Planet of Evil

The slip of card we keep inside all our Doctor Who videos to record the dates on which we watch the story in question often yields additional information or clues about each adventure. The one for "Planet of Evil" records the story title as "Planet of Wretched Evil", along with a brief comment that the story was indeed "completely wretched" when we last watched it (On 4th August 2003, as a matter of complete irrelevance). The story's status as a "right proper crappun" fails to be overhauled whenever the tape is returned to the player (usually when all other entertainment related options are exhausted, including re-tiling, defrosting the fridge and Angela Griffin fitness videos). Like "Pyramids of Mars", you're not allowed to say so (it comes from a golden era you see) but there's a distinct whiff of the mediocre about it. Yet, it's not very easy to say why.

Or at least it wasn't until I re-watched the story recently in a bid to find something good to say about it or, to actually tell the truth, to try and define just why it's so stinking rubbish. I mean, it's a Tom from the same season as "Zygons", "Seeds" and "Brain of Morbius" isn't it? There are no obvious technical slip-ups, no "Planet of Evil" equivalent of the Giant Rat or Myrka. So what on Earth is wrong with it? Well, the answer comes when you spin the tables around and ask yourself what's GOOD about it... what stands out? What makes the story special? What element of the production shines? The answer, of course, is absolutely nothing. "Planet of Evil" is horse-turdingly mediocre.

It's also, on reflection, one of the most by-numbers Doctor Who stories. Even though at its heart is a quite unique subject matter - a living planet and (props here) one that doesn't have a silly booming voice - everything about it manages to be totally predictable. If you were to make a list of anything 'typical' about Doctor Who, that most versatile of programs, you might come up with something like this: the Doctor answering a call for distress, a group of isolated humans in dull uniforms, the Doctor and companion being accused of murder, a jungle hamfistedly realised half in studio and half on film, Prentis Hancock and a monster that is a bloke dressed up like an unconvincing monkey. Now not all those things are in every story, or even very many of them. But they are the elements that we least half-expect to find in every Doctor Who we watch. The things that indicate the show is being fuelled not by originality and imagination but by burning the pages of "The Making of Doctor Who" to create some lifeless hybrid of what Doctor Who SHOULD be like.

Thus "Planet of Evil" works on one level only; it may be aimed, as per the traditions of the era, at the "intelligent" (and, one presumes, insomniac) fourteen year old, but there's also nothing here that would tax or intrigue an adult. And the production is as by-numbers as the script; the jungle is a dull and featureless place made scary only by the use of desperate camera-zooms and an apparent sense of "my mind leaving my body" (whatever that means) and close-ups of Sarah-Jane's hands, perhaps to save them going to the effort of actually putting some hostile plants or animals in the thing. What is the planet supposed to actually do apart from cross-fade people out of existence? The studio sets are little better, featuring the usual old junk pilfered from other stories, like the tall switch from "The Ark in Space" and others. And if you can sit through all this to see the end, where Prentis Hancock goes mad (sigh!) and Freddie Jaeger puts his glowing false eyes on, well you obviously need to go out and buy some new DVD's.

It was once said that "Planet of Evil" was rather good when watched by the light of a Christmas Tree and a log fire. In fact, it would better off ON that log fire, as it's utterly dull whichever time of year it is.