The Impossible Planet / The Satan Pit

Chapter the 280th, which features David Tennant and a demon (not as a demon).

Plot: 

The Doctor and Rose arrive on a Sanctuary base, a futuristic mining operation on Krop Tor, a planet that is somehow in orbit around a black hole. There is a powerful gravitational force in the centre of the planet that the crew are hoping to exploit. The team is eight people, plus legions of Ood, who act as servants. An earthquake causes the section where the TARDIS landed to collapse, and the Doctor and Rose are separated from the ship. An evil force takes over archaeologist Toby Zed, and then all the Ood. Meanwhile the Doctor and science officer Ida Scott travel down into the shaft that has been mined in the planet, and find evidence of an ancient civilisation. The possessed Ood go on the attack, killing many of the base crew. Rose and two other crew members make it to an escape shuttle, along with Toby Zed who appears to be back to normal but is secretly still possessed, and take off. The force that inhabits Toby was previously in the giant beast that the Doctor finds chained at the bottom of the pit. This beast looks like the very Devil and may be the original exemplar upon whom all the other similar entities in the universe were based (or it may not, the script has it both ways, really). The ancient civilisation placed it in the ultimate trap. If it is freed, the gravity force will switch off, and the planet and the Beast will be sucked into the black hole. By projecting itself into Toby, the Beast presents the Doctor with a dilemma. If he switches off the gravity force, the shuttle - including Rose - will disappear into the black hole. If he does not, the Beast will reach Earth. He switches it off, having faith in Rose to work something out. Rose realises Toby is still under the 'fluence and ejects him from the shuttle. The Doctor finds the TARDIS underground, dematerialises and tows the shuttle to safety. He picks up Rose and drops off Ida. He couldn't save the Ood, who all went down with the planet.

Context:

Watched from the BBC iplayer via an Amazon Fire Stick on the big living room TV. I didn't want to eject the current Blu-ray disc and watch the DVD as I was midway through one of the extras on the Snakedance disc of the Season 20 Blu-ray boxset at the time. I was accompanied by all three children (boys of 17 and 14, girl of 11) who are still humouring their Dad by watching old episodes with him on weekends so he can capture their reactions for the blog. Reactions might have been a bit tricky, though, as every one of them started the episode watching another smaller screen (iphones for the eldest and youngest, a Switch for the middle child). I admonished them for this, but that didn't have any effect; interestingly, though, once the story got underway, they all dispensed with their other devices and concentrated on the larger screen in the corner. The Impossible Planet is obviously doing something right. Only the younger two joined me a couple of days later for the second part The Satan Pit, but that might have more to do with the eldest being busy with coursework and revision for A-levels at the moment, rather than any reflection on this story.

Milestone watch: This completes another season of Doctor Who for the blog, the first David Tennant series and the fourth new series run completed (after Matt Smith's series 6 and Jodie Whittaker's series 11 and 13). It is 15th done out of a current, at the time of writing, total of 39 ( the classic seasons 3, 7, 8, 12, 14, 15, 16, 17, 20, 23 and 25 also having been completed).

First Time Round:

The original airing of this story (on the 3rd and 10th June 2006) marks an interesting personal point in my appreciation of Doctor Who: it was the very last time that I in some stupid way fumbled the recording of a story onto a home VHS tape. Since my family got their first VHS recorder late in 1985, I had badly recorded many a classic story after that, either on first broadcast in the 1980s or as repeats during the 'wilderness years' when the programme wasn't being made, and up to the first two years of the returned programme. Late on in the 2006 run, I bought a PVR that would record TV to a hard drive (though I still to this day think of it as 'taping' TV - old habits die as hard as that hard drive). That was in time to record Fear Her. Love and Monsters was captured onto tape the week before without any faults. But I missed off the very end of The Impossible Planet, and The Satan Pit was bedevilled (pun intended) by interference - in the South East, there would be many times that analogue TV signals would degrade in certain types of weather. Anyway, it didn't matter so much that the recordings were blemished as I was watching them live anyway (accompanied by the Better Half), plus there were bountiful repeats on BBC3, and the DVDs would be out very soon afterwards. It still irks me, though, even to this day - this is what being a fan is like!

Reaction:

This is the origin story for the Doctor's orange spacesuit. He is given a Sanctuary base suit to wear when descending beneath the surface of Krop Tor with Ida, and is still wearing it when he reaches the TARDIS towards the end of the story. It seems like he keeps it as David Tennant's Doctor then wears the suit or something very similar in 42 and The Waters of Mars. Since Tennant handed over the role, first time round, it has become a rite of passage for everyone thereafter cast in the star role to get their own moment in the suit during their tenure: Matt Smith wears it in Hide, Peter Capaldi in Kill the Moon, and Jodie Whittaker in the most recently broadcast story (at time of writing), The Power of the Doctor. A nice recurring in-joke, perhaps; or, perhaps, there was a subconscious desire to keep remaking this two-part Ood story as they didn't quite get it right first time. This story is a prototype; it's the first - but would not be the last - time since its return that the series did a futuristic action story where a small group of humans in an isolated outpost are at risk from an alien menace, and are picked off one by one. Aspects had been tried in different stories leading up to the The Impossible Planet / The Satan Pit, but they'd not been all brought together in that precise formula. And it's definitely a formula for both Doctor Who and for the wider genre world (e.g. John Carpenter's The Thing). In this first try, though, the formula isn't quite mixed to perfection.

There were rumours at the time of its broadcast that the story had script problems necessitating extensive rewrites by author Matt Jones and / or Russell T Davies. I don't know how true they were, but the finished product does have some significant pacing issues. For example, the sequences early on where the Doctor and Rose are welcomed by the crew are much too quick and easy, no suspicion seems to have been aroused at all by their mysterious presence; but, the explanation of the planet being in orbit round a black hole is much more long-winded and overly spelled out by comparison. It also takes too long for the Doctor to grasp the 'trolley problem' he's faced with at the end - prevent the villain's escape but sacrifice Rose (and himself). The audience is well ahead of him and precious minutes of screen time are wasted as he catches up. Generally, the creepy moments and the action moments are fine, but all the bits in between drag on too long. Those moments of creepiness are one of the things the story is best remembered for and are mostly effective. I'm not sold on the voice of Gabriel Woolf warning against the act of turning round - it veers towards being humorous, though this type of horror does walk that fine line. But the other scenes with Will Thorp playing the possessed Toby Zed - his skin suddenly tattooed with ancient symbols and his eyes blood-red, his standing outside the base and yet still being able to breathe, his slowly beckoning toward another character - all make the hairs on the back of one's neck stand up.

The two squaddies that work for security chief Jefferson - each played by a supporting artist without any dialogue - don't get names. This is fine for the end credits, but Ida makes a point of introducing everyone in the crew to the Doctor and Rose, but she doesn't include them. This is a major problem that suggests that somewhere in the writing process a full grasp on the world of the story has been lost - there are eight humans alone on a base, and they are still recovering from the loss of their captain; there's no way any one of those eight would not be seen as important enough to be included in introductions. It's annoying as it would be very easy to fix. It also makes it fairly easy, if it wasn't already, to guess that neither squaddie will be making it to the end alive. There are moments that fail to convince with individual characters too; Ida is the scientist on the base, and has been waiting throughout a long and dangerous mission to find out the secrets in the pit, but then for some reason just stands back and let's the Doctor (someone she's known for about five minutes) venture into the unknown instead of her - why? The story also gives in to a periodic temptation for Doctor Who over the years to create a giant monster for the Doctor to confront (as the Doctor confronts the massive beast in the pit here). But from Kroll in the Power of Kroll to the Sun God in The Rings of Akhaten, the problem is the same: the Doctor is obviously just yelling at a green screen; the final face-off can never be tangible because protagonist and antagonist can never be realistically felt to be together in the shot. Problems are compounded in all these examples because none of the creatures can speak, so the Doctor at the climax is reduced to talking to himself.

