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| "Don't! If you try to leave the episode early, Russell will kill you!" |
The funny thing is, as much of a reaming as I gave it, The Next Doctor is probably the second-best of the 2009 specials. The upcoming The Waters of Mars is by far the best and The End of Time is unquestionably the worst. This would put this one right over The End of Time and just under The Next Doctor...and unfortunately, you can insert that one Brad Pitt meme about the 50 miles of feces between this and The Waters of Mars. I'll give this episode credit in that it is the last one in the RTD era with a (intentionally, at least) goofy tone.
. . .and that's really about it.
Planet of the Dead begins with a heist in modern London. The "International Gallery" is apparently a place that requires several armed guards and a laser-grid to protect a single gold cup. Unfortunately for said armed guards and the lasers, they are no match for the Bionic Woman. Yes, Michelle Ryan plays Lady Christina de Souza and she pulls a Mission: Impossible to steal the cup and leaves behind a bizarre waving cat as a calling card...for some reason.
She also takes off a ski mask she's wearing before actually leaving the museum...because of reasons. This also triggers every alarm ever and she escapes, leaving an accomplice behind for the police. She hops onto a double decker bus in order to evade the cops and finds herself in a seat next to none other than the Doctor, who offers her a bit of chocolate and wishes her a Happy Easter as the bus drives off.
After the title sequence, one of the detectives sees Christina on the bus and takes off in pursuit. The Doctor has yet another gadget that goes ding when there's stuff that starts going off. The bus goes into a tunnel, the cops sealing off both the north and south entrances of the tunnel - all ways in and out are covered. A woman on the bus begins to speak of voices calling them all from very far away just as the Doctor's device starts to smoke...and the Doctor advises everyone to hold on!
The windows start shattering as a bright light envelops the bus and rocks its passengers around.
In London...the bus is gone, disappeared without a trace.
The bus appears in a desert, the Doctor joking that they've gone a little bit further than Brixton as we get a sweeping shot of the area. Clearly, the Doctor has finally made it to Arrakis! A clicking alien sees the scene on a monitor...more on them later. The woman from earlier is still claiming to hear the voices, people crying out. They are surrounded...by the dead! The Doctor examines the sand, and the passengers examine the bus to find it tattered...but still drivable if not for the wheels being stuck in the sand.
The Doctor gets grilled by Christina as he tastes the sand, saying that it tastes like... "never mind".
This is not a good sign.
The Doctor explains that he was tracking a tiny little hole in space-time, nothing like this. He demonstrates this by throwing some sand into the portal and creating a ripple effect. The bus driver believes this means they can get back home, despite the Doctor insisting that they can't. He finds out that they, in fact, can't...because he gets skinned alive.
HAPPY EASTER, KIDS! THERE'S A MAN LITERALLY BEING SKINNED ALIVE! WOO WEE WOOOOOOO!!!!!!
Seriously, what in the actual hell?!
His skeleton falls into the street in London (the bones apparently able to survive the trip...somehow), and the police detective calls up UNIT. Back in the desert, the Doctor seems to have passengers far more receptive than the last time he was on a bus. They attempt to liken the bus to a Faraday cage, which is why they weren't murdered to death when they went through the first time...but that isn't how a Faraday cage works.
. . .but, y'know...gamma radiation from lightning strikes.
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| Malcolm Taylor, unsung hero of UNIT. Also one of the only good things about this episode. |
Christina somehow manages to take over and we get introduced to the passengers as they plan. While there are several of them (including one that wants to GET OUT - hahahaha), the only one of major importance is the woman from earlier: Carmen. She apparently has psychic potential that is being exacerbated by the alien sun...because that's how ESP works!
. . .yes, sure, humans are purported to have some psychic potential like dozens of other races in Doctor Who, but this is just...really dumb.
Carmen tells them that something is coming. The Doctor tries to inspire everyone with one of his usual speeches of "human beings are wonderful" and thinking of all the reasons they have to live...and so on...and he promises to get them home.
