Why I should never have watched ‘Planet of the Dead’ again…

After raving about it on first viewing, I now find myself loving and hating ’Planet of the Dead’ in equal measure…
 

40 things I hated…

1. If the Cup of Athelstan has been in the International Gallery for 200 years, why the sudden need to surround it with a security grid (open at the top and a two-foot gap at the bottom, of course)? Or do the armed guards go through their little ritual every night? If it’s been brought out for display, I’d whack it in a vault at night. Little tip. (Incidentally, I’m glad we never got to see this disaster of design and punctuation.)
2. Might’ve been an idea to have oiled the waving cat, you silly bint.
3. Why the ricocheting gunshot sound effect when the camera flips? Followed by a quite deathly twenty seconds of Christina looking hither and thither from one police car to the next. Over and over.
4. Stock working-class bus driver. Irritating in so few lines, with an over the top accent that’s just weird.
5. D I McMillan: awful awful awful, like a bumbling comedy policeman from an episode of Terry and June. Or CBeebies. “It’s definitely her, come on! Jackson, follow that bus!” Perfectly reasonable lines, but from the mouth of Adam James somehow… shit. And later he says “You do not have to say anything, et cetera et cetera” which proves he’s a rubbish copper too.
6. How the hell does the stock bus driver remain so utterly oblivious to the entire ridiculously protracted, slow-moving pursuit?
7. “The voices! So many voices!” God but Carmen’s dialogue is dreadful, especially coupled with constipated wide-eyed delivery. “Sometin is comin! Ridin on the wind!”
8. Sorry to harp on about the working class characters, but Russell’s ‘ordinary people’ all sound and behave exactly the same. All have the same stilted dialogue and limited intelligence, none of them are allowed any fun, any witty lines, are patronisingly referred to as heroes just because they do their own everyday thing and have chops and gravy for tea, while the lords and ladies are larking it up elsewhere. When the Doctor says they’re ‘special’, is he being rude?
9. “My boss is gonna murder me!” Die soon. Oh, he does, good. “He was a skeleton, man! He was bones, just bones!” Another thing about RTD’s ‘ordinary’ characters, they never use five words when ten sound stupider.
10. Christina’s particularly punchable in the ‘team identification’ scene. Especially when she says “I am.” See also “I’m not letting you out of my sight” and numerous other occasions.
11. “Angela. Angela Whitaker.” Is there a section in Spotlight containing Victoria Alcocks, Jacqueline Kings, Lesley Sharps, Camille Coduris, Helen Griffins, etc etc? Dour women of a certain age and a certain look, capable of a certain expression, with overweight husbands called Mike.
12. “Low level psychic ability. Exacerbated by an alien sun.” Exacerbated? That’s a bad thing, right? By an alien sun? What the… heck?
13. “I’m gonna get you home.” He’s a hero, that Doctor, let’s hammer it home in every single episode and applaud him heartily at the end.
14. Remember when UNIT used to be fun? Can’t we have a Benton or a Yates, please? And less shoutiness.
15. And Captain Magambo, words cannot express the violent feelings I experience every time I see your face or hear your strangely monotone voice. And I don’t like your shoes.
16. “Ding ding!” blurts mentally suspect Angela Whitaker. And then what’s with the wasp-chewing face? (Pictured above.)
17. Oh look, a mobile phone. Why can’t they be truly cut off? Or at least the Doctor could have jury-rigged the bus radio for very limited communication with Malcolm – surely that would have been more dramatic?
18. “Listen, this is the Doctor. It’s me.” <Dial tone>
19. “We all want to meet him one day but we all know what that day will bring.” Give me strength.
20. Notice how the incidental music changes from dramatic to comedic the split-second the Doctor asks Malcolm what a ‘malcolm’ is? I’m not a big fan of continuous background music at the best of times, but do we need help knowing when we should be scared, when we should be laughing, etc? Curse you Hollywood!
21. Stop speaking Tritovore, David, you look and sound like a complete fucking idiot.
22. From the gorgeous exterior shot of the Tritovore spaceship go cut to some hideous grey, cheaply-redressed Cardiff basement.
23. They discuss why RTD asks for creatures that look exactly like flies, rhinos, giant wasps etc on the Confidential, but doesn’t this narrow thinking lumber 21^st century Doctor Who with a fraction of the imagination of the old series? Does the design department sleep at night?
24. How irritating and out-of-character does Christina get when she realises she’s got “dead people” in her hair? Argh!
25. “Oh, you are clever!” After saying how great Lee Evans’ timing was on the “He’s gone” line, we now endure a painful wait before he adds a clunking “It is bad news!”
26. “The worse it gets, the more I love it” is the single worst line in the whole thing. It sums up everything I dislike about the Cheshire Cat, cavalier nature of the last two Doctors. Tennant utters this line on learning that the manta rays are comin’ to eat the Earth, which is OK because he knows he can save the day by closing the wormhole. But he’s also recently learnt that the bus is out of diesel and he has absolutely no idea how he’s going to get everyone home. This annoying overconfidence diminishes the danger of the situation, especially because the Doctor’s never been proven wrong. “The more I love it!” What a prick. And Christina agrees, so she is too.
27. “No water. All of it… dust!” Did you mean to write that, Russell?
28. “In a super-clever, outer-space-y way.” Nice gag, the first time round, sounds dumb here though. See also: The Big Red Button.
29. The gravity well looks like a… well. Of course. That’s yer actual science, you know.
30. Tritovore earphone technology – need I say more?
31. “Let me know.” “Nothing yet.” “Anything now?” “‘Fraid not.” “Any sign of movement?” “Nope.” “How’s that?” “Nothing.” “Any result?” “Not a dicky-bird.” “Any other way we can paraphrase this?” “Nada.”
32. The stupid smile of Christina’s face as she zips down the shaft. Remember when Angelia Jolie’s Lara Croft is seen grinning like a loon seconds after learning the disturbing truth about the death of her father? Nobody likes a smart-arse, especially an emotionally-deranged one. So much grating, cocky dialogue in this scene.
33. Would it have been so hard to get the CG bus to look at least the same colour as the real one? After all it’s been through the bus is finally knackered by some pillock on a Mac.
34. Lee Evans’ slapstick with the office chair and fire extinguisher. “Not now!” Quite right.
35. “I-don’t-believe-it-guns-that-work!” Did Noma Dumezweni go to the Andie McDowell School of Acting?
36. The bit where the Doctor swipes the manta ray with the back end of the bus. Rubbish.
37. Oh no, don’t kiss him!!! Oh, she did, she kissed him.
38. It’s around this point that the orchestra becomes a Big Band and start playing the score for something else entirely. I don’t know what, only that it’s really horrible. This continues for the next ten minutes. Everyone loves it so much they break into spontaneous applause.
39. To think, I wanted to see more of Lady Christina’s adventures. I hope to God we never see her maniacal toothy grin again.
40. “Water always wins” sounds ridiculous out of context. But I’m hoping I won’t have to resort to cheap lists after I see ‘The Waters of Mars’…

