Michelle Ryan is a nice bit of eye candy, but that's it. For someone who is supposed to be a thief, Lady Christina doesn't get very much to do aside from gabbing with The Doctor. She has a couple of instances showing off her thieving skills and those aren't that interesting. I thought it was a tad lame that she stood there at the end of story talking with The Doctor in front of all the cops for what seemed like forever. You know the cops are after you, move it — save the corny goodbyes for Rose Tyler.
Someone must have given a little too much caffeine to the editors. Much like "Rose," the first episode of the new series back in 2005, "Planet Of The Dead" has cuts where there don't need to be any. It's annoying and shows a lack of confidence in merely letting a scene be — unless, of course, there isn't much to keep.
Lee Evans is the saving grace of this story. His UNIT scientist character, Dr. Malcolm Taylor, was designed as a playful jab at the fandom which obsesses over the show and its alien time-traveling lead character. I liked his energy. Unlike David Tennant when he's hyper in his performance as The Doctor, not only does the character of Malcolm Taylor make sense when he's babbling technical terms, it actually comes off as funny.
Funny, pure and unintentional, is rare in New Who.
The scenes that take place on the damaged bus remind me a lot of an earlier Russell Davies story, "Midnight", which was broadcast during series four last year. I didn't really like that story myself and found it a shame that he repeated that scenario slightly for "Planet Of The Dead."
The bus passengers don't get a whole lot to do besides worry and fret. One of them, Carmen (Ellen Thomas), is a cliched psychic who can see warnings from the future. As with series four's "Turn Left", the last few minutes deposit (this time through Carmen) another cryptic set of messages for fans to faint over for months until the next special — the first of them being "Your song will end" and the second being "He will knock four times."
Article comments
1 - Nancy
I liked Michelle Ryan, she was one of the few saving graces of this episode. She should be the next companion.
2 - Phillip Winn
I don't know, it didn't seem that bad. Then again, I generally think the show has only 2-3 good episodes a year, with the rest uneventful fluff, so I suppose my expectations weren't all that high.
Of course, with only four episodes this "series," one of them needs to be amazing! This definitely wasn't amazing.