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

Plot

The episode begins as Lady Christina robs a museum, stealing a gold chalice once belonging to King Athelstan; she then evades 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 modifies a mobile phone and makes contact with UNIT. UNIT's scientific adviser Dr. Malcolm Taylor informs the Doctor that the wormhole has grown up to several miles wide and that he is attempting to find a way to close it under Capt. Magambo's orders. Carmen, an older lady on the bus with claimed psychic abilities by her husband Lou, hears numerous voices from all around them. While the other passengers work to free the bus led by the technical prowess of the two teenagers Nathan and Barclay, the Doctor and Lady Christina scout the planet, taking a keen interest in what seems to be a distant incoming sandstorm.

The two encounter the Tritovore, an anthropomorphic fly species, who take them to their wrecked spaceship. The Doctor, able to translate their language, helps to assure them of the situation, learning they were making a routine collection from the planet and crashed. He uses the ship's probes to discover that but a year ago, the planet housed a 100-billion-strong population; the Tritovore had been planning on trading for the planet's excrement. Upon arriving, however, the Tritovore discovered that the planet's entire surface, including its biosphere, had been turned to sand, the population's psychic memories still resonating with Carmen. The probe further reveals that the oncoming sandstorm is actually a large number of manta ray-like aliens, the cause of the destruction of the planet's surface and of the Tritovores' crash landing. The Doctor determines that the species, as part of its life cycle, consumes the surface of each planet, and then moves quickly in large numbers to create a wormhole which they then use 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 artefact 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.

As Christina is escorted away, Carmen predicts that the Doctor's "song is ending". She also tells him that "it is returning through the dark" and that "he will knock four times." Shortly afterwards, the Doctor releases Christina from her handcuffs by the 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.

Continuity

Barclay recalls "when all those planets were up in the sky", and Nathan says "It was the Earth that moved back then", referring to the events of "The Stolen Earth" and "Journey's End".

Production

Writing and casting

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" which the Doctor could 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 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."; the relationship between the Doctor and Christina was influenced by 1960s films such as Charade and Topkapi, which included Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn "being witty and sophisticated together, and then running for their lives"; and the Tritovore were influenced by 1950s and 1970s science fiction B-movies such as The Fly and Davies' habit of including recognisable aliens such as the Judoon. The Doctor's rejection of Christina at the end of the episode was influenced by his recent losses in "Journey's End": under other circumstances, Christina would travel in the TARDIS with the Doctor; and Carmen's warning was a "classical" and "chilling" science-fiction prophecy which evoked memories of the Ood's warning to the Doctor and his then-companion Donna Noble in the fourth series episode "Planet of the Ood", and served to foreshadow the remaining three specials.

Filming

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. The production team examined overseas locations to film the episode because they wanted the scenery to feel "real" and thought that they would be unable to film on a Welsh beach in winter. After examining countries such as Morocco and Tunisia, the production team decided to film in Dubai because the area was more amicable to the filming industry and viable filming locations were nearer to urban areas than other locations.

Production began on 19 January in Wales. The special was the first to be filmed in high-definition television resolution, a move resisted for two major reasons: when the show was revived in 2005, high-definition television was not adopted by an adequate portion of the audience to be financially viable; and special effects were considerably more expensive and difficult to film using HD cameras as opposed to normal cameras. "Planet of the Dead" was used to switch to HD because of the show's reduced schedule in 2009 and because the filming crew had become experienced with the equipment while they were filming Torchwood.

Filming began at the National Museum Cardiff, which doubled for the history museum depicted in the episode's first scene. To portray the tunnel the bus travelled into, the Queen's Gate Tunnel of the A4232 road in Butetown was closed for four nights to accomodate filming. The last major piece of filming in Wales took place in the closed Mir steelworks in Newport, Wales, which doubled almost unaltered for the Tritovore spaceship. Filming took place at the peak of the February 2009 Great Britain snowfall, where the sub-zero temperatures slowed filming and had a visible effect on the cast. To accomodate for the adverse conditions, Davies included a line in the script that specified that the Tritovore spaceship cooled as external temperatures increase.

