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"Planet of the Dead" is an episode of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who that was broadcast on 11 April 2009. It is the first of four specials to be broadcast throughout 2009 and early 2010.

Plot

Lady Christina, after stealing a valuable gold artifact from a museum, escapes the police by riding on the same London bus as the Doctor, who is looking for something using a makeshift device. When the device overloads, the Doctor warns the passengers to hold on, as the bus, pursued by the police, suddenly passes through a wormhole and ends up on an alien planet covered by sand. The Doctor and the other passengers find the wormhole is still present but that the bus protected them like a Faraday cage, and they would need to get the bus mobile to safely make the return trip. UNIT is called into the scene in London, commanded by Capt. Magambo. The Doctor is able to contact UNIT through modified cell phones, and learns from UNIT's scientific adviser, Dr. Malcolm Taylor, that the wormhole is growing, growing several miles wide. Carmen, an older lady with claimed psychic abilities, hears numerous voices from all around them. While the other passengers work to free the bus, the Doctor and Lady Christina scout the planet, taking a keen interest in what seems to be an incoming sandstorm.

The two encounter a Tritovore, an anthropomorphic fly species, who takes them to their wrecked spaceship. The Doctor helps to assure them of the situation, learning they were making a routine delivery to the planet and crashed. He uses the ship's probes to discover that but a year ago, the planet housed a billion-strong population but were turned to sand, their psychic memories resonating with Carmen. The probe further reveals the oncoming sandstorm is actually a large number of manta ray-like aliens, the cause of the destruction of the planet's surface. The Doctor determines the species consume the surface of each planet, and then move quickly in large numbers to create a wormhole and use it to move to a new planet to consume, in this case, Earth. With Lady Christina's burglary skills, the two help the Tritovore to recover a power crystal and its pedestal from a deep well in the ship; however, Lady Christina's presence awakes an alien in the Tritovore's hull and it begins to pursue them. The group flee back to the bus, but the Tritovores are consumed by the alien.

The Doctor quickly uses the pedestal the crystal was on to allow the bus to fly, using the gold from the artifact Lady Christina stole as the means to interface the alien technology with the bus. The Doctor flies the bus back through the wormhole safely but are followed by three aliens before Taylor is able to close up the wormhole. UNIT dispatches the aliens and the bus passengers are debriefed by UNIT. The Doctor recommends that the two teenagers should be hired because they were good in reacting to the crisis. Christina expects to be taken on as the Doctor's companion, but he coldly rejects her, because he does not want to lose another companion. Shortly afterwards, he releases her from handcuffs by sonic screwdriver and allows her to escape police custody in the flying bus, though she makes a point to leave the Doctor on good terms.

In the episode's closing moments, Carmen predicts that the Doctor's "song" is "nearly over", something that the Ood previously told the Doctor in "Planet of the Ood". She also tells him that "it is returning from the darkness" and that "he will knock four times."

Continuity

• Barclay recalls "when all those planets were up in the sky", and Nathan says, "It was the Earth that moved back then." This is a reference to the events of "The Stolen Earth" and "Journey's End".
• The Doctor mentions being accused of being the cause of problems by humans on buses. The last time this happened was in "Midnight".

Outside references

• Dr Malcolm Taylor mentions a unit of measurement that he named after Bernard Quatermass. Quatermass has been referenced twice before in Doctor Who, in the 1989 serial Remembrance of the Daleks and in the 2005 Christmas special The Christmas Invasion.
• The plot was largely inspired by the 1965 James Stewart film The Flight Of The Phoenix in which a 'plane carrying a small number of passengers crash lands in the desert and is trapped until one of the passengers modifies the craft so it is capable of flight.

Production

Writing and casting

Showrunner and head writer Russell T Davies co-wrote the episode with Gareth Roberts, the first writing partnership for the show since its revival. "Planet of the Dead" was a departure from Roberts' usual stories—Roberts had previously only written pseudo-historical stories—and instead consisted of "wild" science fiction elements from his literary career and teenage imagination. The episode had no clear concept—such as Charles Dickens and ghosts appearing in "The Unquiet Dead" or Shakespeare and witches in "The Shakespeare Code"—and instead was a deliberate "clash with many disparate elements". Roberts explained he was cautious to ensure that each element had to "feel precise and defined ... like we meant that", giving Arc of Infinity as an example where such control was not enforced.

Unlike the Christmas specials, the theme of Easter was not emphasised in the story; the episode only contained a "fleeting mention" of the holiday instead of "robot bunnies carrying baskets full of deadly egg bombs". The episode's tone word—"joyous"—was influenced by Davies' realisation that "every story since "The Fires of Pompeii" a bittersweet quality" and subsequent desire to avoid the recurring theme. The starting point for the story was Roberts' freshman novel The Highest Science. Davies liked the image of a London Underground train on a desert planet and rewrote it to contain a bus. Davies nevertheless emphasised it was not an "adaptation as such" because tangential elements were constantly being conceived and added.

Michelle Ryan portrays Lady Christina de Souza, the daughter of a recently impoverished aristocrat and adrenaline junkie. Christina is a "typical" Doctor Who companion, Davies electing to draw parallels from the Time Lady Romana rather than new series companion Rose Tyler. Roberts described her as an "adventuress" who is "upper class and glam, suited and booted, and extremely intelligent" and that the Doctor can relate to because they both rejected their heritages. Comedian Lee Evans plays Professor Malcolm Taylor, a UNIT scientist devoted to his predecessor, the Doctor. Davies created Evans' character to serve as a foil for Noma Dumezweni's pragmatic character Captain Erisa Magambo, who previously appeared in the episode "Turn Left". Roberts noted after writing the episode that Evans' character had unintentionally become a "loving" caricature of Doctor Who fandom.

