Holistic Review: As is sometimes the case with RTD episodes, Planet of the Dead has next to no actual plot; but, I suspect, thanks to Gareth Roberts, it's an entertainingly-told story with some imaginative ideas.

I enjoyed Planet of the Dead in my favorite way, as spoiler-free as possible. Going into it, all I knew was that Lady Christina was a jewel thief (a rather late spoiler for me, thanks to one of the promotional radio broadcasts, I believe) who encountered the Doctor on a bus that got sucked through a wormhole and onto a desert planet, where a dangerous swarm is rapidly approaching. Actually, as it turns out, that's about all the plot there is to it, but still, most of that is over with in the first few minutes, so I was happy to be able to spend the majority of the story with no idea what was about to happen. I had seen a photo of the Tritovores, and assumed them to be the swarm in question — which disappointed me, since I tend to find humanoid aliens less intrinsically creepy than non-humanoid ones, so it was a pleasant surprise to discover that they were quite a separate plot element altogether. I also, of course, knew that the special was being filmed in Dubai, which was a thrill to learn. A year ago, when the book Snowglobe 7 by Mike Tucker was published, I was really fascinated with it, because I thought Dubai was a brilliant setting for a novel, particularly because we weren't ever likely to see an actual Doctor Who episode set in Dubai, much less filmed there. So, when the location filming was announced, I was on one hand thrilled that we might get to see an episode in which the Doctor got to run past the famous giant Dubai hotels and other local landmarks, and on the other hand disappointed that the "Planet of the Dead" was going to be none other than Earth. In the end, it turned out to be neither of these things. All we get to see of Dubai is a bunch of sand dunes; while I did kind of think "that could be anywhere", the truth is that it really couldn't have been, and filming these scenes in the UAE gave it a realism that even LA and the scrubby deserts of the western US couldn't have matched. I had wondered briefly if they might find a reason to set some of the Earth scenes in Dubai, to at least take full advantage of the location filming, but in the end it's probably wise that they didn't; it surely would've been another Lanzarote/Sarn situation. And, on the plus side, the titular planet is most certainly not Earth, which revitalized my interest in the story. Like Midnight, I found the title somewhat misleading (my initial impression was that it had great potential for zombie terror), but although we didn't get any zombies, we did get something pretty cool in its own right. So I can't say that I'm too disappointed with how the plot turned out in that respect. Incidentally, speaking of titles, this story shares its title with a really good Doctor Who Magazine comic strip from issues 141 — 142, in which the seventh Doctor encounters a planet of shapeshifting aliens that take the form of his dead companions (and past selves). Nifty idea, and well-done.

The plot of Planet of the Dead successfully recycles some elements from previous stories, while mixing it up with enough new material to feel pleasantly fresh. The biggest contributor is The Horns of Nimon, which gives us an alien race that accomplishes its life-cycle by jumping through hyperspace from world to world and sucking them dry for nourishment. We've also got a sprinkle of Delta and the Bannermen (a broken-down spacefaring bus that could be repaired and powered using a crystal — or, at least, so we assume at first) and a pretty blatant rejiggering of Midnight (a minimal plot involving a stranded bus carrying a variety of passengers under attack by an alien menace, although in this case they're pretty happy to listen to the Doctor; even the Doctor acknowledges this similarity ["Oh, humans on buses, always blaming me."].) Even our new companion Lady Christina de Souza is a blend of Romana (her aristocratic in-charge nature), Ace (zeal for action and a rucksack to rival the Doctor's pockets) and aborted-season-27 companion Kate Tollinger (cat-burglar skills), which is particularly nice because I'd always thought Kate would have had a lot of potential. What Planet of the Dead adds to this mix, aside from the very-cute-but-essentially-filler Tritovores, is the inescapable menace of a swarm of omnivorous monsters, and the chilling realization that the entire desert is composed of the consumed-and-excreted remains of the planet's civilizations. In my mind, that one brilliant detail fully justifies the desert setting. Instead of being "just a desert", every grain of sand has a meaning.

