Planet of the Dead & Waters of Mars

Planet of the Dead

So they had an Easter Special in 2010. Well, I guess they had to. This story is a mixture of good and bad again. I think it look pretty fantastic, at least the stuff shot in the UAE in the desert certainly does, and for the most part being HD makes it all worthwhile. However, the CGI version of the red double decker bus looks pretty poor.

Lee Evans

RTD seems to have started with the idea of a London bus lost in the desert on a far-off planet. Ok. but then he needed more and besides vision, I’m not really sure what this story offers. Ok, it offers Michelle Ryan as Lady Christina de Souza, who is friggin awesome and I so wish had stayed as a companion. She is a cat burglar who starts the episode off by floating down on a wire and stealing a valuable gold cup from a museum. Doesn’t get much cooler than that?

But the plot is up to pretty much

nothing at all sadly. A massive swarm of metal creatures go from planet to planet through wormholes eating planets dry and leaving them deserts. Ok. But they really stretched it out to a full hour I felt, it could have been more effectively told in 45 minutes. I guess they had a lot of footage from the UAE and they didn’t want to waste it. We have a bunch of characters trapped on the bus which are quite under-utilised too, some of them were really interesting, especially the elderly couple. They basically just wait on the bus whilst the Doctor and Christina try to solve everything.

Then we have Lee Evans giving a wonderful performance as Malcolm which added a lot to the story, but for 60 minutes it did seem a little lacking to be fair.

6.5/10

The Waters of Mars

After watching this story through to the end, I have to say that it contains probably the most disturbing image of any Doctor Who story I have seen. Captain Adelaide Brooke (Lindsay Duncan) takes her own life, she shoots herself. Although we don’t see the moment she shoots herself, we do see her pull out the gun, and we do see a flash as the gun is fired. I’m going to say that considering the intended audience is families, and particularly children, I don’t believe this was appropriate for the show and I am left feeling very uneasy about it.

The episode itself is somewhat disturbing and extremely dark in nature. The idea of water that kills, or transforms, the ideas behind the tale I think are very strong and we have an almost ‘Gerry Davis-esque’ crew on the Mars base who are from all countries of the world with lots of accents. Ok, it’s mostly limited to Europe to be fair.

It’s also the old ‘tried and true’ base under siege storyline, and it’s tried and true because it works. There’s

The Doctor and Adelaide Brooke

wonderful elements emphasising the inevitability of what is going to happen, juxtaposed against the Doctor’s determination that sod it all, he’s basically God and if he wants to change established history then he will! Despite the dangers, as Adelaide’s daughter is inspired by her to become a pioneer of space travel herself.

So this is where it all gets a bit screwy, and the Doctor comes across as so angry. I’m not sure I bought it, and that’s not because of the performances but because of who the Doctor is and has been. He certainly was more chipper in the previous two specials. And we are left wondering how the two characters who survive, Mia and Yuri, could possibly integrate back into life on Earth, let alone explain how they got back home from Mars.

It is great to see Australia actor Peter O’Brien in the cast, a veteran of many Australian shows. I think the story was very solid, the effects and the direction (directed by Graeme Harper) were outstanding. A bit of a hard episode to judge. It’s a bit preachy in places and I wasn’t convinced with the way RTD wrote the Doctor in places.

7/10

Revelation of the Daleks

This is simply a superlative mix of black humour, horror, science fiction and Doctor Who. I cannot praise this story enough. It is a very different story from any other story thus far in Doctor Who’s history. It’s macabre and dark throughout, has a wonderfully measured performance by Terry Molloy as Davros, is expertly shot and directed, has a chilling atmosphere and a lot of very well written and played double acts.

It’s just about my favourite story of all, and is truly a polar-opposite to ‘Timelash’. The characters are rich and well considered, it fills out the two episodes very well, there are NO TARDIS SCENES. I can’t even think of a story recently with no TARDIS scenes, perhaps ‘The Power of Kroll’ is the most recent story some 5 years earlier. The locations chosen could not have been more perfect, and the snow – which was a surprise to the production team, actually really adds to the atmosphere of the tale. What can I say but ‘bravo’ to Colin Baker, Nicola Bryant (her best story easily to this point) Eric Sawar, Terry Molly and most of all, Graeme Harper. Roger Limb also gets a big tick for his score.

Davros tries to get ahead.

We have some utterly wonderful characters. Elenor Bron as Kara heads an all-star cast which includes William Gaunt and Alexi Sayle bringing the ‘DJ’ character to life with changing accents, changing costumes and his ‘rock n’ roll’ beam which destroys Daleks. The best character though is Jobel, played by Clive Swift who simply is perfect in the role of this self-aggrandising womaniser who despite being old and fat and wearing a dreadful toupee loves himself and is always checking his reflection in the mirror. His death scene is utterly wonderful and it fills the audience with a feeling of justice being served. He is pursued by Tasembeeker, played by Jenny Tomasin. I hear some people think she was dreadful in the

Speaking of heads - Stengos

part. I thought she was perfect. I thought that her portrayal of the character was true. Which is all you can ask for. Perhaps people are upset that she wasn’t six foot, blond and a model. She comes across as kind of simple. Eric Saward didn’t feel that she captured what he had planned, but, at the risk of being on the wrong side of the debate, I thought she did a fantastic job. It’s very difficult to play a character that is talked down, badly treated and degraded.

Colin Baker and Nicola Bryant, despite a somewhat less role for both, have their best story both individually and as a team. They seem to get

Wonderful eerie scene at the beginning of the story.

on that goodness, there are some touching moments with the mutant in the snow in the first episode. There’s a little bickering, but toned right down. I enjoy being challenged by the Doctor, and have developed a strong liking for Colin Baker over this season despite moments which have gone a little far.

The story is NOT a Dalek story, despite the presence of plenty of Daleks. It is a story about Davros, which is nice because Molloy really does give a fine performance here, much more coloured and multi-dimensional than the one in ‘Resurrection of the Daleks’. It’s great to see a story where it hasn’t
But it’s not 100% perfect. There’s a dodgy statue that falls on the Doctor at the end of the first episode. There is also… ummm… there must have been something else I wasn’t happy with. Something? Anything?

Clive Swift (black apron) as Jobel

been about the Daleks finding him to help them out of a sticky situation, but to see what he gets up to when left to his own devices. The crux of the plot is that he has been selling a protein to starving planets, giving him the ironic tale of the ‘Great Healer’, which is in fact made from the remains of people who came to the planet Necros (not so subtly named) to be cryogenically frozen until a cure for their disease was found. It’s a very confronting and macabre tale, not really one for the kids. As I am not a kid, but in fact several hundred years old, I don’t really give a fig!

Maybe not.

10/10