As if all of these points weren't enough, there is a stifling atmosphere of smugness about the lead characters at this period of the show's life. This is epitomised in the opening gag where they both laugh at the very idea of getting back in the TARDIS in case there might be trouble ahead. Their laughter is very fake, and it's a little bit cringe. This makes me care a little less about the moments where the plot relies on their strong but unspoken love for one another. The guest cast perform better than the regulars here, sometimes despite the script. Claire Rushbrook playing Ida, Shaun Parkes as acting captain Zachary, and Danny Webb as Jefferson, are all doing sterling work throughout. Best of all, and probably most likely to be overlooked, is Silas Carson as the voice of the Ood, a role he's played ever since. Some brief musings on religion and the nature of evil are passingly interesting, I suppose. You can't beat the creation of a great, new recurring Doctor Who creature, though. The Ood are the best thing about these episodes, and it was obvious that they would appear again (and again) in future. Every detail of design and conception is perfect, including Carson's voice work. All the scenes with them, plus the action scenes and creepy moments mentioned earlier, manage to save the story, and make it more than the sum of its parts, despite all those many flaws.  

Connectivity:

Two David Tennant stories in a row that feature his Doctor visiting a base and interacting with characters of both a scientific and military bent.

Deeper Thoughts:

Tunes of past and future: a review of Doctor Who @60 A Musical Celebration, BBC Sounds. Watching a relatively early story after Doctor Who's return to TV like this Ood two-parter, the die-hard fans had not had time yet to take composer Murray Gold for granted. The music for The Impossible Planet condensed into a 3-minute suite of the same name on his first ever Doctor Who soundtrack CD is very powerful, with a mournful viola line giving way to more lush and stirring strings at the end. That release was a compilation of music from the first two series of the relaunched show, and anyone buying it when it first came out - like me, for instance - would probably not have expected Gold to still be composing music for the eight series after those two, as well as many specials in between. Music he made towards the end of that first tenure is amongst his best stuff too. This was demonstrated at the anniversary concert in Hoddinut Hall in Cardiff on 28th September 2023, when the track chosen to be the final number (bar the obligatory encore of the Doctor Who theme music) was The Shepherd's Boy, the magnificent climactic cue from the late Peter Capaldi episode Heaven Sent. This concert - featuring the BBC National Orchestra of Wales and the BBC Singers conducted by Alastair King - was billed as a celebration of 60 years of Doctor Who, but mostly covered Gold's work, which has been used for many a concert and prom before, so was well prepared for another live outing. Many favourites of those events were played again here (I am the Doctor, All the Strange Strange Creatures, This is Gallifrey, Doomsday, The Long Song, Vale Decum, and more).

I wasn't there in person, alas, but BBC Sounds had the full concert available from the 12th October 2023, and BBC Radio broadcast it on Sunday the 15th of that month. Unlike the previous proms and concerts, this was smaller and focussed more on the music, without creature performers walking amongst the audience or appearances from stars of the show. There were though still interviews between performances, with presenter Jo Whiley talking to various people who worked behind the scenes on Doctor Who in different eras. Murray Gold was one of those, and got the biggest laugh of the night from the assembled audience by answering Whiley's question about whose idea it was initially to have musical motifs for characters with "Er... Wagner's?!" It wasn't quite all about Murray's music and mirth, though. The classic series years were represented by a medley performed by the Radiophonic Workshop's Peter Howell and Mark Ayres with orchestral accompaniment, It covered similar - if not perhaps exactly the same - ground as did the pair's performance at the concert for the 50th anniversary, including amongst others Space Adventures (the 1960s Cyberman theme), snatches of The Sea Devils score, and music from City of Death, Howell's The Five Doctors, and Ayre's magnificent final cue from The Curse of Fenric; it's always a rare pleasure to hear that one performed by an orchestra. Music that came after Gold's first tenure was represented by a suite of Segun Akinola's cues for the thirteenth Doctor Jodie Whittaker's era. This was the first time that any of this music had a concert performance, and it sounded great. I hope we don't have to wait another ten years to hear either of these non-Gold selections live again.

Three showrunners with Jo Whiley

Howell, Ayres and Akinola were all interviewed on stage during proceedings, and it was nice to hear from all of them. Akinola was accompanied by Jodie era showrunner Chris Chibnall. All three showrunners of the 21st century were on stage at different points. Steven Moffat expounded on the differences between his two Doctors: Matt Smith's Doctor could do any terrible action and would still be forgiven, Peter Capaldi's Doctor could be given any number of jokes to say and he'd still seem fearsome. It was once and future showrunner Russell T Davies that was the most interesting, though, as he holds secrets of what's to come. Whiley tried to tease these out of him, a game she admitted she's been playing for many years without success, but he and Gold had come with a few previews for us nonetheless. For the first time were heard three pieces of music that will be featured in stories in 2023 and 2024: new companion Ruby Sunday's theme "The Life of Sunday", Ncuti Gatwa's Doctor's theme "Fifteen", and the 2023 reworking of the main Doctor Who theme. The first and last of these seemed to be harking back. The new main theme seems to pull together elements of every theme tune arrangement used in the last 60 years, appropriate for an anniversary year. The Life of Sunday echoes some themes, particularly from early on in Davies and Gold's time on Doctor Who. It's a waltz, like Gold's theme for Cassandra used in the second 2005 episode, The End of the World; assuming the orchestration is going to be the same, it features a prominent piano melody early on, exactly like Rose's theme from the start of the relaunched show, and there are definite similarities with Martha's theme too. It ties Ruby musically to that companion lineage.

The Ncuti Gatwa "Fifteen" theme meanwhile seems to be looking to the future. It is subtly different to my ears than anything Gold has written for Who before, certainly as the main character's motif, using the whole orchestra percussively to provide a relentless driving rhythm. Broadcaster and Doctor Who fan Matthew Sweet tweeted about it being similar to something Michael Nyman might have composed, and I can hear that. Respondents to Sweet's tweet also highlighted what I'd thought about the melody that plays over that rhythm, that it is reminiscent of the theme to an exciting 1960s ITC film show like Ron Grainer's theme for The Prisoner. It's an instant favourite and leads to some exciting speculation: Ncuti's Doctor feels like he's going to be a force of nature. Davies teased a little in his onstage interview; he may have been joking, but talked confidently about an idea for an episode for a fourth, i.e. 2027 series, saying that the third was already planned out (the first is in the can, and the second according to Davies quoted elsewhere is more than half scripted). Other interviews recently have seen him talk about his and the BBC's grand ambitions for Doctor Who, and the increase in budget it's getting. I'm reminded of the theory I've expounded upon before (see the Deeper Thoughts of The Mysterious Planet and Spyfall posts for more details) that the new series followed a superficially similar progression to the classic series but at an accelerated rate. If Jodie Whittaker's era was the equivalent of Sylvester McCoy's (new direction breaking from the past before embracing some old monsters from the second year, involving more socially conscious writing from a mostly new set of writers, less popular than it had been), then are we approaching the point where the cycle starts again? A period where the show's been off air, followed by a Russell T Davies re-launch with more budget available to it than previously? Certainly sounds familiar. Not long to wait now.

