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| Episode: | 718 | | | Serial: | 174 | | | Writer: | Matt Jones | | | Director: | James Strong | | | Air Date: | 03-Jun-2006 |
This week on Sci-Fi Adventures, I'm writing about another Doctor Who two-parter, starting with The Impossible Planet! They didn't give us much of a break after the Cybermen two-parter, all we got was The Idiot's Lantern and then they went right back into another epic story. I guess they wanted to get this out just before the 6th of the 6th, 2006. For... reasons.
The season's basically structured the same last year though, and the series is going to continue giving us three two-parters a year (more or less) until a couple of seasons into Steven Moffat era. After that point they threw the idea of a regular format out the window, with some seasons having no two-parters, some being all two-parters, and one being a six parter! Honestly, it's very true to the original series, which was also all over the place.
Anyway, this is the first episode to be written by Matt Jones and the first to be directed by James Strong. So next time I write about one of their episodes I can mention that they did this. Though Matt Jones had written a Doctor Who novel, Bad Therapy, plus some articles for Doctor Who Magazine, so he wasn't completely new to the universe.
There will be SPOILERS below for the episode, but it's actually June 2006 for me right now so I can't give away anything that happens next. Just ignore all that stuff I just mentioned about future two-parters.
I don't remember the Doctor laughing much a couple of episodes ago when he was freaking out about being a parallel universe. He was very keen to go somewhere else that time.
It's also handy to have a set already built if you're making a TV series, and this particular corridor ended up as the set of Totally Doctor Who... whatever that is. I know about Doctor Who Confidential and Doctor Who Unleashed, but this one's not ringing a bell.
Though the Doctor can't read the writing and that's a concern. He doesn't have to rely on the TARDIS's translation abilities as he knows a ridiculous number of languages, but he doesn't know this one. Worse, the TARDIS doesn't know it either, which either means that it's older than anything the Time Lords ever encountered, or it's just some gibberish someone scribbled on a wall.
The Doctor at least knows that this is a Sanctuary base made for deep space exploration, and this particular one has drilling going on beneath it. So the series is making a rare visit to an actual alien planet! In fact it's the first time that Doctor Who has spent the entire episode on an alien world since The Greatest Show in the Galaxy in 1988.
They just keep saying it over and over as they move to surround them, which is very strange behaviour. I don't blame Rose for picking up a chair. I'm not sure what the Doctor intends to do with that screwdriver though.
And that's the cliffhanger for the teaser.
OPENING TITLES
Anyway, the base's security team shows up soon after, and they're very surprised to find real live visitors here as that should be impossible. Kind of raises the question of why they're so well prepared for an impossible situation.
There's a big earthquake on the way though so there's no time to chat.
I'm not quite as convinced by the set though. I like the design with the console in the middle, and I think going with bright 'industrial bulldozer yellow' was a smart choice for what's basically a space oil rig. But they've really gone overboard with the wear and grime for a base that's presumably not even that old. And something about the cinematography is throwing me off.
Top left is the classic Doctor Who serial Warriors' Gate from 1981. It's one of the best shot serials of its era but the characters are lit very bright compared to the backgrounds and it makes it look like it was recovered on video in the BBC TV centre.
Top right is Aliens from 1986, looking fantastic. The characters still very visible, but they feel like part of the scene. But the trick isn't just to light the scene flat and get rid of anything colourful, as there are two other future space horror 10th Doctor stories coming up which have lots of colour and look great.
I dunno, lighting and photography is hard.
Though Mr Jefferson rushes out with a fire extinguisher to put out the flames, so the story is still currently more realistic than Discovery. And Starfleet Academy as well.
I like this map by the way. It's cool to see how the rooms and corridors connect up. I suppose that one on the top right must be Hab 3, where the heroes were ambushed.
The crew introduces themselves to their visitors, giving the audience a fighting chance to remember their names. Though Mr Jefferson's two sidekicks aren't mentioned at all! They all seem pretty nice and none of them have gone mad yet, even though that's apparently a risk when you stare at a black hole.
The Doctor finds that fact that the planet is apparently in a geostationary orbit around a black hole to be kind of impossible, as their gravity is too strong for even light to escape. The thing is though, gravity diminishes as you get further away, so you can totally orbit a black hole, you just have to keep your distance.
I'm going to say the science works here, because the Doctor's looking out of the window, so he can estimate how far they are away and do the maths in his head. I'm not sure about that 'geostationary' part though. I mean, why would you want to maintain position above a specific part of a black hole? Do black holes even rotate?
The black hole is designated K37 Gem 5, though Ida calls the Doctor stupid when he asks what the planet's called. "It hasn't got a name," she replies. "How could it have a name?"
