The Impossible Planet

After convincing many of my friends that the new Doctor Who is well worth viewing (both Ecclestone and Tennant) the one criticism that I keep hearing is "They never seem to go anywhere other than Earth". Well personally I have no problem with the Earthbound episodes as long as the story is a good one, which by and large they have been in my opinion, but now with The Impossible Planet maybe there is something to satisfy those who want to see more space and alien planets in Doctor Who.

This one grabbed me right from the outset, a very wheezy and "sick" sounding TARDIS slowly materialising with the Police Box sign lights flickering on and off, gets the attention straight away. Rose and the Doctor emerge into what is described as "a cupboard" and begin to explore. On a wall is sprayed the friendly greeting "Welcome to hell" (a clue of what's to come?) under which is some mysterious alien writing that the Doctor states is "impossibly old" as even he and the TARDIS are unable to translate it. It's not long before they come face to face with the Ood, the new alien creatures for this story, humanoid...ish but with squid like faces and a multitude of red tentacles where their mouths should be. The prosthetics department have really gone to town here and made these creatures look real and believable, a far cry from the bubble wrap monster. And so with the Doctor and Rose surrounded by the Ood all proclaiming "We must feed, we must feed" we go to the opening credits in true Doctor Who cliff-hanger style. So far so good.

Okay so we have some pieces already in place, all is obviously not well with the TARDIS, a strange alien script, the reference to Hell and some new "monsters". I'm not going to go through the story minute by minute as most people reading this will have already watched the episode or be planning to and this is a review not a synopsis. I'll just pick out certain important aspects.

The main thought that springs to mind is the whole darkness of this episode and how close to the wind the Doctor Who production team seem to be sailing these days especially when you consider that this is shown at 7pm on a Saturday evening and is aimed at both adults and children alike. This is a story about evil, we're not talking nasty evil Daleks from Skaro or humans turned into emotionless Cybermen here, we're talking real evil. The references used provide little doubt to adult viewers as to what is lurking deep beneath the planets surface. The Doctor works out how much power is needed to keep the planet in it's orbit above an all consuming black hole and Rose mentions that his answer is "all the sixes". An Ood serving Rose her dinner announces that "The beast will rise from the pit and do battle with God". The archaeologist member of the base crew asks who it is talking to him and the reply is "I have many names". So there can be little doubt that this is the ultimate evil that the Doctor must deal with, the Devil himself. At one point the possessed Ood even mention Satan by name.

Now I watch Doctor Who with my son aged 6 and my two daughters aged 7 and 12, we all love it and despite what I have written in the previous paragraph I really did not have any problem or reservations about them watching this, after all many of the references they probably didn't get anyway, as far as they're concerned it's probably typical Doctor Who, something nasty is lurking somewhere, someone will meet a sticky end and the Doctor will (probably) save the day. But the religious aspect is most definitely there, this along with the whole darkness of the story may give some parents cause for concern.

I gauge the scariness of an episode by my youngest daughters reaction, this tends to be a pointer as to whether the Doctor Who "behind the sofa" thing has actually worked. During the episode "Dalek" she was actually in tears at one point and was torn between running upstairs to avoid it altogether or carrying on watching to see what happened, in the end curling up on Daddy under a quilt and peeking out every so often won the day.I'm not cruel, she didn't have to watch it honest, but I must confess that I was somewhat impressed that the Daleks still had the same effect on her that they had on me many, many moons ago. That was her first real taste of what Doctor Who can really be about. Other obvious episodes that come to mind that had a similar reaction from her were "The Empty Child" and "Tooth and Claw".

So how did my little Leah fair with "The Impossible Planet", well she did turn round and say "ooo, I don't like them much" when she first saw the Ood, but she was still quite happy to sit away from me on her own. The voice behind Toby whispering "I can see you, don't turn around" had her hurrying over to sit with me. "If you turn round you will die" had her hugging me rather tightly, the clincher was "I'm reaching out, I can touch you", that was the quilt over the head and "I don't think I want to watch this anymore" moment and I have to admit that there's something about disembodied, threatening voices that still works even for me. The imagination works overtime and it's not what you can see but what you can't see that can be truly scary. Even my other two children were sitting a lot closer together and staring wide eyed at the screen at this point and usually nothing in Doctor Who phases them at all.

But does it all work as a whole, I would say most certainly it does. The boundaries have been pushed just a little further and the team have come up with a real cracker here. The raised production values of the "new" Doctor Who have never been more obvious. This has had some real work and money pumped into it and it shows big time. Okay the base interior could have been taken straight from the Alien film but it has been built as a set and it looks the part, perfect. No white walls, shiny new computer consoles or sliding doors here, this is a dirty, noisy mining operation in the most inhospitable environment possible and it looks like it! The Ood are completely convincing. The CGI is terrific without overwhelming everything else, the black hole looks like you'd imagine the universes ultimate destructive force to look like, not scientifically what it SHOULD look like but how the imagination says it should look.

Doctor Who Confidential afterwards proved how much effort went into this one, a view of a poor hapless base member floating off into space being drawn in by the black hole that was on screen for all of about 10 seconds (if that) was meticulously filmed in the underwater studio at Pinewood Studios just to get the weightless effect right. I would say that to date this is the closest any Doctor Who episode has come to the cinematic experience on the small screen. And to top it all, the underground sequence was filmed in a quarry, Who finally returns to the quarries (although unlike previous quarry visits unless you were told you would never guess that it was filmed in one of these places)

My summary: Stunning production, great effects, very scary (especially for younger viewers). Completely engrossing, I only hope that the concluding episode of this particular story doesn't let it down.