Planet Of The Dead: Ranking - 253

 Planet Of The Dead

(Easter Special, Dr 10, 11/4/2009, showrunner: Russell T Davies, writers: Gareth Roberts and Russell T Davies, director: James Strong)  

Rank: 253

''It looks like the 200 bus failed to turn up again, wonder what planet it's ended up on this time? I would get the time-travel bus but chances are three will turn up at once again and then detour me to blooming Skaro. Oh here it is - a single universe-explorer-master please...'

Nowadays DW can be off the air for a year or more and nobody thinks twice about it, but the announcement that for 2009 we were getting four specials spread throughout the year up to Christmas rather than the usual 13 part series was met with horror by us fans who remembered the 18 month hiatus in the mid-80s that led to a full cancellation by the late 80s. Would the time off air kill our favourite show just when it was at the peak of its popularity? Would the quality drop? Thankfully not in either case, but the first of these specials - billed as the first ever Easter special, though in the olden days DW stories used to run through the Easter period most years - didn't help much in either respect. It also hinted at why we got that break when we did. Russell T Davies was preparing to hand over running the show to Steven Moffat and David Tennant was making way for Matt Smith and the whole story has the feel of one that got overlooked in the shuffle. Whisper it quietly, but don't you think it looks a bit tired? Still packed full with strong ideas and great lines but going through the motions a bit? We'd had worse episodes since the Who revival certainly, but they tended to fall apart because they were trying something bold, new different - and wrong. 'Planet' feels like lots of other episodes cobbled together. David Tennant has lost his usual bounce and is clearly missing Catherine Tate as much as his character misses Donna. The writing is as close to numbers as two of the series' most inventive and talented writers can get. This week's monster, The Tritovore, feels like a rummage through the costume box for leftovers (the Vespiform, with hints of Hath) rather than a fully fleshed out creation. Even the music and direction fall a bit flat. Meanwhile the one big new addition, one-shot companion Lady Christina De Souza turned down by the Doctor for full-time travel because she's well dodgy (so the Doctor finally learnt after Turlough not to open the Tardis doors to just anyone then?), is irritatingly smug throughout. Given how similar she is to plans for Andrew Cartmel's plans for a post-Ace companion in the 1990 series that never was, maybe we dodged a bullet there. Goodness knows what she'd have done if she'd become a full companion - nicked something off the Bowie base and called The Master a right geezer, or something like that probably.All this is a shame because the bits of this special that work really stand out. The sight of an everyday London bus in the desert sands of an alien world is prime DW, merging the ordinary and the extraordinary, even if it caused horrific problems on set when the bus got damaged in transit (causing a quick re-write about it being damaged by its journey). RTD often shines when writing for crowds of contrasting strangers and while these Humans aren't perhaps as well drawn as the ones on 'Midnight' he still possesses of sketching in a person in a handful of sentences that makes them seem like they've lived an entire life before we meet them. had this story been made years earlier when everyone was still excited and with Rose, Martha or Donna as the companion this story could still have been a real favourite. Like many an Easter present, though, it ends up feeling a bit hollow, its treats buried away under too many layers of sugar.

Positives + This story was based on Gareth Roberts' New Adventures story 'The Highest Science', which is one of the range's best. All the good bits of this story come from there, tweaked, although in the earlier version the bus is a strain, the companion is Bernice Summerfield (that Cartmel companion, whose basically an upgraded Christina) and the baddies are the Chenolians, a far more interesting group of mutant and presumably teenage alien tortoises with X-ray vision who were sadly too expensive to reproduce on screen. This episode has more problems than most, but none of them are in the book, just in the way the book had to be translated to television.

Negatives - Michelle Ryan was a big name at the time after some high profile roles in Eastenders, The Bionic Woman and the ever under-rated Merlin (she plays a witch in at least 1 of these series, possibly 2). After being in everything at once her career crashed and burned after this, much like the London bus when she left Britain to make a name for herself in Hollywood and burnt most of her bridges. It's not that she's bad (her dialogue and character are a bigger problem than her acting) but she plays Christina with very broad strokes and practically winks at the camera when she's up to something, which is out of place when everyone else is aiming for the feel of a rugged kitchen sink drama.