Now, I've already said that the plot of this story isn't exactly its strong point, and the reason is that — yet again — it can be completely summed up in but a few short words. A London bus is sucked through a wormhole onto a desert planet, where it is in the path of the all-consuming creatures that have created the wormhole to migrate to Earth. Before they reach and consume the bus, the Doctor must repair it and escape. Do you get what they did there? They built the entire plot around a repair job. Everything else that happens in this story (which, in an equally minimalist fashion, basically consists of "field trip to Tritovore vessel") is a direct outgrowth of that one element. The bus crashes, they can't fix it, the Doctor finds some clamps, they fix it, and they escape. I mean, c'mon people, you have an hour to fill, you could do more with it than that! You wanna know what I think? I think RTD came up with the story, and Gareth Roberts did his darndest to make it fun and exciting. I have this very strong suspicion that it's only the pen of Roberts that makes me like this story; without him, I think it could have ended up as vapid and meaningless as The Next Doctor. I'm totally willing to concede that I'm wrong about this, on the strength of Turn Left and the fact that if RTD came up with the plot, he must surely have devised the cool stingray creatures... but I could also believe that was his only moment of brilliance. The plot slightly hinges on a deus ex machina device, in that the Doctor et al. would have been well and truly sunk if the Tritovores hadn't crashed too, as it's only their antigrav clamps that allow our heroes to escape. I should be a bit more lenient — the Tritovores' involvement also gives us some much-needed background on the history of San Helios, and a bit of context for the swarm, so it's not like their only function is to supply the antigrav clamps... but it's pretty close. At best, you have to admit that it was an astonishing coincidence (particularly that the Tritovore vessel, the only other thing on the planet, just happened to crash so close to where the bus lands). So you will understand why I feel that this story narrowly skirted potential disaster. It's a testament, I think, to this writing partnership that it turned out so very entertaining.

Big welcomes to our companion-of-the-week, the posh but ethically-suspect Lady Christina de Souza. (When the character's name was first announced, I wondered if they'd lifted a character from the Big Finish audio Loups-Garoux, but I misremembered. That character's name was Ileana de Santos, not de Souza.) I'd never seen the Bionic Woman remake, only heard that it was lousy, so it was a pleasure to discover that Michelle Ryan was almost certainly not the reason for its sad early cancellation. She's a lot of fun, totally confident and full of cool amusement, and clearly very smart. It's clever of her to activate the security grid on her way back up the well, and fry the stingray that's chasing her. Nancy and I were both impressed (as was the Doctor). I love that she automatically takes charge of the bus passengers, even though the Doctor's right there. Her reaction when it sinks in that she's on another world isn't exactly unusual or surprising, but I found it nice that being on the planet didn't hit home as hard as seeing a map of it did... that seems pleasantly realistic. Among her fun deliveries are "I don't think anything's safe any more. But if it's a choice between baking in there or roasting out here, I'd say baking is slower." and "Charming. Just remind me never to kiss them." But I am very annoyed that, for the fourth companion out of five, we've had a semi-romantic kiss with the Doctor — and this time the passengers all clap, as if they've been waiting for this to happen the entire time! Aughhh! This is especially disappointing given that Christina initially didn't seem at all interested in the Doctor romantically. But clearly that had changed by the end of the story, or she would've just given him a peck on the cheek. Annoying. One hope that I have for Matt Smith is that he isn't as alluring to the ladies!

Speaking of the Doctor, David Tennant seems even more ebullient than usual in this story! This is particularly noticeable in his delivery of the lines "At least, I hope she's honourable.", "Yes I am. Frequently!", and "Which makes you, Lady Christina, a thief!" I really love it... I mean, the tenth Doctor has always been fun, but here he's practically silly. Tennant again demonstrates his willingness to suffer for his art, here by licking up some nice Dubai sand. I don't imagine that was very pleasant. And his reaction upon doing so is absolutely priceless (and probably didn't require as much acting skill as usual). Also, massive praise to him for being able to so convincingly pull off Tritovore speech — that could not have been easy. Here the Doctor is back to his old self, winning over the other passengers with ease and relating to them really well. I particularly like the way he handles Angela. Among my other favorite deliveries: "Actually, go on, have it. Finish it. It's full of sugar and I'm determined to keep these teeth." and "Because... they need to be? No, that's bonkers."