40 things I loved…

1. Michelle Ryan in a catsuit. Hate to state the obvious. Although, as the episode progresses, Ryan comes across as barely legal (despite being 22) and erotic feelings quickly evaporate.
2. The camera flip’s cheesy but fun.
3. The Doctor’s iconic shoes. That’s all you need.
4. “It’s full of sugar and I’m determined to keep these teeth.”
5. The little dish. I love a little dish. Much excitation.
6. The sequence inside the bus as it passes through the wormhole.
7. Nice pull back shot from the Doctor’s eyes and some cool music – a hint that we might be in for some more of spookily different incidentals that accompanied the trailer (we’re not).
8. We’re in Dubai! Gorgeous panoramas (although the location’s still curiously underused).
9. Lou. I like you, Lou, shame your missus is bonkers.
10. Three suns. Pretty.
11. “Ready for every emergency.” “Me too!”
12. Excellent tongue acting from the man Tennant.
13. Nice wormhole! (Another Indiana Jones moment in an episode full of them.)
14. The bus driver shuffles weirdly through the wormhole and dies spectacularly – hurrah! Much better acting from the skeleton.
15. Like the talk of Faraday cages. Although, as pointed out elsewhere on this very site, why not just get UNIT to drive a tank through the wormhole?
16. And the ‘appointment of a leader’ bit is amusing, however smug the leader may be.
17. “Poor old Tina.”
18. The Doctor’s quizzical/impressed/hubba-hubba expression when Christina hands over the spade and axe.
19. Pizza Geronimo.
20. Loved the recurrence of the salute gag.
21. Really liked Lee Evans, despite the comedy accent, the Lee Evans tics and general Lee Evans-isms. Also this is the one time where the Doctor’s legendary status actually feels right.
22. “What was your favourite? [Doctor Who and] The Giant Robot?”
23. Quatermass! There’s Nigel, in his grave. “The spinnin’! So much spinnin’!”
24. Lovely comic timing when the Doctor puts the phone down and Malcolm continues, “You’re mine– he’s gone. He’s gone.”
25. Nice weird, wobbly B-movie zoom when we first see a Tritovore. And the fly heads are good, especially the yukky mouth parts.
26. The Tritovore’s crashed spaceship is beautiful. Why we only get two glimpses of it I don’t know.
27. Love Tennant’s nerdy guffaw after “the Honourable Lady Christina – at least I hope she’s honourable!”
28. The Scorpion Nebula is ever-so pretty, as is the brief looping shot of Sanhelios City (sanhelios, incidentally, is a herbal supplement).
29. “You look human.” “You look Time Lord.” Nice.
30. Those manta-ray/shark things really are cool-looking, though they must whizz round at quite a lick to rip a hole in time and space, surely?
31. There’s a very nice shot of Christina’s bottom. Thank you Russell, for this concession to your heterosexual viewers.
32. Hurrah, a reference to the Doctor stealing the TARDIS for us geeks! Is this the first time this has been mentioned in Nu-Who?
33. Despite the engine looking oddly like a church crypt and the Doctor’s utterly random and inappropriate ”It’s gonna eat its way up!”, there’s much to love in the manta-ray ‘gravity well’ scene.
34. The stuff about Barclay’s fake gold watch and the Doctor’s subsequent abuse of the Cup of Athelstan is a bit of a giggle.
35. “I will never surrender. Never!” Good old Malcolm, defiant and heroic. Hard to imagine that a few seconds in the future, after the bus is safe, we’ll all be shouting for him to “just close the fucking wormhole!”
36. Satisfyingly noisy battle between UNIT and the stingrays. With rain. Cool.
37. “I love you! I love you! I love you!” Then watch Evans miming to the soldiers.
38. Very considerate of the Doctor, recommending Nathan and Barclay to UNIT, and, as already established, sending them to their almost certain deaths.
39. Good on the Doctor for refusing Christina, although perhaps better reasons might be she’s a jewel thief and really, really annoying. And how exactly has he “lost them all”? He keeps saying that, yet the last time we saw them the majority are quite happily living their lives. Even Donna.
40. Carmen must be hellish to live with. Still, liked her warning to the Doctor, hope the cryptic message (“Knock four times”) isn’t as blindingly obvious as the fanboys think. ‘The Waters of Mars’ looks promising.