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| The Doctor and Sarah Jane are being watched. |
4 episodes. Approx. 98 minutes. Written by: Louis Marks. Directed by: David Maloney. Produced by: Philip Hinchcliffe.
THE PLOTOn Zeta Minor, a planet at the edge of the known universe, a Morestran science expedition led by Professor Sorenson (Frederick Jaeger) has been picked off one by one by a bizarre energy creature. A distress call leads the Doctor and Sarah Jane to the site - but far too late to save any of the scientists. Only Sorenson remains, a half-mad shell of a man who clings to his samples like a lifeline, insisting that they represent a discovery that will save his civilization.
The Doctor has only barely arrived when a Morestran military ship reaches the planet to check up on the expedition. The Doctor and Sarah Jane, as strangers, are instantly blamed for the deaths. But when the creature begins preying on the ship's crew, the Doctor realizes that they are at a point of collision between two universes: the universe of matter and that of anti-matter. Sorenson's samples are pure anti-matter. If they are brought back to the rest of the matter universe, then it could spell the end of everything!
CHARACTERS
The Doctor: Tom Baker is at very nearly his best, his performance easily the serial's strongest asset. I love his disgust at the Morestrans. When Sarah Jane notices the Oculoid tracker, the Doctor tells her to ignore it. The Morestrans are a nuisance to the Doctor. He admits that it is tempting to simply leave them to their fate on the planet, and there's a sense that he just might do that if the consequences wouldn't be so dire. He's downright ruthless when confronting Sorenson in the final part, telling him that "we purchase the right to experiment at the cost of total responsibility," with a stern expression and unforgiving body language. It's great character stuff overall, with a darker tilt than the early Doctors traditionally have been allowed to show.
Sarah Jane Smith: Her sensitivity to the anti-matter creature provides a few creepy moments early on. But it never gets any sort of payoff. It's never explained, nor does it play any major role in the plot. Likely, it's residue of an earlier draft. Elisabeth Sladen shows her usual chemistry with Tom Baker, and her character is refreshingly assertive in the story's second half, particularly when she pushes Vishinsky to take charge. By and large, though, this is not a strong story for Sarah Jane. "Generic companion" stuff, though Sladen does it well.
THOUGHTS
Planet of Evil is a story of two halves and, unfortunately, of two settings. The first two episodes are nicely atmospheric, with David Maloney's tightly controlled direction making the most of designer Roger Murray-Leach's studio jungle. Sadly, the last two episodes switch settings. Instead of the moody, threatening jungle world, we spend most of the second half on a bland spaceship set. With the shift in setting comes a shift in story focus, all of which sees the serial's initial tension gradually fade away.
I've read that this script went through several rewrites. Unfortunately, it shows. Part 2 tells us that there is a threat to the entire universe if the Morestrans take the planet's anti-matter back with them... right before telling (and showing) us that the planet "won't let" them leave with any anti-matter. Which means that there's no actual threat to anyone other than the Morestrans. The Doctor can go ahead and leave his unpleasant hosts to their fate, with no need to worry about the rest of the universe after all.
Really, for the most part, it's like watching the first two episodes of one story fused to the last two episodes of a completely different story. Save for the characters and people repeating "anti-matter" every few minutes, the two halves play out like completely separate pieces. Sorenson's Jekyll/Hyde transformations were apparently the reason for commissioning this in the first place. But the whole Jekyll/Hyde bit doesn't even start until Episode Three, with no clues in the first half that Sorenson is affected by anything other than his own ambition. The character of the Morestran Captain (a wooden Prentis Hancock) switches midway through from being ruthless to merely being an imbecile. Vishinsky goes from being stern to sympathetic at about the same point.
To an extent, it skates by on Tom Baker's very good performance and (for the first two episodes, at least) the atmosphere of the jungle set. It's all watchable enough, and it does move along... but I'm genuinely confused about the high esteem in which this story's held. Weak guest performances, weaker guest characters, and a shift in focus at the midpoint that all but jettisons the story's strongest elements in favor of bland sci-fi/horror trappings.
Rating: 5/10.
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