Planet of the Dead Review
Story 200, Episode 753, Doctor Who 2009 Easter Special
Doctor: The Tenth Doctor
In Doctor Who‘s 200th story, we get a beautifully shot on-location tale that is disposable fun.
The Review
It was a big leap in technology in story 200, Planet of the Dead marked Doctor Who finally transitioning to high definition after Torchwood was there three years earlier, and the occasion is marked with the bus in the story being called the 200. We even get a pre-stardom Daniel Kaluuya! After a London bus falls through a wormhole and lands on an endless desert planet, we are treated to some of the prettiest on-location shots in show history, the real life desert in the UAE just outside of Dubai. Throw in Michelle Ryan as the cat burglar extraordinaire Lady Christina (as close to Catwoman as Doctor Who will ever get) and the show has never looked better. After the bus driver gets roasted into bones by the wormhole, the Doctor and Christina have to figure out how to get the bus moving back into the wormhole. Unlike Midnight, with no obvious threat, everybody is much nicer to the Doctor. Outside of psychic Carmen who delivers the famous ‘he will knock four times’ prophecy the rest of the guest cast, even Kaluuya, don’t get too much to do. Instead we spend time with Christina being badass and gradually flirting with the Doctor, and Tennant and Ryan have a great dynamic together. Christina in this form couldn’t have lasted a full season, but neither could the original interpretation of Donna.
We meet the Tritovores, who are basically humanoid flies who speak in clicking. Not the most original alien design but it is certainly an arresting one, and them not having lines allows for more Doctor and Christina time. Christina does get to put her thievery skills to the test Mission Impossible style to extract the anti-gravity clamps that fly the bus home. Less successful is the plot line with UNIT talking to the Doctor from London, where we meet UNIT scientist Malcolm woh is your stereotypical ditzy scientist who is over the moon that he is finally helping THE actual Doctor solve a problem. Osgood will later be a much better rendition of a UNIT scientist obsessed with the Doctor. It’s all a bit too silly. The concept of a planet-devouring swarm that inadvertently generates wormholes to move onto its next victim is a very cool idea, though I just realized: how do the wormholes always know to appear around planets? Could’ve used a technobabble line saying planetary gravity causes that or something. The real problem though is that this story still feels kind of disposable, I had forgotten half of it watching it for the first time in seven years. It’s a fun story, and doesn’t aim to be anything but, just the Doctor and notCatwoman cavorting around an actual desert facing alien stingrays. Not a classic for story 200, but a fine entry.
With a middling subplot, little story depth, it takes a gorgeous setting and a memorably unique performance from Michelle Ryan to make this one worth a rewatch.
8/10 The opening is literally a daring art heist, extremely not this show.
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