One area where Midnight does have a slight edge is in the guest stars. In that story, we learn a bit more about the characters' backgrounds, and they're vital to the unfolding of the plot. Here, they seem to suffer from "a full character in one line" syndrome, wherein we basically learn one sympathetic fact about each person that makes us like them and fear for their safety, and then that's it. (Angela has a daughter she loves, Nathan just lost his job, Barclay has designs on a lady friend, and Carmen and Lou... um, like chops with gravy and are therefore salt-of-the-earth people.) With that taken care of, they all become superfluous and are left behind to repair the bus for the rest of the story while the Doctor and Christina do more exciting things elsewhere. I'm impressed that the writers resist the impulse to kill more than one of them off, and it's nice that they all get something to do, but I wish they'd been a little more integral to the plot and gotten some meatier action. As for their respective actors: Victoria Alcock (Angela) is convincing as a terrified woman who pulls herself together for the sake of her faraway daughter, David Ames (Nathan) is charmingly shy and ready to pitch in, Daniel Kaluuya (Barclay) starts out looking like a rogue but reveals hidden layers of depth, Reginald Tsiboe (Lou) is the epitome of a sweet and supportive husband, and Ellen Thomas (Carmen) gets the most to do as psychic Carmen, who provides a window on the action for all the passengers onboard the bus. I always enjoy a good psychic character, and Thomas portrays that side of Carmen very effectively, along with making her seem like a sweet and nurturing woman. Plus she has a fantastic accent. (When the Doctor wondered aloud about Carmen's psychic abilities, Nancy decided, "It's because she's Caribbean!" Clearly I need to ask her for more details about her friends from Trinidad.) I really liked getting to see Angela feeling all guilty for having used up the petrol in her attempts to get the bus started (poor thing), and Alcock's delivery of the line "Here we go, hold tight! Ding ding!" makes me laugh. We also briefly get to meet Keith Parry as the bus driver, who doesn't get enough to do for me to formulate much of an opinion, but I enjoyed his performance.

On the Earth side of things, we have the policemen, played by Adam James (DI McMillan) and Glenn Doherty (Sgt Dennison), who are mostly forgettable stock policeman characters, but well played, particularly McMillan's desperate attempts to wrestle Magambo for some control over the situation (which of course he does not get). And then we have UNIT, here represented by the finest and most entertaining team since the Pertwee days. I was delighted to learn that Noma Dumezweni was returning as Captain Magambo, and while I don't find her quite as appealing here as I did in Turn Left (mostly due to her rather more humorless portrayal, and her shocking-yet-unsurprising decision to close the wormhole and condemn the Doctor to certain death), I still really enjoyed her performance, and her rapport with Tennant really helped to make up for the character's flaws. Great delivery on "Till we meet agan, Doctor." Lee Evans was not a name I really knew before Easter Sunday, but I found him almost totally delightful. The accent, the enthusiasm, the intricate knowledge of the Doctor's past exploits, and how touched he was when the Doctor described him as a "genius" and "brilliant" — all so very lovable. I do think they went a bit over the top with his repeatedly yelling "I love you!" at the Doctor — that was just embarrassing — but otherwise I thoroughly enjoyed him. I love the way he wins over the Doctor's respect, although I also wish the Doctor had given him a bit more of a chance to begin with! His performance is definitely a highlight of the story. I'm so glad that both he and Magambo get to meet the Doctor at the end. The two of them really do make a great double-act and I hope that they'll become the face of UNIT that we encounter from now on. (The tabloids have already interpreted Davies' comment that they're a spinoff waiting to happen as fact that he's already got it commissioned!) Toss in some Lethbridge-Stewart (seriously, toss in some Lethbridge-Stewart before Tennant's reign is over) and maybe a dash of Benton, and I'll be a happy man. But I'm still sad that UNIT is wearing red berets instead of baby-blue these days.

