Holistic Review: It has its faults (primarily the Morestrans), but the thought-provoking concepts and the creepy atmosphere lift Planet of Evil above its shortcomings.

I've never been a particular fan of Robert Louis Stevenson's Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde in any of its forms, but given a Doctor Who twist, I find it much more interesting and compelling. Part of the reason for this may be that we don't see any signs of Sorenson's transformation until it suddenly overtakes him in part 3, so while the Jekyll-and-Hyde story element helps to reinvigorate Planet of Evil midway through, there are lots of other interesting ideas whirling around to compete for the viewer's interest. Among the many interesting concepts on display, we have: an alien (although possibly Earth-derived) civilization desperate for alternative fuels to replace their dying sun; an isolated planet on the edge of the universe that's home to an interdimensional bridge; the antimatter universe, crossing over into ours within a very limited safe boundary; and a hostile jungle stalked by a presence that completely drains the body of fluids. The ideas are great, and the script examines them all at sufficient length that none of them seem shortchanged.

It must be said, though, that the script is a little slow. Much of the first two episodes revolves around the Doctor and Sarah being captured, escaping, and being recaptured — a scenario that even lingers into the end of episode three. Few of the characters, aside from the Doctor and Sorenson, are really allowed to contribute to the plot development; everyone else just seems to react to the events around them. Worst of all, most of the guest characters range from boring to unlikeable. So how is it that Planet of Evil ranks so highly on my personal list?

Well, I can't deny that childhood exposure plays its part. Judging from what memories I can dredge up, Tom Baker's first two seasons as the Doctor were the stories that I watched when I was youngest, and they evoke the strongest gut reactions in me, even when I can't pinpoint specific memories from them. All those stories tap into a vein of childhood thrills that are so deep I can't even really articulate them; in contrast, with the stories of season 14 and later, it's easier for me to recall distinct memories, thoughts and reactions that are a little less visceral. As it happens, I do have some fuzzy memories — or at least strong gut reactions — concerning parts of Planet of Evil. I find the scene in which the anti-matter monster slowly rises from the pit as the Doctor skirts the pit's perimeter to be petrifying, even while my adult brain is trying to analyze whether the edges of the monster are properly aligned with the edges of the pit. I also reacted strongly to the fantastic freeze-frame as the Doctor falls into the pool, and the shots of Sorenson desperately gulping down a steaming blood-red brew and clutching at his glowing red eyes. Likewise petrifying is the scene in which the Doctor and Sarah are strapped into side-by-side pallets and trundled toward the airlock to be ejected into space, which reminds me of several scenes from Super Friends that really affected me as a child. (The one in particular that comes to mind involves a giant malevolent conveyor belt, in which Wonder Woman and Aquaman are immobilized in giant ingot molds and slowly trundled toward a giant cauldron filling the molds with molten steel. What episode this is from, I have no idea! Sometimes the internet is just no help at all. ...Fortunately, though, Gray is much more helpful than the internet, and informs me that the scene in question is from "Lex Luthor Strikes Back" from the 1979 World's Greatest Super Friends season. I feel much better now.)

But there's something about the design of Planet of Evil that really helps to sell the story. The "exterior" scenes are a work of art. Roger Murray-Leach's jungle set has often been called the most realistic jungle in Doctor Who, and it's very easy to see why. The flora is incredibly exotic, without an earthly fern in sight, and the trees are draped in fronds and dangling vines that give the set a ton of detail. (In particular, I love the dried-up vine with a large cacao-type pod dangling from it.) Better yet, huge swathes of the jungle floor are covered in shallow, steaming water, which gives it that extra 'ick' factor. The crowning touch is that the whole jungle is lit in red, which not only gives it an alien quality, but also seems to disguise any deficiencies that might have been noticeable in regular lighting. As it happens, Planet of Evil is one of those stories where all of the departments were working in synergy, and the jungle set is made truly creepy by the story's sound effects. The jungle on Zeta Minor is full of squelching noises, bubbling liquid, hollow breezes, and the sound of rocks falling or branches snapping in the near distance, all of which combine to give the effect that there's a threat stalking the Doctor and Sarah, waiting for the right moment to attack. It's that same sense of malevolence in the shadows that, for me, makes HP Lovecraft's writing so compelling.

