Planet of the Dead

Show Doctor Who / Series IV / Episode 16
First Broadcast 2009/05/31 - 19:30 (Link: ABC Details)
Related Links Wikipedia
Previous EpisodeThe Next Doctor
Next EpisodeThe Waters Of Mars

With a long break between episodes, this one seemed a little ... rusty. The actors were good, as were some of the special effects, but the story didn't really grab me. Average is the best I can give this one.

The episode begins with a cat burglar (Lady Christina) stealing a rare cup. She makes her escape on a bus. The Doctor joins her. At first it seems he's following her, but it turns out to be coincidence. Then the bus travels through a worm-hole to another planet. The police chasing Christina call in UNIT.

The planet is apparently all sand. A fly-like biped captures the Doctor and Christina. We then discover the cause of the worm-hole and what turned the whole planet to sand, a vast swarm of metallic, flying, string-ray-like creatures, coming their way fast.

The Doctor, with Christina's aid, gets his hands on a crystal and they return to the bus. Turns out the crystal is housed in some anti-gravity devices. The Doctor affixes them to the wheels of the bus. And lo and behold the bus flies, back through the worm-hole. UNIT manages to close the worm-hole soon after and destroy the three sting-rays that came through.

All that remains is for the Doctor to say no to Christina when she asks to come with him. To much sadness there now it seems. The Doctor does help Christina to escape from the police though. And finally the psychic bus passenger delivers a warning to the Doctor. His song is ending soon (echoing the Planet of the Ood). "He will knock four times." I wonder who that could refer to.

Comments

Post new comment

The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.
  • Internal paths in double quotes, written as "internal:node/99", for example, are replaced with the appropriate absolute URL or relative path.
  • Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.
  • Allowed HTML tags: <a> <em> <strong> <cite> <code> <ul> <ol> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd> <sup> <sub> <h1> <h2> <h3> <img> <acronym> <strike>
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.
  • Images can be added to this post.
  • Filtered words will be replaced with the filtered version of the word.

More information about formatting options