Lastly, turning to the non-mammalian characters, we have the frankly adorable Tritovores, Sorvin (played by Paul Kasey) and Praygat (played by Ruari Mears). I have to evaluate them as part character and part effect, but they're really well done on both counts. Kasey and Mears manage to convey a nice amount of personality through the huge masks, particularly the moment when one of the Tritovores shrugs helplessly. Their masks are really great, particularly the interior mandibles, which flex in a very realistic way (and the red fleshy inside of their mouths are grossly realistic too). How two giant humanoid flies manage to be so cute, I have no idea, but I warmed to them a whole lot more than I was expecting. It probably doesn't hurt that they were so quick to believe the Doctor. Love their language, too!

I had, of course, also heard about all of the panic over the prop bus that was smashed when a cargo crate was dropped on it at the port. I had been under the impression that they had actually flown over a replacement bus (clearly the last report I'd heard was before they had decided on what course of action to take), and I think just before the story aired, I read that they had simply decided to repair the damaged bus as much as they could. I was quite surprised, then, to see that the bus as filmed was pretty completely wrecked, and it looks fantastic, particularly with the smoke pouring out of it. Honestly, this is a case of serendipity almost up there with the asbestos scare during The Greatest Show in the Galaxy. That wrecked bus looks so much more realistic than a pristine bus would have, and really adds to the menace of the wormhole.

A pretty nice effort by Murray Gold here! His music ranges between a vaguely Middle-Eastern "desert trek" theme and a Blinkesque style (which is always a good thing). I like the way the music cuts out right before Carmen says "Death! Death is coming." I'm not terribly fond of the "jaunty" music that plays at the end, though, first as the bus touches down and then again as Christina flies it off. Lovely direction by James Strong, particularly the establishing shots of the Dubai sands.

There's some nice effects work going on, too. The shots of San Helios' three suns, with their different colors, are great. The wormhole looks great, similar to but more convincing than its counterpart from Sliders. The bus driver's disintegration and smoking skeleton are a highlight, particularly the melted badge that slightly evokes Snyder's death from Earthshock (but in a much less ichor-y way). I really like the visual of San Helios City from above, with the traffic slowly moving about... nicely done. The gravity well is a superb combination (I assume) of set decoration combined with CGI. The bus lifting itself out of the sand dune is mostly successful, particularly the sand that cascades off it as it rises. The CGI lets us down a bit in the visuals of the swarm, which don't ever really look like anything other than a computer-generated effect overlaid onto the UAE dunes, but if you squint your eyes, it's convincing enough to pass.

The stingrays themselves, on the other hand, are really really cool. (Although I'm not sure how I feel about the fact that, yet again — and for the second time this story — we have an alien that's recognizably based on an Earth creature, and in this case the writing team haven't even gone to the trouble of trying to pick a suitably alien name for them. From all accounts, they just call them "Stingrays".) Their lifecycle is fascinating and gruesome, and I love that idea that the metal they eat gets extruded into their exoskeleton, thus making wormhole travel safe for them. But could someone explain to me how they anchor the other end of the wormhole they generate? What happens if it anchors randomly and strands them in the middle of deep space? So they must have a way to specify where the other end is going to come out.

