Review - The Impossible Planet

We get set for a nice little trip to Hell in another top two-parter as The Doctor and Rose visit Krop Tor, The Impossible Planet.

Season 2, Episode 8 - The Impossible Planet

The cold open of this episode was quite delightfully handled, with the Ood set up as a monster in the cliffhanger before the opening titles, only to reveal it as a fake-out. The introductions after The Doctor and Rose's arrival were well handled, with the research crew filling all basic tropes nicely, and the basic exposition felt reasonably natural. In particular the Ood and their plot-integral empathic field. I suppose this is a benefit of the two-parter, in that you can take a little longer setting things up, thereby avoiding the whole Go, Go, Go, Geronimo! thing.

It's always fun when The Doctor loses the TARDIS, as he inevitably needs to do things a little differently. The unique situation had he and Rose assuming it was all over, which we, as the audience, know is not true (regardless of how contrived the scenario in which it eventually returns). But instead of lamenting her lost life on earth, Rose seems more interested in locking in a new one with The Doctor.

I think this episode is where we really start to see the solidification of the relationship between Rose and The Doctor. It wavered a lot until this point, most likely because Mickey was technically still around. Now that he's supposedly stuck in a parallel dimension, that frees Rose up to love The Doctor without guilt. You know, if she'd had any guilt to start with.

This story is essentially classic survival horror along the lines of Alien and The Thing. An isolated team being slowly picked off by an insidious threat from within. It could be part of why I quite liked this episode. Our resident archaeologist Toby doesn't take long to get himself possessed, and start wreaking havoc through the facility. You can tell he's possessed because he's got red eyes and crazy tattoos.

Damn it! I said one small butterfly on the neck!

We see possessed Toby fairly early, and he fits my profile of an Agent Boss, even though he's not consciously aware of his involvement with the Monster Boss. The real Big Bad is revealed in a neat series of flickering images on background monitors. As brief and subtle as the flashes are, it's pretty clear what we're dealing with.

Santa!

No... Wait... The other guy.

In a way, the possession of the Ood throws in what could almost be seen as an unnecessary extra monster type. Of course, the possessed Ood have a significant role in part two once the party is split, so we couldn't really drop them, could we?

Overall, this was a well paced opening to a good story. It used a tried and true horror structure and pulled it off nicely. This one's definitely up there.

8/10

Can we fix it?

Interestingly, I think this story could have worked reasonably well without the possessed Ood. The Beast would end up possessing different people. This would have provided some good tension, as the characters didn't know when they may turn on each other. Of course that could have been difficult to handle without it being an obvious "I win button" for The Beast.

That said, because of how the Ood fit into part 2, this would require more rewriting, and would probably just be change for change's sake.