Basics: The Daleks surface in 1930 New York City where they are experimenting with humans and building the Empire State Building.


At this point, I will watch pretty much anything with Andrew Garfield in it. Garfield is, easily, one of the best actors of the day and while Benedict Cumberbatch gets a lot of attention and is taking a slew of roles, Garfield could go toe to toe with him dramatically in virtually anything. As it turns out, Andrew Garfield was in a two-part episode of Doctor Who before he started getting big movie roles. Unfortunately for me as a fan of Doctor Who and Andrew Garfield, the episodes Garfield was in were some of the most problematic.

The essence of my problem with “Daleks In Manhattan” is that the formidable adversary that has been the Daleks are further weakened by the way they are presented in the episode. The Daleks seem to escape through time and space as much as The Doctor does and while Russell T. Davies made some intriguing arcs with them, when Helen Raynor took the reins for writing “Daleks In Manhattan,” she created a preposterous story and one of the weirdest allies to the Daleks ever. Amid the story of Daleks living in Earth’s past are a new race of human/pig hybrids and the idea that humans at the technological level they were at in the 1930s could adequately combat the Daleks is a pretty ridiculous notion.

After Laszlo, a pretty regular guy in 1930, who is involved with the dancer, Tallulah, disappears, The Doctor and Martha Jones arrive in New York City on November 1, 1930. Martha is excited because she has always wanted to go to New York City and she sees that they have arrived at an intriguing time; the Empire State Building is not yet complete. The Doctor sees on a newspaper headline that people are disappearing from Hooverville and the pair begins to investigate. Checking out Hooverville, The Doctor meets Solomon, a community organizer among the impoverished living in Central Park. When Mr. Diagoras visits Hooverville after the Daleks insist he finish the Empire State Building that very night, The Doctor, Martha, Frank, and Solomon take some work going into the sewer. While they are running into weird biological matter in the sewers, Diagoras is enforcing the will of the Daleks with completing the spire on the Empire State Building.

Diagoras is brought before Dalek Sec, the leader of the Cult Of Skarro, the surviving Dalek from the future. Sec is experimenting upon humans, creating human/pig hybrids with the citizens of Hooverville. In the sewers, The Doctor and his team encounter one of the people abducted, who has been altered by the Daleks. In escaping, Frank is abducted by the pig men and the group meets up with Tallulah. Solomon suspects The Doctor is not what he seems when The Doctor tries to analyze a jellyfish-like creature they found in the sewers. While Dalek Sec makes a move on Diagoras, The Doctor realizes just who he is fighting!

In “Doomsday” (reviewed here!), the survival of the Daleks was virtually assured when one made a temporal leap to escape the trap The Doctor and Rose set. So, the idea that Dalek Sec survived is not actually surprising. Near the climax of the episode, Sec gives a decent monologue which explains his concept of evolving the Daleks. The idea of Daleks willing to use human DNA undermines the whole idea of what the Daleks are. After all, if the Daleks are the last remaining creatures from the planet Skarro, the idea of going to Earth to try to resurrect the race is a ridiculous one. Moreover, the writers do not seem to actually understand what DNA is; if DNA is a blueprint, a chain of amino acids in a specific order, one can pretty easily replicate alien DNA from any building blocks once they have the full blueprint. In other words, Daleks that had the full record of Skarran DNA in their database could simply reconstruct pure Skarran DNA from any genetic material, i.e. frogs, with vastly less risk than they take on in “Daleks In Manhattan.”

So, the idea of Daleks experimenting on humans and creating a race of human/pig hybrids is absurd and the episode “Daleks In Manhattan” does not justify its concept well-enough to be convincing.

Similarly unfortunately, “Daleks In Manhattan” is crowded with guest characters who fail to resonate. Laszlo and Tallulah are hardly compelling and their arc and reuniting feels like filler. Laszlo serves mostly to provide exposition late in the episode and Frank is not developed enough to truly be vital. Similarly, Solomon is a good idea, but more of an archetype than an actual character.

Martha Jones stands out in the episode. Jones is defined as having superior intelligence in “Daleks In Manhattan” by the Daleks and the episode marks the first time that Martha explicitly declares that she has romantic feelings for The Doctor. Jones is smart and resourceful as ever in “Daleks In Manhattan” and Freema Agyeman plays her well, as always. David Tennant is given shockingly little to do in “Daleks In Manhattan,” especially with the cluttered guest cast.

Perhaps that is why “Daleks In Manhattan” fails; it’s so much set-up and the set-up is more silly than compelling to the characters viewers love and respect.

[Knowing that single episodes are an inefficient way to get episodes, it's worth looking into Doctor Who - The Complete Third Season on DVD or Blu-Ray, which is also a better economical choice than buying individual episodes. Read my review of the second season of the Tenth Doctor here!
Thanks!]

For other works with resurrected villains, be sure to check out my reviews of:
“Dark Frontier, Part 1” - Star Trek: Voyager
“Tempus Fugit” - The X-Files
“The Only Light In The Darkness” - Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D.

3.5/10

For other Doctor Who episode and movie reviews, please visit my Doctor Who Review Index Page!