One particularly fun memory for me is that, for the first time, I got to watch new Doctor Who with my good friend Nancy, who (like Katherine and Nick, with whom I watched seasons 1 and 2) was one of the five entering students in my graduate program. (That means there's only one left! Mwahahaha! Watch out, Jen... maybe The Waters of Mars are coming for you. Oh, except Jen doesn't do well with anything that has an unhappy ending; I might have to vet an episode before forcing it upon her.) I had thought I'd be watching Planet of the Dead alone, but Nancy has been getting into Doctor Who quite a bit lately. She used to watch the show as a child (a few years back, I loaned her Pyramids of Mars and The Robots of Death to see if they would spark any memories (they didn't)) and recently she's been TiVoing the new series. I'm not sure what brought this on; I had shared The Unicorn and the Wasp with her, seeing as she's a big fan of "Agatha Christmas" (as her husband says), but I think she had been watching it prior to that. Since then, her husband Sander has created his own truly awesome scarecrow costume for Halloween '08 (the eyes alone were pure genius; he replicated them exactly) and she's been particularly fond of Blink (which she shared with some other friends of hers and freaked out their daughter) and The Fires of Pompeii. So, once I figured out how to make the torrent download faster after 20 hours of getting it at a snail's pace, successfully installing my new DVD burner, converting the .avi file and burning the whole thing to DVD with half an hour to spare, Nancy and I hung out on Easter Sunday with a bag of chips and thrilled along to the Doctor's latest adventure. (It made me want chocolate.) To my delight, Nancy happily talked back to the TV and made me even more nervous than I would've been during the scary scenes. (I first discovered she had this ability when we watched the Audrey Hepburn movie Wait Until Dark together... she made ME scream! If you've seen the film, you know where I mean.)

Minor points:

• They want us to believe that Planet of the Dead is story number 200. (Me, I count the Trial as 4 stories, Shada is not omitted, Mission to the Unknown is its own story, and Utopia is part of one overarching plotline, so I count Planet of the Dead as number 205. (Wikipedia has it as 204.) Lucky number 200 goes to Silence in the Library / Forest of the Dead, which I hadn't realized before today. Still, gotta love that little wink with the bus number.)

• The beginning, with its James-Bond-esque stunts, made Nancy ask me "Are you sure this is Doctor Who?" (I think she was only joking though!)

• The cat-burglar scene in the museum is neat, particularly the Indiana-Jones-style switch and Christina's little "Yes!" gesture when the switchout works. But, when exactly does she put the kitty statue down? Was it inside the burlap bag? And, if she's going to leave behind something that squeaks every time it moves, doesn't she expect that she's going to be found out pretty quickly?

• Is it really wise of Christina to take off her mask while she's still inside the museum? Wouldn't the security cameras catch her? Then again, if she'd still been wearing it when she went out the door, the police most certainly would have.

• Ha!

  Christina: "Ah, well, that's the problem, you see. I only use my Oyster when there's an R in the month."
  Bus driver: "It's April."

• Two related questions. One: how does the bus driver know that the diamond earrings Christina gives him are genuine? (Although I suppose even glass earrings would still have been worth the cost of a bus fare.) Two: how, in good conscience, can the driver take them?! Like I said, even glass earrings would have covered the cost of the fare — genuine diamond earrings of that size would be a huge overpayment. Surely the ticket couldn't have cost all that much... why not tell her to keep her earrings and have a ride on the house? And once he takes the earrings, is he expecting to keep them himself, sell them to pay the fare and keep whatever money is left over, or give them to the bus company? The latter option is really the only ethical choice, but I didn't get the impression that's what he was going to do. Maybe he left the earrings on the bus and Christina has them again now.

• I had no idea that Easter was actually going to get a mention in this special, so I had to laugh out loud when the Doctor plopped down next to Christina, chocolate in hand, and said "Hallo, I'm the Doctor. Happy Easter!" And, the Doctor was at the first Easter? Nice! I understand from Roni that some fans have taken his line "Between you and me, what really happened was..." to mean that Jesus never came back from the dead, and therefore RTD is mocking Christianity (again). Which is certainly a valid interpretation of the line, and quite possibly what he had in mind. (Although it must also be pointed out that, despite being an atheist, RTD sure does love to pepper his scripts with religious imagery.) Personally, I didn't read that into it; maybe the Doctor was privy to information that wasn't in the gospels, or maybe there are details that people have misinterpreted, or maybe he was talking about the original pagan Easter... it's impossible to say, so I prefer to give him the benefit of the doubt!