4 minutes and 30 seconds later, Ida explains that the planet is called Krop Tor, in the scriptures of the Falltino at least. We're getting a bit of exposition here, but that's fine as it seems like a good time for it. And it's delivered pretty naturally.
This is an illustration of the gravity field that the planet is projecting, which allowed them to safely approach and land despite the incredible inescapable gravity of the nearby black hole. I appreciate they went to the trouble of putting this into the episode as I needed something to help me visualise that.
It wasn't a completely smooth ride getting down though, as they lost the captain along the way. So Zachary Cross Flane wasn't supposed to be in charge, he was just next in line to take over. Now I'm wondering what his job was supposed to be. Toby's an archaeologist, Ida's a science officer, Mr Jefferson is security, Scooti's there to do maintenance, Danny is in charge of ethics apparently. Actually they mention that Scooti is a trainee, so maybe Zack was the original engineer.
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| Tardisode 8 |
It's a very short clip, just a minute long, and it shows Walker being given the job to take a crew to the planet and claim the power source generating the gravity field. How they're supposed get back out after the power is shut down is not discussed.
It's at this point that the episode tells us about the Ood. They're a 'basic slave race' and 'everyone's got one', so that's a bit of a red flag about the society these guys are from. Turns out that the 'ethics committee' guy is actually there to manage the slaves.
Danny claims that the Ood offer themselves and if they don't get orders they just do nothing and die. The Ood even back him up on this, saying they "have nothing else in life". Rose isn't quite ready to fight for their freedom, more information is definitely required here, but she does tell them that she used to think like that as well, showing empathy and setting up the possibility that they could be more. The episode's definitely not just telling the audience 'they're slaves and it's fine, just roll with it'.
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| 1-05 - World War Three |
The uneasiness surrounding the Ood situation works in the episode's favour I reckon, as it gives them a motivation to be the villain, while also making the slave-owning humans seem potentially pretty villainous as well. It's all a mystery right now.
By the way, if this diagram is to scale, then this rock is only 34 miles across, which is absolutely tiny for a planet. The smallest dwarf planet in our solar system is Ceres, which is 584 miles in diameter; 17 times wider. The moon is 2159 miles in diameter, so that's 64 times wider. Even the Death Star would be 3 times wider.
And the last bit of exposition is that they found the weird untranslatable text on fragments unearthed by their drilling. Toby just decided to write it on the wall under "WELCOME TO HELL" because, I dunno, it helps him think.
The Doctor is impressed by their spirit and gives Zack a hug. Though it's actually a cunning ploy by the episode to lighten the mood before it drops a bombshell: the TARDIS was in that part of the base that was lost in the quake.
He tries to convince Zack to use his drill to make another tunnel so he can reach his ship, which he believes fell 'into the heart of the planet', but they've only got the resources to drill one hole. The Doctor's not entirely out of luck, as even with the supply cupboards trashed the cold equations still provide enough food and air to keep him and Rose alive until they're ready to leave. Ida even has a job for him: the laundry. Oh, so that's what Zack's job on the team must have been.
Things have suddenly got very real for the Doctor and Rose. He gives her a hug too, but this is more of a 'we're trapped together on a scary planet in the distant future' kind of hug this time.
I really like this shot of the drill control area, even if it's a bit confusing to look at. I can't quite tell if the lit up area on the right connects to the rest of the walkway. Also I don't get why the drill is up at the top of the screen if they're supposed to be drilling right now. I suppose Zack said they didn't have resources to dig a second hold, he didn't mention anything about how many drills they had.
Toby's not having much fun though. He's still trying to translate the text but he's interrupted by a creepy mysterious voice. Personally I'm more distracted by how the doors make the same noise as the ones in the video game Doom.
It's interesting as the episode's not letting the Ood situation go or making Rose look dumb for not accepting their foreign culture, but it's also not painting the crew as bad people, or even ignorant to be treating them the way they do. This is actually a pretty decent set of people to be in a crisis with.
Zack's currently alone in the command centre and that's not unusual for this two-parter. The poor actor, Shaun Parkes, was left filming in here on his own for days while David Tennant and Billie Piper disappeared off to film their scenes for Love & Monsters. The two stories were kind of simultaneously the last to be recorded for the season.
Then there's the best scene in the episode, or at least it is to me.
His fear of the creature creeping up on him finally overpowers his fear of turning around, but then he discovers that there's no one there! So that's a relief. Though the writing has disappeared from the thing he was examining, which has only made his job harder. The weird thing is that it's jumped across to his hands.
The sinister voice was played by one of the few returning actors from the classic series, Gabriel Woolf, who played a character called Sutekh in the 1975 serial Pyramids of Mars. In fact if you consider the Ncuti Gatwa era to be the start of a new series then he's part of an even smaller group of actors who has worked on all three incarnations of the show.
