Planet of the Dead

Dear Gary—

Planet of the Dead is pretty dry (much like the desert the bus ends up in), but it is a standalone episode which is a plus in my book and it is pleasant enough.

The Doctor is again on his own in this adventure, and although he clearly is not ready to take on a permanent companion (thankfully turning down Lady Christina de Souza), he does not shun the company of others. In fact he goes out of his way to interact; when he first gets on the bus there are plenty of empty seats to choose from but he deliberately sits next to Lady Christina and starts a conversation.  This is very reminiscent of Midnight, a sort of Midnight Lite if you will. The Doctor even refers back to that earlier episode (“Oh, humans on buses, always blaming me.”)

The passengers on the Mighty 200 are not as well drawn, however. Not even the mysterious Carmen with undefined psychic abilities. Her only function is to echo the Ood with her parting, “Your song is ending sir.” None of them provide any practical value to the adventure at hand with the exception of Christina. And she is my least favorite of the lot.

The Lady Christina de Souza is a bored rich girl who rips off museums for kicks. There’s not much redeeming about her. She is ready with a shovel and a winch when you need one, granted; but she has no warmth or depth or feeling. She is all sleek and sophisticated surface personality.

Malcolm on the other side of the wormhole provides some much needed humanity as well as comic relief. He is a bit too gushing at times, but overall a welcome presence. I especially love the “Not now, I’m busy” phone bit. Captain Erisa Magambo is a nice counter balance to Malcolm, although I’m not sure what to make of their standoff. It doesn’t quite work for me.

And as long as I’ve mentioned Captain Magambo, what’s up with the Doctor’s objection to salutes? Someday I’ll have to go back and review each instance of saluting in the new era. He seems inconsistent in his ‘no salute’ policy, if not hypocritical. A salute between friends seems nothing to him (I’m not even going to get into the bowing-down-before-him attitude his companions often take); I think it has more to do with his prejudice against authority figures. (Same with guns by the way.)

The story itself is standard fare. The bus the Doctor has boarded is whisked through a wormhole onto another planet and he has to figure out how to get them all back safe and sound without letting anything else through. Along the way he meets some disposable fly aliens who supply some much needed information before their demise.

There isn’t much more to it. The metal stingrays are mildly interesting like everything else in the episode, but very little time or effort is put into them. On the whole it is an insubstantial story. But a diverting enough way to spend an hour. It has some good moments, like the Doctor calming his fellow travelers by grounding them in their day to day lives. And it’s a nice touch when he recommends Nathan and Barclay to Magambo even though he really doesn’t know very much about either; but I can’t help wishing that Detective Inspector McMillan would catch up with Lady de Souza.

Overall, Gary, Planet of the Dead is very much the Doctor just biding his time; a field trip while he waits for his song to end.

“He will knock four times . . .”

The Next Doctor

Dear Gary—

Doctor Who has a long way to go to get back into my good graces after Journey’s End. The Next Doctor is a good start.

This is an episode that can stand on its own. It doesn’t have to be seen in any particular order or in conjunction with any other story or within the context of a season long arc. It is lighthearted in tone with just the right amount of pathos. And it doesn’t try to replace Donna. If anything, the Doctor himself becomes a companion of sorts.

Plus it takes place at Christmas and it happens to be the Christmas season as I view this, so I am full of that spirit that is so willing to forgive.

David Morrissey also helps. He plays the part of the Next Doctor with the perfect flamboyant flourish and yet there is a hint of sorrow that manages to peak through. When the Jackson Lake damn breaks, the flood of pain that washes over him is heartbreakingly real. Rosita is a great caricature of a companion, too.  “Always telling me off,” the Next Doctor says of her, to which the Doctor replies, “Well, they do, don’t they?” Strong of will and quick with a punch, Rosita tends to look after the Next Doctor more than the other way around.

The Doctor, the Next Doctor/Jackson Lake, and Rosita make a wonderful trio and the touches of slapstick are welcome. I love the glaring clues that the Next Doctor is not in fact The Doctor, from his sonic screwdriver (“It makes a noise; that’s sonic, isn’t it?”) to his TARDIS (“It stands for Tethered Aerial Release Developed in Style. Do you see?”). Even the Cybershades, which under normal circumstances are laughable, seem to reflect the charming nature of this playacting at the Doctor motif.

The sets, the costumes, the wide-eyed and grimy orphans in peril—everything lends a Dickensian air to this Christmastime tale.