The episode was influenced by several outside works; Davies described "Planet of the Dead" as "a great big adventure, a little bit Indiana Jones, a little bit Flight of the Phoenix, a little bit Pitch Black."

Pre-production on the four specials started on 20 November 2008, four days before scheduled because the episode's overseas filming in Dubai required the extra planning time. Two weeks later, the production team was on a recce for the special and the final draft of the script was completed. Production began on 19 January in Wales.

Filming

Rumours of overseas shooting in Dubai were confirmed by Davies in interviews in late January, who indicated the need for a desert on "a proper alien planet". At the same time, reports emerged that a 1980 Bristol VR double-decker bus — previously alluded to as a major element of the story — had been substantially damaged during transport to Dubai. Subsequently, the bus was partially reconstructed and used in filming although substantial rewrites were necessary to maintain the production schedule. Russell T Davies later explained that only one page of the script had been altered to incorporate the damage, and that there was, "...no crisis. None at all."

It is the first episode of Doctor Who to be filmed in HD.

200th story

"Planet of the Dead" was advertised as Doctor Who's 200th story. Writer Russell T Davies admitted that the designation was arbitrary and debatable, based upon how fans counted the unfinished serial Shada, the season-long fourteen-part serial The Trial of a Time Lord, and the series three finale consisting of "Utopia", "The Sound of Drums" and "Last of the Time Lords". Davies personally disagreed about counting The Trial of a Time Lord as one serial—arguing that it " like four stories" to him—and grouping "Utopia" with its following episodes, but agreed that it was only an opinion which did not override any others. Gareth Roberts inserted a reference to the landmark—specifically, the bus number is 200—and Davies emailed the show's publicity team to advertise the special as such. Doctor Who Magazine' editor Tom Spilsbury acknowledged the controversy in the magazine's 407th issue, which ran a reader survey of all 200 stories.

Hedingham Omnibuses

Standing in for the London Bus was a pair of Hedingham Omnibuses, from North Essex, which had never seen service in the capital, and a miniature model. The original livery can be seen in the accompanying episode of Doctor Who Confidential.

References

1. Cook, Benjamin (11–17 April 2009), "Sands of time", Radio Times, pp. pp. 16-20 {{citation}}: |pages= has extra text (help)
2. Tribe, Steve (2009). Doctor Who: Companions and Allies. BBC Books. p. 96. ISBN 978-1-846-07749-4. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
3. "Doctor Who - The Tennant Tapes". BBC. 28 March 2009. Retrieved 28 March 2009.
4. ^ "Planet of the Dead listing". Radio Times. 11-17 April 2009 (cover date). {{cite journal}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
5. "Series Five". BBC. 3 September 2007. Retrieved 25 January 2009.
6. ^ "Get ready for Planet of the Dead!". Doctor Who Magazine (404). Royal Tunbridge Wells, Kent: Panini Comics: 5. 4 February 2009 (cover date). {{cite journal}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
7. "Doctor Who - Saturday 11 April - Programme Details". Radio Times. Retrieved 2009-04-04.
8. "Press Office - Network TV Programme Information BBC Week 15". BBC. 1 April 2009. Retrieved 1 April 2009.
9. "Doctor Who - Episodes - Series Four". BBC. 2008-03-28. Retrieved 2009-04-12.
10. Writer Russell T. Davies, Director Graeme Harper, Producer Phil Collinson (28 June 2008). "The Stolen Earth". Doctor Who. BBC. BBC One. {{cite episode}}: Unknown parameter |city= ignored (|location= suggested) (help)
    Writer Russell T. Davies, Director Graeme Harper, Producer Phil Collinson (5 July 2008). "Journey's End". Doctor Who. BBC. BBC One. {{cite episode}}: Unknown parameter |city= ignored (|location= suggested) (help)
11. Cornell, Paul. "Doctor Who Classic Episode Guide - Remembrance of the Daleks - Details". The Discontinuity Guide. BBC Doctor Who website. Retrieved 12 April 2009. {{cite web}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help); Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
12. "The Christmas Invasion - Fact File". BBC Doctor Who website. Retrieved 12 April 2009. {{cite web}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)
13. ^ DWM 407 preview, p6-7
14. Roberts, DWM406
15. Cite error: The named reference DWMroberts was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
16. ^ "All aboard for next special". BBC. 23 January 2009. Retrieved 25 January 2009.
17. Colville, Robert (11 April 2009). "Russell T Davies Doctor Who interview: full transcript". The Daily Telegraph. Retrieved 11 April 2009.
18. DWM 403 production notes
19. DWM 404 production notes
20. Nick Setchfield (28 January 2009). "Doctor Whobai". SFX. Retrieved 29 January 2009.
21. Michelle Ryan Interview, "The Paul O'Grady Show" Channel 4, 5pm, 8 April 2009.
22. Ben Leach (28 January 2009). "Doctor Who filming disrupted as double decker bus wrecked". Daily Telegraph. Retrieved 29 January 2009.
23. ^ Davies, Russell T (1 April 2009 (cover date)). "Production Notes". Doctor Who Magazine (406). Royal Tunbridge Wells, Kent: Panini Comics: 4. {{cite journal}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
24. DWM 405 page 12
25. "The Stolen Earth: Fact File". Doctor Who microsite. BBC. 28 June 2008.
26. DWM 407 editor's notes
27. "Doctor Who Confidential: Desert Storm". BBC. 12 April 2009.

External links

• Planet of the Dead (TV story) on Tardis Wiki, the Doctor Who Wiki

Template:Doctor Who (2009-10 specials)

• 2009 television episodes
• British television specials
• Screenplays by Russell T Davies
• Tenth Doctor episodes