The black pool, which forms the heart of the story, is so stunning an effect that I'm still not sure how they did it. It looks like it must be CSO, because the blackness is so intense and non-reflective, but it's clearly not just a bit of blue paint on the set floor, because people fall into it and climb out of it. Given that the edge of the pit bows under the Doctor's weight (oops) when he steps on it in part 4, there really does seem to be a hole in the set, but how they made the interior look so inky-black I'll never know. It's a great achievement, and it adds hugely to the unearthly feel of Zeta Minor.

Zeta Minor in general, actually, is just a great concept. It has a lot going for it: the idea that it's an incredibly remote planet on the fringe of the universe gives it a mystique right from the start, and clearly it's a freaky place once you start exploring it. But the idea that it could be a boundary zone between the universes of matter and anti-matter, where some form of anti-matter can actually exist without annihilating everything it touches, is fascinating. I love the concept that the stones littered around the pool are actually anti-matter crystals that have spilled over into our universe, but they literally can't be taken very far from the gateway. And that's the really cool thing about Zeta Minor: the idea that it's practically a living organism itself, a sort of guardian of the portal to the anti-matter universe; it knows the intentions of the people who arrive there, it deliberately makes veins of the anti-matter mineral appear and disappear as if taunting them, and it refuses to let you leave if you try to take any anti-matter with you. That just adds to the sense that there's a malevolent force stalking the jungles; maybe the malevolent force is the planet itself.

Although, of course, there's also the malevolent anti-matter monster to contend with. While Zeta Minor may be the guardian of the anti-matter gateway, the energy monster is like its minion, responsible for doing all the dirty work. It seems to live in the pit, emerging only to whoosh through the undergrowth invisibly and drain the life out of interlopers. (It's not entirely clear why it targets some people and not others; one would think, for example, that Sorenson would be the first to go, as he's the one living by the pool and actively trying to exploit the anti-matter crystals. Certainly Zeta Minor doesn't seem to want him to turn into Anti-Man and destroy the rest of the universe; it merely wants to keep the anti-matter contained, and protect the gateway. So why the monster persistently lets him live, while freeze-drying the folks who are just innocently hanging around the ship, is a mystery.) Its menace is considerable: it's practically unstoppable, sometimes invisible, kills you suddenly and painfully, and it can even walk right through your walls because it's made of an energy that apparently doesn't exist in this universe. And then there's the sound that it makes, yet another example of the production team getting it totally right: the anti-matter monster sounds like an unsettling combination of rattling bones and chittering insects crawling all over each other.

I think it's safe to say that Planet of Evil marks the moment when the partnership of the fourth Doctor and Sarah, now a double-act for the first time, really hits the stratosphere. Baker and Sladen seem to have had fairly instant chemistry anyway, and they had time to build their rapport while Ian Marter was a regular. Now that the Doctor and Sarah are alone again — and, perhaps, without having to watch over their somewhat more reluctant fellow-traveller Harry — they've hit the ground running. Sarah, in particular, comes across as very competent, particularly in episode one. She's intelligent (realizing that the power drain accounts for the expedition's weak distress signal, and somehow realizing that the low power will affect the ship's magnetized windows), analytical (deducing from a tool that the people who sent the distress signal must be humanoid), and independent (volunteering to fetch the spectral mixer from the TARDIS and brave the jungle alone). As a result, she and the Doctor bounce off one another beautifully, even at times seeming to share the same brain, and she never comes across as confused or slow. The downside of the script is that after episode one, Sarah basically gets shuffled off to the sidelines, trapped on the Morestran ship and usually following the Doctor around. The one exception comes at the start of episode three, when she sneaks off the ship and races to the pool in an attempt to rescue the Doctor singlehandedly. For a story that started off so well in its treatment of the companion, it's a shame that it drops her like a hot potato, but the attention lavished on her character in part one means I'd never noticed this problem until now. At any rate, Sladen is a pro, as always, with the material: as evidence, I point to "Let's go, shall we?", her sarcastic "What was that, an elfin spirit of the forest?", "I think there's been another killing.", her always-great asphyxiation acting, and her reaction shots as she watches the Doctor confront the anti-matter monster at the pool. Planet of Evil also gives us my favorite of Lis Sladen's outfits: the jeans and ruffled denim top are really flattering on her, both feminine and practical, and even now I don't think it looks dated.