• If the police are obviously pursuing the bus, with sirens a-blaring, why doesn't the driver pull over? You'd think he was Christina's accomplice! (Or, seeing as how he's practically stolen her earrings, maybe he's secretly her jewel-thieving competition.)

• Given how fast the police are chasing the bus, it's a miracle they don't drive through the wormhole too!

• I like that Christina gives the Doctor (a lot of) grief about his "name". Very funny scene, and a nice change after so many people just accept that he wants to be called "Doctor".

• As the Doctor takes a taste of Dubai:

  Doctor: (gags) "Not good."
  Christina: "Well, it wouldn't be, it's sand."

• Very true, and a nice illustration of the fact that Christina doesn't just want to be in charge because she's power-hungry:

  Doctor: "I thought you were in charge!"
  Christina: "I am. And a good leader utilizes her strength."

• Cool scene for Carmen, as the Doctor holds up three fingers behind his back. (But what makes him think that her psychic power is being exacerbated by the suns of San Helios, rather than being intrinsic? Lou's already told him that she does this sort of thing at home.)

  Doctor: "Tell me, Carmen, how many fingers am I holding up?"
  Carmen: "Three." (the Doctor adds another one) "Four."

• Cute line, and cute delivery.

  Doctor: "...and poor old Tina."
  Barclay: (grinning) "Hey!"

• Well, she says this now...

  Doctor: "We make quite a couple."
  Christina: "We don't make any sort of couple, thank you very much."

• We haven't had a Line I Just Don't Get in a while now, but this week there's another one:

  Christina: "And the way you stride around this place, like..."
  Doctor: "Like?"
  Christina: "Like you're not quite..."
  (comedy music plays, and the conversation turns to French.)

• Love that Christina actually responds in French! (Her line means "Yes, but not if we're going toward a nightmare.")

  Doctor: "Anyway. Allons-y!"
  Christina: "Oui, mais pas si nous allons vers un cauchemar."

• Ha! So UNIT has an automated menu! That's hilarious, if slightly unbelievable. (It goes back to the old days when UNIT HQ had a giant "TOP SECRET" sign outside the front door.) Incidentally, I love Angela's tip that holding down zero gets you through to a real person. Does that really work??? I must try it!

• Nice acting by Dumezweni!

  Jenner: "It's him, ma'am."
  Magambo: (confused head shake)
  Jenner: "It's the Doctor."

• And again! I love this woman. Her facial expressions are superb.

  Doctor: "Did you just salute?"
  Magambo: (totally lying) "...no..."

• I appreciate the fact that the Doctor is confident that they're not going to suffer any more fatalities. (And, as it turns out, he's right — although he could verrrrrrry easily not have been!)

• Nice line! (Although in the end, they do meet him, and nothing terribly catastrophic happens.)

  Magambo: "We all want to meet him one day, but we all know what that day will bring."

• Ha! Nice! I love that we get a reference to Robot. (What do you suppose made him peg Malcolm for a "robot" man?)

• This is such an awesome line... it really cracked me up.

  Malcolm: "I'm measuring an oscillation of fifteen malcolms per second!"
  Doctor: "Fifteen what?"
  Malcolm: "Fifteen malcolms, it's my own little term. A wavelength parcel at ten kilohertz operating in four dimensions equals one malcolm."
  Doctor: "You named a unit of measurement after yourself?"
  Malcolm: "Well, it didn't do Mr Watt any harm. Furthermore, 100 malcolms equals a bernard."
  Doctor: "Who's that, your dad?"
  Malcolm: "Don't be ridiculous. That's Quatermass."

• There's some very strange sexual tension after this line:

  Christina: "You look human."
  Doctor: "You look Time Lord."

