Doctor Who: Planet of the Dead
Planet of the Dead started off like no other Doctor Who story has ever done with Christina breaking into the international museum and stealing a prize exhibit. While we are on that scene what a waste of time that security system was, the only place there wasn’t lasers protecting it were from above, which is just asking for trouble if you ask me. So obviously that was the way that Christina was able to nick the exhibit. I fully expect that particular security company lost the contract for the museum soon after. Then she gets on the number 200 bus and the Doctor got on and the story itself began in earnest.
Until the moment that the Doctor’s trainers first appeared you could have been forgiven for thinking that you were watching an episode of Hustle rather than Doctor Who. It also reminded me of one of my favourite movies Jay and Silent Bob Strikes Back, particularly the character of Christina (most notably her costume), and the scenes when Christina descends down the shaft in the Tritivore spaceship the oft copied cable work from the 1990’s Mission Impossible films. The bus disappearing is also quite funny as that seems to happen on a daily basis where I live. I reckon that being sucked into a wormhole happens a lot to buses as more often than not at least one bus seems to disappear when you are standing waiting at the bus stop, particularly when it’s raining!
Planet of the Dead is a fun little adventure that isn’t too demanding on the audience and manages to keep you interested throughout its running time. It does start a little slowly but picks up when they land on the alien planet. The story itself is a little thin, and the fly like Tritivore’s are very much underused, but there were plenty of good elements to the story.
Firstly Michelle Ryan was very good as Christina who was a good foil for the Doctor in this adventure. You did kind of feel a bit sorry for her at the end, when the Doctor wouldn’t let her travel in the TARDIS with him, but in a way relieved because the luck this incarnation of the Doctor has had with companions you wouldn’t fancy her chances of happiness would you?
There was a little bit of moral outrage present in the story just so that the children watching didn’t think that crime pays. So after a quick lecture in the fact that stealing is bad the Doctor then goes and aids and abets her escape in the bus at the end of the story, possibly opening up a future appearance for her in a later series. Of course, as he mentions himself, the Doctor is hardly one to talk about stealing stuff as he stole the TARDIS.
Secondly is Lee Evans who was excellent in the role of Malcolm Taylor, the current UNIT scientific adviser who has gone as far as naming a unit of measurement after himself and Bernard Quatermass. I wasn’t entirely convinced by his Welsh accent at first, but when I watched it a second time it didn’t sound that bad at all and Lee Evans did grow up in North Wales so he would be used to that accent. I would not be averse to seeing Malcolm return at some point in the future as he was a lot of fun.
The location filming in Dubai did lend the story an epic quality that it would never had got had it been filmed in a quarry or on a beach as it would have been in the old days. Those desert landscapes are very popular with makers of science fiction as they do just look so otherworldly, like they just don’t belong on this planet, without much work being done afterwards.
UNIT return in this special in the shape of Captain Erisa Magumbo, who had previously appeared in Turn Left. Magumbo is a rather gung-ho Unit officer happier to shoot and answer questions after. She was more than willing to sacrifice the life of the Doctor and the other people on the bus without a second thought if it meant that any of those creatures never reached the other, and if it hadn’t been for Malcolm then she might well have done. This is certainly not the UNIT of old which in a way is a good thing as for the most part UNIT were a very ineffectual military UNIT for much of the 1970’s in Doctor Who. I suppose the question could be asked then when a code 1 is released UNIT send a Captain to head up the team rather a higher ranked officer but then again UNIT don’t work in the same way as the normal military would so perhaps this is a just a normal UNIT set up.
The script was co-written by Russell T Davies and Gareth Roberts and to be honest I wouldn’t be able to tell which bits were written by who as the whole things just seems very RTD particularly in the dialogue which is straight from the pen of RTD. Having said that, the idea of a form on transport being trapped on a desert like planet does come from Gareth Roberts 1992 New Adventures novel The Highest Science. There are also elements of the plot that seems to be very similar to that of the movie Pitch Black but I am not sure that that film was particularly original in the first place anyway, and Doctor Who has always borrowed from other sources giving it that Doctor Who slant for decades and will continue to do so.
One disappointment of this story was the underuse of the Tritivore who really needn’t have been there at all save for getting killed by the jellyfish like Swarm. Still I am sure there will be a character options 5” figure of them very soon in a supermarket near you.
I really enjoyed Planet of the Dead. It was a straightforward piece of entertainment for an Easter Saturday but, it does have to be said, that the more interesting stuff is to come later on in the year.