© 2015 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Duller Than It Is Satisfying, “The Satan Pit” Is Hardly An Engaging End To “The Impossible Planet”

The Good: Adequate acting
The Bad: Erratic special effects, No real character development, Exceptionally heavy on exposition without real plot
The Basics: “The Satan Pit” finishes off a Doctor Who adventure story in a very unremarkable way.


So much Doctor Who is loosely serialized, but there are a few true two-parters (or more). In the run of episodes featuring David Tennant as The Doctor, the second directly serialized pair of episodes climaxed in “The Satan Pit.” “The Satan Pit” is the second part to the story arc that began with “The Impossible Planet” (reviewed here!) and it does not stand very well on its own without having seen the first part. That said, “The Satan Pit” is a rare Doctor Who second part that only utilizes the teaser for the “Previously on. . . “ recap of the prior episode.

As a result, “The Satan Pit” picks right up in the middle of the action that was the climax of the prior episode. “The Satan Pit” is a very basic supernatural action-adventure story without a huge deal of character development for the primary characters of Doctor Who. Featuring an obligatory reference to Torchwood, which the second season is preoccupied with, “The Satan Pit” is exposition heavy, without having much in the way of a significant story. Outside foreshadowing the imminent demise of Rose and resolving the story begun in “The Impossible Planet,” “The Satan Pit” is very much a bottle episode that does not influence the Doctor Who universe much.

With the Ood in a sudden, murderous frenzy under the mercy of The Beast on the sanctuary base suspended above a black hole and The Doctor and Ida Scott on the planet far below, Rose finds herself fighting for her life. The Doctor and Ida stand over the opened seal and The Doctor makes the decision for a rare tactical retreat. Rose starts guiding the crew on the sanctuary base, especially when The Doctor’s communicator is cut off and the cable to his lift onto the planet is cut. While the crew on the sanctuary base struggles to avoid the murderous Ood, who have become the voice of the Beast, the Doctor finds himself drawn into the pit on the planet below.

Crawling through the ducts, struggling for air, Rose and the other survivors up top fight the Ood off as best they can. Sacrificing Jefferson, Rose and Danny are only able to escape the Ood because Toby retains some sort of power from the Beast within him. With the Sanctuary base saved, Rose turns to trying to rescue The Doctor. The Doctor, lowered into the pit on the planet, takes a leap of faith and drops into darkness where he encounters the Beast. As Rose is forced into an escape rocket with the others, The Doctor figures out the nature of the creature and the trap that keeps it there.

“The Satan Pit” has the characters giving a great deal of exposition and trying to mask their descriptions as plot. Much of the episode features philosophical discussions masquerading as plot development. The episode, however, does not have much going on in the way of plot. Instead, the episode feels like it is made up of equal points action and filler. It’s like the writers stretched a fifteen minute story into a full forty-five minute episode with babbling and characters running away.

The episode includes a somewhat pointless bit of exposition from The Doctor. David Tennant does a fine job opposite a CG creature (presumably a blue screen when he shot it). Faced off against the Beast, The Doctor uses a single painting on the wall to reason the entire nature of the trap in which the Beast was left. The logic and reasoning the Doctor goes through might be solid, but the Doctor gets it all right without any new information being given to him. The result might seem satisfying for some, but the more one watches, the more it appears like The Doctor just guessed a number of factors right. This is more random and correct exposition than a satisfying series of conclusions from the Doctor reasoning things through.

That is not to say that David Tennant and the others do not perform the parts well; they do, but the episode lacks genuine character development. Instead, the Doctor does not grow or develop and Rose does not actually become the superheroine the episode seems to imply she is becoming. The Doctor and Rose unceremoniously kill in “The Satan Pit” and there is no real reflection of that within the episode. Instead, Tennant and Billie Piper make it around the technobabble and rush around in tight jeans, respectively.

“The Satan Pit” also suffers because the special effects are painfully erratic. The special effects department seems to want to make the rocket and its fall into the black hole look like a b-rate science fiction flick as opposed to a state-of-the-art science fiction horror. The Beast is generic and the space shots are utterly campy.

Ultimately, “The Satan Pit” takes the energy of “The Impossible Planet” and fizzles. So burdened with explaining the setting and the adversary, “The Satan Pit” disappoints.

[Knowing that single episodes are an inefficient way to get episodes, it's worth looking into Doctor Who - The Complete Second Season on DVD or Blu-Ray, which is also a better economical choice than buying individual episodes. Read my review of the debut season of the Tenth Doctor here!
Thanks!]

For other works with Danny Webb, please check out my reviews of:
Redemption
Valkyrie
Alien 3

2/10

For other Doctor Who episode and movie reviews, please visit my Doctor Who Review Index Page!

© 2015 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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The Introduction Of The Ood Comes On “The Impossible Planet!”

The Good: Decent performances, Interesting set-up for the plot and aliens, Some decent character moments.
The Bad: Very much a set-up episode where very little actually happens and less is explained/revealed
The Basics: Alternating between a somewhat standard possession story and a spooky science fiction exploration drama, “The Impossible Planet” is engaging Doctor Who.