• The only one of Michelle Ryan's deliveries that I'm not sure I like. She looks like she's trying not to burst out laughing, which makes Christina not look very creeped out. (Although I must admit, it is a funny line.)

  Christina: "But I've got sand in my hair. That's dead people, uchh, that's disgusting, ohhh!"
  Doctor: "They destroyed the whole of San Helios."
  Christina: "Yes, but in my hair!"

• Just as I hate it when characters hang up on one another without saying "goodbye", here the Doctor blatantly refuses to answer either Nathan or Christina when they start asking difficult questions ("how are you going to save us now?"), although when the Tritovores say something, he's perfectly happy to talk to them.

• The Doctor says that at the speed the swarm is travelling, it'll take 20 minutes for it to reach the crashed conveyances. But the probe only takes a few minutes to get there. Is it travelling that much faster than the swarm? When it finally reaches the storm, it doesn't seem to be moving much faster than the stingrays are.

• Again the Doctor thrives on danger, but this seems to be taking it a little bit too far! (Plus, Christina is smiling too, so why does she ask?)

  Christina: "Those things are going to turn the entire Earth into a desert. So why exactly are you smiling?"
  Doctor: "The worse it gets, the more I love it."
  Christina: "Me too."

• For a jewel thief, it's a little surprising that Christina doesn't notice the massive alarm system crackling in front of her. Surely she should have noticed that she was about to be fried to a crisp?

• Neat! Not only do we get a reference to Donna ("I had this friend once. She called me 'spaceman'.") but also to Castrovalva ("Oh, the places I've been. ...creation of the universe...") I've thought before that the war between China and Japan would be a really interesting setting for a story, too, although I don't suppose the Rape of Nanking would really be suitable for a children's show. But I always like it when we hear about adventures that take place elsewhere on Earth besides the UK (and indeed other English-speaking countries).

• Nancy was very impressed with how up-to-date this production was. I wasn't even aware that the Icelandic banks had collapsed.

• The one moment when Nancy really amped up my own tension level was when the stingray started chasing Christina up the gravity well. "They're following her, Carson!" she cried, almost bouncing up and down on the couch with worry. It was awesome!

• It looks like there's only one button to turn off the security grid, on the upper side of it. So what if you're approaching it from underneath? If a stingray were following you, would you just be trapped?

• So this crystal is a bit of a problem. First: the Doctor very strongly implies that it's the crystal that they're going to use to power the bus. His response to "You can use the crystal to move the bus?" is "I think so!", and when Christina follows this up with "How does a crystal drive a bus?", he brushes her off with a glib answer, but doesn't mention that technically he doesn't need the crystal at all. In fact, the first time he even mentions this to her ("Not just the crystal!") is just as she's almost pried it loose, while she's risking her life trying to do it without making much noise! A little advance warning would've been helpful, Doctor. But he doesn't actually admit that the crystal itself is useless until he gets ready to install the clamps. At that point, it just looks like he's been playing a massive joke on her, and one that could've scuppered their entire escape plan. Was it really worth forcing him not to say "The clamps holding the crystal could be really useful!" just for that joke? (I suppose it also preserves the surprise of how he plans to get them off the planet, but still.) Second: why, when the Doctor chucks it away, does Christina the jewel thief not snatch it straight back up? (Maybe she realized she might not be able to sell it for its true worth on Earth? But I think she underestimates the number of aliens that get stuck there.)

• Poor Barclay, what a way to find out that his watch wasn't really gold.

• I really hate the moment when the Doctor destroys King Æthelstan's cup. If he needs it to create a conduit between the alien tech and the wheel, why doesn't he melt it under the grips rather than sticking it overtop and bashing it randomly with a hammer? I don't see what good that was supposed to do; if he had let go of the cup, it would have just fallen off the wheel! (Maybe if we had ever seen the wheel again, to find out what exactly he had done with the cup to bridge the systems, this would make more sense.) I also feel sorry for the poor jewel that flies off the cup when the Doctor starts banging away.

