The
Doctor and Donna give themselves a well-earned rest on the
crystal planet of Midnight, but the Time Lord isn’t
one to sit around the pool and enjoy some pampering, like
his companion. Electing to head out on a tour of the planet’s
crystal valleys, the Doctor and several other passengers
sit back and enjoy the in-cabin entertainment over the four
hours it takes drive across the Xtonic radiation filled
to the stunning Sapphire Waterfalls. But the barren, lifeless
planet has some secrets and they want to be heard.
Since
the series returned in 2005, the Doctor’s adventures
have been getting more and more grandiose every season,
so how could a ‘bottle’ show for the Time Lord
bring something new to the series?
Fans
of many a long running science fiction series will know
that a show that takes places using either an established
setting, like a starship, or one fixed location is known
as a ‘bottle show’. Producers love these because
they are a lot cheaper to make and for the most part tend
to be a low point of a season. Fortunately, this isn’t
the case for ‘Midnight’.
It takes
place inside what is best described as eight-wheeled, armoured
transport, with a level of luxury that isn’t really
any better than we had in passenger jets back in the 1990s.
With a lone stewardess going through the usual motions you
would expect, this is going to be a long four hours for
the passengers.
The
advantage they have, however, is that the Doctor is onboard
and he always sees the best in his favourite life forms
in the universe, humans. He gets them talking to each other
and we, as viewers, get to know the passengers a little
more. The thing is that this isn’t an ordinary sightseeing
trip.
Written
by show runner and producer Russell T. Davies, ‘Midnight’
is another frightening Doctor Who episode. Just
as you get to know the passengers, start enjoying their
quirks and finding out about their lives, the transport
stops. From then on it is tension all the way as we discover
that because the transport has taken a different route than
normal, they have wandered into a new area of the planet
that has never been touched by man.
Here
they discover the planet they thought was uninhabited, as
nothing can survive in Xtonic radiation, is in fact harbouring
a new life form and it wants into the transport. Influenced
by John Carpenter’s The Thing, the tension
comes from the fact that the new life form inhabits a host,
to learn everything it can about the intruders into its
world. The trouble is that it might be able to change hosts
at a whim, so no one is safe.
‘Midnight’
might be a bottle show, but it is one that will have you
on the edge of your seat. Of course David Tennant excels
and drives what could have been a very ordinary episode,
but you know that ‘Midnight’ is just a building
block for what is to come.
editor's note: The last three episodes
of this season all tie together, so Jamie Kelwick has suggested
that he will write one large review.