In Summary:

When it's G-Ood it's devilishly g-Ood.

Flux

Chapter The 216th, is the biggest chapter to date.

Plot:

[These are the most recent episodes of Doctor Who at the time of writing, so be wary of spoilers from this point on if you haven't seen the shows; there's also a lot of plot to recount.]

Many years ago, some Time Lords including Tecteun - the Doctor's adopted mother who took the Doctor when she was the seemingly abandoned Timeless child - formed the Division. This was a group that slowly came to recruit operatives from all races including Weeping Angels and Ood, who interfered in events in a way that the official Time Lords swear never to do. Early on, they created the Temple of Atropos on the Planet Time to imprison the chaotic and destructive time force that existed back then. Two Ravagers, brother and sister Swarm and Azure, powerful creatures who revere this time force as an anthropomorphised entity, later take over the temple and there is a siege. The pre-William Hartnell regeneration of the Doctor, who later was a fugitive on Earth in Gloucester, led a Division team that broke the siege, and captured Swarm and Azure. Both were imprisoned - Swarm fully conscious in a remote prison somewhere in space, and Azure on Earth in human form, unaware of her real identity. Tecteun, now in charge of Division, notices the current Doctor's investigations into the forgotten lives she had before she was an old man with long white hair. Wary that the Doctor will find out too much about the Division, Tectuen decides on a quite extreme way to stop the Doctor - destroying the universe. Tecteun is based on a vehicle outside our universe, poised to navigate to a new one. She releases the Flux, an energy wave that destroys matter. Just in case that's not enough, she also frees Swarm who then finds and frees his sister; they will want revenge on the Doctor, and will ensure complete destruction by mucking about with time too.

In 1820, Joseph Williamson is building his tunnels under Liverpool, and finds that some of them lead to other times and places (through rips in the fabric of time and space). From what he witnesses, he pieces together the danger that the Flux will mean in the future, and develops the tunnels to become a survival chamber for humans. On an unnamed planet, Bel and Vinder are life partners, and recent graduates of space pilot academy. They only have one night together before they are given separate postings. Vinder is given special duty as the personal guard of their ruler, the Grand Serpent. The Grand Serpent is corrupt, though, and abuses his position to threaten his political enemies. Vinder tries to blow the whistle, and finds himself sent to do a punishment duty in a deep space observation station, Outpost Rose. As he was sent there directly, he does not know that Bel is pregnant with his child. Vinder spots the Flux coming, and it destroys planets around him and finally Outpost Rose. It also unbeknown to him lays waste to his home planet. Vinder is transported to Atropos by the Ravagers as part of their plan to humiliate the Doctor. Bel travels off world to find Vinder.

The Doctor, helped by Yaz, has found an ex-member of the Division, Karvanista, a dog-like alien from a race called the Lupari. He won't tell her anything of her history, tries to kill both her and Yaz, and makes off for Earth. It looks as if he and the massive Lupari fleet are out to invade, but they are really trying to save the human race. Each Lupar is pair-bonded with a specific human. As he's ahead of his fleet, Karvanista is the first to pick up his human, arriving on the evening of October 31st 2021 and caging the human within his Flux-proof craft. This is Dan Lewis from Liverpool, who's very surprised to be on a dog's spaceship, and is even more surprised to then be rescued by the Doctor and Yaz. Eventually working out that Karvanista isn't exactly against her, the Doctor gives the Lupari a new plan, to configure the fleet into a Flux barrier encircling the Earth. The Earth is safe, but the Sontarans, exploiting possibilities offered by the Flux, sneak in before the barrier goes up. In the TARDIS, the Doctor, Yaz and Dan just avoid being destroyed by the Flux in space, and materialise in the Crimean War. The Sontarans have changed history and taken the place of the Russians in this conflict.

The Doctor is left alone when her two companions are transported elsewhere by the time disturbance. Yaz goes to Atropos and meets Vinder. Dan appears back in Liverpool 2021, meeting his Mum and Dad who explain that in the two days since he's been gone, the Sontarans have taken over the Liverpool docks. Helped by Mary Seacole, the Doctor defeats the Sontarans in the Crimea. Dan sneaks aboard one of their ships and communicates across time to the Doctor. The Potato-Heads' misadventures in the Crimean War are just a pilot scheme, and they plan to continue temporal warfare throughout Earth history. With Karvanista's help, still protecting his human, Dan destroys the Sontaran ships on Earth, and the time explosion reverts things to normal as if they'd never been there. Leaving Karvanista and the other Lupari in their ships still protecting Earth, the Doctor and Dan go in the TARDIS to find Yaz on Atropos.

Since the siege, the temple has been enhanced by incorporating time-sensitive lifeforms called Mouri that have the time vortex flowing through them as part of the temple circuit. Several of the Mouri have now been destroyed by Azure and Swarm sabotaging the system. The Ravagers wire in Vinder and Yaz to take their place, and are just about to switch on, which will kill both. To save them, the Doctor pulls herself, them and Dan into the unstable time vortex, hiding everyone in moments from their own timelines while she pieces together some of the backstory of what's happening, and persuades more Mouri to complete the temple circuit again. Once this is done, the Ravagers don't seem too bothered - they were just taunting the Doctor. They reveal that their attendants are Passenger forms, bigger on the inside prisons shaped like lumbering blokes in masks. Inside one is Diane, the person that Dan was set to meet for a date on Halloween night, who they've kidnapped. Again, they tell Dan this just for shits and giggles then they nick off. The Doctor drops Vinder off to search for Bel; Bel has by this time commandeered an abandoned Lupari ship and is searching the remaining areas of the Flux-impacted universe for Vinder. The TARDIS team are in the control room when a Weeping Angel, which Yaz had seen visions of in the time vortex, appears and takes control of the time ship.

Claire Brown lives in Liverpool in the present day and has psychic ability. She sees visions of the TARDIS, the Doctor and a Weeping Angel. On Halloween night 2021, she briefly met the Doctor and Yaz, and then got attacked by an angel, and zapped back to 1965. By 1967, she is in the village home of Professor Jericho who's investigating her abilities. The Weeping Angel brings the TARDIS to that village, and the Doctor finds Jericho and Claire. Meanwhile, Yaz and Dan are zapped back to 1901 by another angel. The angels attack Jericho's home. These angels are an extraction squad working for Division and want the angel from the TARDIS, who is now hiding in Claire's head, because it also previously worked for Division and has vital knowledge including information about the Doctor. The angels break in to the house. The Doctor, Claire, and Jericho attempt to escape but Jericho is zapped back to 1901 where he meets Dan and Yaz. The Doctor and Claire escape to find a stone vehicle that the angels used to get to Earth. The extraction squad angels are no longer interested in the rogue angel, they have a bigger prize now: the Doctor. Yaz, Dan and Jericho watch through a portal linking the time zones to see the Doctor turned into an angel and taken off.