Tom Baker is relaxed and wonderful, typically taking all the Morestran abuse and accusation in stride with nothing but a knowing look and a faint smile. The fourth Doctor just refuses to be cowed by bullies, instead taking the approach that ignoring them or finding them amusing will frustrate them no end. But when the situation demands it, he turns focused and intense, as when he confronts Sorenson over his abuse of the anti-matter crystals, or his best line of the story: "Get back! Haven't you learned anything? You're tampering with the balance of nature on this planet in ways you don't understand." At this point in the Hinchcliffe era, though, the fourth Doctor is becoming atypically violent: not only does he deck Salamar with a punch across the jaw, he actually shoots Sorenson twice with a blaster! (While he's in Anti-Man form, but still!)

It's a good thing we've got Baker and Sladen on hand, because the main area where Planet of Evil drops the ball is in the casting department. On the whole, the Morestrans are a fairly dull bunch, which in turn drags down most of the scenes set onboard their ship. (In fact, part one is shaping up to be extremely freaky until the moment when the raygun-waving Morestrans all crash onto the jungle set and stomp around the TARDIS, draining all the tension right out.) The worst offender is unfortunately the controller, Salamar — a regrettable combination of an irrationally obstinate antagonist and an unsubtle acting performance. Granted, Salamar himself is a fairly unsubtle chap, but Prentis Hancock seems content to deliver his lines (half of which are "That's impossible!") in a one-note ranting tone. A couple of the worst offenders are "I may have better fortune." and the halting "I am well aware of your high position in the science — authorities, Professor." What makes me want to tear my hair out is the way that Salamar is absolutely determined to believe the worst of the Doctor, even when his assertions fly in the face of all the available evidence. We've got:

• "You idiot!" when the Doctor informs Salamar that the reason the ship can't escape Zeta Minor is that he's still got some anti-matter crystals in his pocket. Despite the facts that the Morestrans were the ones who brought him (and the anti-matter) aboard while he was unconscious, he informed Salamar about it the moment that he woke up, it's the only reason he's still alive after falling into the pool, and he had no idea that they would rescue him and immediately attempt to take off. What could the Doctor possibly have done differently?
  
• "There is no anti-matter aboard this ship!" he rails, even though the ship still isn't pulling free of Zeta Minor. Hasn't anybody remembered how opposed Sorenson was to the idea of jettisoning it all?
  
• "They caused it all!" he rages, attempting to justify his execution of the TARDIS crew, even though it's obvious that the Doctor and Sarah couldn't have been behind the killings.

Forming the middle band are Ponti (Louis Mahoney) and Morelli (Michael Wisher); neither is given much to do, with Morelli coming across as over-serious and Ponti getting basically no characterization at all. Mahoney's great in Blink, so I know he has (or will have) the chops, but it's not coming through here. It's odd that the production team would give Wisher such a tiny background role after his stunning turn as Davros, but maybe they thought he'd be too recognizable in a larger role so soon, even without the mask and voice modulation...? The other Morestrans — Braun (Terence Brook) and Baldwin (Tony McEwan) from the original expedition, and O'Hara (Haydn Wood) and Reig (Melvyn Bedford) from the rescue party — barely get any screentime at all, and as such hardly register. I will, however, commend McEwan for his convincingly terrified death scene.

That leaves the three top Morestrans. Of the minor characters, the likeably grumpy De Haan (Graham Weston) is by far the most successful. Weston's acting is naturalistic and, as a result, De Haan is a relatable character with a nice bit of understated comic relief. His best moment is his complete incomprehension of Sorenson's miraculous discovery, and although he doesn't get much to do throughout the story, I think that scene endeared me to him, and I was sad to see him killed by Anti-Man. Next, the one Morestran who's really on the Doctor's side, Vishinsky (Ewen Solon). I don't know that Solon is the greatest actor, but next to Hancock he seemed so much more naturalistic that I found myself enjoying his performance, and of course it's great that Vishinsky is actually willing to listen to the Doctor. I certainly wanted to cheer when he finally wrested command away from Salamar! Finally, in the key role of Sorenson, we have the reliable Frederick Jaeger. His performance makes Sorenson a passionate and stubborn but reasonable and well-meaning man, and the script makes it clear that Sorenson has no god-complex delusions or megalomaniacal impulses. He simply wants to rescue his planet and save his people from obliteration, and while he's willing to break a few rules to try to salvage his life's work, he's not willing to risk unnecessary loss of Morestran life. The fact that Sorenson is ultimately willing to sacrifice himself and his work when he realizes how he's endangering the ship's crew demonstrates that he's an honorable man, and I think that emotional hook gives Planet of Evil yet another lift. It's a nice change from the usual "mad scientist ploughs ahead with no regard for ethics" storyline.