Back on Earth, UNIT arrives on scene and takes over the situation promptly. Interestingly, Captain Magambo from Turn Left returns and puts up a perimeter guard on the wormhole and orders them to shoot to kill should anything get through.
Christina puts some of her thieves' tools to work to the clear amazement of the Doctor (who has worked out who she is by now, is my theory) and the group starts to work on getting the bus running again. The Doctor and Christina, meanwhile, head off into the desert. They exchange mysterious backstory talk, some French talk, and the Doctor relates to Christina that every single one of his instincts his telling him to get off this planet as fast as he can. They see a storm getting closer...and the Doctor quickly realizes that it's not a sand storm.
On the bus, Carmen is having a mini-freakout and insisting that "they're coming". The Doctor gives a superphone upgrade and calls up the UNIT help line, getting in touch with Magambo. She salutes him, which the Doctor comments on despite not being able to see her. They compare notes, Magambo putting the Doctor in touch with UNIT's scientific advisor Malcolm Taylor. Malcolm is likewise star-struck as Magambo was. Malcolm gives some technobabble worthy of the Doctor himself and, when the Doctor says he wants to scan the wormhole, he reveals that he can actually measure the wormhole, which the Doctor needs to determine what is going on.
The Doctor and Christina leave again, the "cloud" somehow getting further away...yet is somehow close enough to be seen as metallic. Carmen tells her husband that "they devour". The Doctor and Christina find themselves at the mercy of a fly creature with a ray gun and a mechanic suit. The fly creature brings them to a wrecked ship. The flies - Tritovores - apparently think that the bus caused the problem. The Doctor corrects them, and offers to help, wanting to get a probe out to figure out whatever the oncoming storm (heh) is.
With their tech, the Doctor is able to figure out that they're on a planet on the other side of the universe from Earth. The Tritovores were apparently coming to the planet to trade...but this is a desert, rather than the thriving metropolis shown in the images, apparently taken last year. The Doctor reveals the truth to Christina - SOYLENT GREEN IS PEOPLE!...or, rather, the people of the planet are now sand. All of them are dead.
Thus, we have our title...Planet of the Dead!
The Doctor calls up Malcolm and Malcolm reveals that the wormhole is getting bigger...four miles wide and getting bigger outward. A further complication arises - the bus is out of gas from the passengers trying to get it out. There's no way to get the bus moving, even if they get out. The Tritovore probe reveals what the "storm" is...space stingrays. Space stingrays that are headed for the wormhole...and Earth!
So, basically, this entire episode has turned into a gigantic shitshow fast.
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| "Who the hell edited this script? Helen Keller?!" |
The Doctor realizes the stingrays work on Superman logic - i.e., they break time-space by flying really really fast in one direction. Granted, this is billions of them at once, but still no less ridiculous. As they approach, Carmen tells the others on the bus that they aren't due for water...something worse is coming, but the girl...she will fly!
Christina works out that the Tritovores must have crashed for some reason other than the sting rays and they reveal that their engine failed and they crashed. The Doctor attempts to technobabble, but Christina uses a winch and some acrobatics to lower herself down into the engine and get the crystal that the Doctor needs...only to be stopped short of being burned by a far more effective security grid. As she deactivates it and lowers himself, the Doctor waxes poetic about things that happened in his past...and her future. The Doctor pulls out the golden cup, calling her out as a thief...and says he can't really judge, seeing as he stole his TARDIS.
. . .not really the same thing, but alright.
Christina finds one of the stingrays dormant in the bowels of the ship, pulling out the device the Doctor needs and getting pulled up in the nick of time. Realizing there are more on the ship, the Doctor and Christina convince the Tritovores to leave...only for them to get killed off so as not to ruin the budget with more extras. The Doctor and Christina run back to the bus (somehow outrunning a swarm of stingrays fast enough to create little wormholes.