Bel goes to the planet Puzano, one of the last remaining wrecks of planets surviving after the Flux, and where she and Vinder were planning to honeymoon. She finds that Azure is tricking refugees arriving there, promising to take them to safety but instead locking them up in a Passenger form. Vinder arrives on Puzano too, but after Bel's left, just missing her. Bel and Vinder both trace the source of the Passenger form signals, but Bel's Lupari spacecraft is called away to join the rest of the fleet round Earth before Vinder can catch up with her. He is captured by the Ravagers, who are exploding all the people they have abducted to generate power. They put Vinder in a Passenger form where he meets with Diane. Yaz, Dan and Jericho spend a few years of the early 20th century trying to work out when the final date for Flux destruction will occur, based on a recorded mission set for them by the Doctor. They don't get very far, but finally bump into Joseph Willamson, who shows them the portals within his tunnels. Meanwhile, still protected by the Lupari shields, with the Flux still active elsewhere in the cosmos, Earth becomes a target. The displaced Grand Serpent makes his way there, and infiltrates UNIT at its formation, then hopping through its formative years using time travel. In the present, Kate Stewart uncovers this, and gives him a warning; he blows up her house, so she goes underground. Karvanista boards the Lupari craft to wrest control of it back from Bel, just as the fleet is attacked by Sontarans. The Grand Serpent has done a deal with them, and has used his UNIT influence to weaken Earth's defences.

The Doctor is taken to Tecteun's base outside the universe and returned to her normal form. She has a converter attached so she can exist outside the universe. Tecteun and an Ood are controlling the Flux from here. Tecteun reveals that she has all the Doctor's lost memories in a fob watch, but neither the offer of this, nor an offer to spare the Earth from the Flux, persuade the Doctor not to interfere. With their needed power built up, Swarm and Azure are able to cross into Tecteun's domain, and kill her. They tease the Doctor with the memories from the fob watch, threatening to erase them, then roll back time, and erase them over and over again. The Doctor persuades the Ood to come to her aid, and rips off her converter device to return to the universe. Because of the time disruption, this instead splits her into three identical copies of the Doctor phasing in and out: one with Swarm and Azure, one with Karvanista and Bel, one with Yaz, Dan and Jericho. Between them, the three Doctors and her various helpers work to defeat the Sontarans. The Sontaran plan is to lure the Daleks and Cybermen to the area of space where the final Flux activity will happen, with a promise to use the Lupari shield to protect them; they'll then let both races be destroyed with the hope that all that matter being consumed will exhaust the Flux's anti-matter energy, leaving the Sontarans to rule over the remaining universe.

Kate Stewart arrives in the Williamson tunnels with the TARDIS (that UNIT retrieved from the abandoned 1967 village attacked by angels) and shares a plan that she's been developing to infiltrate the Sontarans. They are using humans with psychic ability to forecast where the final Flux activity will take place. The Doctor picks up Claire from the 1960s, and Claire and Jericho infiltrate a Sontaran psychic team, and come up with the desired coordinates. Diane and Vinder work out a way to signal to the Doctor, and she rescues them. The Sontaran fleet is destroyed alongside the Daleks and Cybermen, but not before they kill all the other Lupari except Karvanista. Claire manages to transmat away from a Sontaran ship before the Flux hits, but Jericho is not so lucky and dies. It's still not enough matter to halt the Flux though, but Diane has had the idea to use the Passenger form to suck up the remaining Flux energy, which works. Swarm and Azure summon their "Saviour" Time and offer up the Doctor. As the Flux has not destroyed Atropos, Time is still not free, so it destroys the Ravagers in punishment. It does not kill the Doctor, though, instead dropping a hint that her time is ending soon. The three parts to the Doctor come together as one and stabilise. The Grand Serpent is banished to an exile on a barren rock in space. Bel and Vinder are reunited, and go off with Karvanista. Everyone else is returned to their proper time and place. Diane is no longer interested in going for a date with Dan. The Doctor invites him instead to join the TARDIS team. The Doctor still has the fob watch, but decides not to open it for now, and hides it deep within the TARDIS.

Context:

I brought this on my self. About this time three years ago, in a blog post for the 12 x 25 minute episode story The Daleks' Master Plan, I made the following comment: "Unless Chris Chibnall were to take things in a very unexpected direction in 2020, Master Plan is going to be the longest story with which I will ever wrestle". Well, it took him until 2021, but he did indeed take things in a new direction, and created a story longer than that William Hartnell behemoth that took up three months of Saturday afternoons in the 1960s. Flux is composed of varying length episodes, three of 50 minutes and three of around an hour, so is the equivalent of at least 13 episodes of classic Who, making it the second longest Doctor Who story ever, measured in minutes. The winner, 14-episode The Trial of a Time Lord, doesn't really count to my mind, as it is composed of four discrete segments under an umbrella title. Each story is as separable as those that make up the Doctor's quest for the Key to Time, say, or various parts of more involved series arcs in 21st century Who like the Silence episodes in 2011. Not Flux though. If you cut out all the running subplots, you could make a standalone adventure out of Chapter 2 (War of the Sontarans) or Chapter 4 (Village of the Angels) at a push, but everything else is interweaved too tightly with the overall narrative.

There was nothing for it but to cover the story as one long piece. It troubled me a tiny bit to burn through so much of Jodie Whittaker's limited and precious stock of remaining stories, so I've decided I won't post about any of her three 2022 specials until they come up randomly, the better to make her era last throughout the remaining lifetime of the blog. Perhaps perversely, I also decided if I was going to use up six episodes in one go, I would use them up in one go. I would binge the lot in one five and a half hour marathon, with only the odd bathroom break on pause. I previously managed this for the relatively svelte 10-parter The War Games, but this would be even more of a challenge. I very nearly made it, but during Christmas holidays in a busy family house it wasn't possible to not have one meal break of half an hour. It at least took place between chapters four and five, so not interrupting an episode and following a cracking cliffhanger. I was accompanied throughout both shifts by the youngest (girl of 9) who was keen to watch it all again, and felt happier that some outstanding questions in her mind were answered by this re-watch. We viewed the story from my PVR recordings of the episodes rather than on the BBC iplayer, so we could get the surrounding idents, continuity and trails as part of the experience.

First Time Round:

I have often bemoaned my meagre remembrances of recent stories when covering them only a few years later here on the blog; many times I've suggested the keeping of a viewing diary, so as an experiment I tried it for Flux:

• 31st October. Chapter 1: The Halloween Apocalypse. Giving out sweets from about 5.30pm while the kids are out trick or treating. All sweets gone in half an hour, but that's not stopping people ringing the doorbell. Put up polite notice - 5 minutes to go before the broadcast, but kids not back yet. Start to watch live at 6.25pm, but feel guilty that I'm not waiting and give up at "Liverpool 1820" just after the beginning credits. When they get back, kids need to warm up with some soup. End up watching [from the start] with the two youngest (boy of 12, girl of 9) time-shifted using the PVR about 40 minutes later than live.
• 8th November. Chapter 2: War of the Sontarans. Missed the live broadcast as I was at the BFI for the Galaxy 4 animation screening, then with friends in London afterwards. Kids waited so they could watch with me. Put on the PVR recording the following evening after dinner with two youngest [they will be my only viewing partners throughout Flux]. Lots of chants of "Sontar-ha!" from both before they settled down to bed afterwards.
• 14th November. Chapter 3: Once, Upon Time. First episode we watched live as it went out on BBC1. Caught the obligatory last few minutes of Countryfile, waiting in anticipation. Youngest showed me that she was keeping her eyes wide open whenever the Weeping Angels were on screen.
• 21st November. Chapter 4: Village of the Angels. Slightly time-shifted (about 10 minutes or so) as we couldn't wolf down our supper fast enough. Youngest needed to play a game on my phone to distract herself towards the end as it was getting too scary, but didn't want to leave the room and kept occasionally glancing at what was on screen.
• 28th November. Chapter 5: Survivors of the Flux. Watched live including the last few minutes of Countryfile again. Youngest is feeling a bit poorly but didn't want to miss it. [This will turn out to be Covid and everyone in the family will get it before too long.]
• 5th December. Chapter 6: The Vanquishers. Tested positive the day before on a Lateral Flow Test, so could not be at the BFI again for City of Death as planned. Consolation is that we can watch the finale live. All three of us enjoy it.

