The Impossible Planet

Marvellous. Planet of Evil, The Daemons, The Robots of Death, Alien, Event Horizon, Solaris say what you like about similarities with past episodes and other things but this was marvellous. I was disappointed with last weks ep but this brought us back on track with a vengeance. I liked the way that they stretched the boundaries of the usual base under siege story. Instead of the usual, 'you're strangers you must be responsible for this', it's subverted by the doc just saying to the base commander, 'you trust me don't you?' and the commander basically saying, 'yeah OK'.

The design of the Ood was great, very HP LOvecraft. Despite the comparisons made with other things I think that Lovecraft is a huge influence on this. If you haven't read 'At the Mountains of Madness' then read it because it's a great story but it's very like this. The scientists in that story found impossibly old creatures and writing in the Antarctic (which means 'without bears' incidentally so there) just like the Doctor realises that the writing is impossibly old.

The doc is left without the TARDIS in this ep and is apparently stranded, this is dramatically necessary because it adds to the claustrophobia and means he has no choice but to throw his lot in with the crew. It asn't been explained yet why an immortal entity at the edge of the cosmos would use judeo christian imagery but I suppose that we are coming up on the 6/6/6. By the way if 666 is the number of the beast then is 665.99 the recommended retail price of the beast?

I still remember watching The Planet of Evil for the first time and the cliffhanger when the monster rises out of the pit as a child and seeing the seal open in this episode reminded me of it. Oh yeah, another reference, the seal of Danthazar which the ubervamps come out of in Buffy. There's nothing wrong with borrowing from other things, it's only plaigarism if it isn't any good. Next episode please and a knighthood for Russell if Margaret Thatcher comes out of the pit.