It's funny now that I think about it, how a guy called Gabriel keeps playing evil godlike entities.
Rose wonders if this is one of those black holes that leads to another universe, but it is not. Though the Doctor did actually travel through a black hole once in the story The Three Doctors.
Incidentally this is the same set as the command centre, they just redressed it a little and changed the numbers on the doors. Which means the actress was using the exact same shutter control lever both times. I like how they built the place a little bit above the studio floor so they could put lights under the grating.
It's not something he's really had to worry about before, at least not in the last few centuries. I don't even know if the Third Doctor had a house when he worked for UNIT or if he just slept in the TARDIS. I remember he kept it parked in his lab, as he spent most of his time trying to get the thing working again. To be fair it wasn't his fault he couldn't figure it out, as the Time Lords messed with his head as a punishment. Though we learn here that even with the full knowledge of time travel back in his head he couldn't make another TARDIS, as they're grown instead of built.
I bet he could make something though, he's always customising Rose's phones so they can transmit across time. Though they're so far away from home right now that Rose's new phone can't get a signal. Until it does, and a voice tells her "He is awake". She's not happy about that, and launches the phone across the room. Like I said, he's always having to customise her new phones. She gave her previous one to Mickey just a couple of episodes ago.
Though they have more to worry about when Rose mentions they said "He is awake," and they reply "And you will worship him".
The Doctor jumps straight into action, repeating the line to see if they respond again and then asking who they should be worshipping. No answer to that question.
I like this shot, as you've got the CGI base in the background, Toby standing a set, and then the window reflecting Scooti standing in another set. It's pretty well done scene.
Unfortunately Toby now has telekinetic window-breaking powers to go along with his 'able to stand outside in a vacuum' power, and he kills her the same way the Daleks killed Lynda last season.
I feel like they could've thrown in a line here like 'she's outside of the base's artificial gravity and the planet doesn't have the mass to keep her here' to explain how they could be standing on the ground watching someone float away. It's a bit weird.
It's an interesting shot though. They actually went to the trouble of going to Pinewood Studios and filming the actress in an underwater tank against a black background, so she actually was weightless.
Mr Jefferson starts quoting the poem 'Horatius', by Thomas Babington Macaulay, which I guess just sprang to his mind. "For how should man die better than facing fearful odds? For the ashes of his father and the temples of his Gods." It sounds vaguely suitable I suppose.
Plus this soundtrack is very suitable, though not necessarily what you'd expect. Instead of going bold or sinister or sad, Murray Gold produced something beautiful. And then they hear the drilling stop.
They're sending two people down to Point 0, Ida... and the Doctor. It would've been Zack, but with the captain dead he accepts that he needs to stay behind to give the orders. The fact that the Doctor already had a suit on when he volunteered probably made the decision easier.
And this is actually a pretty good looking suit, worth the money they spent on it. It looks suitable for the purpose without being overly sci-fi, which makes sense as it's heavily inspired by the "pumpkin suit" worn by Space Shuttle crews. Though the detailing on the helmet is bit too busy perhaps (and it was apparently impossible to hear people when they were wearing them).
They're travelling 10 miles, and that's not an approximate figure. The screen says 16093 metres, 10.000 miles. Whoever built the gravity device keeping this planet in place liked to be precise. It's a bit interesting that they're using a standard human unit of measurement. I also noticed that Sanctuary Base 6 uses the British spelling of 'metres', though that's no surprise as they all have British accents.
The two of them emerge from the capsule, throw a gravity ball up for light, and then see this awesome structure.
If I felt like being a smart ass I'd say that Doctor Who's come a long way from filming alien planets in a quarry, to set up the ironic reveal that this was actually the first scene the new show filmed in a quarry. The series had gone almost two seasons without them, because they wanted to avoid that cliché, and they were thinking about shooting this in a studio. In the end though the quarry turned out make the most sense, so they went for it and I think they made the right choice! It works so much better to get some shots of the actors from far away instead of using the ropy looking CGI figures seen in Babylon 5 and Enterprise.
There were a few drawbacks though. For one thing it was absolutely bloody freezing, though that always seems to be true of location filming on this series. Unless they're off filming in another country... or filming the Christmas special with everyone in big warm coats in the middle of June.
Ida mentions 'no turning back', and the Doctor replies that's almost as bad as saying "this is going to be the best Christmas Walford's ever had." I have to admit, I didn't get the reference until I looked it up. I'm just not much of an EastEnders fan.
It did end up snowing, but you can barely see it so they decided to cut all mentions of weather and focus on the giant ominous pit with more mysterious letters on it.