David Maloney is handed a gift on a silver platter with Planet of Evil; that jungle set alone must have made filming the story a joy. I really like the shots of Sarah being affected by the proximity of an anti-monster; the close-ups of her stiffening fingers and widening eyes are simple but powerful. He does a great job of subtly showing Sorenson's transformation, when he reaches out to throw the lever and eject himself into space, but by the time he grips the lever, his hand has turned into a hairy claw. Maloney also creates a lot of tension with his direction, notably in any of the jungle-traversing scenes; one particularly good instance of this is the shot of Anti-Man twisting and bending his restraints behind the oblivious Doctor's back. (It's the sort of shot that makes us want to yell at the TV, "Turn around!") I really like the final shot of the monster rising from the pool to watch the TARDIS dematerialize. And I've already mentioned the memorable shots of the Doctor being confronted by the monster at the pool, and the freeze-frame as he falls into it. The only moment that I question is the odd zoom past Sarah in to the pool, only to cut back to a wide shot of Sarah saying "There's nothing!" And, oops, there's a noticeable camera wobble just after Salamar tells Sorenson "You're a scientist, you must have formed some theory." (Clearly the camera agrees that all scientists are experts on everything.)

As I've mentioned, the effects work here is quite, quite good. The shot of Zeta Minor from space is great; with no stars in the background, it just hangs in the empty blackness of space looking like a wrinkled red citrus fruit, organic and disturbing. The dessicated bodies of the anti-matter monster's victims are creepy and, I suspect, intelligently shot from a distance (with no close-ups to frighten the kiddies or reveal any unconvincing details). The oculoid tracker is well-designed and eerie, and looks convincing as it floats through the jungle. There's an interesting afterimage effect used to show the neutron accelerator's mutation of Anti-Man, and the shots of the anti-matter duplicates penetrating the hatchways are well-done. The eerily-lit shots of the Doctor falling into the pool aren't bad, and the painted-eyelid technique is used effectively here to give Sorenson pulsating glowing red eyes. My favorite: the crackling red outline of the anti-matter monster, which is unusual, effective, inventively done and frightening. The least-successful effect is probably the cartoonish forcefield barrier repelling the anti-matter monster, but as Batman-y as it is, I love it.

Along with the jungle sound effects, Dudley Simpson's incidental music is really effective at boosting the atmosphere. In particular, his music over the initial deaths is dramatic and effective. I also like the noise made by the firing Morestran guns.

In the area of design, top marks definitely go to the jungle set and the black pool. I also like the bi-level control room set, which allows for some interesting filming angles (but who decided that the staircases shouldn't have any railing?! that's just asking for trouble if they run into turbulence), and I appreciate that the set designers incorporated what appears to be untranslated Morestran writing (which mostly takes the form of mirror-image or upside-down letters and numbers, but also some interesting line drawings) into the signs on the doors and walls. Occasionally we get a glimpse of what seems to be a viewscreen or a computer bank at the front of the control room, which is appealingly colorful. We've also got a brand-new TARDIS console room set making its appearance in Planet of Evil, but I'm decidedly underwhelmed. The roundels are strange and flat, and the console looks cheap, particularly the flimsy-looking strip of metal around the edge. I must also comment on costume design, to wit: while Sarah's outfit is fantastic, I can't decide if it's amusing or bizarre that the Morestran uniforms are designed to show off a swathe of chest hair.

