Short review: I don t believe it. Doctor Who out Aliens Alien!
No, I m not usually given to huge bouts of hyperbole, why do you ask?
The Doctor: I don t know what s wrong with her (the TARDIS). She s sort of queasy. Indigestion, like she didn t want to land.
Rose: [straight-faced] Oh, if you think there s gonna be trouble, we could always go back inside, and go somewhere else
[Rose cracks up, and they laugh outrageously]
What is it about Doctor Who that allows the series to so effortlessly mine H.P. Lovecraft, H.
R. Giger or the other masters of gothic horror? It s flexibility of format, perhaps?
The fact that it is a fantasy series in sci-fi clothing? Whatever the case, some of the best Doctor Who stories have found their inspiration by turning to the masters of horror. Maybe it s the time travel element, says .
After all, the whole evil, evil from the dawn of time schtick becomes a lot more credible if you can actually visit the dawn of time.
: (voice of evil being): I was just at the dawn of time, and this evil wasn t there!
Me (voice of evil being): If every so-called evil from the dawn of time was actually at the dawn of time, it would be like Woodstock.
I was at Woodstock. I possessed a flower girl and spent the rest of the weekend staring at my hands.
(ahem).
Thank you Joss Whedon.
Anyway, whether it is the human race-memory fear of the intelligent reptilian Silurians (the previous masters of Earth), or the shameless and delightful cribbing of Sherlock Holmes, Jack the Ripper and Phantom of the Opera in The Talons of Weng Chiang, or the fan produced, At the Mountains of Madness inspired audio play Endurance, Doctor Who is more than happy to scare its audience, and it does it again with The Impossible Planet.
The Doctor and Rose barely manage to materialize on a scientific research station far in the future on a planet that is orbiting on the event horizon of a rapidly growing black hole.
They are immediately discovered by the humans that set up this station, and the mysterious, Lovecraft-inspired slave creatures called the Ood, but the crew trust the Doctor and Rose enough to give them a tour of the place, thankfully getting the paranoid accusations out of the way before things start going to hell in a handbasket.
Although nothing more than a rocky husk, this planet used to boast a civilization billions of years ago. The Doctor discovers ancient writing on the wall so old not even the TARDIS can translate it.
The humans are here investigating a massive and mysterious power source ten miles beneath the surface. The power source is so powerful, it s probably the reason this planet hasn t fallen into the black hole. Indeed, it s sustaining the very gravitational funnel the humans travelled along to access this black hole so close to its event horizon.
All of this is, of course, impossible; as is, from the humans points of view, the Doctor and Rose s sudden appearance. But that very impossibility is what has drawn the humans here, practically to the end of the Universe. It s not Milliways, but it s beautifully rendered.
As the revived Doctor Who s first visit to a truly alien environment, The Impossible Planet succeeds in providing viewers with some impressive visuals.
The Doctor: So when it comes right down to it. Why did you come here?
Why did you that? Why? I ll tell you why.
Because it was there. Brilliant! Excuse me, er Zac wasn t it?
Zachary Cross Flane: That s me.
The Doctor: Just stand there cos I m going to hug you. Is that alright?
Zachary Cross Flane: Suppose so.
The Doctor: Here we go. C mon then.
[the Doctor hugs Zac] Human beings. You are amazing. Hah!
Thank you.
Zachary Cross Flane: Not at all.
The Doctor: But apart from that you re completely mad.
You should pack your bags, get back in that ship and fly for your lives.
The Impossible Planet is scary. Alien scary.
Doctor Who is very much in its element here: base under siege, power outages, dark shadows, a limited number of characters isolated in the wilderness, whose numbers will soon be coming up. It manages to sustain that fear by balancing it off with wonderful moments of comedy. The scene transcribed above wittily acknowledges the problem in a nicely glib manner.
The ancient legends of the area call the impossible planet the bitter pill . According to the story, the black hole was a mighty demon tricked into devouring the planet, only to spit it out because it was poison. Legend or not, there is an ancient and powerful intelligence at work here, and it appears to have horns.
The Doctor senses this, the humans seem to as well, but still they stay. As huge as the risks are, the reward is just too big to pass up.
Mr.
Jefferson: For how shall man die better / than facing fearful odds / for the ashes of his father / and the temples of his gods?
I love how The Impossible Planet plays with the show s conventions. Usually, when the Doctor and his companion arrive at a base under siege, they re marked as saboteurs or worse, and locked away.
That doesn t happen here. Even though the Doctor and Rose s appearance is impossible, the humans on board the station are delighted to have their company. Perhaps this is what comes from sitting on top of the devil; it s easy to tell who your friends really are.
And this alteration of the convention has the nice effect of making all of the guest characters sympathetic from the get-go. Not only that, but rather than waste time locking the Doctor away and having him play the escape game, writer Matt Jones takes the opportunity to have us get to know the crew better. This is key, because when bad things start to happen, and they do, they start happening not to red shirts or people too stupid to realize they re in a horror movie; they happen to people we know.
Their deaths have significantly more impact.
There is no secret formula to the frights, here. No gore, no evisceration, no night of the living dead.
Just creepy moments inserted when the Ood, the computer and Rose s cellphone pick up transmissions and say things they are clearly not supposed to say ( He is awake ). Director James Strong takes the time to establish the characters, make you care about them, and then he brings the Bad Things (tm) to bear. It s very cerebral, very slight of hand.
You have a man with red eyes and ancient writing tattooed to his skin, cracking glass on the outer hull of the base, creatures with eyes that glow red, deep melodious voices of evil. And yet the director brings out set pieces which stick in the back of your mind and give you nightmares.
The casting is marvellously done, with special credit given to the voice of the beast in this case Gabriel Woolf, who is better known to Doctor Who fans as Sutekh the Destroyer (from The Pyramids of Mars), another evil from the dawn of time a casting move that had more than few fans go hmm .
How would you like this man answering your phones?
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