Reaction:

Chris Chibnall famously appeared as a young Doctor Who Appreciation Society member on BBC public feedback show Open Air to express his lack of appreciation of the most recently broadcast series of Doctor Who. It being 1986, that was The Trial of a Time Lord. It is amusing therefore that all these years later, Chibnall has used the key idea from that 80s epic (an entire season of Doctor Who as one long serial) and for the exact same reason (to make a benefit of a reduced episode count thrust upon the production team by factors outside of their control; Covid this time, rather than Michael Grade). To be fair to Chibnall, the structure of the series was never what he had a problem with, and he certainly wasn't the only one then or since to find the writing of Colin Baker's final year as the Doctor a little lacklustre. People now and in the future may well say the same about Flux. I always thought people were generally a little hard on Trial - it has some great moments, and hangs together reasonably well. I would think anyone being so sniffy about Flux was being massively unfair though. It's a magnificent achievement. Watching the whole thing in one go makes it clear that everything in the narrative is clearly explained and paid off. It's only confusing when you're meant to be confused, and is paced well overall across the six chapters - frenetic opening of multiple narrative strands, action story with a little bit of resolution, pause for the revelation of some backstory, chamber horror piece that ends of a big cliffhanger, confrontation and more explanations, big explosive finale.

Like many of the longer stories of 1960s Doctor Who, including the other major antecedent for Flux, The Daleks' Master Plan, the narrative keeps things interesting over its running time by hopping between many different locales. Every single one of these is beautifully realised. What is on screen is breathtaking in its scope (many CGI-rendered spacecraft whizzing through amazing starscapes), beautiful in its detail (the Samurai styling of Karvanista's Lupari technology, as just one example) and perfect in its design (the make-up and costume for Swarm and Azure is outstanding). These episodes were made during a pandemic, when the crew were working out as they went along how to operate within restrictions that kept changing. I can't think of any moment that lets the side down. There was some carping online that the Passenger masks were commercially available ones that hadn't been adapted, but this misses the point to my mind, and the point is: the Passenger forms looked really cool. Why mess with that? Just like Trial of a Timelord back in the day, the epic starts with a sequence that pushes the boundaries of effects technology (the Doctor and Yaz zooming around above a lake of acid), but this is then sustained. There's at least one amazing set piece in every episode, like the massed ranks of Sontarans versus British soldiers in the Crimea, or many of the moments involving Weeping Angels from the fourth episode including perhaps the most memorable image of the Doctor turned into an angel. This is the one episode that I think will come in for the most praise, but it was mostly quite derivative. Nonetheless, it was enjoyable and scary. It seems that no matter how many times you have statues advancing on people trying not to blink, it never gets old. In that story, the 1960s are expertly recreated, as elsewhere is the Crimean War, and various places in 1904, and the many 20th century moments in the formation of UNIT that the Grand Serpent gatecrashes.

More than times and places, though, the many people of Flux help propel it along, and keep the audience engaged. Chibnall clearly understands this, as he ends the first episode with an exciting montage of each featured character at the start of their journey. The cast is Flux's biggest asset and every performance is a good one, some great. Karvanista is the first of the recurring guest cast to be introduced, and he's an instantly complete and engaging creation: gruff, blunt, and very Northern, at times almost antagonistic, but always coming back however unwillingly to his basic moral code. He also looks like a very cute dog, which is a genius choice as it informs his character - it could've been rubbish and just seemed like a mask (though the handiwork is exceptional) but it's great because looking cute clearly annoys the character so much. The concept allows for some wit in the dialogue too; "I still have a human in this fight". He's also now stitched into the programme's lore as an old companion of the Doctor, and I'd love to see Craige Els return to portray him again. Vinder and Bel, as more straightforward action / romantic heroes, are not quite so interesting, but nonetheless are engagingly performed (by Jacob Anderson and Thaddea Graham respectively), and both have some good moments. Vinder's backstory as a punished whistle-blower in a corrupt regime is something a bit different, and it's great to see them reunited near the end after a series of near misses. Annabel Scholey as Claire Brown doesn't get much to do that doesn't involve reacting to moving statues, but makes the most of it; the scene where she looks in the mirror to see her reflection has stone angel wings (achieved in camera with physical effects work) is another standout moment.

Other guest actors shine in less extensively featured roles: Nadia Albina as the resourceful Diane, Jemma Redgrave returning as Kate Stewart, Sarah Powell perfect as Mary Seacole, the historical celebrity around which a lot of the second episode revolves. On first watch, Blake Harrison seemed a little wasted in the role of Namaca, but this time round I got that he's there to represent all of the refugees displaced by the Flux, who otherwise wouldn't have a voice in the narrative. Best of all the guest characters, even though he doesn't turn up until halfway through, is Professor Eustacius Jericho, haunted but indomitable, serious but with a twinkle. It was a treat when he continued to work with Yaz and Dan in episode five, as he looked set to be a one-off character specific to the Angels plotline. It's also nice that Kevin McNally gets to do another good performance in Doctor Who, but this time as part of a story that's not The Twin Dilemma. Also returning to Doctor Who after a reasonable time away is Dan Starkey, who along with Johnathan Watson plays the different Sontarans featured. They are both so good, and the slightly tweaked masks similarly good, that you almost forget that there are actors in there. This is perhaps the best Sontaran story ever - showing them actually getting to participate in a war, having one ride a horse, and putting them on a level with the Daleks and Cybermen as top-tier adversaries. Main villains Swarm and Azure are gleefully but also glamorously sadistic, and actors Sam Spruell and Rochenda Sandall are having enormous fun playing them. Best of all the baddies, and also well dressed, is Craig Parkinson as the Grand Serpent. Yes, he's playing an extra-terrestrial twist on a somewhat similar role he famously played in another series (I'm trying not to spoiler here, if you know, you know) but he's doing it so well. He's also still alive at the end, so potentially could return to face the Doctor again.

There's still room left for the regulars to shine. John Bishop arrives fully formed as Dan, and slots instantly into the team, bringing a down-to-Earth warmth and humour to a long-running team, but also a greater sense of wonder than the existing regulars who maybe take the adventuring a bit for granted now. A new companion, and long periods where the Doctor is separated from the others, allows Mandip Gill to shine as the experienced old hand, and even act as the Doctor surrogate at times: her having WWTDD (What would the Doctor do?) written on her hand is a lovely character touch. There's some great interplay between the two companions too; I particularly liked the following naturally funny exchange: "Dan, are you from Liverpool? Why have you never mentioned it?" "Alright Sheffield, keep your cutlery on!". Jodie Whittaker has never been less than excellent in any of her previous stories, no matter the quality of the material. Here, with a rollicking good set of scripts, she somehow steps it up a gear and is sensational. Too many memorable scenes to list them all, but some stand-outs include flirting with her self when split into multiple Doctors, many scenes with the Ravagers playing vulnerable as her secret past is teased but not revealed, and turning the tables on the Grand Serpent in the finale. Best of all are the sequences with Barbara Flynn as Tecteun, the Doctor confronting the mother she never knew she had, who has robbed her twice, once by changing the course of her life by taking her as a foundling (an assumption that the Doctor points out was not necessarily a sound one), and secondly by removing her memories. These are great scenes in a story stuffed full of them, and crackling with some great jokes and snappy dialogue.