The jarring note comes courtesy of the Cybermen.

Despite the fact that the Cybermen are scarier on a practical level in their New Who reboot, they always tend to come up short for me and I’m not exactly sure why. Perhaps someday I will take the time to analyze it more. For now I’ll remark on the comic book element that somehow creeps in each time I see them in the modern era. In this story we have the Cybershades and the Cyberleader with his plastic brain showing. Then there is the unwieldy Cyberking. I keep hoping that the Next Doctor will go all The Empire Strikes Back on it and trip it up with his lasso.

On a more philosophical level, I wonder if their origin story from their first appearance in New Who, Rise of the Cybermen, blunts their menace for me. These new, human Cybermen from a parallel universe are the creation of one man in his mad attempt to live life eternal; not a race that willingly underwent the conversion for their own survival. New Who Cybermen are motivated by the programmed instructions of John Lumic to convert all of Mankind; Classic Cybermen are motivated by the survival of the Mondasian race. Every meeting of the Doctor with the Cybermen in this new era has been with these new fangled Cybermen. I wonder what would happen if these New Who human Cybermen from a parallel universe ever met up with a group of Classic Cybermen hailing from Mondas.

Putting that aside, however . . .

Cybermen crashing through the cobbled streets of 1851 London just doesn’t rhyme (as my father would say). For the most part they are kept under wraps, but there is only so much sewer and cellar skulking they can do. Sooner or later they have to come up to do their dirty work and I’m not sure how these giant metal men stealth their way through the city without notice. And of course when the Cyberking rises there is no hiding it. I guess this is one chapter of history that was never recorded.

The collaboration of Miss Hartigan does help a little bit in accepting the secretive operations of these clinking, clanking, clattering collections of caliginous junk. (Oh what a wonderful Wiz he is.) In fact Miss Hartigan, clad in her red dress complete with parasol, is an excellent intermediary between the fictions of Dickens and Cyber Who. Taking the arm of one of her knights in shining armor, she is picture perfect.

Like the Next Doctor, Miss Hartigan has hints of tragedy lurking beneath the surface. However in her case we never learn her background and we can only speculate when she states, “Yet another man come to assert himself against me in the night.”  She is a remarkable woman, or so we are told. The Doctor tells her, “You might have the most remarkable mind this world has ever seen.” I don’t know, though. This is narrative convenience that weakens her as well as the Cybermen.

The justification for the Doctor’s statement is the fact that she can resist the Cyber conversion and dominate the Cyber brain. Now if she is this most unique of individuals, how is it that she never did anything with her life up to this point? It rather makes her pathetic more than anything. And what does this make of the Cyber threat? Now that I think of it, Miss Hartigan is not the only instance of a personality surviving the Cyber conversion process. First to mind is Yvonne Hartman from Doomsday. I think the Cybermen seriously need to refine their procedures.

Having said all of that, the Doctor’s use of the Next Doctor’s TARDIS to confront Miss Cyberking Hartigan is fantastic, and I can forgive the all too handy zapper by virtue of this from Jackson Lake: “Well, I’d say he used that Dimension Vault to transfer the wreckage of the Cyberking into the Time Vortex, there to be harmlessly disintegrated. Oh, I’ve picked up a lot.”

The best, though, is saved for last. “But this is nonsense.” Jackson’s reaction to the TARDIS is one of absolute wonder and amazement, that childlike glee of a Christmas morning. “Complete and utter, wonderful nonsense. How very, very silly.” It is that pure innocence of emotion that inevitably gets corrupted with the passage of time, and I’m glad that Jackson races from the TARDIS before the dark world of the Doctor has a chance to infect him.

Overall I give a Peace on Earth pass to this wonderful little Christmas package of an episode. I think it is exactly what the Doctor needed as well. All of the companions lined up in Journey’s End have gone their own way. The Doctor is alone. Being able to jump into an adventure as a sidekick and to observe the Doctor/companion relationship through this somewhat warped mirror has given him a new perspective.

“They leave,” he tells Jackson of “all those bright and shining companions.”

“Because they should,” he continues. “Or they find someone else. And some of them, some of them forget me. I suppose in the end, they break my heart.”

He hasn’t fully come to terms yet, but it is the start of a lonely journey he must make.

However there is room for hope in this journey as the Doctor heads off to spend Christmas dinner with Jackson and Rosita.

And so I send this out, Gary. “Merry Christmas indeed.”