Aside from the Super Friends "death trap" vibes, I've got some other strong memories associated with Planet of Evil. The first time I ever visited England, in 1995, I was delighted to find that they still sold tins of Farrah's Harrogate toffee, and of course I had to get one (mine being a slightly different size than the one the Doctor uses). Sadly, the tin held actual toffee rather than anti-matter; happily, the toffee was delicious. And then there's the Pictionary incident. Back in the fall of 2002, I took a trip during fall break to Michigan's Upper Peninsula with a few friends of mine (Nick and Katherine from my cohort, with whom I also watched the first couple seasons of the revival; my cousin Gray, during one of his visits to Michigan; and Dushy, my Sri Lankan friend who was a year ahead of us). We stayed in a cabin near the shore of Lake Michigan and had a wonderful time cooking and making s'mores and taking daytrips to Tahquahmenon Falls and Mackinac Island. We also brought some board games along with us, one of which was Pictionary. When we played, Gray and I typically teamed up, much to the chagrin of the other team (usually Nick and Dushy, as Katherine tended to retire early), who accused us of having so much shared history that we barely had to draw anything for the other person to immediately recognize it and yell out the correct answer. Actually, we hardly ever drew upon that shared knowledge; I think we just knew how one other thought. But at one point, I decided that I was going to try to exploit that shared knowledge when I had to make Gray guess the word MATTERHORN. Ah-ha! I thought. He'll get "matter" if I can get him to guess "anti-matter", and the easiest way to do that will be to draw the anti-matter monster! Shared knowledge of Doctor Who monsters? Score! So, I tried. (Alas, I seem to have misplaced the drawing, but I'll scan it if it turns up again.) It was a miserable failure; at one point, Gray stared at my drawing — absolutely clueless — and suggested "Frog of Satan?" Sigh. They probably heard Nick and Dushy's howls of laughter in Toronto.

Minor points:

• More evidence that the Morestran civilization is Earth-derived comes from the very Earth-y names: Braun and Baldwin (Germanic), De Haan (Dutch), O'Hara (Irish), Ponti and Morelli (Italian), Sorenson (Scandinavian), and Vishinsky (Slavic). Only Salamar and Reig actually sound alien, although both are plausibly Spanish (Reig, at least, being a genuine last name of some Spanish speakers). Then, of course, there's Egard Lumb, whose surname is English. (Given how similar "Egard" is to "Edgar", do you suppose he's a writer's in-joke?) And the Morestrans have certainly heard of Earth; at least, they don't act all confused when Sarah says that's where she and the Doctor were headed.

• When Braun hears or sees the anti-matter monster, why doesn't he run back inside the ship rather than trying to run away from it? (Although, as we find out shortly thereafter, it wouldn't have done him much good if he had...)

• I always like it when the companions see right through the Doctor.

  Doctor: "What makes you think something's gone wrong?"
  Sarah: "Because you always get rude when you're trying to cover up a mistake."

• Is Zeta Minor really "the last planet of the known universe"? Or are we just talking about the Morestran empire here? Because I find it hard to believe that they've mapped the entire universe and figured out that Zeta Minor is the most remote planet ever. (Then again, they can travel between galaxies with apparent ease, so perhaps that's not as implausible as it sounds. Their empire must be enormous!)

• As intelligent as Sarah is in this story, it's a little odd that she would immediately assume that they're still in Earth's solar system, as if solar power can only be provided by her sun.

• If it were me, arriving on an alien planet to find bodies that had apparently been drained of fluids overnight, one of my first assumptions would be that there could be some kind of pathogen or contaminant on the planet, but nobody seems to even consider that possibility.

• "Appearances can be deceptive"? Who did Sorenson think the Morestran rescue party might be? Of all the crazy things we see Zeta Minor do, producing malevolent dopplegängers is not one of them.

• Upon seeing a dessicated corpse in the expedition ship, Sorenson cries, "Baldwin!" To which the Doctor helpfully adds, "He's dead."

• Actually not a ton of great dialogue in this story; this is the last really clever line.

  Vishinsky: "Any signal would have been monitored by our receivers."
  Doctor: "Perhaps my receivers are better than yours."
  Ponti: "Shut up!"
  Doctor: "My manners certainly are."

• It occurs to me that while magnetic power may be great in theory, if low power means that your windows come unsealed, that could pose a slight problem if you suffer a power drain while in outer space.

• Gosh, what brutes the Doctor and Sarah are. No sooner has O'Hara saved their lives by distracting the anti-matter monster than they leg it in the opposite direction and abandon him to be eaten. There's gratitude for you.

• I wonder why it is that Sarah's the only one who seems to have out-of-body experiences around the anti-matter monster? Something in her female biochemistry? Or it only affects Earth people, meaning that the Morestrans aren't human after all?

• The Morestrans are, however, typically horrible shots. As the Doctor and Sarah run off into the jungle — through a clearing, even — the Morestrans fire at them at least 20 times and utterly fail to hit even one of them.