The nature of such a long story with many facets is going to attract a particular criticism. When I reviewed similarly epic The War Games I described it as the Doctor Who equivalent of The Beatles' White Album. Could Flux then be the long medley from Abbey Road? In other words, it's lots of bits and bobs put together with only a semblance of coherence. I'd take exception to such a reading, as the whole is well integrated and more than the sum of its parts (actually, you could say that about side 2 of Abbey Road too, I suppose). Sure, any one of the story threads could be unpicked and lumped together to create more modular individual episodes, but the whole would suffer. You could, for example, take all of Steve Oram's moments as Liverpool tunneler Joseph Williamson out of chapters one to five and just have him in the finale, but him popping up and meeting characters at unexpected moments, being weird and portentous, is much more fun. Any other flaws I've seen levelled are minor ones, or ones I can't accept as flaws at all. Yaz, Dan and Jericho spend a globe-trotting episode achieving naff all, but it's so much fun to be in those characters' company. The Sontarans vulnerability at the end because they have become addicted to chocolate is no bum note, it's a sort of crazy genius. The universe is so changed by the end that the show might have to reset, but that's true towards the end of any showrunner or Doctor's era. The next episode on the 1st January features Daleks who were seemingly all eaten up by the Flux, so they're already ignoring it anyway. The story might not be very deep; unlike previous Jodie Whittaker seasons there are no political or ecological themes, just an exploration of lore. Some people might think this is a good thing, of course.

Connectivity: 

Both Flux and A Christmas Carol feature a Doctor paired with two companions, one male one female, and both see them assisted by a wider group of people, some of whom travel in the TARDIS. Both stories feature scenes set around a notable day of the religious calendar (All Hallow's Eve and Christmas). Both see the Doctor flying through the air in a somewhat unconventional manner. Flux contains lots and lots of elements from Doctor Who's history, but it couldn't find room to include any flying sharks, alas.

Deeper Thoughts:

Everything's in flux. The 2021 story / season was an enjoyable event as it went out weekly, and stands up well when watched as one very long - Peter-Jackson movie length - special. I think it's fair to say that nobody on December 31st 2020 could have predicted that Chibnall would provide us with the 21st Century's version of The Daleks' Master Plan or Trial of a Timelord in the following year. So, it's probably a pointless exercise to look ahead to next year and speculate; but, I like pointless exercises, so here we go. Whatever else we guess about what 2022 has to offer, we know it will have one of the most exciting moments for a Doctor Who fan - the final story for a Doctor. Jodie Whittaker has three more stories left for 2022: a festive special on January 1st, and then two more specials in Spring and Autumn. In the final one, no doubt some of the questions about the Doctor's past left unanswered by Flux will have been answered, but the smart money would be on it not being all of them. Some mystery is likely to remain. I'd also bet that Sacha Dhawan will return as the Master and Jo Martin as the Division Doctor, but it's not certain. The only thing we can be 100% sure of is that the lead actor will bow out (Jodie's finished all her filming) and the character will regenerate. Beyond that, anything could happen. It's not completely unprecedented for the regeneration to end on a cliffhanger without revealing a new Doctor and actor, but it's not been done for a long time and only happened once (Jon Pertwee did not appear in Patrick Troughton's finale). Large sections of the audience would be very miffed to not have resolution and confirmation of the new Doctor, but that doesn't mean returning showrunner Russell T Davies won't do it.

I think it's more likely that someone will be cast as the Doctor next year and announced before the final special airs. It would be lovely for it to be a complete surprise and revealed only at the end of that story, but I don't think it's realistic. Any actor and their agent is going to want to keep the casting secret for only so long; professionally, it would need to be known that the person has the kudos of one of biggest roles in television (as well as clarifying that they won't be able to take on any other work for a bit). When the 2023 episodes start filming, it would be very likely to leak anyway. It's exciting, though; it means that sometime in the first three quarters of 2022, we should find out. According to a recent interview, Davies and team have not cast anyone yet (but he has been known to lie in interviews to ensure surprises). He also confirms that he has already written more than one episode, and the first one will be broadcast in November 2023 around the 60th anniversary of the show. This means that there will definitely not be a festive special on January 1st 2023, so 2022 could see the end of that tradition (or the schedulers and Davies could move the special back to the 25th December and there'd be one before the year is out). It's always nice for the profile of the show that Doctor Who is on over the Christmas period, but maybe all the possible stories set sometime between the 24th December and the 1st January have been told now, so I wouldn't be that sad about it ending.

Aside from the new, there's also the new old. One animation of a 1960s missing story has been confirmed for 2022; this will be 1967's The Abominable Snowmen. There's no date confirmed yet, but it's likely to be in the first half of the year if it's already being talked up. There are now two teams regularly tackling the creation of pictures to accompany stories where only the audio survives intact. So, providing the budget's still there to commission both, the other team should be working on something (it certainly seemed that way when they appeared at the BFI showing their last project The Evil of the Daleks). My guess, which will undoubtedly be wrong, is that they'll do The Wheel in Space next and it will be released late in the year. This will complete season five (Patrick Troughton's second year) on shiny disc, and will make it feasible to release that season as a Blu-ray box set sometime in the future. With regard to the Blu-ray sets, they returned to their pre-Covid release frequency in 2021, with three limited edition box sets (as well as some re-releases of older box sets in standard packaging). From social media mentions from some of the people that work on them, more are definitely in the works, and I'd expect another three in 2022. I'll speculate again, and no doubt be wrong again, and guess that the releases will be season 13 (Tom Baker's second year, a fan favourite, and there seems to be a one Tom set per year rule), season 22 (Colin Baker's first full year), and season 2 (William Hartnell's second year, which would be the first black and white season set, and would likely have photo reconstructions of the only two missing episodes in the season).

The previously mentioned RTD interview tied in with the Guardian's annual countdown of the 50 best TV shows of the year. I looked through the list and - as usual, and doubtless as intended - disagreed with a lot of it. Flux does not make the list, which maybe shows more about a long-running consistent programme such as Doctor Who being taken for granted rather than necessarily anything about the quality of the episodes themselves. Having paid for a month of Disney Plus to watch the Beatles documentary Get Back (number 27 in the Guardian's list), I was finally able to see WandaVision (the Guardian number 16), one of the fantasy shows to which Doctor Who has been compared unfavourably of late, and... it's only okay; wildly overrated, to my mind, and nowhere near as clever as it thinks it is. I am still to watch The Mandalorian or Loki; I'll report back if they rock my world. I much preferred the new seasons of a couple of US shows that I first watched during last year's lockdowns: Superstore and Ted Lasso. The latter made the Guardian list (at number 14) , the former didn't. As good as Lasso is, Superstore's emotional final season was slightly better for this viewer. Best of all for me was discovering the UK comedy series Ghosts (a US remake also premiered this year, but I haven't seen that yet). It only made number 34 in the Guardian list, but it was top ten for me. At some future date, when they finish telling the story of Button House, the entire Ghosts creative team would be a great pick to become showrunners of Doctor Who (though they might fall out between themselves as to which of them gets to play the Doctor). Of course, the next showrunner Russell T Davies happens to be the writer of the Guardian's number 1 show of the year, It's a Sin. It was shown early in the year, but it was such an intense, upsetting, invigorating and unforgettable drama that nothing shown since could top it. A worthy winner. It's very exciting to see what the writer of It's a Sin (who's maybe a slightly different man to the writer The Second Coming all those years ago) will make of Doctor Who next. But that's 2023, and we have 2022 to enjoy first. Any minute now...

