Planet of Evil
 |
| 081 – Planet of Evil | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Doctor Who serial | |||
The Anti-Man manifests himself. | |||
| Cast | |||
Guest
| |||
| Production | |||
| Directed by | David Maloney | ||
| Written by | Louis Marks | ||
| Script editor | Robert Holmes | ||
| Produced by | Philip Hinchcliffe | ||
| Executive producer(s) | None | ||
| Production code | 4H | ||
| Series | Season 13 | ||
| Running time | 4 episodes, 25 minutes each | ||
| First broadcast | 27 September–18 October 1975 | ||
| Chronology | |||
| |||
Planet of Evil is the second serial of the 13th season of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who. It was first broadcast in four weekly parts from 27 September to 18 October 1975.
Plot
The TARDIS picks up a distress call and the Doctor and Sarah arrive on the planet Zeta Minor. There they discover that a Morestran geological expedition has fallen prey to an unseen killer and only the leader, Professor Sorenson, remains alive.
A military mission from Morestra has also arrived to investigate. At first they suspect the Doctor and Sarah of responsibility for the deaths of the expedition members, but the culprit is eventually revealed to be a creature from a universe of antimatter, retaliating for the removal by Sorenson of some antimatter samples from around the pit that acts as an interface between the two universes.
The Morestrans take off in their ship, but it is slowly dragged back towards the planet due to the antimatter on board. Sorenson himself becomes infected by antimatter and gradually transforms into antiman, a monster capable of draining the life from others.
The Morestran commander, the increasingly unhinged Salamar, attacks Sorenson with a radiation source but this only causes him to produce multiple anti-matter versions of himself, which soon overrun the ship. The Doctor finds the original Sorenson, takes him back to the planet in the TARDIS and throws both him and his samples into the pit, fulfilling a bargain he earlier made with the anti-matter creature. Sorenson reappears unharmed, and the Doctor returns him to the Morestran ship, which is now freed of the planet's influence.
Continuity
The spin-off novel Zeta Major by Simon Messingham, part of the Past Doctor Adventures line, is a sequel to this story.
In a rare moment, the Doctor uses a blaster against an opponent, contradicting his position made during Pyramids of Mars that he never carries firearms.
Production
Template:Doctor Who episode head
The plot was deliberately conceived by Philip Hinchcliffe, Robert Holmes and Louis Marks as a mixture of the film Forbidden Planet and the novella The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. In addition, Marks had been reading science magazine articles about antimatter, and decided to write a story incorporating the subject. Hinchcliffe, in the first season in which he could commission new material, planned to move away from the "rubber-suited alien" theme, which he felt was clichéd. For this story he proposed having three separate monstrous elements: Sorenson's transformation, the anti-matter monster and finally the planet itself, claimed by Sorenson in episode 1 to be conscious of his group's motives.[1]
Despite the jungle setting of this serial, the shoot was entirely studio bound, and designer Roger Murray-Leach built an intricately detailed jungle set. The BBC was so impressed with it that they kept photographs of it for several years as an example of excellent set design and producer Philip Hinchcliffe recommended that he be nominated for an award for this work.
The original script had Sorenson dying after falling into the pit, but Hinchcliffe ordered that this be changed, as he felt it would too grim an ending for "the little ones"[clarification needed], and because he saw Sorenson as a victim of the planet's influence rather than an evil man in himself.[2] Instead, a scene was added in which Sorenson is released from the pit, cured of his anti-matter contamination.
The most visible reference to Forbidden Planet is the anti-matter monster (Mike Lee Lane), which is sometimes invisible and otherwise is seen as red outlines. It bears a close resemblance to the film's "Creature from the Id". The monster is invisible in the filmed sections of the serial (where a wind machine was used to show its progress), and as outlines in the video sections (created with Colour Separation Overlay).
The ship main cabin set was re-used in the 4th Doctor story The Robots of Death.[citation needed]
Cast notes
This is the final appearance by Michael Wisher in Doctor Who. Prentis Hancock made his third appearance in this story having previously appeared in Spearhead from Space and Planet of the Daleks. He would later appear in The Ribos Operation. Frederick Jaegar (Professor Sorenson) and Ewen Solon (Vishinsky) both previously appeared in The Savages, in which they played Jano and Chal respectively.
Outside references
The Doctor quotes from Romeo and Juliet and Hamlet,[3] and says that he met William Shakespeare once.[4] In the DVD commentary Elisabeth Sladen, in a discussion about Forbidden Planet's influence from Shakespeare's The Tempest, compares Sorenson/Antiman to Caliban.
In print
Template:Doctor Who book A novelisation of this serial, written by Terrance Dicks, was published by Target Books in July 1977 as Doctor Who and the Planet of Evil.
VHS and DVD release
Planet of Evil was released on VHS in January 1994. It was released on DVD on 15 October 2007.
References
- ^ "A Darker Side" documentary on the making of the serial (BBC DVD 1814)
- ^ "A Darker Side"
- ^ Cornell, Paul; Day, Martin; Topping, Keith (1995). "Planet of Evil:Roots". Doctor Who: The Discontinuity Guide. London: Doctor Who Books. pp. 180–1. ISBN 0-426-20442-5.
{{cite book}}: External link in|chapterurl=|chapterurl=ignored (|chapter-url=suggested) (help) - ^ Cornell, Paul; Day, Martin; Topping, Keith (1995). "Planet of Evil: Untelevised Adventures". Doctor Who: The Discontinuity Guide. London: Doctor Who Books. p. 182. ISBN 0-426-20442-5.
{{cite book}}: External link in|chapterurl=|chapterurl=ignored (|chapter-url=suggested) (help)
Bibliography
- Cornell, Paul; Day, Martin; Topping, Keith (1995). "The Hand of Fear". The Discontinuity Guide. London: Virgin Books. pp. 180–182. ISBN 0-426-20442-5.
{{cite book}}:|access-date=requires|url=(help);|format=requires|url=(help); External link in|chapterurl=|chapterurl=ignored (|chapter-url=suggested) (help) - Haining, Peter Doctor Who: 25 Glorious Years W H Allen (1988) ISBN 1-85227-021-7
External links
- Reviews
- Target novelisation