• What makes Ponti fall into the pool? The Doctor doesn't seem to have pushed him in that direction; it's almost like the monster invisibly reaches up and taps him fatally on the shoulder.

• Sorenson declares that the whole purpose of his expedition was to move materials from one dimension to another, not to gather samples of a potentially-exploitable new power source. Does that mean, then, that he realized exactly what Zeta Minor was? (He did, after all, develop a preventative remedy against anti-quark penetration, so at the very least, he knew he'd be dealing with anti-matter.)

• When the Doctor falls into the pit, why does the monster seem to suddenly vanish off the oculoid tracker's viewscreen? Did it just dive into the pit after him, and we missed that part?

• They don't make a huge deal of it, but there's a really scary moment at the start of part three where it looks like the Doctor and Sarah may be stranded on Zeta Minor forever, if the Morestran ship takes off with the TARDIS aboard before they can get back to it.

• I rather like the way that we have no clue that the anti-matter is affecting Sorenson adversely, until we see him start to have difficulty concentrating moments before his eyes first turn red.

• I quite like the idea of removable sickbay beds that do double-duty as stretchers!

• Man, anti-matter is awful on your teeth. Just look what it does to Sorenson's when he turns into Anti-Man!

• One thing that I like about the script is that it takes some pains to sketch out Morestran culture. In particular, the mention of different religious denominations is nice (even if the only one we hear about — Morestran Orthodox — sounds boringly Earth-like).

• Why does Sarah think it's so awful of the Morestrans to set their dead bodies adrift in space? It's no different from what a lot of Earth cultures do. Surely the seafaring Britons pitched some of their dead overboard without being considered barbaric?

• The cliffhanger to part three, as the Doctor and Sarah are about to be ejected from the ship, is really quite fantastic and tense. (This Perils-of-Pauline-type deathtrap was pretty popular in the Hinchcliffe and Williams eras, with similar versions appearing in The Seeds of Doom and The Sunmakers, at the very least; and that's without even counting the similar "slow countdown to oblivion" traps in The Face of Evil (two of them!), Underworld, The Power of Kroll and Meglos. All highly effective, in my opinion!)

• Hee, the sickbay door that Sarah goes out doesn't seem to want to let her through. It opens late, leaving her standing there waiting for it, and then only opens about a third of the way. (Fortunately, she's a petite thing, and doesn't have to try to squeeze through the opening.)

• The Doctor recommends they lower the hatchways without even bothering to make an announcement to the entire ship. Granted, there aren't that many people still alive at this point, but you have to pity the poor hypothetical dude who accidentally got stuck in the same section as Anti-Man.

• Isn't it a little cavalier of the Doctor to go ladling antimatter crystals onto the table? It might have been a bit safer to put them on the underside of the canister lid, just to be sure that no antimatter particles remained onboard the ship. And while we're at it, how does Sorenson's curative liquid render the entire pile of crystals inert, rather than just the crystals that come into contact with it?

• I love the creepy plot device of the Doctor talking with Vishinsky in hushed tones via intercom about Anti-Man roaming loose on the ship. It's the same sort of technique that works really well in The Ark in Space and The Robots of Death.

• By the time the Doctor's tracking Sorenson down, are any of the crew left alive besides Vishinsky? I think not! (Good luck to the two of them, trying to pilot the ship back to Morestra through deep space by themselves!)

• Vishinsky inventions odd new verbs, as he and Sarah prepare to set up a forcefield barrier in the control room:

  Vishinsky: "Direction them in a line straight across! We'll seal off the area."

• Um, guys, given that there are two entrances to the bridge, wouldn't it be wise to set up your forcefield so that it covers both of them? The way they're setting it up, the anti-matter monsters could come in through the upper entrance, walk down the stairs, and completely bypass their forcefield. (Which, as it turns out, is exactly what they do! And do Vishinsky and Sarah then back up and try setting up their forcefield around a smaller area? No, they abandon the whole setup and huddle together helplessly to await imminent freeze-drying.)

• Huh. I wonder if you really could derive energy from the kinetic force of planetary movement? It sounds like a plausible idea. Do you suppose anyone on Earth has looked into it?

It could do with some slightly better casting and a somewhat meatier role for Sarah, but other than that, I wouldn't change a thing about Planet of Evil. This story takes its source material and makes it even better, with some fascinating concepts and frightening imagery. A great start to the era of the Baker/Sladen duo.