Planet of the Dead

I have a real love/ hate relationship with the new incarnation of Doctor Who. I watched the Easter special and it definitely fell into the hate category. Why? It was nothing special. It seemed to be a mish-mash of Lara Croft, Mission Impossible, Pitch Black and other films and TV shows.

My first moment of oh dear occured when the security guards at the gallery appeared and marched, in unison, to the gold cup on display. They had guns. In a gallery? They had laser beams protecting the exhibit. And they all cleverly faced outwards. The theif then came from above; where there was no security.

The episode then proceeded to be, quite frankly, very silly. The police couldn't catch a bus in a chase. A mobile phone worked across the galaxy. The sonic screwdriver has become a cool gadget with no purpose other than to be a cool gadget. Yes, it was funny for about one second to see the Doctor change his glasses into sunglasses. But the screwdriver has become an easy plot device. Locked in a room. Point the screwdriver. Need something fixing. Point the screwdriver. You get the point. Need to free someone from handcuffs. You guessed it.

Lady Christina needed to turn off a force field. Lo and behold there is a big red off button just above the field. The wormhole had spread to ten miles in diameter, but on screen was a little bigger than the tunnel.

As for the characters... Ladt Christina was okay. Lee Evans as the scientist was okay. The character of the UNIT commander was embarrassing. Saluting the Doctor for the first time whilst speaking to him on the phone! The characters on the bus were not really characters and as for the psychic lady, well she was only there for the prediction at the end of the episode.

And let's not get started on the silliness with the flying bus.

It also felt like David Tennant was sleepwalking through this episode. Normally he is excellent. Though, he can only work with what is scripted.

There have been some very good episodes of Doctor Who. This wasn't one of them.

I respect that RTD has returned Who to our screens and very successfully, but more often than not, his episodes seem to be the weakest ones. I could go on and deconstruct this episode further, but suffice to say that it was disappointing.

It can, and has, been argued that Who is for a family and mainstream audience and that, as such, it should be taken with a fair amount of suspension of disbelief. I have nothing against silliness (I am a huge fan of Farscape which had some incredibly silly episodes), but the silly moments should at least make sense. SF can be light, but still retain some consistency in the rules of the world or universe it is set in. Certain episodes of Star Trek, in all it's incarnations, had humour and silliness. Buffy and Angel often did. Yet Who seems to have silly moments for the sake of having them rather than for any story related purpose.

Doctor Who should be consistent and should have rules that guide the fictional universe in which it is set. It can be fun, but it doesn't have to be dumb.

I suppose that I had higher expectations for a special that had a longer running time than a normal episode. This one fell into the hate category. Oh well, maybe The Waters of Mars will restore my faith.

Or not.