The Doctor adjusts things on the bus, calling Malcolm and telling him to find a way to close the wormhole is necessary. Magambo orders her troops to go to Code Red and be ready for any hostile alien. The Doctor ends up using the gold cup to bind the systems together (comedy bit of David Tennant whacking it with a hammer "delicately"). On Earth, Malcolm figures out a way to close the wormhole...and Magambo orders him to do so. When he insists he'll do it once the Doctor is through, refusing to do otherwise, Magambo puts him at gunpoint.
The bus begins to fly...somehow managing to get ahead of the sting ray horde in spite of the clear speed disadvantage...and they head off through the portal. In London, the bus gets through...and so do a few sting rays so that UNIT can do a little five rounds rapid. The Doctor calls up Malcolm, and Malcolm finally attempts to get the wormhole closed. While it initially fails, a suggestion from the Doctor gets it to work, and the rest of the rays do not get through.
The Doctor knocks the last one aside with the bus, UNIT taking it out with gusto.
Christina snogs the Doctor, because we need a good trailer shot, and the day is saved. They land to UNIT applause and disembark from their little voyage of the damned...heh. The Doctor gets hugged by Malcolm (professing his love for the Doctor - don't we all have it?) and Christina gets taken into police custody. Magambo salutes the Doctor (whether he likes it or not), and the Doctor uses nepotism to get two of the passengers jobs with UNIT.
We also get the implication that the Doctor knows the Queen of England (which shouldn't be that surprising), when UNIT apparently found the TARDIS on the grounds of Buckingham Palace. Christina manages to escape the cops, trying to get the Doctor to take her along, but he refuses her on the grounds that he's lost people...all of them. Declaring never again.
. . .not refusing her on the grounds that she's a devil may care thief who shows little to no regard for the people around her outside of their tactical usefulness.
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| "Kiss me!" "You're smothering me! Stop it!" |
The Doctor is visibly worried by this.
So much so that he uses his sonic to disable Christina's handcuffs at distance and then gives her the flying bus to escape from the authorities in. For some reason, everyone treats this as a happy moment and the episode mercifully ends.
Yeah, I'm not a fan of this one. To misquote a particularly soulful green-skinned demon, "Planet of the Dead is like watching Godfather III - once was enough!".
The sting rays are a bit ridiculous. The timing with them is all over the place for the sake of the plot. I don't doubt that an alien race like this could exist in Doctor Who, but I find it amazing that they weren't hunted into extinction by the Time Lords given the terrifying effects of their natural life cycle.
Lady Christina de Souza is pushy and annoying and even more of a glory hound than Ten is, so I secretly think he didn't allow her to join him onboard the TARDIS because he didn't want someone stealing the spotlight.
The flies serve no purposes apart from exposition and could have been cut with no problem. The Doctor and Christina could have easily found and pillaged a crashed alien ship and nothing would be lost, plus we wouldn't have had two more extraneous deaths on top of the over the top one that the bus driver already had.
Again, what the hell?!
The one bit of good in this episode is Malcolm Taylor, who I'm legitimately sad we never got to see more of in the future. He'd have to be one of the first people that Kate Lethbridge-Stewart would be keeping on the payroll. Certainly not a companion, but he'd make a find recurring character for Earth-bound stories.
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| "The remorseless career thief is escaping! …wait, why are you all cheering?!" |
Planet of the Dead is worse than The Next Doctor, though it is infinitely better than The End of Time. Of course, that isn't saying very much. Next time, however, we touch on greatness! Russell T. Davies managed to write a surprisingly good script that is well-executed...with some help from Phil Ford, who sadly has only one other writing credit on the show to his name.
The Waters of Mars. It's an incredibly bleak and dark story, something we were admittedly warned about by producer Julie Gardner and David Tennant before it aired, and it works so well. It really, really, really pisses me off that it's grouped in the same place as The End of Time, because it really deserves to not be.
Next time, we get into it...see you then!
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