The Impossible Planet

[altariel]

That rocked!


Didn't it look good? In a way you don't expect BBC SF to look good. They went to a quarry and made it look brilliant! Quarry redemption!

Strong echoes of Chris Boucher's The Robots of Death (mining on an isolated planet, the omnipresent servitors who suddenly become a danger everywhere). Event Horizon and Alien in there too.

I loved the music: Ravel's Bolero for a descent into hell was smashing; also the single, mournful violin (viola?) over empty space - very Firefly.

I really want the disappearance of the TARDIS to turn out to be plot rather than convenience. Because you don't need to remove the Doctor from the TARDIS in order to make him stay - he'll stay because there's a mystery, and because things are happening. I suppose if all else fails I can pretend Unbenign Presence targeted the TARDIS because it perceived it/the Doctor as a threat.

Comments

[communicator.livejournal.com]

My daughter said 'This episode sounds like Firefly'

[aervir.livejournal.com]

The cave scenes were shot in a quarry, weren't they? Even though I have only seen one proper old school quarry so far (masking as Skaro in Genesis of the Daleks), this made me smile.

I really want the disappearance of the TARDIS to turn out to be plot rather than convenience.

Now that would be nice. I strongly suspect, though, that it will turn out to have been merely a convenient device to make the situation genuninely claustrophobic and life-threatening. Otherwise, they could just cram the whole crew into the TARDIS and leave the creature from the pit behind...

Some people were speculating that this episode might be a ret-con of Pyramids of Mars and that the Unbenign Presence will be Sutekh or any other Osirian. Personally, I'd rather like it to be Cthulhu. Preferably the baby plush version (http://www.paizopublishing.com/image/product/catalog/IMPTYV/IMPTYVHP004_360.jpeg).

[i-smell-shite.livejournal.com]

I loved it but it isn't against the laws of physics to get something orbiting round a black hole! Mr Happy was clawing his eyes out with a fork but other than that he loved it too. I thought it was like watching an English version of Serenity. It was really scary!

[edge-of-ruin.livejournal.com]

I'm loving this one! I’m hoping that the TARDIS bit is going to turn out satisfying in a thematic sort of way. On the edge of the Black Hole he's losing the one thing he has left and has to venture into the Underworld to find it etc etc ... Great stuff ;-)

[jhall1.livejournal.com]

An excellent episode.

As an aside, is it my imagination or is the theme tune this series even faster than it was for the last series? It seems slightly _too_ fast, which I didn't notice it being before.