Doctor Who has managed to intrigue me for several reasons, but the most common reason is that they are intriguing. Essentially, the best of Doctor Who manages to mix elements from science fiction, horror and character drama in exceptional ways. One of the episodes that has the most intriguing combination of elements is “The Impossible Planet.” “The Impossible Planet” is a space exploration story that has, in one of the rare twists for an episode, a legitimate supernatural twist to it. Unlike most episodes of Doctor Who, “The Impossible Planet” does not even try to explain all of the elements in literal, scientific terms.

But more than a simple, creepy, supernatural story that puts The Doctor and Rose in a dark, nebulous future fighting an ancient evil, “The Impossible Planet” starts a morality tale when it introduces one of the most distinctive Doctor Who alien races: the Ood! The Ood are essentially an alien slave race used by humans in a dangerous, futuristic, mining compound and the ethics of using them as a slave workforce is skirted, but addressed, in “The Impossible Planet.” While that might be unsatisfying within this episode, the Ood become vital and interesting in characterizing the Doctor and his companions as higher ethical life forms in future episodes.

Rose and The Doctor land inside a base on a distant world where The Doctor notes that the TARDIS seems reluctant to land. The Doctor quickly ascertains that they have arrived on a Sanctuary base in the distant future. There, they are surprised to discover that the base is overrun by mysterious aliens and there is an ancient language scrawled on the wall that even the TARDIS cannot identify. The aliens are the Ood, a servant class of aliens working for the humans at a dangerous mining site. The human crew of the Sanctuary base is shocked by the appearance of two new people given how far out they are and the fact that they are on a planetoid that is hovering in a stationary position above a black hole!

As night falls on the Sanctuary base and the Doctor and Rose realize that they are stranded there (due to the TARDIS falling into a chasm thanks to a planetquake), weird things begin happening on the base. One of the Ood Rose talks to misspeaks “I hope you enjoy your meal” as a prophecy about the Beast awakening and preparing to lay waste to the universe, two people hear strange voices and see a hologram of a devilish creature, and one of the crewmen working on an artifact suddenly finds the glyphs from the artifact transferred to his own skin. When the possessed crewman, Toby Zed, awakens, the Ood suddenly explode with telepathic abilities and they proclaim that the Beast has awakened. When Toby appears outside the base without a spacesuit on, the crew finds themselves fleeing the demonically possessed Toby and the telepathically manipulated Ood!

“The Impossible Planet” is smart-enough to not neglect the character aspects that are essential for great drama. Finding themselves stranded at a distant point in time and space, the Doctor and Rose consider what being trapped means to them. While The Doctor laments how he may be breaking the promise he made to Rose’s mother – to always bring Rose home safe – Rose contemplates a life settling down with the Doctor. More than in any of the prior episodes of this season of Doctor Who, “The Impossible Planet” illustrates that Rose has transferred her feelings from the previous incarnation of The Doctor to the current one. Rose accepts that the Doctor’s regenerations do not make him an entirely different person and here it is clear she has love and affection for the current regeneration.

The mining that the crew is doing on the planetoid is incidental in “The Impossible Planet,” save that it allows the episode to climax with the Doctor and Rose being separated. The nature of the planetoid is not explored in “The Impossible Planet,” so this is very much a set-up episode where Toby is possessed, but does not realize it, and the Ood’s odd behavior makes them into a somewhat terrifying hive mind-controlled herd.

What helps make “The Impossible Planet” so memorable is the quality of the supplemental characters. The crew of the Sanctuary base is diverse, both in terms of ethnic composition and job positions. Instead of all the typical military-style officers found in most science fiction shows, the crew of the Sanctuary base features a science officer (who seems to have a bent for archaeology) and an ethics officer! That the ethics officer oversees the treatment of the Ood is an atypical twist that works and the feel of the Sanctuary base crew is such that the viewer instantly buys the premise that the crew has been together for some time, working as a generally cohesive unit.

Another impressive aspect of “The Impossible Planet” comes in the realm of the special effects. More than the awesome, filthy-looking sets for the remote mining platform or the generally impressive CG rendering of the black hole, “The Impossible Planet” is augmented by a cool soundtrack. Until the end when the soundtrack turns to a rousing and tense anthem, “The Impossible Planet” is sublimely accented by haunting violins and strings that enhance the feeling of loneliness that defines the remote setting.

In the end, though, “The Impossible Planet” is an establishing episode that does not resolve anything or even ask most of the questions that are raised by the events that occur within it. The episode might not stand alone, but it has enough elements to make for an intriguing start that is well worth returning to because it is a great balance of smart and creepy, plot and character. It certainly is enough to make one excited about watching Doctor Who.

[Knowing that single episodes are an inefficient way to get episodes, it's worth looking into Doctor Who - The Complete Second Season on DVD or Blu-Ray, which is also a better economical choice than buying individual episodes. Read my review of the debut season of the Tenth Doctor here!
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For other works with Silas Carson, please visit my reviews of:
Star Wars: Revenge Of The Sith
Star Wars: Attack Of The Clones
Star Wars: The Phantom Menace

8/10

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© 2015 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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