DOCTOR WHO-PLANET OF THE DEAD

 

DOCTOR WHO-PLANET OF THE DEAD

 

All set to hate on this silly romp but you know what, I just let go and enjoyed it. It was fun and yes, it was silly and stupid in places but not as irritating as the first time or as annoying as ABOUT TIME would have you believe. I even liked Malcolm and the gimmick of the psychic lady telling the Doctor, “It’s returning” and “he will knock four times,” bullshit.

 

Yes, the first go around, with DW gone for months, THIS was what it returned with and a big red button in a shaft just above a force field in your own ship? And THE FLY monsters? AND metallic exoskeletons on the manta monsters (impressive though they were)? I mean did someone build them? Were they really from nature? With metal as part of their bodies? I guess in this part of DW anything is possible.

 

ABOUT TIME will tell you how irritating the black woman, Christina and Malcolm are but this time out, I found them engaging, funny, and even charming.

 

Daniel Kaluuya is in this, too, as Barclay but honestly, he’s not that good in this. I found David Ames as Nathan much more engaging and realistic. I haven’t seen GET OUT but I’m sure it’s good. Maybe?

 

Unlike NEXT DOCTOR, here, with the death of the bus driver (poor man), I found this had a sense of urgency, though the Doctor does say mid way through he’s not losing anyone else. The two fly aliens also die horribly, being eaten on screen, pretty much. Christina told them just before they died, they would find somewhere for them to live. The Doctor didn’t do his usual, “I’ll take you somewhere to live,” like he did in the past with Cybermen, Terrileptils, and maybe even Davros?

 

He also makes reference to MIDNIGHT:

 

Oh, humans on buses, always blaming me. Look, look, if you must know, I was tracking a hole in the fabric of reality. Call it a hobby. But it was a tiny little hole. No danger to anyone. Suddenly it gets big, and we drive right through it.
DRIVER: But then where is it? There's nothing. There's just sand.

 

 

Christina is almost Romana and I half expected her to have a fob watch or something. ABOUT TIME will explain all the things wrong with her and this story but I sort of liked it this time round.

 

That UNIT is involved is interesting and that the mantas were so easy to dispatch was a bit comforting.

 

This might be the only Easter special?

 

 

In any case, I enjoyed this. Onward and upward….this was not the mess I first thought it was, though it’s still a kind of fairy tale Doctor Who UNIT story with all the trappings of UNIT from the past but only…not as good. It works mostly and was entertaining enough but DW should be big epics like PRYAMIDS OF MARS or BRAIN OF MORBIUS or SEEDS OF DOOM and while this strives to be that or sort of like this, it comes off as a trite little adventure despite a big giant desert planet and the best visuals the show ever produced. The alien ship looks fantastic and the attack of the manta rays, while sometimes looking like animated cartoons, isn’t bad either.

 

It just feels so…DW and yet not as grand as less expensive productions like WEB PLANET, MASQUE OF MANDRAGORA, and even some of the worst stories like LEISURE HIVE, MEGLOS, INVISIBLE ENEMY and worst of all ANDROID INVASION.

 

 

 

It IS DW but yet it feels as if a change is needed. I’m pretty sure there is a DWMagazine story called PLANET OF THE DEAD, too about the 7^th Doctor lured to a planet where aliens fake being his other selves and his dead companions Katarina, Sara Kingdom, Adric, and Jamie (yes, Jamie, as an old man, died in a Sixth Doctor story in the comics in the DWMagazine).

 

In an almost offensive line, the Doctor starts to tell Christina about the first Easter and what really happened (probably some atheistic alien nonsense from RTD) but is cut short. Other than that, some of the dialog is brilliant (“You look Time Lord.”). Some of it is crap. Malcolm loving the Doctor is charming and when I first watch it, I thought it was just RTD being ridiculous and maybe he was but now it sort of resonates. I love Tennant’s Doctor, I always have but in these specials, he almost rubbed me the wrong way when they first aired but this time out, I can empathize with Malcolm’s loving him after having Matt Smith, Peter Capaldi and Jodie W. I like all three of them, though Matt as the Doctor is sometimes awful in awful scripts but all three had a fair share, an overpopulation of bad stories and scripts and things to say and pout about. Now, I love David more than ever (though not as much as Chris’ Ninth Doctor).

 

Three more to go.