January 19: "The Impossible Planet"

The TARDISode suggests that someone wanted this impossible planet to be found -- even if the map was found on the other end of the galaxy (although, given it's full of the untranslatable symbols, how did they figure out where the place was?)...

This first episode of the latest two-parter is probably the closest the BBC Wales series has come yet to capturing the spirit of the New Adventures, Virgin's '90s novel series featuring the seventh Doctor which frequently dealt with ancient beings and crazy set-ups.  "The Impossible Planet" has the feel of those books (perhaps not the most surprising thing, given that the author of this, Matt Jones, wrote one of the last NAs, Bad Therapy), with an isolated human base uncovering an ancient force that's gathering its strength.  (It's also rather like a Tom Baker story, but as there's no story or legend being overtly remade, it's not as clear-cut a connection as you might think.)  But while there are lots of hints as to what's going on, we don't really get anything too explicit here; sure, the Ood at the end refer to the Beast as Abaddon, Satan, and Lucifer, but that's not really proof (after all, the Doctor suggests in The Dæmons that it was the titular beings that led to the idea of the "Horned Beast").

But what this episode does really well is create an atmosphere of solitude and tension; the conditions of the planet are such that help isn't coming¹⁷³, and even the Doctor and Rose are isolated when the part of the base that the TARDIS is parked in disappears down into the depths of the planet.  This means that, as things start to go to hell (sorry), there's no escape for any of them; they have to deal with the events head-on.

They do a really good job of making things feel more dangerous with their throwaway lines.  The way the Ood matter-of-factly say things like, "The Beast and his Armies shall rise from the Pit to make war against God," is nicely done, and the whole sequence with Toby and the voice in his quarters is suitably creepy -- and the sight of all the sigils on Toby's hands and face are extremely effective.  (Although the fact that they've cast Gabriel Woolf -- who, you might, recall, was Sutekh in Pyramids of Mars -- as the voice of the Beast looks like a deliberate effort to make long-term fans think something different is coming in the second part from what we actually get.)  The death of Scooti is really distressing, and the discovery of her body, framed against the black hole, is a memorable moment.  (Though as long as we're here, let's note that the black hole shown isn't a very accurate depiction of the genuine object; supposedly they looked into doing a scientifically accurate rendition but decided it wasn't as visually interesting.  Wait, really?  That suggests they were doing it wrong...)

And one of the nicer moments in this episode is the Doctor contemplating life without the TARDIS, having to settle down and do normal things.  It's a quiet interlude, and Rose's awkward fumbling as she tries to suggest living with the Doctor is rather sweet; happily, in fact, "The Impossible Planet"'s characterization of Rose is a lot closer to series 1's than what we've been getting -- other than some painfully forced laughter right at the beginning (oh, and the moment when the Doctor realizes the TARDIS is gone where the script makes her distressingly thick -- but that looks like it's been included for any viewers who haven't cottoned on to the problem, rather than as a character point for Rose), this is a much more pleasant and sympathetic Rose.  And while Rose is doing a lot better, the Doctor is also firing on all cylinders -- he's clever at the right moments, worried when he should be¹⁷⁴, and somber when the story needs him to be.  Even his hug of Zach and his little speech about humans (which by all rights should have been an excruciating moment) is passable.

Danny watches as a guard is killed by a possessed Ood. ("The
Impossible Planet") ©BBC

Meanwhile we get a great new alien design in the form of the Ood -- the tentacles hanging from the mouth area are creepy without being terrifying, and the eyes rotated so that they're at a diagonal to the rest of the face is a cool move.  The overall effect is rather pleasing -- alien but not threatening.  Making them a slave race is also rather distressing -- despite any protestations from the Ood themselves -- and this firmly puts us on Rose's side, as well as making them feel unthreatening.  But that makes their possession by the Beast, as they become the Legion of the Beast (complete with red eyes), all the more scary, as these rather benign creatures start killing people, all while they're apparently mentally screaming.  It's a really effective moment.  The only real downside is that they're still slaves -- just to the Beast, rather than humanity.  (To be fair, this aspect will be addressed in series 4, in Planet of the Ood.)

There are other minor problems here and there.  There seems to be some artifacts from earlier drafts that lead to strange moments (most notably, Ida scoffing at the idea that the planet they're on has a name -- "Don't be stupid.  It hasn't got a name.  How could it have a name?" -- and then a few minutes later stating that "in the scriptures of the Veltino, this planet is called Krop Tor"), and while the orange spacesuits look neat, putting lights inside the helmet like that seems really impractical.  Oh, and it's all well and good grabbing public domain files for your sound effects, but maybe don't pick one intimately connected with the sound of a door opening in the one of the most popular and influential PC games of all time (Doom, if you need to be told).

But ultimately "The Impossible Planet" is a huge success -- we get a nice slice of terrifying Who, done through suggestion and the development of tension rather than cheap shock moments.  If they can deliver in the next episode, this story might go down as one of the best ever.







¹⁷³ Something to note is that no one ever mentions relativity effects, which would probably make help largely useless anyway; possibly this is handled by the gravity funnel that let them get to the planet in the first place, but then that gravity funnel seems to collapse at the end of the episode.  But then, if relativity was a factor, wouldn't it be pointless trying to get the power source from the center of the place?  By the time they were successful the rest of the universe would have long since passed them by, presumably rendering the attempt irrelevant.
¹⁷⁴ Namely, at the language so ancient that the TARDIS can't translate it.  But what does that actually mean?  Presumably the written translation function works by the TARDIS scanning the brains of the people in the area (via that telepathic field), working out how their written language works, and then giving that information to the Doctor (and any other relevant people).  So if the TARDIS can't translate it, that must mean it's never encountered any other speakers of that language.  Of course, given the size of the universe and everyone in it, this perhaps isn't the most surprising thing ever.  Nevertheless, the Doctor treats this as an impossible event, which suggests that this race had already come and gone before the Time Lords came about -- and that they either made no impact on the universe (despite their advanced technology, and the fact that one of their books made it across the galaxy (as seen in the TARDISode)) or they deliberately shielded themselves from the Time Lords (or that the Time Lords never ventured back to the beginning of time, but this seems unlikely); either way, the Time Lords (and, by extension, any TARDISes) never encountered these people.  Odd no matter how you look at it.
     (There's a possible get-out clause: if we assume that this civilization is actually from the universe before our current one -- which seems to have been established as a real thing (in internal continuity terms) in Terminus -- and that they never made it to this universe (perhaps their dying act before our Big Bang was to ensure that the Beast would be imprisoned), this might explain the stuff about the language being unknown by the TARDIS.  This theory comes with its own set of problems, though.  (Such as, for starters, how did the Beast and the planet survive the Big Bang, and why (jumping ahead here) is the Beast found in the legends of so many races?))