Filming in Dubai took place in mid-February 2009. Two weeks previously, one of the two 1980 Bristol VR double-decker buses bought for filming had been substantially damaged when a crane accidentally dropped a container in Dubai City Port. Instead of shipping the spare bus from Cardiff—which would have delayed the already hurried filming schedule—the production team decided to partially reconstruct the bus in Dubai, damage the spare bus in Cardiff to match the bus in Dubai, and rewrite the script to accomodate the damage to the bus. James Strong recalled the reaction of the production team to the damage to the bus in an issue of Doctor Who Magazine:

One morning in the first week of February, I was leaving my flat when Julie Gardner phoned. She said, "there's been a little accident with the bus it's a disaster; the bus is fucked." When I got into the office, I was handed a photograph—and my initial reaction was absolute horror. We called an emergency meeting. Russell came in and we discussed our options. We had bought an identical London bus to film on in Cardiff, so could we send that out to Dubai? We could have got it out in time if it'd left Cardiff, literally, the next day, but we'd have had to find a third bus, an exact replica, to film on in Cardiff a week later. It had taken us a month to find the one we had. It was even mooted that we'd have to forget Dubai and opt for a beach in the UK. But Russell's response was "Okay, let's embrace it. Let's say that the bus was damaged on its way to the alien planet. He wove it into the narrative. We're not trying to hide the damage at all. In fact, we show it off, enhancing it with special effects, smoke and sparks. It works rather marvellously. That London bus, damaged and smoking, in the middle of the desert—yeah, it looks incredible, especially in gorgeous hi-def.

— James Strong, Doctor Who Magazine issue 407.

The damaged bus was not the only problem to filming in Dubai: the first of the three days was afflicted by a sandstorm which left all of the footage shot unusable. The production team then struggled to complete three days of filming in two days; the last day was compared to "filming Lawrence of Arabia". To complete the episode's filming, interior scenes in the bus were filmed in a studio in Wales. To disguise the fact they were using a translite—a 360-degree background image—, Strong utilised often-avoided techniques such as muddied windows and lens flares; the former also served to create a warmer environment for the viewer.

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 third series 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.

Reception

Overnight figures show that the special was watched by 8.41 million people a 39.6% share of the audience. An additional 184,000 watched the programme on BBC HD, the channel's highest rating so far.

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. Cite error: The named reference "DWM404" was defined multiple times with different content (see the help page).
6. "Series Five". BBC. 3 September 2007. Retrieved 25 January 2009.
7. "Series Five". BBC. 3 September 2007. Retrieved 25 January 2009.
8. "Doctor Who - Saturday 11 April - Programme Details". Radio Times. Retrieved 2009-04-04.
9. "Press Office - Network TV Programme Information BBC Week 15". BBC. 1 April 2009. Retrieved 1 April 2009.
10. "Doctor Who - Episodes - Series Four". BBC. 2008-03-28. Retrieved 2009-04-12.
11. 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)
12. ^ DWM 407 preview, p6-7
13. ^ Roberts, DWM406
14. ^ "All aboard for next special". BBC. 23 January 2009. Retrieved 25 January 2009.
15. Colville, Robert (11 April 2009). "Russell T Davies Doctor Who interview: full transcript". The Daily Telegraph. Retrieved 11 April 2009.
16. ^ "Desert Storm". Doctor Who Confidential. 11 April 2009. BBC. BBC Three. {{cite episode}}: Unknown parameter |episode= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |seriesno= ignored (|series-number= suggested) (help)
17. DWM 403 production notes
18. DWM 404 production notes
19. ^ DWM 407 p18-21
20. ^ Podcast, BBC7
21. http://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/2009/01/30/doctor-who-plot-rewrite-after-prop-bus-is-wrecked-91466-22814804/
22. Michelle Ryan Interview, "The Paul O'Grady Show" Channel 4, 5pm, 8 April 2009.
23. Ben Leach (28 January 2009). "Doctor Who filming disrupted as double decker bus wrecked". Daily Telegraph. Retrieved 29 January 2009.
24. ^ 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)
25. "Planet of the Dead Fact File". Doctor Who microsite. BBC. 11 April 2009. Retrieved 14 April 2009.
26. DWM 407 editor's notes
27. "Television - News - Huge audiences for 'Talent', 'Who'". Digital Spy. Retrieved 2009-04-12.

External links

• Planet of the Dead on Tardis Wiki, the Doctor Who Wiki
• "Planet of the Dead" at the BBC Doctor Who homepage
• Template:Brief

Template:Doctor Who (2009-10 specials)

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