In Summary:

It's fluxing great. Happy New Year!

Planet of the Ood

Chapter The 214th, a snowy story as we get close to Christmas.

Plot:

The Doctor and Donna visit Ood Operations, a company that trades in the noodle-faced slave creatures; its base is on the snowy planet Ood-Sphere in the year 4126, and various long-running plans are coming to fruition there. Doctor Ryder is a member of Friends of the Ood, an organisation set up to end this slavery. Over the previous ten years he has infiltrated Ood Operations to a high enough position on the scientific staff to get access to the mysterious Warehouse 15 where a giant central Ood brain is kept locked away. Surreptitiously, he lowers the dampening force emissions surrounding the brain that keep the Ood controlled and docile; this causes outbreaks of red-eye and rabidness in the Ood and people get attacked. The company boss Klineman Halpen discovers his treachery, and kills Ryder by throwing him into the giant brain in its deep pit, but Ryder dies knowing he has instigated a revolution that will free the Ood. Halpen's personal aide, Ood Sigma, has been broken free of his conditioning for a while, and has patiently been working on revenge. He substituted a hair tonic drink that Halpen regularly imbibes for a suspension of Ood-iness, and once Halpen has been in the presence of the giant Ood brain for long enough, it turns him into an Ood. The revolution frees the Ood, who drive the humans away from their home. The Doctor doesn't do anything at all to help until the end, when he diffuses some bombs that Halpen had set around the brain, so it doesn't get destroyed. Donna does nothing at all. The Ood promise that they, their children, and their children's children will forever sing the song of thanks to the Doctor and Donna. Ryder doesn't even get a mention. Ungrateful gits.

Context:

I suffered a small disappointment in early December. The day before I was due to travel up to London to attend the BFI screening of City of Death (to tie in with the soon to be released season 17 Blu-ray boxset) I tested positive on a lateral flow test. I was lucky enough to only get Covid mildly (I'd thought I'd only had a cold, which is being reported as a common misunderstanding with the latest cases, so don't take chances - get yourself tested if you're unsure). This put paid to the trip, and indeed any social event I'd had planned for the end of the year. At a loose end, I thought I would use my time in self-isolation to break my blogging record (yes, it was a bit boring not being able to leave the house). The most posts I've managed to publish in a year previously was 38 in 2018. Including this one, I'm up to three posts for December 2021, and 37 for the year to date. Just two more and I'll achieve a personal best. Having watched a few stories in short order (including Planet of the Ood, on DVD from the New series 4 box-set, and unaccompanied by any of the family again), I'm planning next to pick a random Christmas special to blog before the big day, and then to squeeze in another story before December 31st. Might not manage it, but that's the plan.

First Time Round:

I first watched Planet of the Ood on the evening of its debut BBC1 transmission on the 19th April 2008, timeshifted on the PVR; I was accompanied by the Better Half, after we'd put our then only child down to bed. Doctor Who had an earlier broadcast slot for that year, and the boy was nearly two years old, so we had experimented with the first couple of stories of the series letting him watch live with us. The Adipose one was fine, but the following week The Fires of Pompeii's lava monster was a bit too much. So, it was back to waiting until after bedtime for the rest of the stories starting with the Ood episode. I vaguely knew the writer of the Pompeii story James Moran as we were both screenwriting bloggers at the time (he much more successfully than me, of course) and I made a joke in a post on my old blog along the lines of "Who do you think you are, James Moran, scaring my innocent child?" but I had to edit it to make clear that it was an arcane classic Who reference (referring to an article about 1970s script editor Robert Holmes by a tabloid journalist Jean Rook) and that I wasn't having a pop at James. This was because he was then getting a lot of flak from arse-hat Doctor Who "fans" as one of the few writers in those days - this being before social media became widespread - to have an online presence. I remember someone telling him he was an elitist scumbag for putting in-jokes related to a Latin textbook into the story (James replied that he didn't study Latin at all, and they had been suggestions by Russell T Davies). When he later wrote an episode of Torchwood that killed off a major character, he got even more and even worse abuse. I subsequently met James at a screenwriting festival, and he came over as a very nice guy indeed. Some Doctor Who "fans" really don't deserve nice things.

 

Reaction:

I mentioned in the Dragonfire blog post earlier in the year that the Raiders of Minimization episode of US comedy The Big Bang Theory highlighted that Indiana Jones does not contribute anything material to stopping the bad guys' plans in the film Raiders of the Lost Ark. If the story of a big Hollywood film (thereafter loved by audiences for decades) can make the mistake, then I suppose we have to forgive a little 45-minute segment of Doctor Who too. For in Planet of the Odd, the Doctor and Donna are just observers. One might not even notice this at first, as they both do lots of Doctor and companion stuff - getting chased, getting captured, piecing together the backstory by investigating. In this story, they work out the physical and mental make-up of Ood society and how it is being manipulated to make them subservient. I'm not sure that this stands up to much scrutiny if you think too hard about it after the credits have rolled: creatures with tiny vulnerable "hind-brains" that they have to carry around in their hands? It doesn't seem like a viable mutation. Maybe there were no predators on the Ood-sphere (there's no evidence of any in the story, except for humankind, of course), but the natural environment still seems a bit harsh for the Ood to have survived there. This kind of thinking didn't occur during my first watch of the programme, though, so I think the story gets away with it during its running time. Piecing all this together, whether or not it persuades the viewer, doesn't make a jot of difference to the plot. The Doctor can't use the information, as others - who presumably have pieced it all together long before him - already have an endgame in play.

Perhaps this slight lack of engagement of the main characters in writer Keith Temple's script is the reason that the normally entertaining pairing of David Tennant and Catherine Tate as Donna don't have as good a go of it in this story compared to others in the series. Some jokes don't land, some exchanges and bits of business feel a bit forced. The director is the normally dependable Graeme Harper, who delivered some great stories in the classic and the new eras, but this is not one of his best. Where he does excel is in the scenes of Ood carnage. The trick of the calm creatures suddenly going on the attack with eyes flicking to red had already been done in the two-part Ood / Satan story in Tennant's first year, but it doesn't get old when its done again and again here. The ante is upped with the rabid Oods, and the explosive scenes of Ood versus security guard fights. Some of the industrial locations are quite impressive, but the CGI-enhanced snowy vistas look a bit fake. The interiors of the posher areas where clients are being wined and dined don't look that classy too, particularly in comparison to The End of The World, the story I last blogged, which was made three years earlier at New Who's beginning when everyone knew less about how to put the show together. Perhaps Planet of the Ood just had a bit less money spent on it than others. The big action sequence - Tennant being pursued by a giant grabber claw - is fine, but doesn't have much to do with the events of the story; it feels like it was (and maybe I've read somewhere that it definitely was?) an idea the production team had for an action sequence that was just waiting for a story for it to be crowbarred into.

Best of the performances, and maybe not coincidentally in all the scenes where the plot is truly moving forward, is Tim McInnerny as Klineman Halpen. He's very good at doing the oily, pinstriped CEO, but there are flashes of vulnerability in moments where he dwells on his childhood or lack thereof (Slave trading of Ood is a family business, which he's been prepared for from a very young age), and McInnerny does very well at showing us a man teetering on the edge of coming apart, literally pulling his hair out with stress in some scenes. It's witty of the script to then show him physically as well as metaphorically coming apart at the denouement, when he turns into an Ood in a gruesome splattery sequence. Through the story, though, McInnerny keeps Halpen the right side of being a villain, we can't ever fully sympathise with him and his fate does not seem undeserved. Ayesha Dharker as PR person Solana Mercurio gets one knockout scene, as she struggles between what we're given to suspect she knows is the moral thing to do versus keeping her job, and chooses wrong (then gets killed to punish her for this mistake). Other actors are not as well served, with Roger Griffiths as Kess, for example, struggling to find much depth in the one-note henchman role as written. It sounds like I didn't like the story as much as I did. It's perfectly okay, just not much more than that. 

