Doctor Who - Easter Special Review

[angelophile]

Managed to catch Planet of the Dead earlier. I'll avoid saying too much outside the cut, beyond that it had glimpses of both the best and worst of Russell T. Davis' writing.


I'll start off by saying - everyone who's made the comment that the special felt like a poor Tomb Raider and Doctor Who crossover fanfic has it exactly right. There were all the right ingredients for a fantastic episode. And then ladled on top was the cheesiest and most stomach churning concoction of Lara Croft meets the Whoniverse that could be imaged and succeeded in dragging what could have been a classic Midnight-esque nail biter down to pantomime levels.

Firstly, the great - an alien planet, proper aliens, a proper alien spacecraft, mention of Quatermass, Lee Evans making the most of a comedy role, the classic trapped humans plotline, wormholes in space, a plague of alien locusts, Tennant doing the now classic "I'll save you all" routine, UNIT back in force.

There was potential for brilliance there - the characters trapped on the bus on an alien world were, according to the Doctor himself, extraordinary and capable of extraordinary things.

Sadly we didn't see any of that because of so much screentime being devoted to Michelle Ryan's Lara Croft take-off, which was a pantomime character given a ridiculous pantomime plot which swamped everything else around it. She was the kind of character that even the Sarah Jane Mysteries would probably have discarded as being a bit too cheesy. Of course, cheesy can work - take Captain Jack - but it helps for a character to have some layers and Michelle Ryan seemed to make the character even more two dimensional with her performance as well as weak support from the rest of the ex Eastenders on the cast. I can't blame her for giving a shallow performance in a shallow role but I wonder if a different actress could have given a more layer performance.

On the other end of the spectrum there was Lee Evans as UNIT's new scientific advisor, the ultimate fanboy but somehow making the role endearing rather than irritating.

But on the other hand, once you add a flying London bus into the mix, the cheese starts to drown out the strong material.

It's a pity and, as is often the case with Russell T. Davis' writing, the ideas are often stronger than the execution. Or he gets distracted by inserting things he things will get kids flocking to stores to buy action figures. This story screamed of that, with a strong premise (bus full of ordinary people transported to an alien world) tainted by the design to randomly insert the "companion" character and make her exciting and dynamic from the start. On reality, the story would have come through stronger if the other characters had room to grow and become the xciting and dynamic ones, not the Mary Sue in tight leather.