• Although I wasn't exactly surprised that Magambo wanted Malcolm to shut down the wormhole (it's usually what these military types do), I still find it ridiculous in the extreme that she wouldn't wait until the Doctor got through. How could she sacrifice his life like that? Especially when it's a sure bet that he'll be saving the Earth again in the future, many times over. Good on Malcolm for standing up to her! (When Magambo pulled a gun on Malcolm, Nancy gasped loudly! I love it when people get into Doctor Who as much as I do. Or even more!)

• When the Doctor lifts the bus off, why doesn't he head straight for the wormhole? Did he really need to make such a big loop around?

• If the swarm is as close to the bus as it looked, why is it that only three of the stingrays make it through? Apparently they were leading the rest of the swarm by 1 minute and 14 seconds (which, coincidentally, is exactly how much time Malcolm needed to close the wormhole). But why doesn't Malcolm close the wormhole the moment Magambo tells him that the Doctor is safely through?

• Given that the bus is now higher than it was when it first went into the wormhole, it's a good thing that it doesn't reappear above the tunnel but still underground! (Then again, I guess that would've killed the whole swarm, too...)

• Hee! Funny!

  Malcolm: "By how much?"
  Doctor: "...500 bernards!"

• Nancy laughed at the futility of Magambo trying to hit a stingray with her teeny little gun. And, as she pointed out, after the creatures are dead, one of the soldiers fires two more shots before Magambo calls "Cease fire!" So, uh... what was he shooting at?

• Love the way the Doctor whacks one of the stingrays with the back of the bus! I feel sure that was a move worthy of the fifth Doctor.

• Given the extent to which the Doctor is opposed to UNIT's methods these days (not that he was exactly in favor of them during the Pertwee era), it somehow struck me as a little odd that he would recommend anyone to be recruited!

• Cute!

  Magambo: "Found in the gardens of Buckingham Palace."
  Doctor: "Oh, she doesn't mind."

• A sweet little detail that adds some realism to the scene, and a bit more character for Angela:

  Angela: "They didn't even know I was gone."

• When Christina asks to travel with the Doctor, he treats her so coldly that I thought he was going to reject her for being a jewel thief (back to "I only take the best" again). But, no, he's just back on his anti-companion kick, for the third time now. He really needs to learn that that just doesn't last.

• Ahhh, yet again a psychic character warns the Doctor of imminent danger. So I guess maybe the Ood's prophecy wasn't such a red herring after all... it just wasn't coming true quite as soon as I thought it was. I do wonder, though, what makes Carmen couch her prophecy in Ood terms. "Your song is ending soon" makes a lot of sense from an Ood perspective, but Carmen has never heard the Doctor sing, or had any reason to use singing as a metaphor for life (as far as I know).

• Intriguing, though:

  Carmen: "It is returning. It is returning through the dark. And then, Doctor — oh, but then — he will knock four times."

• Nice line! Although you do have to wonder why McMillan seems to think that an antiquated police box is a perfectly acceptable place for a prisoner to be held:

  McMillan: "I'm charging you, too! Aiding and abetting!"
  Doctor: "Yes. I'll just step inside this police box and arrest myself."

• The Waters of Mars looks verrrrrrrry creepy. Woohoo! Already I'm looking very much forward to it. But it looks like, despite my expectations, we won't be getting any Ice Warriors on Mars. I'm not particularly unhappy about that, though — I'd much rather have a new, unique, water-based monster. I'm intrigued to see how RTD and Phil Ford turn water into a threat... presumably it's something more exotic than "drowning". This has very good X-File-y potential.

All in all, not a bad effort. On the plus side, it has a great sense of inescapable menace, interesting and/or appealing characters and beautiful location filming. On the negative side, these are offset by the fact that most of the interesting and/or appealing characters get nothing to do, and the plot is nonexistent. But it's a pleasant and inoffensive hour of Doctor Who, so far the better of the specials... but I sense that the next couple of stories are going to blow it out of the water.