One aspect that's good that I haven't mentioned is a clue to how Planet of the Ood was just a stepping stone for later overarching plots: Murray Gold's music, and in particular the choral work for the song of the Ood. This will develop (and probably it was mostly unplanned at the time and only retroactively made to fit, but that's showbusiness) into themes - both plot-wise and musically - for David Tennant's final stories as the Doctor. We will see the image of an Ood in the snow again before too long.     

Connectivity: 

Both Planet of the Ood and The End of the World are from the (first) Russell T Davies showrunner period of new series Doctor Who, and both feature alien creatures invented by him. In both stories there are scenes of rich people partying in expensive surroundings as well as more industrial locations elsewhere. In both, the Doctor takes his female companion for her first trip into the future, and they have a minor tiff where the companion accuses him of taking cheap shots. Both stories feature a speech about humankind thriving and spreading despite pessimistic contemporary worries abut the race dying off (both scripts specify global warming as one 21st century worry). 

Deeper Thoughts:

Early Christmas Gifts (of Peace in all Good Faith) - Part 2. The story so far is that certain circumstances arising in 2021 have rekindled an obsession for completion in my Doctor Who Target books collection, which I thought I'd left behind nearly 30 years ago. I have bought the final three books I don't own to complete the collection, and I have done this late in 2021, so I can draw a line under this madness! With luck, and the sober January chill of a new year incoming, I won't be tempted to find new categories of book to collect - it is an expensive habit. These final three are a short-lived offshoot from the main range, covering adventures of 'The Companions of Doctor Who' after their time with the Doctor. The first book was about Turlough, and my feelings about it, in all their gory detail, can be found in the Deeper Thoughts section of the previous blog post. The second one, originally published in September 1986, is Harry Sullivan's War by Ian Marter. Marter had of course played Sullivan with Tom Baker in the 1970s, but more recently had become one of the regular writers of Target novelisations of broadcast Doctor Who stories, including many that he'd starred in back in the day. As such, he was more than qualified to write an original story about his fictional lookalike. Not that it's a wholly original story, being an espionage action-thriller very much in the mould of a James Bond book. I don't remember ever seeing the book anywhere to buy when it came out. The only memory I have of it from back then was a letter from Marter in Doctor Who Magazine complaining about accusations of plagiarism.

I'd started picking up the magazine again after a gap as Doctor Who was back on television (with Colin Baker's Trial of a Timelord season) so had missed the book review, and only saw Marter's reply to it. The main thrust was that the author had never seen the 1985 Bond film A View to a Kill, so the resemblances to his novel - including situating climactic events atop the Eiffel Tower - were coincidental. The novel and the letter were sadly the last examples of Marter's Doctor Who writing to be published before he died terribly young a few weeks later (on October 28th 1986, his 42nd birthday). At that point, he'd delivered two manuscripts of novelisations (for The Reign of Terror and The Rescue) that would be published posthumously over the next couple of years. Working that far in advance, it's possible Harry Sullivan's War had been written before A View to a Kill even hit cinemas in mid-1985; but, in general it is clearly inspired by Ian Fleming's work, and the Bond film adaptations (particularly the Roger Moore starring ones that were current at the time of writing). The book sees Harry 10 years after his travels with the Doctor doing top secret government work on anti-toxins. He starts to get attempts made on his life by members of an anarchist organisation who are opposed to chemical weapons. There ensues many chase scenes with sports cars and helicopters, investigations, double-crosses, code breaking, fights, escapes, and a little bit of globe-trotting (action takes place in England, Scotland and France, and visits landmarks like the National Gallery and the Forth Bridge as well as la Tour Eiffel).

It's hard to know whether some of the flaws are down to Marter, or are mainlined direct from Fleming: in the first couple of chapters, there's the questionable characterisation of a West Indian bodybuilder henchman, for example; it's dodgy, but you could say that about characters featured in the relevant Bond books and films too. There's sexism, of course. A couple of female characters, described in physical terms when introduced, throw themselves at Harry. As the writer looks exactly like the character, this made me a little queasy - is there a male fantasy or two being played out here?  It is clear that Marter is not trying to subvert this genre, but is wholeheartedly celebrating it, but for all the flaws it's infinitely more enjoyable than Turlough and the Earthlink Dilemma. There are flaws that are definitely Marter's too, such as two major plot holes. First, why are the baddies trying to kill Harry at the beginning if their plan is to use his knowledge on anti-toxins for their own ends? Second, how come the secret service turn up at the end to arrest the many wrongdoers that are still left alive? Harry never told anyone he was going to Paris. There are less significant loose ends too. There's a big fuss about the initials labelling the tapes that have been made from the anarchists bugging various places. Harry works out what one means, but there's never an explanation of the others and it doesn't have any bearing on future events. If I was supposed to work it out, I couldn't (be bothered). There's the massive coincidence where a good character just happens to turn up at a dead drop - on a remote island - that the baddies are using, to throw suspicion on her as a red herring. It stretches credibility that she'd happen to be there for other reasons.

Overall, it's fairly good and never boring. Harry makes an endearingly bungling spy, and there are nice cameos from the Brigadier and Sarah Jane Smith in there. It was certainly a better foundation for a continuing series of original companion stories, with lots of contenders that could have been featured (Jo Grant, Tegan, Susan, etc.). Unfortunately, it was not to be. The only other contribution to the range was not an original story at all, but a novelisation of the TV spin off K9 and Company by the original writer Terence Dudley, published in 1987, nearly six years after it was broadcast. My feelings on the story are recorded in my blog post about it here. The book suffers from not having some of the only things about the story that are fun (the theme music, the beginning credits sequence, some of the performances) but it does give Dudley a chance to smooth over some of the more odd plotting decisions. Motivations and emotions are much clearer when we get insights into the characters' thoughts. There's only so much that can be changed though, as there was a definite expectation from the readership that the novelisations would be generally faithful to what was on TV. The only significant difference in the text is the locale; events have been moved from a fictional town in Gloucestershire to a fictional town in Dorset. My guess as to why is that Dudley was more familiar with that neck of the woods, the better to describe it accurately in prose. I don't think there's any bearing on the plot (unless witches' covens are more likely to still exist in Dorset, perhaps?). Ultimately, this is K9 and Company in all its dubious glory, and whether you enjoy the book or not is entirely dependent on how you feel about the TV version.

Since 1987, though there have been many ranges of original stories featuring Doctors new and old, a series of original novels featuring companions has never again been created. A couple of one-off novels have been published over the years since the show came back; like Harry Sullivan's War, these both had the distinction of being written or co-written by the actor that portrayed the main featured character. A Torchwood novel Exodus Code by John Barrowman and his sister Carole came out in 2012, and Sophie Aldred penned At Childhood's End, featuring Ace, which was published last year. That's it for now, though there may be more one-offs in future. I'm not collecting those two, or any other books. The Targets are done, and I have to draw a line. (Obviously, if I crack, change my mind and start collecting all the Virgin New Adventures, say, I'll let you know here!)

In Summary:

It's fairly G-Ood, but not that g-Reat.