Fortunately Toby says he knows what the text says.
"These are the words of the Beast. And he has woken. He is the heart that beats in the darkness. He is the blood that will never cease. And now he will rise."He tells Mr Jefferson that his wife never forgave him, though that's all we learn about that story. We're just left to imagine what it could mean, though it's presumably the most devastating event in Jefferson's past.
The guy keeps his cool fairly well considering, though he does mention that if Toby keeps being evil with all those letters on his face, then by the strictures of Condition Red he is authorised to shoot him with his very futuristic FN P90. Stargate SG-1 loved these guns and I do too, but they're not from centuries in the future.
But Toby has strength in numbers, as the letters fly off to possess the Ood too. Which is a bit weird and supernatural, not sure I liked that.
That was a bit unnecessarily goofy I reckon. I'm not sure I liked that either.
I mean, would a translator orb even have the battery power to kill someone?
Everything's going on now. The heroes are being menaced by Ood, the pit is opening, and the planet has suddenly started to fall from orbit into the black hole. To be continued! Oh, surprise, it's a two-parter.
It's funny though, because the cliffhanger is basically the same as the one in the teaser, with the heroes being cornered by Ood. Except this time it's not a fakeout and they actually are in danger.
It could've been worse for her though, as in one early version of the story she got possessed herself and it would've lead into a dream sequence subplot in the next episode.
CONCLUSION
I've been thinking about what my favourite part of The Impossible Planet is, and I reckon it's the sets. Actually it's the scene where the voice creeps up on Toby, but those sets are pretty great too.
They only really built one room and one corridor, but they did a great job of making it seem like they'd made a whole base just for this one story. It feels big and expensive. Plus I like the yellow paintwork, that was a good choice to make it a little visually distinct. Covering it in decades of dirt and wear was a bit weird though, seeing as they couldn't be there that long. Plus it's got that series 2 cinematography that makes it look a little fake. Not the pit though, that place looked fantastic. Sometimes shooting a quarry is the correct choice, especially when the VFX team is up to the task of filling in the rest of the alien architecture.
Maybe I'm a little biased because this is the first proper outer space adventure in the show and space stories are my thing, but this has a great atmosphere to it I reckon. Okay I'm less keen on the supernatural intruding on my Doctor Who, but this works so well I can't bring myself to be too bothered. It's got a bit of a Lovecraft meets Aliens thing going on. It reminds me of the times I played video games, listening to audio logs as I walked around an empty base wondering how everyone died. Except here the Doctor is going to disrupt the genre, like he does, and make sure there's at least one sane survivor in part 2.
The tone shifts between comedy and horror pretty appropriately. The Doctor all smiles and hugs to make it more shocking when he realises that his TARDIS fell off a cliff a while back. He's stuck, like in The Girl in the Fireplace, except this time no one revealed the hidden exit to get him back to his normal life, so he had to actually process it. In fact one of the more interesting scenes in the episode is the Doctor and Rose sitting down and chatting about carpets and mortgages, and the possibility of getting one together. It's exciting dramatic spooky sci-fi horror with some proper Doctor and Rose scenes for the shippers.
Though there are lots of others characters here too, as I think this is the first time the two of them have worked with an entire team. They're a surprisingly likeable crew as well, without any forced antagonism, and they spend most of the episode doing their normal jobs competently enough instead being led by the Doctor through a crisis.
It's funny how the episode starts and ends with the same cliffhanger, with the Ood swarming in looking like they're about to attack. It's for the same reason both times as well: something bad is screwing with their heads and translator spheres. The Ood are interesting though, as they're ethically a bit ambiguous and in another story them breaking free of servitude and killing the people who treated them like livestock could've been a cathartic ending. Their whole situation is extremely weird and a bit concerning, and I'm glad Rose keeps asking questions about that. She's never entirely okay with how they're treated, so I'm not okay either. I like the makeup though, with the blinking animatronic eyes and the tentacle mouth, they're very distinctive.
It's just a shame the production team decided to have them kill people by throwing their translator ball at them, because it's hard to take that seriously.
RATING
It's be hard to say that The Impossible Planet is my favourite episode of a season which has The Girl in the Fireplace in it, but I think an 8 is a pretty fair score. The episode's fine, better than fine, though my attention was wandering a couple of times on this rewatch. Then again, when the worst thing I can say about an episode is that I didn't like how the Doctor Who monsters kill people in a goofy Doctor Who way, it's probably time to bring out the high numbers.
Oh alright, I'll give it:
9/10
NEXT EPISODE
If you want to share your opinion about part one, then your time is now. There's a message box right there, just waiting for you to come up with something to type. Don't make it wait too long though, it gets bored.
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